[EM] British Colombia considering change to STV

[Raph Frank]

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 7:12 AM, Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> A related point:
> You mentioned that votes 10: A=B can be
> seen as two sets of votes, 5: A>B and
> 5: B>A. If the quota is 8 then we neither
> A nor B can be elected yet.

This isn't an issue, as soon as one or other of them is eliminated,
then the other will be elected.

The election and elimination vote would be something like:

Election:
5: A>B
5: B>A

A: 5
B: 5
=> neither elected

Elimination
10: A=B
A: 10
B: 10

This means that they get full strength to protect against elimination,
but the election step requires that the candidate wins even if the
vote is shared.

> It is another question if one
> should flip a coin and decide between A
> and B right away or to wait for some others
> to be eliminated

My method would be to wait.

> Would use of larger districts alleviate
> the problem? I guess also here we need a
> balance between guaranteeing nation wide
> local representation and keeping the
> thoughts on nation wide questions.

The larger the constituencies the weaker the local link, but only up to a point.

A candidate could run as a local candidate, even if his 'local' area
is only part of the constituency.

Again, the larger constituencies allow voters who want to vote local
to do so, without requiring all the other voters to do so.

> (One radical approach (not necessarily
> a good one) would be to allow voters to
> vote any candidate in the whole country
> but still use a seat allocation
> algorithm that forces regional
> proportionality.)

I am not sure what you mean here.  If I vote for someone who lives
'far away', where do they count as being elected from?