[EM] Multipile Transferable Votes

[Raph Frank]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 4:12 AM, Stephen H. Sosnick
<shsosnick at ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> If your "here" refers to Meek's method (or, for that matter, to any other
> version of STV), then see Appendix 1 and/or read the paragraph in which I
> said the following:

I was wondering about the whole principle.

> "When the number of votes cast by each ballot changed, each of those three
> variables changed in proportion.  Specifically, when each ballot cast 2
> votes, the quota, the tallies, and the excess at every stage were 2 times
> the level they had when each ballot cast 1 vote. Similarly, when each ballot
> cast 4 votes, the values at every stage were 4 times the level that those
> variables had when each ballot cast 1 vote."

Ahh, so it is purely a maths change?  Each ballot is given a weight of
N and the process proceeds as normal?  This actually happens in
Ireland for the Seanad (Senate) elections.  Each county councilor
casts a ballot and it is converted into 1000 copies of his ballot
prior to counting.  Clearly, this wouldn't have any effect on the
results.

What I was thinking when I originally heard it was something like:

In round 1, each ballot is considered to vote for its top N choices.
The means that the quota is N times larger.

Elimination is easy, as you just recount the votes as if that
candidate wasn't present.

Election is a lilttle more complex.  Assuming 4 votes per person, if A
was elected and had double the quota, the a ballot of the form

A>B>C>D>E
would count as something like
A: 0.5 (as he had double the quota on election)
B: 1
C: 1
D: 1
E: 0.5 (remainder)

Looking at it under Meek's rules, the rule would be that no candidate
may receive more than his "keep value" from any 1 ballot.  Any excess
is passed on to the next rank as per normal.

Effectively, no ballot may assign any candidate more votes than his
keep value.  Any excess is passed on to the next rank as per normal.

However, this isn't a PR method, unless you allow voters to multi-rank
candidates.  For example, if I vote

A: 1
B: 5
C: 6
D: 7
E: 8

This means that A gets my 1-4 ranks.

In any case, it would be pretty hard to hand count.  I was thinking
that replacing a vote of the form

A>B>C>D>E>F

with 4 votes of the form

A>B>C>D>E>F
B>C>D>E>F
C>D>E>F
D>E>F

might achieve the same thing, but it doesn't, as it allows D to
receive 100% of your vote if A,B and C are eliminated.

Btw, if you want to reply to the group, you have to hit "reply all",
as there is a problem with the return-to field in the group settings.