[EM] (5) APR: Steve's 5th dialogue with Richard Fobes

[steve bosworth]

[EM] (5) APR: Steve's 5th
dialogue with Richard Fobes


>
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 21:57:55 -0800

> From: ElectionMethods at VoteFair.org

> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com

> CC: stevebosworth at hotmail.com

> Subject: Re: [EM] (4) APR: Steve's 4th dialogue with Richard Fobes

> 

> On 11/27/2014 2:39 AM, steve bosworth wrote:




Please
feel free to ask Steve to sent you a copy of his draft article explaining APR
(stevebosworth at hotmail.com)


 Hi
Richard,


Thank you
for being willing to spend the time to start the writing of a more simple presentation
of APR.  I would also be grateful if you and
others could offer any more criticisms and suggestions in regard to the
additions I have made below in an attempt to complete your summary with equal
simplicity.  Your original suggestions are
printed using Courier New Font, while my additions use Calibri Font: 
 


Positive
Voting Guaranteed


If you
would like to be sure that your own vote will continue to have equal weight in
the legislative assembly through the rep you trust most, use Associational
Proportional Representation (APR).

 

Step 1: APR’s Primary election allows you to choose which voluntary
organization you want to help you make your vote count more efficiently during
the later general election.  You choose
from the list of applicant organizations who wish to send their own reps to the
legislative assembly.  These would
probably include all the political parties, many of the
existing electoral districts, and many interest groups (e.g. business, labor,
professional, social, environmental, recreational, ethnic, or religious).  You may rank as many, or as few, of these
organizations as you wish. Rank first the one you believe is likely to offer
the most attractive candidates for you to rank during the later election.


The Primary counts all these citizen preferences to
discover the group of organizations who are sufficiently popular both to
contain all citizens as their voting members and to elect all the reps during
the general election.   Each organization
in this group becomes an official electoral “associations”.  Also as a result, you (and each other
citizen) become a voting member of one of these associations for the general
election. 


If a citizen’s first choice organization proved not
to be sufficiently popular, his application to be a member will be shifted to
his next choice organization until one is found to be sufficiently popular to
become an association.  If a citizen prefers not to participate in the Primary or not to rank any association beyond their favorite,
that too is acceptable. If none of the organizations a citizen has
ranked proves sufficiently popular, they will automatically remain a registered
voter in the district in which they reside. 




Step 2: Counting the primary election ballots also
determines how many legislative
seats will be awarded to each association. If, for example, the legislative assembly is
to have 500 members, an association will be awarded one seat if it has
attracted at least one 500th of all the registered voters as its
official electors.  It will be awarded
two seats if it as attracted two 500th, etc.  (See Endnote 5 and Flow Chart 2 in the
article).



Step 3: In the general election,
you (and each citizen) is asked to vote by ranking as many,
or as few, candidates as they prefer. The ballot paper is designed to allow each voter easily to rank any candidates in any associations in the country.


Step 4: Counting these ballots determines which candidates win the seats that were awarded to each
association. For example, the candidate who received the most votes in an association
allowed to elect 1 rep would be elected, the two candidates receiving the most
votes in an association allowed to elect 2 reps would be elected, etc. 


Step
5:  Each elected rep would retain all the
votes they had received.  Thus, each will
have a “weighted vote” in the assembly exactly equal to the number of votes
received.  In this way, each citizen’s
vote continues to count during the assembly’s deliberations (see the Sample
Ballot, Endnotes 3 & 4, and Flow Chart 1 in the article).




END OF SUMMARY 


 R:  Notice that, unlike your
descriptions, this sample summary does not contain any claims, opinions,
judgments, or even intended goals. You already know how to write that kind of
promotional material.

> 

> After it becomes clearer how your method works, then we can further discuss
the strengths and weaknesses of your method.


S: Yes
please.



R:  In case I forget, your method involves an
additional complication that I have not yet mentioned. The fact that seats
would be awarded to many associations means that a ruling/majority coalition
would need to be formed, and the process of forming a coalition always involves
back-room compromises that undermine the most important political priorities of
many voters. The long-term solution to this issue is to improve the voting
methods that are used within the legislature/parliament, and then your
associations would not need to form a ruling coalition.

> 

> Richard Fobes




S:  I look forward to our future dialogues both
with regard to the formation of “majority coalitions” and the above summary.


Steve 


 		 	   		  
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