[EM] Maintenance Elections

[Raph Frank]

Sorry, this is a resend as I didn't cc the list.

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 9:31 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:
> Schulze's STV proposal uses a proportional completion for this purpose. As
> far as I understand, the proportional completion is an extension of the PR
> result, for more seats than really exist.

For CPO-STV and Schulze's method, I would just pick the winning
outcome that contains all current members of the legislature.

His proportional sequence proposal is separate from his main method.

For N=1, elect the condorcet winner

For N=n (all other values)
- use method to find the winners if N=n-1
- only consider outcomes where the (n-1) candidates are included
- find the winner out of the outcomes considered

This method is much easier to process as for each round, you only need
to consider which unelected candidate to add to winning pool, so there
is a much smaller number of possible winning sets.  The number of
possible outcomes is (Candidates+1-Round),  The number of pairwise
comparisons is approx the square of that number divided by 2.

Also, all outcomes would only differ by one candidate, so you can
directly check each outcome against the others without need

It is kinda the Schulze-STV version of sequential proportional approval voting.

> If a party member quits/dies/etc,
> he's replaced by the highest-ranked unelected party member on that
> proportional completion ordering. I'm not sure how this works with
> independents; perhaps they should just appoint a replacement ahead of time
> (that is, as a precaution, like with your VP or EU Parliament examples). The
> risk may be too low for it to be worth the bother, in which case that seat
> could simply be empty.

You could specify a rule and then say "Otherwise, it will be filled in
accordance with law" for exceptions.

> For list PR, it would be even simpler. The next candidate on the list gets
> the seat. I don't think this should be used if the representative decides to
> vote against the party, but just if he leaves, since party list PR grants
> enough power to the parties as it is.

In New Zealand, if you are kicked out of the party, you have to resign
your seat, as it is a party seat and not a personal seat.  This pretty
much eliminates the whole point of a legislature.