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

[Raph Frank]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 7:19 PM, Peter Zbornik <pzbornik at gmail.com> wrote:
> Condorcet methods have not been used in politics yet, I think.

Not sure if they have been used in politics.  However, they have been
used by various open source organisations.

Schulze's method seems reasonably popular.

> Are there by any chance other methods to elect centrist presidents?

I would recommend approval voting.

For every candidate, the voter says approve or disapprove.  The
candidate with the most approvals wins.

However, it would require a separate ballot for the President.  The
reason for picking condorcet was to allow the same ballots to be used
for both counts.

Approval should mostly give the same result as a condorcet method, but
you just need to count how many approvals were received for each
candidate.

I am not sure if it is used much in politics either.  A variant is
used for election of the general secretary in the UN.

The main single seat method is plurality, but that isn't a good method.

> The president has to be elected by the delegates as is the case today, if
> the proposal should have a chance to pass.
> The vice president's are ordered first and second and third. The number of
> VP chan vary. The VP are the ones who stand in for the president or party
> leader (in that order).
> The president and the vice presidents are all member of the board, which
> currently has seven members.

What about

Each voter submits 2 ballots
-- approval ballot
-- ranked ballot

The most approved candidate becomes President automatically, as a
separate election.

The ranked ballots are used to elect 6 other councillors using PR-STV.

The most approved councillor becomes 1st VP, the next 2nd VP and so on.

The gives reasonable PR and has VPs as councillors.

In fact, if there was 2 wing within the party with 51% and 49% of the
members, then it would give them 3 seats each and the President would
be elected from the 51% wing.

Also, hopefully, a party wouldn't have such partisan sub-parties.