[EM] Preferential voting system where a candidate may win multiple seats

[Vidar Wahlberg]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 01:15:17PM +0200, Vidar Wahlberg wrote:
> Alternatively you could go the other way, distribute seats to parties in
> district the same order they won the seats, but then you'll get the
> opposite effect, that small parties may not win a seat in a district
> where they got 10% of the votes (because the larger parties took all the
> seats), but rather get a seat in a district where they got 1% of the
> votes.

I can give a much better example on this:
Let's assume a party barely got enough votes to win a seat, they got the
very last of the 169 seats.
If we distribute seats in the same order they were won, then this party
would receive a seat in whatever district that was left, it may be a
district where they didn't get a single vote as well as a district where
they got most of their votes.

On one hand you want parties to win their seats in the district where
they got the most support, on the other hand certain districts got few
seats while still being districts where multiple parties may have great
support.

There are still some issues:
A party may not be on election in certain districts, and thus can't win
any seats in this district. An extreme example:
Consider a 1-seat district, this is the only district a party got a
party list on election and they receive enough votes here to win the 2nd
last seat of the 169 seats. However, the party who won the very last
seat also did a good election in this district and takes the seat from
the party which is only eligible to win a seat in this district.
It's exceptionally unlikely something like this happens, but it needs to
be addressed.

Still boils down to distributing seats, need a better algorithm (that
still should be easy to understand).


-- 
Regards,
Vidar Wahlberg