[EM] Parliamentary compromising strategy

[Richard Fobes]

On 3/11/2013 1:33 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
 > Here's a scenario I've been thinking about lately.
 >
 > Say that you have a parliament using proportional representation, and
 > the voting method is party list. Then say that the situation is
 > so that after the election, either the left-of-center parties or the
 > right-of-center parties form a coalition.
 >
 > Given this, you might get a compromising strategy. [...]
 >
 > But if enough people vote this way, then the right-wing wins, even if
 > the polls were inaccurate and it would not have won if people had
 > voted honestly.
 >
 > Is there any way of ameliorating this? [...]

The need for a coalition -- which often occurs when PR is used -- 
introduces an extra layer in the political system.  The layer is between 
the elected representatives and the majority coalition (or ruling 
coalition).

This extra layer can easily result in the opposite of what some voters 
want.  As an exaggerated, simplified, and non-realistic example, suppose 
that half the voters in the Green party are women, and their votes for 
this party are based on the party's support for gender equality.  And 
suppose that the Green party forms a coalition with another major party, 
and in the backroom negotiations a majority of the Green party leaders 
are men and agree to compromise on gender issues, in exchange for 
increased focus on environmental issues.

Of course, in reality the backroom compromises are both unknown and 
intertwined.  Yet this example illustrates the underlying problem.

I see two ways of resolving this dilemma.

One way is to eliminate the need for coalitions.  This is the purpose of 
VoteFair negotiation ranking, which allows the elected representatives 
to rank various proposals on various (hopefully-at-least-somewhat) 
related issues.  Based on these rankings the software calculates which 
proposals would produce a proposed law that is "best" supported by the 
elected representatives -- including support by small (but not tiny) 
opposition parties.  (Details about VoteFair negotiation ranking are at 
www.NegotiationTool.com.)

The other approach is to replace traditional PR with an election method 
that gives no advantage to strategic voting.  This is what the full 
VoteFair ranking system is designed to do.  Specifically, each district 
would use VoteFair representation ranking to elect one "majority" MP 
(member of Parliament) and one "opposition" MP, and the remaining 
parliamentary seats are filled using VoteFair party ranking (to identify 
party popularity) and VoteFair partial-proportional ranking (to choose 
which district-losing candidate wins each party-based seat).  The result 
does not allow even a group of well-coordinated voters to meaningfully 
and predictably alter the results.

Both approaches are needed to achieve the highest level of democracy. 
Either alone would greatly improve democracy.

The bird's-eye perspective is that I support solving the problem at the 
source of the problem.

Richard Fobes


On 3/11/2013 1:33 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> Here's a scenario I've been thinking about lately.
>
> Say that you have a parliament using proportional representation, and
> the voting method is party list. Then say that the situation is so that
> after the election, either the left-of-center parties or the
> right-of-center parties form a coalition.
>
> Given this, you might get a compromising strategy. Say (WLOG) that
> you're a left-wing voter. Then if it's a narrow race, but the polls are
> slightly favoring the right-wing group, it might make sense for you to
> vote for the most centrist of the right-wing parties. The reasoning
> would go that "the right wing is going to win anyway, so if I vote for
> the left wing, I get zero influence, but if I vote for the leftmost
> right-wing party, I at least pull the right-wing coalition away from its
> right extreme".
>
> But if enough people vote this way, then the right-wing wins, even if
> the polls were inaccurate and it would not have won if people had voted
> honestly.
>
> Is there any way of ameliorating this? The best solution would let
> people vote the left parties ahead of the right parties and contribute
> both to their left-wing preference, as well as push the right-wing in
> their direction.
>
> I suppose the problem is that the coalition makeup is set up after the
> election rather than during it. So the voting method has no idea about
> how power is distributed and arranged after the election. All the voting
> method does is produce a council that is proportional. Thus, if we're to
> solve that problem, it would mean either codifying the coalition
> structure into the system itself, or make the voters able to react to
> coalition setups so that they can redistribute their votes manually.
>
> The former, I'm a bit wary of doing. One of the advantages of
> parliamentary rule is that the parliament is fluid. The parliament can
> nominate, select, and dissolve executives. The members of parliament can
> also ally themselves with others or shift their allegiances, or not have
> any fixed coalition allies at all (as is the case with minority
> governments). So making the assumption, within the voting system, that
> the parliament is going to consist of multiple coalitions and that the
> system can redistribute votes to ensure the favored coalition has a
> majority... seems intrusive.
>
> That leaves the second option, which sounds more like a form of proxy
> voting or liquid democracy. Besides the problems with vote-buying,
> there's also the instability. Yes, the voters can now react: left-wing
> voters that see that the right-wing is winning can shift their votes to
> the most centrist of the right-wing. However, this can cause reactions
> in the parliament - e.g. the right-wing wants to exclude the centrists
> because the centrists are diluting the unity of power of the coalition -
> which in turn would cause reactions among the voters, and so on. There
> might even be unstable oscillatory cycles. One such cycle might go that
> the right-wing coalition wins. Then the left-wingers move their votes to
> the centermost right-wing coalition members. The right-wing splits that
> centrist group away because they dilute the "right-wing-ness" of the
> right-wing coalition. Then the leftists move their votes back because
> nobody has a majority now, so the left-wing could use their support; and
> then the right-wing gains a majority. Rinse and repeat.
> (One might ask what a deterministic system would do in such a case. The
> answer is not obvious!)
>
> So does that mean that we're forced to have some amount of compromising
> strategy in parliamentary elections with blocs? Perhaps it's better to
> say that the system isn't prepared to handle that kind of problem. Other
> systems might, but then they wouldn't be parliamentary in the classical
> sense. Or it might be the case that one can make tweaks, but these will
> settle on somewhat random outcomes in edge cases like the above. A
> proxy/liquid democracy system with damping of noise (e.g. if you move
> your vote from X to Y, power gradually seeps from X to Y, not all at
> once) might settle on either a minority government or a right-wing
> coalition in the cyclical example above -- but there's no objective
> reason why it shouldn't settle on the outcome it doesn't settle on.
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>