[EM] Electoral Pluralism

[Dave Ketchum]

On Nov 9, 2011, at 6:26 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:

> In light of the #OWS statement on electoral reform.
> http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2011/11/people-before-parties-electoral-reforms.html
>
> My Thoughts about an alternative possible "consensus" statement for  
> non-electoral analytical types.
>
> 1. Democracy is a never-ending experiment.  It also is like a garden  
> that can go to seed.
> We need to join the rest of the world in experimenting with better  
> ways to tend our democracy.
> This entails changes in election rules, not just changing who is in  
> power.
>
> 2. The most important change is to use both single-winner and multi- 
> winner (or Proportional Representation) election rules.
> Single-winner elections give us leadership who can be held  
> accountable.
> Multi-winner elections  give us pluralism and protection for  
> minority rights.
> We need both of these values.  A common sense way to combine them is  
> to use more multi-winner
> elections for "more local" elections that otherwise are rarely  
> competitive, while continuing to use mainly single-winner elections
> for "less local" elections.

Single-winner makes sense for single-person tasks such as mayor,  
sheriff, or governor.  We should agree that this class of tasks should  
be left to this type of electing.

Proportional representation makes sense for multi-person tasks such as  
councils or senates.  These tasks have often been elected via single- 
winner mode - if so, change to multi-person should be done only when/ 
if value is seen in this by groups involved..
>
> 3. We need to realize that election rules are like screwdrivers.   
> One election rule does not work well with all elections.
> As such, we need to consider alternatives to our current election  
> rule, First-Past-the-Post.
> Most election rule alternatives like (.short list with links to  
> brief descriptions.), but not the  "top two primary" used in (...)  
> or the plurality "at large" voting used in (....), would improve  
> things.

Agreed FPTP is a loser from a simpler time.
      Need to allow voters to vote for more-than-one, although some  
voters, some of the time, will see no need for this.
      Need to allow voters, when voting for more-than-one, to indicate  
relative preference among these.
      Primaries were an invention to help with FPTP pain.  Methods  
that satisfy the above needs see little, or no, value in primaries  
with their expense.
      Runoffs were another aid for FPTP pain.  As with primaries,  
possible value of runoffs decreases with methods that do better in the  
main election.
      Approval, while fixing the first above problem at little cost,  
fails to help with the second.

Methods list:
      Need to be understandable to, at least, most voters.
      If to be usable over county and state districts, must NOT have  
to retrieve local data as IRV does.
      Should (must?) tolerate write-ins.
      Must tolerate several candidates running in a race and report  
their relative strength.  This means that a weak candidate will be  
visible, with this helping progress to be visible, up or down.
>
>  dlw
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