[EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czech green party)

[Terry Bouricius]

Peter Zborník,

The appropriateness of using PR to elect a party governing council really 
depends on the function and goal of the body.

PR is appropriate when a group is going to engage in a deliberative 
process... where it is beneficial to have a microcosm of the full 
membership participating. There is compelling evidence that the quality of 
group decisions is enhanced through diversity, compared to exclusively 
like-minded people or "experts" who tend towards "group-think." Including 
members with diverse perspectives promotes consideration of new options 
that might not occur to a homogeneous group, and frequently leads to 
better decisions. (James Surowiecki gives examples and sites research 
showing this in his book "The Wisdom of Crowds.")

However, if the council's function is non-deliberative, but rather to 
carry out a workplan adopted by a majority vote at a convention, diversity 
and proportional representation may not be beneficial to the organization. 
Including minority perspectives who lost the battle at the convention may 
prompt this faction to prove they were right by under-cutting the 
workplan.

Terry Bouricius

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Raph Frank" <raphfrk at gmail.com>
To: <VoteFair at solutionscreative.com>
Cc: <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 5:36 AM
Subject: Re: [EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed 
(Czech green party)


Another argument that can be used is that it maximizes the number of
people who are directly represented.

If you elect using a single seat method, then you could end up with a
situation where 51% of the party are represented and the other 49%
aren't.

With PR, if you have 5 seats, then each councilor would represent at
least 1/6 of the party.  This means that at least 5/6 of the party are
represented on the council by someone they actually voted for.

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 8:00 AM,  <VoteFair at solutionscreative.com> wrote:
> The method you have in mind proposing, namely the Schulze
> proportional method, may not correctly fill the council with
> smaller sub-groups -- such as members who comprise 15
> percent of the Green Party -- so I don't suggest saying that
> those smaller sub-groups will get representation. I presume
> that the Schulze proportional method at least gives
> representation for both a majority group and an opposition
> group (which is often a virtual coalition), so that's what I
> suggest focusing on.

I think the final proposal was to use proportional rankings.  This
will give a generally proportional result.  There might be some small
variations.

However, if the last few councilors are elected at the same time, then
they should correct any problems with the earlier stages, so you get a
President that is centerist and a proportional council.

> As I've said before, it's difficult to get proportional
> representation for more than the two main sub-groups

That isn't true, PR methods are designed to do exactly that.  If a
group represents 1/6 of the electorate, then they will get roughly 1/6
of the seats.

However, very small groups can't be represented due to a lack of seats.

> (Although I have not yet seen a description of the Schulze
> proportional method, I'm confident that it has to be much
> better than your current approach of using single-mark
> ballots.)

Right, any PR method is better than single seat methods in terms of
maximising the number of people who are directly represented
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