[EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not

[Raph Frank]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 6:51 AM, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level that fixes
> the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best in small
> districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it typically leaves
> some space to distortion in proportionality as caused by the district
> structure.

While I would agree there is a compromise between distict size and
complexity for the voter, I don't agree that PR-STV is at its best
with a small districts.

Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable proportionality.

> List based methods have also similar problems but in them it is
> easier to have the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality
> but weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional
> proportionality"))

I think they also suffer from the same trade-off, between giving
voters max choice and preventing them being overloaded with options.

Under a tree system, you still need to list all the candidates in the
country.  However, granted the voter just needs to pick one candidate
to vote for.

> or they can be easily extended to count the "political
> proportionality" at national level but still allocate the seats in the
> districts (and thereby maintain also "regional proportionality" and more
> local representation).

I think this is reasonable.  I made a suggestion about how to allow
that while retaining the spirit of PR-STV locally.

http://www.mail-archive.com/election-methods@lists.electorama.com/msg04272.html

This gives allows candidate level elections locally while allowing any
wasted votes to be distributed to parties nationally.