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

[Raph Frank]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com> wrote:
> In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional
> representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and
> count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters'
> 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already
> transferred votes.

That is technically 2 rounds.

This would increase the number of voters who end up wasting their
vote.  Voting for a no-hope candidate first choice would be "throwing
your vote away".

PR-STV maintains proportionality no matter what order candidates are
eliminated (assuming you don't eliminate candidates who have achieved
the quota).

I don't think this could be used to create a monotonic method though.

> Any method of proportional representation must be precinct-summable in
> a reasonable fashion

The certainly isn't a required condition for it to be a PR method.

> The party list system works much better for achieving proportional
> representation as long as there is a party representing your
> interests.  It doesn't have to be a "party", but could just be that
> each candidate chooses his own list of candidates below him/her to
> pass excess votes down to.

If each candidate was allowed to submit a list and candidates were
allowed to be listed on more than 1 list, then you could have precinct
summability while having (a weak form of) PR-STV.

Each voter would vote for 1 candidate's list, rather than providing a
full ranking and PR-STV could be used to combine all the votes.