[EM] Raph: Sainte-Lague. Transfers in party-list PR.

[Raph Frank]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 1:58 PM, Michael Ossipoff
<email9648742 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, but if a large party suplus-transfers to another party,and it,
> too,as a result, acquires a quota and must transfer,then the
> destination for that next transfer can just be that 2nd party's
> transfer-choice. All of the transfers, surplus and elimination, could
> be accommodated by each party publishing a single transfer-choice

You could end up with a loop, if small parties tended to nominate each
other.  However, as long as the loop has enough votes to get some
seats, then it isn't that big an issue.  It would prevent the loop of
parties from transferring outside the loop.
.
I think maybe something like Meek's method could be used to share out
the seats.  Maybe a non-elimination system might be possible too.
Eliminating based on excess votes would be pretty random.

>And maybe that would be preferable.I'm just saying that it
> would still work if each candidate published only a single
> transfer-choice. I'm not saying that would be better--only that it
> would be one possible way of doing it.

With only 1 transfer choice, then the entire vote must be transferred
if your first choice is eliminated.

I see very little extra cost in allowing the candidate to have any
length of choices.

> Yes, it sacrifices some expression of voter-choice, in return for a
> simpler count. But the candidate-ranking STV, or
> candidate-single-transfer-instruction STV, would still only require
> one _big_ count of all the ballots, and then the remaining counting
> would be the kind that anyone could do at home.

I think candidate based lists is a big improvement over requiring
central organisation of the voters.

It is nearly as good as full PR-STV.  Also, depending on the rules for
"candidates", you could allow non-candidates to also submit lists, but
there is a tradeoff against having to many choices on the ballot.

>> This happens somewhat with "vote management" under PR-STV.  A
>> candidate who is popular in his own right is discouraged from seeking
>> first choices from party supporters.  This means that he gets elected
>> on "personal" vote and doesn't waste party supporters.
>
> I suppose that could save some other members of his party from
> 1st-round elimination.

Partly.  If a candidate has supporters who are 50% party core voters
and 50% "personal" voters (so their 2nd choice is not a member of the
party), then the party benefits by having the candidate elected mostly
by the personal voters, since they wouldn't transfer to the party
anyway.  The fewer party voters who vote for that candidate, the
greater the percentage of the personal voters' votes are held by the
party's candidate.

That way the party core voters can use all of their votes for the
party's other candidates.

>> I think Asset voting might be interesting.
>
> I haven't seen a definition of it,.

At its least complex, it has almost no definition.

- Voters vote for 1 proxy/candidate each
- Proxies/Candidates have a meeting where they can assign their votes
"assets" to anyone they want
- The N people with the most votes after the assignments are completed
are elected

In practice, the transfers would likely target Droop quotas and
candidates are likely to assign their votes to themselves.

You could also have problems with candidates refusing to transfer and
"chicken" games.

For example, in the standard center squeeze situation, neither of the
major party candidates are likely to assign any votes to the center
candidate.

L: 43
C: 10
R: 47

L and C are effectively in an equal situation.  Unless they assign
their votes to the other, then R will win.

Perhaps, C could say that he doesn't care if L or R win anyway and L
would (in theory) prefer C over R, but most likely, L would just hold
out and then blame C for R winning.  He could say, since he got more
votes than C, he is entitled to win.

The method could have formal elimination rounds

1) If no candidate volunteers to be eliminated before the round's time
limit expires, eliminated the candidate with the least votes assigned
2) Goto 1) unless there are only N active/running candidates

> In STV, you wouldn't want equally ranked candidates getting whole
> votes, because it would violate proportionality.

That was why there was 2 vote totals for each candidate.  The "elect"
total vote would be used to determine if a candidate was elected (and
also the keep values for Meek).  This total shares the voting weight
for equal ranked.

It would only be when determining who to eliminate that voting weight
is not shared, but given at full strength.

> In STV there probably
> isn't any need for ranking several candidates equally.

Well, it would effectively allow approval to be used for intra-party
candidate selection (assuming party supporters give all party
candidates rank 1 or 2)