[EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

[Richard Lung]

Richard Fobes is saying that the STV glass is not half full, it is half 
empty. He is right – sort of. But not that right! The proof of the 
pudding is in the eating, as shown by the examples given by James 
Gilmour. STV returning officers have long known that they take 
short-cuts with the manual count, that are not strictly logical, but 
keep the procedure manageable.

Gilmour advised the BC Citizens Assembly on the more sound version of 
the Gregory method of transferable voting.
Essentially, proportional surplus transfer is a standard method in 
statistics, known as weighting in arithmetic proportion. If transferable 
voting is “extremely flawed” then so is basic statistics.
One has to keep things in proportion.

(Borda method is essentially what statisticians call weighting in 
arithmetic [series, or geometric series or harmonic series] progression, 
which they use as an estimate of the relative importance of categories 
of data, when they do not possess actual information of their weights, 
in proportion to each other.)

From
Richard Lung


On 23/02/2017 17:54, VoteFair wrote:
> On 2/22/2017 3:45 PM, Richard Lung wrote:
> >
> > Don't understand your remark about STV ...
> > ... for a single national constituency.
> > ...
> > The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
> > transferable vote in large constituencies."
>
> I assume you are referring to this statement:
>
> >> STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and similar methods(!) are designed
> >> for a small number of available seats, and it is a mistake to think
> >> that such a method can simply be used repeatedly to achieve fair
> >> results for a large number of available parliament seats.
>
> Although the designers think that they designed STV to handle a full 
> national legislature/parliament, the method has the same flaw as 
> instant-runoff voting (IRV), namely the method looks at each voter's 
> currently top choice (after any candidate eliminations), and that 
> approach -- of assuming the candidate with the most such "votes" is 
> the most popular (or the inverse, assuming that the candidate with the 
> fewest such votes is least popular) -- is extremely flawed.
>
> In other words, STV is like using single-mark ballots, except that 
> when a voter's marked candidate is eliminated, then the voter 
> automatically supplies an alternate single-mark ballot.
>
> In spite of that major unfairness/flaw, STV would provide reasonably 
> acceptable results if only two seats were being filled.  And if a 
> nation has 3 equally dominant political parties, then filling 3 seats 
> for each district would work.
>
> However, as I stated before, STV would not provide fair results if it 
> were used for a full national legislature.
>
> Recently, in Canada, some people have been promoting the idea of using 
> STV to elect about 5 MPs (members of parliament) from each district 
> (which they call a "riding").  That would produce very unfair results! 
> That's what I had in mind when I referred to using STV repeatedly.
>
> Although Schulze-STV uses pairwise counting, it still has the same 
> flaw that it would not provide overall proportional results if it were 
> used repeatedly to fill more than 2 (or maybe 3) seats in each 
> district.  And this method, and similar methods, would also provide 
> flawed results if it were used to fill all the seats in a national 
> legislature (and those reasons are explained in my book).
>
> So, OK, I was not clear about the meaning of the word "designed."  I 
> was referring to the effect of the design rather than the intention of 
> the design.
>
> Richard Fobes
>
>
> On 2/22/2017 3:45 PM, Richard Lung wrote:
>>
>> Don't understand your remark about STV, the name given by Thomas Hare,
>> who invented it for a single national constituency. (Tho Mill was
>> prepared to be flexible about this, when he moved "Mr Hare's system" of
>> Personal Representation in parliament.
>> The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
>> transferable vote in large constituencies."
>>
>> Agree with you about preference voting essential for fairness. Do you
>> have any good source for your assertion that the lack of it in European
>> party-proportional methods makes them especially vulnerable to moneied
>> influence?
>> You could say the same, for instance about the nuclear lobby in Britain
>> (tho not Scotland).
>>
>> from Richard Lung.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 22/02/2017 00:24, VoteFair wrote:
>>> On 2/20/2017 11:57 PM, Armando wrote:
>>> > ...
>>> > I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional
>>> > representation.
>>> > ...
>>> > I would very appreciate if you can help me giving “guidelines”,
>>> > explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. ...
>>>
>>> I suggest that you look at VoteFair ranking, which is a method I
>>> developed years ago, over a span of about a decade.
>>>
>>> It is described in detail in my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In
>>> U.S. Elections," which is available through multiple e-book reading
>>> platforms.  The book includes lots of illustrations to make the
>>> concepts easier for "average" (non-math) readers to understand.  (With
>>> so many illustrations the file size is large and the low price
>>> basically just covers the download fee.)
>>>
>>> Near the end of the book I explain that the same system would work in
>>> other nations simply by increasing the number of parliament members
>>> who are elected using cross-district voting methods.
>>>
>>> Based on your questions, here is what I think is the most important
>>> concept for you to understand:
>>>
>>> STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and similar methods(!) are designed
>>> for a small number of available seats, and it is a mistake to think
>>> that such a method can simply be used repeatedly to achieve fair
>>> results for a large number of available parliament seats.
>>>
>>> You seem to correctly understand that ranking candidates -- rather
>>> than using single-mark ballots -- is essential for fair results.  PR
>>> (proportional representation) methods in Europe did not get this part
>>> of PR correct.  That's why it is easy for campaign contributions
>>> (money) to easily control European politics.
>>>
>>> With these concepts in mind, I suggest that you read the overview of
>>> VoteFair ranking, which is here:
>>>
>>> http://www.votefair.org/calculation_details.html
>>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20170224/7b80bf51/attachment-0001.htm>