[EM] (Kevin Venzke) and James Gilmour.

[David L Wetzell]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 6:01 PM, <
election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com> wrote:

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> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr>
> To: election-methods <election-methods at electorama.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:16:19 +0000 (GMT)
> Subject: Re: [EM] JQ wrt SODA
> Hi David,
>
>   *De :* David L Wetzell <wetzelld at gmail.com>
> *À :* election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> *Envoyé le :* Vendredi 17 février 2012 13h37
> *Objet :* Re: [EM] JQ wrt SODA
>
>  IRV's got a first mover advantage over SODA and to catch up you need to
> convince someone like Soros to help you market it.  It wouldn't matter if
> you got the whole EM list to agree with you that it was hunky-dory.
>
>
>
> You are supposed to get the EM list to agree first, before writing Soros
> directly.
>

If there were such a pot at the end of the rainbow then maybe the EM list
would have an incentive to agree.

>
>
> But in the context of a 2-party dominated system, there aren't as many
> serious candidates
>
>
>
>
> That doesn't make much sense to me. The election method is a part of the
> system and it has an obvious effect on how
> many candidates could run.
>

dlw: It depends on the size of the effect of the election method.  There
still are cost-benefit rationales that would keep the number of serious
candidates down, depending of course on the size and importance of the
election.  Ceteris paribus, to have a party institution behind you will
make a difference regardless of what election method gets used.

>
>
>  and so what relative advantages there are of SODA over IRV will be less,
> which then makes the first-mover marketing problem more significant,
> especially if IRV can be souped up with the seemingly slight modification
> of the use of a limited form of approval voting in the first stage.
>
> dlw
>
>
> If I remember correctly your idea is to use approval to pick finalists. I
> don't think this is a good idea because it breaks
> clone independence, which is an IRV selling point.
>

But does it break it strongly?  Let there be A, B, and C.  Let BB be a B
clone.
The field is split 30.1-40-29.9.  Normally B wins.  If BB enters then
either B or BB gets eliminated in the first round but then their votes
transfer to whoever remains and so the outcome wouldn't change.  You'd need
to have a crowded field so that an original finalist and their clone would
both get eliminated.  If either the original winner and clone(s) got
eliminated, which would be harder, in all likelihood, or you might change
the order of elimination in the 2nd round so that there'd be a different
winner.

For me, I think there are real world safeguards against clones in politics
and so to be 100% clone independence is not important.


> If your goal is to e.g. not elect Condorcet winners who place third,
>

I don't think my goal is not to elect CW's who get 3rd amount of
top-rankings among the three finalists.   I think the goal is to reduce the
distance between the de facto center and the true center,
while allowing that we don't know the true changing center and don't want
to chase it too easily.


>  I think you should use the Approval-IRV hybrid that eliminates the least
> approved candidate until there is a majority
> favorite. I call it AER... I think Woodall called it Approval AV.
>

 dlw: IRV+ is easy to tabulate at the precinct level.  One could get the 3
> finalists on election night.
>
The next day the votes can be sorted into 10 categories, once again at the
precinct level, and the results used to find the winner.
This is  more important than clone independence, cuz the true winner(for
normal irv) would be more immune to the existence of clones than other
finalists.
dlw

>  Kevin
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "James Gilmour" <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk>
> To: "'David L Wetzell'" <wetzelld at gmail.com>, <
> election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:00:04 -0000
> Subject: Re: [EM] STV vs Party-list PR, could context matter?
> **
> I don't see why anyone would want to use a party-list voting system when
> there are more voter-centred alternatives that fit much better with the
> political cultures of countries like USA, Canada, UK.
>

3-seat party-list is the only party-list that is adaptable to the political
cultures of the USA, Canada and UK.  It still has one candidate per party.
 And folks still would get to vote the candidate, who'd be able to
meritocratically pick a vice-candidate if (s)he were to beat the third
place candidate by more than one-third of the total vote.  Or, (s)he could
announce who'd they pick in advance so as to rally a minority group within
their party's support for their party.  Either way, it'd be more
user-friendly for voters.


> Why anyone would want to use the Hare quota when, with preferential
> voting, it can distort the proportionality  - in a way that Droop does
> not.
>

LR Hare is designed to maximize the absolute value of the differences
between the percent of the vote received and the percent of the seats won
across all participating parties.  It's weird effects occur for when the
number of seats is very high.  It is meant to be used in conjunction with
single-member elections that are biased in favor of the bigger parties.
 It's bias in favor of bigger third parties offsets the other bias.

But at the end of the day, proportionality isn't the target.  What is the
target is a system that uses a mix of single-winner and multi-winner
elections to safeguard minority rights.  The Hare quota's bias in favor of
smaller parties is why it (when used in conjunction with single-winner
elections) is superior at giving minority groups more exit threat from the
bigger parties.


> Why anyone would want to restrict the voting system to 3-seat districts
> instead of adopting a flexible approach to district magnitude to fit local
> geography and recognised communities..
>

In the US, we redistrict regularly.  All are s'posed to be about the same
size of voting population.  We're used to it and bigger-seated districts
tend to be more third party friendly than smaller-seated districts.  It's
not fair to give that to some people and not others.  So it's best to have
the same number of seats in all districts.

Plus, the effects of gerrymandering a 1-seat and 3-seat PR election go in
opposite directions and so to use state senate districts also for state
representative elections would be a very potent anti-gerrymandering
technique.

dlw

> James Gilmour
>
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