[EM] What does "proportional representation" MEAN? And list of known PR methods (know any more?)

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 01:03 PM 11/17/2009, Raph Frank wrote:
>I am not sure referring to "racism" is a good plan :).

The word "racist" was used. A more politically correct term would be 
"factionally affiliated" or "factionally dedicated."

>Something like
>
>"Any group representing more than N/M of the voters, where M is the
>number of seats to be filled, must be able to guarantee that N of
>their candidates are elected (assuming they run enough candidates)".
>
>I think all PR methods meet this (as it is the Hare quota).

Because Asset Voting is a system which can create an electoral 
college that elects the assembly, I prefer the Hare quota, but, of 
course, this leaves the question of dregs: after all the seats are 
assigned from candidates who are elected and the easy vote transfers 
are done, there may be votes which "belong" to candidates not elected 
and they are having difficulty finding a suitable compromise. If any 
votes are left unused, of course, there is then a vacant seat, and, 
less likely, more than one vacant seat. Is it necessary to fill this seat?

The importance of it is not necessarily clear. The Election Science 
Foundation is currently used Asset Voting, experimentally, to select 
a steering committee of three members. It's pretty unlikely that more 
than one seat would remain unallocated if the Hare quota is used, but 
one empty seat is reasonably possible. That represents what could be 
approaching one-third of members who aren't represented. Now, if 
direct voting on issues is allowed -- if this is to become a board of 
a corporation, there could be some legal problems with both direct 
voting and the possibility of unequal voting powers, but 
decision-making is a separate issue from voting and voting method, 
per se -- and if the members of the unrepresented group still have a 
means to bring some matter to the attention of the "short committee," 
it's not particularly harmful. Decisions could require, I believe, a 
majority of the board, which with two members requires unanimity. 
That, again, might not be harmful. The organization is proposing to 
have a separate presiding officer who would be elected by the 
committee, and who could vote to break ties. So, again, it would take 
unanimity to elect this officer, so the officer is likely to 
represent a compromise who would satisfy at least two-thirds of the 
members. Not bad.

But it would be better if the remaining voters are represented. So 
what happens if we use the Droop quota? We end up with a 
single-winner election for that last seat, with the voters being 
those who are unrepresented plus excess votes from those elected. 
This member of the board might represent a fairly small number of 
voters, but gets equal voting power (normally). This is the reason I 
prefer the Hare quota, it's exact, every member elected does 
represent a specific group of voters, the same as the quota, with the 
same percentage of voting power in the committee. And then the 
elected board can make whatever special rules it finds appropriate to 
secure representation for the remaining voters. It can even, as I'd 
implement Asset, pick an entirely new candidate, who was not on the 
ballot. Ideally, for that last seat, it would maximize 
representation, encouraging a broad compromise among the remaining 
voters, and it could be flexible. The quota could be adjusted down 
for the last seat, but that lowering could also be restricted so that 
disparity of representation doesn't exceed a limit. There is little 
harm if a small faction has a slightly higher voting power; by 
definition in our problem here, it is a small faction that can only 
exercise power through coalition, and if the disparity is limited, it 
would, in a practical sense, not have true excess power, because 
actual voting is limited.

The goal in an elected committee or assembly, as I see it, is to 
fairly represent as much of the electorate as possible. When the 
number of seats is small, that becomes quite important, how that last 
seat is chosen. With a hundred seats, it wouldn't be so important 
but, on the other hand, an assembly with a hundred seats is pretty 
large, it really needs to function through a (sub)committee system, 
direct meeting for most business becomes too cumbersome.

Normally, supermajority of a deliberative body can change or suspend 
the rules. So ... rules could provide that, say, two-thirds of the 
assembly (full size, so this is an absolute supermajority based on 
the full assembly assuming all seats had been elected) can determine 
how the last seat is chosen, within certain simple parameters 
designed to prevent serious abuse. Note, however, that if two-thirds 
of any body with power wants to abuse, it can. Period. An absolute 
majority can, not merely a supermajority, that's the "Nuclear Option" 
in the U.S. Senate. And the nuclear option has never been exercised, 
to my knowledge, because of the recognized damage to the traditions 
of the Senate. It was bad enough that the Senate changed the cloture 
rule from two-thirds to three-fifths, that was a small loss for 
democracy. Even though the purpose was apparently "noble." The road 
to hell is paved with noble intentions....

