[EM] Survey of Multiwinner Methods

[Greg Nisbet]

There's some definite motivation for writing the list of criteria to
exclude parties, districts, and relying on candidates making decisions.
These sorts of mechanisms are not always available (for instance, picking
pizza toppings or locations or something of that nature). That's not to say
that these methods are never useful or not "competitive" with party-less,
district-less, candidate-decision-less methods in some sense ... it's just
harder to compare their merits in some sort of "universal" sense without
considering very specific factors about the community associated with the
election. In that sense, limiting focus to methods that don't impose these
sorts of additional structure or requirements on the candidates or voters
helps to simplify things rather dramatically.

I'd like to point out that this still leads plenty of room for creativity /
is perhaps not restrictive enough a requirement to really create a fair
comparison.

For instance consider a form of Cumulative Voting where each voter receives
n votes to use in each of m rounds with the results being published at each
intermediate stage and voters each allowed to cast n votes again while
knowing a little bit more about the outcome.

How would one compare this method to STV or List PR or districted [Favorite
Single-Winner Method Here]? It's hard to say and may depend very much on
what sort of assumptions you make about people and their behavior.


On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 9:55 PM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ <Walabio at macosx.com> wrote:

>         2013-01-07T01:04:52Z, “Greg Nisbet” <Gregory.Nisbet at Gmail.Com>:
>
> >       Hey, I'd like to get a sense of what sorts of multiwinner methods
> are currently known that are reasonably good and don't require districts,
> parties, or candidates that are capable of making decisions (I'm looking at
> you, asset voting).
>
> ¡KISS!:
>         ¡Keep It Simple, Oh Stupid!
>
>         I would stick with Asset-Voting.  It is a good thing that you look
> at Asset-Voting already.
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