[EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Juho]

On Apr 25, 2010, at 11:24 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am a member of the Czech Green party, and we are giving our statutes
> an overhaul.
> We are a small parliamentary party with only some 2000 members.
> Lately we have had quite some problems infighting due to the
> winner-takes-it-all election methods used within the party.
> I am sitting in the working-group for the new party statutes, and
> would like introduce proportional elections instead.
> So I thought I might find some help in this forum in formulating my  
> proposal.
>
> There are several practical different types of elections in the party,
> which need to be addressed:
> 1. election of council members
> 2. election of delegates to regional and national rallies, where the
> regional and national council members are elected
> 3. election of candidates to the ballot - primary elections
>
> In this letter, I would like to ask you to propose good proportional
> election system for the election of the council members.
> A council exists at all levels in the party organization: national,
> regional and local.
>
> SCENARIO 1: COUNCIL ELECTIONS
> We have to elect the following:
> 1. Election of the party president
> 2. Election of one or more vice-presidents in order of importance,
> i.e. first vice president, second, third etc.
> 3. Election of the rest of the council members
> Normally the council has five or seven members.

One approach could be to first elect all the council members using  
some proportional method, then elect the president among the council  
members using some appropriate single-winner method, and then elect  
the vice-presidents using some single winner method. This could still  
mean that the most powerful grouping would get all the president and  
vice-president seats. If you want the vice-presidents to elect  
different sections of the party and the party members are not expected  
to respect this wish and vote accordingly, then maybe you'd need some  
method that can elect also the president and vice-presidents in some  
proportional way.

>
> CURRENT SYSTEM:
> Currently the president and the vice presidents are elected in several
> two-round run-off elections
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system).

Ok but not ideal. The biggest block might take all the seats. There  
are also better single-winner methods, e.g. the Condorcet methods.

> The rest of the board members are elected by block-voting
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality-at-large_voting) in the
> following way:

Not good, not proportional. I'd get rid of this one and use some  
proportional method. If your candidates are purely individuals and  
there are not too many candidates then STV could be used. If you have  
clearly identified subgroups then some list based method could work.

> 1. A candidate who gets 50% of the vote is elected
> 2. In the second round, candidates with less than 25% of the votes are
> eliminated
> 3. In the third round, candidates with less than 30% of the votes are
> eliminated. Now only 40% of the votes is enough for election.
> 4. New elections are arranged for the rest of the mandates, where
> candidates who got at least 20% of the votes in the previous election
> rounds can run as candidates in new elections:
>
>
> DELIVERABLES FOR IMPLEMENTATION:
> In the end, if proportional elections are to make their way into the
> party statutesm, then I have to deliver the following:
> 1. a proposal of a text to the statutes, describing the election rules
> and procedures
> 2. a motivation of the proposal which shows why it is better than the
> present one.
> 3. a vote counting computer program which works
> 4. preferably a ballot scanning program
> 5. preferably some good examples that the system works in real life.

Should be doable (I don't know the status of the scanning programs  
though).

>
> CRITERIA:
> I am looking for a approximately proportional election scheme, which  
> is

I propose to use a fully proportional method (if you don't have any  
requirements to make it only approximately proportional).

> (i) simple for the party members to understand - this is the main
> criterion. A complex system like Schulze-STV has no chance of getting
> required political support
> (ii) simple to use, i.e. where it is quick to vote and vote counting
> is also quick (max 400 votes cast)
> (iii) gives results which leave most party members reasonably
> satisfied with the result
> (iv) votes are cast "secretly" on paper ballots, alternatively on some
> smart electronic voting system that is as secure as paper ballot
> voting.
> (v) asset voting is excluded due to lack of political support

I already mentioned basic STV and list based methods. Both approaches  
are very traditional and therefore maybe also easy to accept. (I have  
promoted also tree based methods that offer a more detailed opinion  
space than lists.)

>
> ASSUMPTIONS:
> There are several types of board elections in the party, where several
> types of assumptions apply:
> 1] 70-90% of the voters are "dishonest" - i.e. they vote strategically
> as they are told by leaders, who want to maximize the number of
> "their" people on the board - this is the case for the election of the
> national party board
> 2] 30-60% of the voters are "dishonest" - the roughly regional  
> election case
> 3] 20% of the voters are "dishonest" - this is roughly the local  
> election case

Use a method that is robust and can tolerate strategic voting => less  
interest to vote strategically. All the methods that I mentioned are  
quite good in this respect.

>
> Currently I am considering Re-weighted range voting and range voting,
> since it fulfills the criteria above, but other simple-to-understand
> methods could be used.

Plain range is quite vulnerable to strategic voting. I wouldn't  
recommend it for this kind of highly competitive environments.

