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

[Raph Frank]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 9:24 PM, Peter Zbornik <pzbornik at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I posted a "simple" explaination of PR-STV in a post back in August.

http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2009-August/024720.html

However, you would also need to cover why a PR method is a good idea in general.

> 3. a vote counting computer program which works

OpenSTV has already been linked to.

> 4. preferably a ballot scanning program

That would be cool.  I don't think there is any open source software
available that actually does it though.  It should be possible to have
simple software that can process ballots based on an image taken from
a webcam or camera phone.

> 5. preferably some good examples that the system works in real life.

PR-STV is used in many countries.

> (iv) votes are cast "secretly" on paper ballots, alternatively on some
> smart electronic voting system that is as secure as paper ballot
> voting.

This is a good plan.  Combining this with scanning software gets you
the best of both worlds.

> 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"

PR-STV has pretty good strategy resistance.  There are some strategies
called "free-riding", but shouldn't be that big an issue.

> 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.

It would be very interesting to see how RRV works in practice.

The problem is that with any change is that it is hard enough to get
voting reform to happen without also trying to push an untested
method.

> Maybe the RRV system will have be reduced to approval voting for the
> high dishonesty scenario.
> This would lower its attractivity.

Then it would be proportional approval voting, which should still be a
reasonable method.

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

It probably would elect the condorcet winner.  However, with PR
methods, there is no guarantee that it picks the middle candidate.

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

Improved proportionality means that voices from all parts of the party
are represented.  If you elect using a majority based method, then you
only get one group represented.

> 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?

It is unclear how best to handle this.

Some possible options:

- The outgoing member gets to nominate his replacement

- re-count the original ballots
If they are still available, you re-run the PR-STV system, but current
councillors are not allowed to be eliminated.

- a single seat by-election -> this breaks proportionality

- the council appoints someone with similar views to the person who left
This can be abused.


> 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?)

By X, you mean no vote?

Actually, I am not sure how RRV handles no-opinions.  I don't think
they are allowed.  Maybe Warren can comment.

In most cases, you would need a roughly a Droop quota.   However, you
could get elected with less, especially, if the votes are fragmented.

> 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)

It would depend on how you actually want to implement the method.  For
PR-STV, there are some subtleties here in how transfers are
calculated.

> Why d'Hondt? Why does it give proportional
> representation?

Do you mean why does D'Hondt work in general, or just for RRV?