[EM] PR for USA or UK

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/7/23 Andy Jennings <elections at jenningsstory.com>

> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 7:45 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> And so I'd like to suggest that we should be looking for a PR system which
>> satisfies the following criteria:
>>
>> c1. Truly proportional (of course). I would be willing to support a
>> not-truly-proportional system, but I'm not everyone. Egregious compromises
>> on this issue will simply reduce the activist base, to no benefit.
>> c2. Includes a geographical aspect. People are attached to the "local
>> representation" feature of FPTP, whether that's rational or not.
>> c3. No "closed list". A party should not be able to completely shield any
>> member from the voters. In general, voter power is preferable to party
>> power, insofar as it's compatible with the next criterion.
>> c4. Simple ballots. A reasonably-thorough voter should not have to mark
>> more than, say, 5 candidates or options, and an average ballot should not
>> list more than 20 candidates or options. Those are extreme limits; simpler
>> is better, all the way down to around 7 options (of which only around half
>> will be salient and/or viable).
>> c5. Ideally, the smoothest transition possible. If existing single-winner
>> districts can be used unchanged, all the better.
>> c6. Insofar as it's compatible with the criteria above, greater freedom in
>> voting is better. For instance, if ballots are printed with only in-district
>> candidates, a system which allows out-of-district write-ins is better than
>> one which doesn't, all other things being equal.
>>
>
> I'm interested both in systems which satisfy 2 and those that don't.  If we
> could identify a good, truly proportional, at-large system, then a state
> with a bicameral legislature (like Arizona) could leave one house as
> geographical and change one to be at-large proportional.
>

I agree that if you were designing a democracy from scratch,
non-geographical systems deserve attention. My purpose here is to support a
system or systems that have some chance of passage in the US or UK. In my
experience, that means that activists should unify behind a system which
represents a minimal change. Whatever reform you propose will have
opposition, both from people who are honestly and naturally skeptical of
anything new, and from whichever major party currently benefits from the
distortions of the current system. It's better to push a smaller reform
which gives such people fewer arguments to use against you, than a
more-complete one which can never pass. That's why I included criteria 2 and
5, and I stand behind them.

This same argument applies to Kathy Dopp's suggestion that states like AZ
could have their bicameral legislatures function using one PR body and one
geographical body. It's a great idea, and I'd happily and enthusiastically
support it; but it's a more-radical reform, so I think something which meets
my criteria would be more attainable. At least, I'd like to settle on
something which meets my criteria, so that if I'm right, we still have a
chance.


>
> My proposal for SODA-PR satisfies and surpasses all 5 criteria. Other
>> systems which do reasonably well:
>> -I've seen a proposal for single-member districts and open party lists.
>> This is similar to my SODA-PR system, except that it requires that all
>> candidates in a party approve the same party set. As such, it is strictly
>> worse on criterion 3, without being notably better on any of the other
>> criteria. It is more conventional, though.
>> -Multimember districts, with some system inside each district.
>> -Mixed member systems.
>>
>
> We should add Fair Majority Voting, by Balinski.  (
> http://mathaware.org/mam/08/EliminateGerrymandering.pdf)  Here's the
> summary:  Parties run one candidate in each district and voters vote for one
> candidate in the race in their district.  The votes are totaled nationwide
> by party and an apportionment method is used to decide how many seats each
> party deserves.  Each party is assigned a "multiplier" and the winner in
> each district is the one whose (vote total times party multiplier) is
> highest.  The multipliers can be chosen so that the final total seats won by
> each party matches the number of seats assigned by the apportionment
> method.
>

> It definitely satisfies your criteria 1,2,4, and 5.  I'd say it mostly
> satisfies 3.  Don't know how to evaluate 6.  The main thing I don't like
> about it is that it conflates voting for a candidate with voting for his
> party.  What if I like the candidate but not the party, or vice versa?  But
> since so many things in the legislature happen on a party basis, I've
> decided that this is not as bad as it first seems.
>
> FMV is equivalent to the "single-member districts and open party lists"
system I was talking about, although I remember seeing it under some
different name (some two-letter acronym with a "U", I seem to recall). In
the end, FMV can be considered a limited special case of SODA-PR. Thus,
using the more-general terminology of SODA-PR to discuss them both, the
differences are:

d1. FMV requires all candidates to approve all other nominated candidates
from their own party, and no others. In SODA-PR, this would probably be the
most-common result, and perhaps parties would develop means of effectively
forcing their candidates to do this, but the system itself allows greater
freedom.
d2. FMV as stated does not allow cross-district write-ins, although actually
there is no technical reason this couldn't be allowed. Without this feature,
it is clearly worse on my (quasi-)criterion 6.
d3. FMV does not allow an approval-style vote. Like difference d1 above,
this ends up giving less power to the voters, and more power to the party
nomination process. Again, worse on c6.
d4. FMV's counting process nominally involves "vote multipliers", whereas
SODA-PR nominally involves (optional) delegation and vote transfers.
Although the two processes have the potential to be fully equivalent, I have
a real concern that (for silly reasons) FMV would not pass constitutional
muster in the US. SODA-PR, where the voter has the ultimate say, and each
vote is eventually counted for exactly one candididate with exactly the same
weight as all other votes, seems to me clearly constitutional.
d5. FMV was proposed by "some French PhD" (Balinski; and, as I said, I've
seen an equivalent proposal before under a different name), and SODA-PR was
proposed by "some American on the internet" (that is, me). This is an
advantage for FMV, though not a huge one, especially in US red states where
France is viewed with suspicion, or if SODA-PR could get good endorsements.
d6. FMV is precinct-summable, while SODA-PR is not (although SODA-PR is
still significantly easier to recount and/or audit-through-sampling than
generic STV is).

Consider the following scenario, which shows the advantages of SODA-PR from
d1, d2, and d3: what happens when a major party candidate in a "safe"
district for that party has a corruption scandal after being nominated.
Let's call the corrupt candidate Caligula and their party Countrymen. Under
FMV, the majority voters in that district cannot support the Countrymen
without supporting Caligula. If the district naturally skews 70/30 for one
party, Caligula can lose over 20% of the vote and still be elected. ("Over"
20% because such a safe district implies that the gerrymandering favors the
other party, so the multiplier will favor this party to compensate.)
Effectively, this candidate has a guaranteed seat; it's as bad as
closed-party-list in that regard.

In SODA-PR, three things can happen:
d1. Other Countrymen candidates can make a principled decision not to
approve Caligula. Without vote transfers from these others, Caligula will
have a harder time winning.
d2. Voters in Caligula's district can vote for Countrymen candidates from
other districts who represent the party they like, and who (by d1) didn't
approve Caligula.
d3. Countrymen voters in other districts, whose candidates *did* approve
Caligula (ie, did not opt for d1), can choose to vote approval-style for
some set of Countrymen candidates, whether or not those candidates approve
Caligula. This is extra work for voters, so it won't be too common, but it
is an important principal that voters can always ensure that their vote will
not support a candidate they despise, if they want to spend the effort.

All of these three things will end up reducing Caligula's votes. Thus, in
SODA-PR, unlike in FMV, no candidate can be given a safe seat through
gerrymandering.

The upshot is that SODA-PR has 4 advantages over FMV, and two disadvantages.
Disadvantage d5 could be fully overcome with the right endorsements, and
disadvantage d6 could be removed along with advantage d3 and a small part of
advantage d4, by moving to SDA-PR (ie, not allowing approval-style votes).

JQ
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