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

Wed May 19 10:53:58 PDT 2010

Peter
If you want to address your argument to ordinary party members and convince them, for goodness sake, forget all the stuff you have
laid out below.
Jameson said it all: "The whole point of having a representative body is that it represents the diversity of an organization."
A voting system like STV-PR (or whatever similar you choose) gives practical effect to that, without imposing any restrictions on
the candidates or the voters and will produce a representative result..
James Gilmour

-----Original Message-----
From: election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Peter
Zbornik
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 6:39 PM
To: Jameson Quinn
Cc: Election Methods
Subject: Re: [EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czechgreen party)

Dear Jameson,

yes your argument is similar to the one of Terry Bouricius ("the wisdom of crowds", and yes it is a good one.
Diversity also has an appeal to a diverse set of voters, allowing for improvements in voter preferences.
That is a good line of argument, thanks.

A very nice argument for proportional elections would be one founded in welfare economic theory.
That would be very interesting at least for me, and I quess this argument should not be too difficult to formulate for elections
(but I have no clue how)

I am not sure if the resulting argument would be interesting for normal party members, but I think it is an important and very
fundamental question to answer.
I have seen technical arguments flying around in this forum (Bayesian regret, socially optimal pareto fronts, and Kristian's
intruigung graph at: http://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/multiwinner_tradeoffs/), which I haven't been able to understand.

What I do understand is that we have a preference ordering when voting, which can be used in social welfare functions (see
http://aede.osu.edu/programs/Anderson/trade/Welfare5rev.pdf, page 8 and on). 
Maybe it can be shown that proportional elections are better than winner-takes-it-all elections for a wide range of social welfare
functions.

Some wild speculation about things I don't understand very well:
Selecting a social welfare function (i.e. selecting between a utiltarian, bernoulli-nash or rawlsian social welfare function) can
indeed be a voting task itself. I just don't have the proper training in economy to understand the details, like the publication
below:

I quote a publication I found:
"The isoelastic SWF [see the publication PZ comment]  takes on a number of familiar foms depending on the value of p. When p =O, it
is the classical utilitarian. The limit as p-1 is the Bernoulli-Nash (linear in the logarithms). And as p-m, it is the Rawlsian
maximin fom. These cases are characterized by the shape of the social indifference curves shown in Figure 2.1. Because it is a
function (i.e. the inverse) of the elasticity of substitution along these indifference curves. p reflects society's willingness to
made-off utility berween individuals. A greater value of p reflects greater social aversion to inequality . Therefore, p may be
considered an equity parameter, chosen by consensus or some other political means."(see page 24-25 in
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/10891/1/NQ27722.pdf) 

Threse publications seems to be on a path which could have something to do with voting (selects the bernoulli-nash social welfare
function):
Economic analysis and distributive justice, page 49: http://people.ku.edu/~dburress/econ-ana.pdf
Page 9: http://www.cherry.gatech.edu/mod/pubs/proceed3/c14_burr.pdf
Isoelastic function again: Page 9, equation 10: http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/fnu-files/publication/tol/ereaggregation.pdf
(there is even a maximin function)

I personally like the Bernoulli-Nash welfare function on page 13, as it has good properties, where the utilities are multiplied
instead of added (i. the form is the same as the other functions in the Pareto framework ii. it gives logaritmic weighs to utility
by multiplying them efficiently preferring more "equal" utility distributions without demanding that utility should be distributed
equally). Samuelson and Bergson proposed the Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function themselves.

Ok, I am not sure if I made things clear or not, i touched (very lightly) upon this stuff in my studies. Seems to be an area which
is not well understood.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 5:55 PM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com> wrote:

The whole point of having a representative body is that it represents the diversity of an organization. It's not just a matter of
diversity of opinion; it's a diversity of strengths, of outlooks, of focus, which makes the organization stronger than any one
person. A non-proportional system tends in the other direction, of electing N clones of the same bland majority candidate. Selecting
only for broad appeal means selecting only for bland schmoozing; certainly a valuable skill in politics, but not the only skill you
want your party to cultivate.

Is that a good start?

Jameson Quinn

2010/5/19 Peter Zbornik <pzbornik at gmail.com>

Dear all,

just a post scriptum to the email below to make things clear:
I wonder if there is a short and to the point argument for dummies, why proportional elections (say elections meeting the droop
quota) leave the voters happier than winner-takes it all elections.
This "for dummies" explanation of the advantages of proportional voting could be combined with a longer technical explanation,
perhaps using social welfare functions. for people with time and interest to understand the argument in full.

I don't mean that the argument above would be the best argument, but it could be a really interesting one.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 4:58 PM, Peter Zbornik <pzbornik at gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Kristoffer, dear readers,

Kristofer, you wrote below: "A minor opinion within the party might need time to grow, and might in the end turn out to be
significant, but using a winner-takes-it-all method quashes such minority opinions before they get the chance."

Thanks, yes I have used this line of argument a lot (we actually have a global charter of the greens, according to which the greens
are obliged to put the same principles into practice in thei organizations as they work for in society).
The problem is, that this argument does not "stick", it is simply not sexy.

Would it be possible to measure the "utility" or "happiness" among the voters in the party compared to different election methods. I
saw you Kristofer did some work on this but I didn't understand it, I guess I lack the preliminaries.

I guess the notion of "Bayesian regret" or something similar could be used to argue that proportional elections are better than
block-voting, but I have no idea of how to explain this, as I don't know the subject at all (pareto optimal social allocations, or
whatever).

It seems intuitive that economic tools could be used (I know almost no economics), since ranked ballot elections simply are
explicitly stated preference orderings. 

I guess that voting and elections, could be indeed one of the best imaginable real-world examples, where preference orderings of the
actors actually are known, and thus all of the machinery of economic equilibria and social welfare functions could be applied (like
the Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function).

I am personally interested in the possiblity of measuring utility, is there some (preferably short) literature on social welfare,
utility and voting theory for proportional elections (I know some undergrad maths and statistics)?

Best regards
Peter

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:

Peter Zbornik wrote:

Dear all,
 thank you for your help with the election system for the council elections of the green party.
I will try to move on with technical testing of Schulze's methods and the specification of the elections to the party lists as soon
as time allows.
Thanks all for the support and all methods supplied.
I never could imagine that I would get such a response.
When advocating proportional elections in the party, I have found it difficult to explain to other members of the green party why
proportional elections to our party organs is a good thing.

As far as I remember, your party, the Czech Green Party, is a minor party. Therefore, it might be possible to draw an analogy to the
proportional methods used by the Czech Republic itself. Without proportional representation, the Green Party would have next to no
chance of ever getting into parliament. However, since your nation does use proportional representation, there is some chance.

The same argument could be used within the party. Since the Green Party is a minor party, I reason that the party membership
honestly believes the presence of that party is a good thing. Thus, they would also know (to some extent, at least), that minor
groups of opinion - like their own party in comparison to the major parties - can be good and can add valuable ideas to governance.
Then could not the same argument be used for the party itself? A minor opinion within the party might need time to grow, and might
in the end turn out to be significant, but using a winner-takes-it-all method quashes such minority opinions before they get the
chance.

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