> Maybe the RRV system will have be reduced to approval voting for the
> high dishonesty scenario.
> This would lower its attractivity.
> A contender to the RRV-range voting system is the STV-IRV system used
> by the green party of the USA, since it evidently works, but is more
> difficult to understand than RRV: see
> http://www.gp.org/documents/rules.shtml#section7

I wouldn't say that STV is more complex than RRV. STV is used in many  
real life elections so it should be understandable (at least the main  
idea, maybe not all the details in some of the more complex STV  
methods).

Even if you use STV for the proportional multi-winner elections I  
wouldn't recommend to use IRV for the single-winner elections (you  
could use e.g. Condorcet).

>
> QUESTIONS:
> Please propose a voting system fulfilling the criteria above with the
> given assumptions, and answer the following questions:
>
> 1. if the proposed election system is as simple to understand as RRV
> and range voting,
> name what advantages and disadvantages it has to RRV and range voting.
> Alternatively, which specific variant of RRV and range voting do you
> recommend for the elections described above (normalization of voter
> scores, number of categories, given that 70-90% of the voters vote
> strategically)?
> To clarify: Asset voting is excluded for this election type, since we
> have problems with transparency and political support.
>
> 2. In which order should the election of the board members be
> performed in order to insure that all the voters will be reasonably
> satisfied with.
> a] how should the elections be done, it the current election order
> should be preserved (i.e. first you elect the president, then the vice
> presidents etc.)?

I already mentioned above the possibility of electing the board first  
and only then its leaders among the already (proportionally) elected  
members. If you really want to guarantee that also the leaders are  
elected in a proportional way then we might need to create some new  
rules on how to elect the presidents.

>
> b] Is one election enough to give an unambiguous winner, even if the
> president is elected by the margin of one vote?

Yes, one election should be enough (for most uses).

> The talk about RRV not electing the Condorcet winner makes me a  
> little nervous.
> The election of the president has to be unambiguous, and several
> elections is not a problem.

Plain range doesn't necessarily elect the Condorcet winner. Good  
single-winner methods that are intended for competitive environments  
should generally elect the Condorcet winner. In proportional methods  
it is not even necessary to elect the Condorcet winner. (There could  
be e.g. two sections and one good compromise candidate C between these  
sections. C could be a Condorcet winner but if one elects two  
representatives proportionally it could make sense to elect one from  
each section and not elect C.)

>
> c] if you reverse the election order, i.e. first you elect the board
> members, then the president and the vice presidents, and lastly you
> elect the president? This order of election seems to be more simple to
> conceptualize.

Maybe 1) board, 2) president, 3) vice-president. Or alternatively all  
presidents at one go. If the presidents are considered to be part of  
the board, then it could be easier to arrange full proportional  
representation in the board using this order. One more approach would  
be to elect all the mentioned groups at one go, but I'm not aware of  
any method that would be ready and available.

One more possible approach could be to circulate the presidency and  
vice-presidencies among the board members (or board groupings).

>
> d] what are the main advantages of the your preferred method to the
> current election system?

I think you want to get rid of the strategic voting incentives and  
strategic voting. Range is not a good fix. Condorcet should do bette  
job. The current two-round run-off is also not too catastrophic for  
single-winner elections, but can be considerably improved.

>
> e] (optional question) if a member of the board leaves his/her
> position before the end of the election period, and a new member of
> the organ has to be elected, how should this election take place in
> order to insure proportionality is retained?

You could elect/name the reserve candidates after the election. It is  
possible to use the old ballots/results to decide who should replace  
the retired representative.

>
> Specific questions for RRV:
> f] what is the minimal number of votes a person needs in order to be
> elected (if all voters except for one put an "X" for the candidate and
> the last voter puts maximum points, is this candidate normally
> elected?)
>
> 3. If the following exists for your selected election method, could
> you please provide a reference to:
> a] a text which describes the election procedure and can be used in
> statutes (preferably a text in existing statutes)
> b] an explanation of how the voting system works and an explanation of
> the vote counting procedure for a person who knows nothing about
> election methods. For RRV I do not understand the d'Hondt style
> re-weighting. Why d'Hondt? Why does it give proportional
> representation?
> c] an open-source program for windows which makes it easy to count the
> votes, once you have entered the data in the computer.
> d] a list of organizations, which use the method

I didn't recommend any single method yet. Maybe later.

>
> 4. As we have to count the ballots quickly, I would appreciate a tip
> on the following:
> a] A tip of a good and cheap and open source system for creating and
> digitalizing paper ballots.
> b] Alternatively a free electronic voting system with the same
> security level as a paper ballot system could be used, preferably with
> paper ballot receipts, which would be counted later for confirmation
> of the vote.
> If you know of any such system, please let me know.

Paper ballots are safer if you fear that many might not trust a fully  
electronic system (that doesn't leave any verifiable paper trail  
behind).

BR, Juho Laatu


>
> OK, that's the first scenario.
> Any help answering some of the questions above is greatly appreciated.
>
> Peter
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