[EM] Proportional, Accountable, Local (PAL) representation: isn't this a big deal?

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Jameson Quinn wrote:
> 
> 
> 2011/10/25 Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km_elmet at lavabit.com 
> <mailto:km_elmet at lavabit.com>>
> 
>     Jameson Quinn wrote:
> 
>            * A multimember-district system helps with the above
>         problems, but
> 
>              doesn't actually solve them. Who wants a system where
>         ballots are
>              only a little bit too complex, where you only sort of know who
>              your representative is, and which is only mostly proportional?
> 
> 
>     Multimember systems have been used in the US, on a local scale. The
>     lack of such systems in the current day might just as well be due to
>     that there is no modern day "League of Proportional Representation"
>     such as the one whose efforts helped get STV into New York, than
>     that multimember systems themselves are too complex.
> 
> 
> Fair enough. But note also that this was just the lesser of my two 
> stated hurdles to MMP. 

STV is not mixed member proportional. As for the complexity issue, STV 
seems to work where it has been implemented. I agree that complexity 
will put a bound on how large each district can be, but as long as you 
keep below that size, it should work.

If you have a district size of 5 members and 10 parties, that would give 
a seemingly unmanagable number of 50 candidates. However, voters can 
"chunk" by considering these candidates in party order. First they can 
consider "do I like party A more than party B", then "which of A's 
members do I prefer?". They do not have to rank all 50 members either, 
and few would.

To the extent that the voters chunk in this manner, it seems to be 
personalized enough that the system doesn't degrade into party list 
(except in places where full ranking is enforced), yet it makes the 
burden easier to the point that ranked multimember voting does work.