[EM] Vote-Count consistency

[Richard Lung]

Vote-count consistency

JFS Ross said, in Elections and Electors, that every election has a vote 
and a count. The count is the aggregation of community wishes from 
individual votes. It follows that a vote and count must be consistent, 
to impart that aggregation.

One vote, that is a single choice, can express a preference between one 
of two candidates. This is consistent with a single majority count.

Half the votes is the least democratic representation, called by John 
Stuart Mill, maiorocracy. This is the tyranny of the majority, as 
re-asserted by Lani Guinier, mocked as a “Quota Queen,” and subjected to 
an early example of “cancel culture,” by having her government 
appointment withdrawn.

One vote, that is a preference vote, actually a many-preference choice, 
is consistent with a multi-majority count (which is, at least, the Droop 
quota, and at most, the Hare quota.) There is a one-to-one relationship, 
or an isomorphism, between a votes 1, 2, 3, 4 etc order of preference, 
and a counts 1, 2, 3, 4, etc member constituency, of many majorities 
(over an increasingly residual minority).

This vote-count consistency was invented by the mathematician and Danish 
statesman, Carl Andrae. And also independently by Thomas Hare, supported 
by Mill, greatest philosopher of science, in the nineteenth century.

This Andrae-Hare system, the quota-preferential method, to use an 
Australian term, is the logical basis for a standard model of elections.

It follows, immediately, that the anarchy of world election methods are 
nearly all logically false, because their vote is inconsistent with 
their count.

A one-preference spot vote cannot establish a preference between more 
than two candidates, for a one majority count.

A many-preference vote will not serve, to rationally establish a single 
majority (short of Binomial STV. Even that falls short of the 
consistency requirement between vote and count, in a single-member 
constituency.)

Party lists fail all the main claims electoral reformers 
indiscriminately claim for proportional representation. This is because 
their many-majority count lacks the many-preference vote, 1, 2, 3,.. 
etc. Hence, party lists do not abolish safe seats, because of the 
unscientific ambiguity of a one-preference vote over-riding an 
individual choice with a party choice. Party lists do not end tactical 
voting, because the spot vote might have to be used for a less prefered 
coalition partner. Party lists do not ensure a democratically prefered 
majority, only an extra-electoral party-brokered majority.

All these decided short-comings of party lists are over-come by the 
Andrae/Hare system of the single transferable vote, which is, or should 
form, the standard model of election method.

Regards,

Richard Lung.


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