[EM] PR for USA or UK

[Andy Jennings]

Jameson Quinn wrote:

> 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.
>

Agree on both counts, but I live in AZ so the bicameral option doesn't seem
so radical.  :)



>
>>
>> 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).
>

I totally agree with all this, but three points:

- The SODA-PR ballot design features (bolding candidates in the district,
having to write in people if you want to vote for someone outside a
neighboring district) are a little radical and may be hard to explain to
voters.  For this reason, I think FMV is slightly better on criteria c4 and
c5.

- In a two party system, gerrymandering can create safe seats, but if you
have more than two parties, these safe seats become very fragile.

- FMV only works if there are political parties.  SODA-PR can work with or
without them, which I like.  But the legislature runs on party lines, so
maybe we'll never get rid of them.

Andy
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