The goal, as I see it, of the committee's process in choosing the 
final seat (or seats, with a larger assembly) would be to maximize 
representation, so that as many members of the society as possible 
think of the committee as "their committee," and feel represented on 
it by someone they chose, directly or indirectly. Not having that 
last seat be automatically assigned provides incentive for those 
voters to compromise, to find someone they all -- or almost all -- 
can accept as their common representative. It does not paralyze the 
asssembly, which can begin to conduct business with an empty seat. It 
simply needs a somewhat larger majority, in effect. With a 3-person 
nominal size, 2 elected, it needs unanimity among the two. If two 
people representing two-thirds of an organization can't find 
agreement on important things, the organization is in serious trouble 
and needs to address *that* problem. In addition, there are likely 
some left-over votes from the election of the two. These voters don't 
have specific representation, in the sense of an assigned seat 
elected with their vote, but they are still defacto represented by 
someone who has the power to insist on no action without his or her 
consent. That's not shabby, and it points out that the two-thirds I 
mentioned is probably more than two-thirds.

I'm suggesting that the Election Science Foundation use the Hare 
quota, initially, because it gets the committee going, and the 
committee can go ahead and elect a presiding officer; I think that 
the goal was that the presiding officer not be one of the members of 
the committee. Whomever the two elect could have been elected anyway 
regardless of the vote of the third. No harm is done. When the bylaws 
are written the committee can be specifically charged with the task 
of maximizing representation on the committee, which is seriously 
advantageous to the organization. The biggest loss of support for 
organizations is from members who feel left out, who have no say in 
how the organization proceeds. Not everyone wants that say, but 
everyone appreciates the *possibility* of having a say. And when a 
decision comes up that turns out to be important to the member, it 
matters very much.

What if the Center for Proportional Representation had, as Clay 
Shentrup is fond of saying, "eaten its own dog food," and set up a 
membership structure with ... proportional representation on a 
steering committee. Where would FairVote be today?

It's possible, indeed, that there would be less usage of IRV for 
single-winner elections, but it's also possible that a democratic 
Center would influenced deeper changes, would have wider support from 
academics and experts on voting systems, or would be on its way. 
Instead, the CPR was formed as a lobbying group with a tight core in 
control, classic political structure, solicited funds, eventually set 
up staff, etc., and these things take on a life of their own.

 From my understanding of the history, some or maybe even many of 
those who were involved in the founding meeting ended up out in the 
cold, as a political strategy developed to implement IRV because it 
used the same expensive voting system as used for STV-PR. Thus, it 
was apparently thought, we'd be one step closer to PR. In addition, 
there are a few deluded individuals who do imagine that IRV is a 
decent single-winner system, but, unfortunately, pursuing this 
will-o-the-wisp, they are damaging the most advanced voting system in 
wide use: top two runoff. Top two runoff with some tweaks would be an 
extraordinarily powerful voting system. For example, if write-ins are 
allowed (they are in some places, such as California by default), and 
if the runoff is, say, Bucklin, Condorcet failure should be very, 
very rare. It might never happen. Bucklin is much better than IRV at 
finding a true majority, because it counts all the votes, discarding 
none. IRV, in nonpartisan elections that go to runoff, and with a 
substantial candidate field (perhaps more than three) almost never 
finds a majority. Bucklin may pick up about half of these, avoiding 
half the runoffs if a majority is required.

In fact, the lessons of history have been overlooked. There was 
widespread implementation of preferential voting in the U.S. in the 
first two decades of the twentieth century, and some of these systems 
survived into the forties, I think. Only Cambridge, with its PR 
council, remained. Those implementations included Bucklin and IRV, 
and they all were swept away. By what? My impression is, generally, 
top two runoff. It was discovered that preferential voting wasn't 
living up to its promise to find majorities without runoff elections. 
Apparently, after a time, most voters don't add additional 
preferences. Lewis Carroll could have told them this would happen in 
the 1880s. That's why he invented Asset. By being oversold, 
preferential voting was later rejected. And that's exactly what 
FairVote has been setting up, and the reversals are starting to happen.