[EM] No geographical districts

[Stéphane Rouillon]

Dear "baby" Jonathan,

STV-PR suffers from three principal problems that are exacerbated when 
trying to push the proportionality limit. They are all caused by the large 
number of candidates:
1) A pre-selection occurs within each party, in order for the star candidate
of each party to get elected, that star often tries to kill concurrency 
having bad collegues running with him or none at all in order to increase 
its own election probability;
2) It is hard to make fair debates when the number of candidates is huge and 
they are not even the same for several parties: in the end the candidates 
having the most means (money and visibility) have the opporunity of getting 
heard and the others may simply not;
3) voters complain about the large number of names on the ballot adding 
several undesirable behaviours like random completion or following a party 
pre-selection.

Equivalent virtual districts have no such problems: they allow comparing all 
candidates with every party proposing a unique candidacy per district. The 
result is you can obtain PR results like using only one district for STV-PR, 
without the previous problems.

>From: Jonathan Lundell <jlundell at pobox.com>
>To: Allen Smith <easmith at beatrice.rutgers.edu>
>CC: <stephane.rouillon at sympatico.ca>, election-methods at electorama.com
>Subject: Re: [EM] No geographical districts
>Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 16:30:51 -0700
>
>On Sep 3, 2008, at 3:51 PM, Allen Smith wrote:
>
>>In message <BAY104-F37EB23BC91C64156A090F68F5E0 at phx.gbl> (on 3  September
>>2008 22:01:24 +0000), stephane.rouillon at sympatico.ca
>>(=?iso-8859-1?B?U3TpcGhhbmUgUm91aWxsb24=?=) wrote:
>>>Hello electorama fans,
>>>
>>>regarding that last comment, I invite those interested in non- 
>>>geographical
>>>district to consider astrological district.
>>
>>How about self-chosen districts? One element of current geographical
>>districts is that people at least theoretically (and in some actual  cases 
>>-
>>see Libertarians moving to New Hampshire, Alaska, etc for instance)  can
>>choose to move to be more around people they agree more with; that  even 
>>this
>>(frequently impractical) method would be impossible with such a  system 
>>would
>>be one objection to it.
>
>STV-PR, baby.
>----
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