[EM] Re Raph Frank wrt 3-seat LR Hare and RV for US Senators by proxy.

[David L Wetzell]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Raph Frank <raphfrk at gmail.com>
To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Cc:
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 17:58:56 +0000
Subject: Re: [EM] STV+AV (Raph Frank)
On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 2:55 PM, David L Wetzell <wetzelld at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nope.   I'm advocating the use of the Hare Quota, not the Droop Quota.

RF:Ahh ok.

So to be guaranteed 2/3 of the seats, you need 2/3 of the vote.  But
if some voters vote for non-concentrated parties, then you can get
your 2nd seat for 1/3 more than you "need".

dlw: I believe you need to beat the biggest 3rd party by more than 1/3rd of
the votes.
Egs: 50-35-10-5, but not 40-30-20.

And any 3rd party that can successfully persuade supporters of the bigger
major party to vote for them instead in state reps elections has an even
easier time winning away the 2nd seat from the top party.

>dlw: I think one can then get a "major party" in power by a plurality vote
and
> give their a priori selected leadership enough procedural controls to get
> things done without a majority.  What this does is give 3rd parties the
> right to decide which major party is in power so that neither can corner
> this branch and leverage their control of it to get an unfair edge in
other
> elections, which in turn has a further multiplier effect of making more
> elections more competitive.

RF: The thing about PR is that the "King maker" role for 3rd parties is
over-stressed.  It assumes that 2 and a half parties is the way things
go forever.

dlw:Well if single-winner election rules are used that encourage economies
of scale then such might be relatively stable.
Or there might be an indefinite number of minor parties who contest the
duopoly, in part by being among the top two in some areas, like Burlington
VT.

RF: However, if smaller parties have excess power, then the major parties
will fragment.  A balance occurs where both types of parties have
roughly power corresponding to their numbers.

dlw: There are ways to increase intra-party discipline for major parties to
prevent their fragmentation and
help them to coordinate the making of serious needed changes that perhaps
were spotlighted by 3rd parties.

>dlw: Yeah, so I'm saying it might be advantageous to push for going back
to the
> Constitutiona mandated 2-stage approach if we were to dramatically improve
> the 1st stage via the use of 3-seat LR Hare.

RF:Changing the constitution is very hard, you need people to be
reasonably sure that they want to change things.

That seems pretty hard, when many/most people would view losing their
right to elect the Senate as a decrease in democracy.

dlw: It's a marketing problem, IMO.  If we tied it to making the senate
elections biannual, maybe it'd be easier to market...
Or if we created a "American Idol" like popular reality tv program that
used something similar and then turned the 2nd stage election
in the state assembly into a reality tv program then perhaps it'd be seen
as an increase in democracy.

> You could set it up so that the State House of Reps chooses the Senator
and
> then the  state senate approves of the chosen senator by at least a 40%
> rate.

RF:Maybe, it depends on the Supreme Court's viewpoint.

dlw: I think it's a states' rights matter and people shd insist that most
of it get decided in the more proportional state legislative branch.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Raph Frank <raphfrk at gmail.com>
To:
Cc: EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 18:03:58 +0000
Subject: Re: [EM] Range Voting for State Representative election of US
Senators.
The reason to elect 1/3 of the Senators for 6 years instead of all for
2 years was presumably to give stability, rather than to save money.

dlw: The use of single-winner elections for Senators, as opposed to
congress-persons, by a body with 1/3rd+ from each major party for a state
would keep the Senate in their control, which would give stability,
since that's the function of having two major parties.

If it can also save money and enable the election of non-rich senators and
elevate the import of state representative elections then all the better!!!

dlw
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