[EM] STV and weighted positional methods

[Kathy Dopp]

James,

You seem to have very much misunderstand every single statement I made
when I told you that we are in agreement on this.

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 12:14 PM, James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> wrote:

>
> I am not familiar with that particular case, but the usual reason why STV-PR is defeated is because the partisan interests

No. I believe that Cincinnati wants a fair equitable voting method
that is publicly transparent and were smart enough to realize what an
utter unfair mess the IRV/STV voting method is, and also recognized
that STV/IRV methods tend to keep the top two parties in power by
ensuring that minority parties cannot interfere unless the minority
gets large enough to cause the elimination of the most popular
two-party candidate, causing the least favorite two party candidate to
win.


>> I suppose district seats is a good alternative that tends to
>> represent minority groups who live dispersed in different districts.
>
> No, this would NOT be good alternative, because the largest minority could win every one of the single-member district seats and so

Obviously I did not express myself clearly enough for you. When a
minority group lives concentrated in particular geographic districts
then single-member districts give them good representation.

>
>
>>  But you're right that a single ranked or rated vote method
>> if a fair method (unlike IRV/STV) would better allow for a
>> geographically dispersed minority group to obtain
>> representation if they came out and voted in numbers
>> proportionate to their population for candidates who
>> represented their position and if their proportion of the
>> population were at least 1/N where N is the number of seats
>> being decided.
>
> I am afraid you have confused me here.  The best way to provide representation for a geographically dispersed minority is to elect as many embers as possible "at large" (e.g. the whole city council).  It is then up to that minority to make sure they all vote for the candidate(s) who best represents their views.  If that minority is large enough to secure 1/Nth of the votes (or 1/(N+1)th of the votes in STV-PR), then that minority will obtain one seat, or more in due proportion to their votes.

Yes. That is exactly what I said.

Cheers,

Kathy