[EM] Holding byelections with PR-STV

[Juho]

On Sep 10, 2009, at 6:30 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

> On Sep 10, 2009, at 6:14 AM, Raph Frank wrote:
>
>> Also, there is a philosophical argument.  The effect of the count  
>> back procedure is that people who have died/left the constituency  
>> since the last election get their vote counted, while new adults/ 
>> people who have move into the constituency don't get their counted.
>
> I don't think that this is a terribly strong argument. The  
> constituency that would elect the new member is the same  
> constituency that elected the outgoing member, and more broadly the  
> constituency that elected the entire group. We don't ordinarily call  
> for new elections when voters move in and out of a district.
>
> That's not to say that countback doesn't have its problems. But this  
> doesn't strike me as a particularly serious one.----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for  
> list info

Also my first approach would be to use the old votes. If all the  
others have been elected based on what the electorate and its opinions  
were at the time of the last election then also the new members could  
be elected based on that same data.

The proposed approach of arranging a new election every now and then  
and having some extra rules to keep the old representatives in would  
be another alternative. How often would one arrange new elections  
then? One probably can not arrange new elections every time and right  
after some representative leaves. If it is possible that the old  
representatives will not be elected then such elections could as well  
be considered to be regular elections and the only type of elections  
that are arranged (i.e. elections would be frequent and regular and in  
all elections the old representatives would have some hysteresis  
function protecting them against small changes in the opinions).

The hysteresis function may increase the strategic opportunities since  
voters could trust that old representatives will be elected in any  
case and they could try free riding. But in real life small hysteresis  
may well not be too problematic.

Juho