[EM] How to combine list and candidate ranking based proportionality?

[Juho]

On May 22, 2010, at 3:18 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> Juho wrote:
>> Simple question, simple answer. Use lists between parties (or other  
>> groupings) and candidate ranking within them. Open lists try to  
>> implement proportionality within the lists in one quite primitive  
>> way. Use of candidate ranking within the parties allows us to offer  
>> also proper party internal proportionality.
>
> It seems easy enough to generalize, at least given how proportional  
> ordering methods have been mentioned lately:
>
> - Each voter votes for a list, and can rank this list if he wants to.
> - Once the election is done, the authority calculates the number of  
> seats given to each party, as well as a proportional ordering for  
> each party.
> - Each party gets the top n candidates on its proportional ordering,  
> where n is the number of seats allocated to that party.

Yes. Use of proportional ordering is not a requirement though. One  
could as well count the n proportional representatives directly at one  
go. (And in elections with open list tradition one could require that  
all votes are to individual candidates in any case => one or more of  
them ranked.)

>
> A more complex version might give the party itself some say in the  
> ordering; e.g. the voters' ballots may count as 75% of total while  
> the predefined party order counts as 25% of total. If the  
> percentages are 0 and 100 respectively, you have ordinary closed list.
> (Yet another approach would be to have the party order count as a  
> fixed *number* of ballots - if few people bother to rank, the party  
> order is strong so that it can counter the noise of the few ballots  
> that have been submitted, while if many people do, there's less  
> noise and so the err-default rank should matter less.)

One approach if one wants to give the party some say when determining  
the representatives would be to allow the party to complete the short  
votes with the predetermined party ordering. In that case the voters  
could determine the representatives 100% if they so wish, and the  
party could have more say if the voters don't care.

Juho