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

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Juho wrote:
> On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>> Is this acceptable PR? I hope your answer is "of course not" (if it 
>> isn't, we can have that discussion).
> 
> I note that a two-party system can be seen as one style of democracy 
> that may be chosen intentionally. But if the target is to have PR then 
> such single-seat FPTP systems are of course not good at all.

If the people truly want a two-party rule, then using STV (or some other 
party neutral PR method) can't hurt - they'll have that two-party rule 
if they want, and can at any moment escape from it if they change their 
minds. See Malta.

In addition, if the method is any good "between the hard limits" 
specified by the DPC or analogous proportionality criterion, then there 
will be competition between the candidates inside of the party. STV is 
IRV between the hard limits, so one may doubt how good it is at this, 
but in reality, it does at least provide some measure of that; my 
clustering methods are much more Condorcet and so presumably would 
provide greater such competition. My proportionality simulator shows it 
to be much better than STV, but I've discovered that said simulator also 
has a significant small-party bias, so I'm taking the results with some 
salt until I can get proper correlation going.