[EM] Poll on voting-systems, to inform voters in upcoming enactment-elections

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 2024-04-05 16:03, Filip Ejlak wrote:
> First thing: it's surprising how all the options that have been 
> mentioned are single-winner methods, despite the poll subject not being 
> worded in such a restrictive way. Are multi-winner options allowed as 
> well, or should this be a different poll? Because it needs to be said 
> that _every legislative election needs proportional representation_. I 
> guess any single-winner method, no matter how good, will be bad in 
> comparison with a PR method. So if multi-winner options were allowed in 
> the poll, I would nominate *STV *(a Condorcet-compliant variant would be 
> better if there was any polynomial one with good recognition; an 
> optional indirect element - like GVT, but strongly improved - would also 
> be nice).
> 
> And speaking of single-winner methods, in my opinion *Woodall* and 
> *Benham* seem to be the best, at least among the well-known ones. While 
> Woodall (especially Schwartz Woodall) is perhaps marginally better, 
> Benham is so easy to explain (and it's a very obvious/natural way to 
> make IRV actually good) that it should be seriously considered by voting 
> reform campaigners. So I'd like to nominate these two.

I agree: if the poll is primarily meant to be about single-winner 
methods, it would still be useful to have a "use multiwinner PR instead" 
option, to see how well it would do compared to the single-winner methods.

I'd also suggest the following methods:

Majority Judgement (as a category; includes usual judgement etc.)
Approval with manual runoff (since it has seen actual use)
Copeland//Borda (proposed by Equal Vote)

and to echo Joshua Boehme, I'd also like to know what it's a poll of: 
the theoretically best method, the one with best chance of passing a 
reform effort, most bang for the buck, or something else?

On an aside, STV with ranked pairs elimination is not too bad a polytime 
Condorcet-reducing STV method IMHO. RP's LIIA compliance reduces the 
chaos you would otherwise get from elimination. It tends to have 
somewhat of a center bias within the "clusters" (solid coalitions 
entitled representation by Droop proportionality), but that might not be 
too bad if it deters extremist kingmaker scenarios.
	(You'd do a ranked pairs election every time you've elected someone and 
eliminated him from the ballots, then eliminate from the RP loser up 
until someone exceeds the quota, then elect him, distribute surpluses, 
and do a new RP election, and so on.)

-km