[EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Richard,

maybe a second round could take place between the winners of competing
methods, say Schulze winner vs Approval or  Bucklin winner or any
other endorsed method. This would allow for election-methods
"competitions", and could address potential weaknesses of each method.
When one of the method would generate a "bad" winner, then the other
method could still give a "good" winner. For instance, if the Schulze
method would generate a winner noone has heard of before (the dark
horse), then in the second round, when he meets the Bucklin or
Approval winner, he or she might lose the second round, after new
details of his/her political past come to public knowledge due to the
increased attention given. The election methods should be different
for this approach to work. The obvious downside of this approach is
increased complexity and thus less public support. With this method
IRV might be used as one of the methods, or the old method could be
used against the new method.

A second proposal: since most single winner methods have their
multiple-winner counterpart, the first round could proprtionally elect
two (or more) candidates, between which the second round would take
place. This solution would use one method for both rounds, thus
decrease complexity compared to the first proposal; the solution would
not require political party candidates; it would provide a solution
for the French presidential elections. The downside of this system is
that some of the multiple winner versions of the single-winner methods
are not used anywhere and exist only on paper and/or in vote-counting
software.
Example: 1st round: Schulze-STV elects two candidates for the runoff.
2nd round: Schulze-Condorcet is used.

Personally I think the issue of one vs two rounds of elections is a
neglected issue. For instance, if the Brittish liberals would have
chosen a run-off elections as the alternative to FPTP instead of IRV
(AV), then I think they would have found support in the referendum.

A second issue, which I think the statement does not address, is the
minimal number of seats in each constituency, or in other words, the
number of regional constituencies in the election to one body, like
the parliament. If we have a 200 seat parliament and each constituency
has only two seats, elected proportionally, then we have a
proportional election system, with a quota of 33%. This is not a
system I can endorse. I would rather endorse low (max., say 5%) and
would prefer no quotas, i.e. the quota equals the votes needed for one
seat with only one constituency - around 0.5% for a 200 seat election.
Using a party list system, there might be constituencies which do not
hinder proportional representation, provided that there is a "National
constituency" of sufficient size, which makes sure that each party is
proportionally represented in the elected body (Swedish election
system). The national constituency would level-out any disproportional
representation of the parties, which might arise from the division of
the electorate into constituencies. Maybe a similar system could be
(or most probably has already been) constructed for open lists. The
voter would cast a vote in his/her constituency and at the same time a
vote in the national constituency. Question is then how to achieve a
proportional representation for open lists balancing the regional
constituencies and the national one. I think it is possible and should
not be too difficult but don't know how to do it.

Maybe these questions have already been discussed.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

On 8/30/11, Richard Fobes <ElectionMethods at votefair.org> wrote:
> Here is what I've just written for the new section titled "Multiple
> rounds of voting":
>
> ----------- begin ------------
>
> In highly competitive elections, multiple rounds of voting are needed to
> eliminate the weakest candidates so that attention can be focused on
> electing one of the most popular candidates.  Our supported election
> methods work as described for two rounds of voting if the first round of
> voting elects a single winner from each political party, and the second
> round chooses from among those winners.
>
> However, different counting methods are needed if the same voters vote
> in both rounds. There are election methods that handle such cases, and
> they use the better ballots we support. However, we have not yet
> analyzed this category of counting methods sufficiently to express
> support for any specific methods.
>
> We do strongly agree that single-mark ballots must not be used in any
> round of voting. More specifically, just as the candidate with the most
> first-choice votes is not necessarily the most popular, and the
> candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is not necessarily the
> least popular, the candidate with the second-most first-choice votes is
> not necessarily second-most popular, and the candidate with the
> second-fewest votes is not necessarily the second-least popular.
>
> Also we agree that "open primary" elections are not fair. In this
> approach, the candidates who are identified as "most popular",
> regardless of political-party affiliation, progress to the next round.
> This approach fails to consider that the majority of voters who support
> the most-popular candidate are likely to be the same majority of voters
> who support the second-most popular candidate -- unless the counting
> method specifically compensates for this redundant influence. The
> remaining voters, who may almost be a majority, can end up with only
> getting to choose between the two candidates who are preferred by the
> majority. Expressed another way, the words "most popular" are ambiguous
> in the context of choosing which candidates deserve to progress to
> another round of voting.
>
> ----------- end ------------
>
> I'm sure I'm missing some important additional considerations, but they
> aren't coming to me at the moment, so I'll tap into your brains to help
> refine this section.
>
> Of course we aren't offering a fair way to handle French presidential
> (?) first-round elections (in terms of which two candidates should move
> on to the final runoff election), but we have nothing specific we would
> agree on, right?
>
> Richard Fobes
>
>
>
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