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

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Oct 31, 2009, at 11:08 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote:

>>> (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people
>> the right to achieve the political balance using two-party
>> systems if they so want.)
>>
>> How would this decision be made? Majority rule?
>
> It's not hard to imagine a referendum with that kind of effect. I
> don't see how you can get away from majority rule; even if we elect
> a body using PR-STV to vote on the party system, that's still majority
> rule (or a super-majority rule with a possibility of no outcome), it's
> just different people voting in the end.

I don't have a counter-suggestion, but there does seem to be a  
practical problem here.

PR-STV was used in quite a few US cities in the first half of the 20C.  
Mostly, it got repealed when the local majority party realized that  
they could benefit from majority-take-all voting, and could avoid  
sharing power by repealing PR.

One can imagine establishing a "culture of PR" where even members of  
the majority support the idea that others should be represented; this  
seems to be the case in various places outside the US, and for  
whatever reason in Cambridge MA. But this has certainly not been the  
rule in the US.