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

[James Gilmour]

There's some muddled thinking here.

If you are electing a president or a mayor, you will use a single-winner election method.

If you are electing a "representative assembly" like a parliament or town council, you would use (should use) a multi-winner election method.  Only be using a multi-winner method can you begin to ensure that the elected assembly is properly representative of those who voted.

So before you hold your "Poll on voting systems", you must define the purpose of the election for which the voting system is to be used.

James Gilmour
Edinburgh, Scotland


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Election-Methods [mailto:election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Kristofer Munsterhjelm
> Sent: 05 April 2024 18:55
> To: Filip Ejlak <tersander at gmail.com>; EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Poll on voting-systems, to inform voters in upcoming enactment-elections
> 
> 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
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