[EM] Smith+IRV//Approval

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 2023-09-17 18:14, Colin Champion wrote:
> Chris - as I understand it, there's no reason to expect Condorcet voting 
> to produce satisfactory results if applied seat-by-seat to 
> representative assemblies. Some voting theory texts have a disclaimer 
> near the beginning: "We here discuss the election of a single 
> office-holder (eg. a president); election of individual members to an 
> assembly brings in additional considerations" (which are never discussed).

Plurality can be used as a rough semiproportional method that's 
proportional under strategy (SNTV). But bloc Condorcet isn't. I suspect 
that Condorcet failing to be at-large proportional when used for single 
member districts is related to this quirk in Plurality. In a way, 
Condorcet is too majoritarian.

>     At any rate, if a country is governed by a parliamentary assembly, 
> then the primary the aim of an election should be to produce an 
> effective government whose policies are as close as possible to the 
> consensus view of the electorate. This will not usually be achieved by 
> giving each constituency a representative who is close to its local 
> consensus.
>     I made a proposal of my own a couple of years ago: 
> http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2021-October/003113.html
>      My main concern was to avoid the minority governments which 
> generally arise when FPTP is replaced by less crude methods. As for 
> traction... I'm still its sole supporter.

I think a ranked party list method with a centrist-favoring bias would 
work relatively well: to be what something like D'Hondt should have 
been, and favor consensus/centrist kingmakers instead of random minor 
parties or whatever party happens to get the most Plurality votes.

But I might be coming from a different perspective: in Norway, minority 
governments are more common than not, and the legislature-executive 
balance of power is much more in favor of the legislature than is common 
elsewhere, but things generally work out. Using ranking and a 
centrist/consensus bias would reduce the need for thresholds and ad-hoc 
tweaks to Sainte-Laguë[1]; they wouldn't eliminate minority governments 
unless the bias were much harsher than I have in mind.

-km

[1] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_method#Modified_Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_method