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

Fri Apr 5 15:32:16 PDT 2024

With the nomination of Benham, Woodall & Schwartz Woodall, 11 methods have
now been nominated so far:

In the order in which they were nominated:

Approval
RP(wv)
Schulze
IRV
Plurality (Vote-For-1)
MinMax(wv)
Black
Baldwin
Benham
Woodall
Schwartz-Woodall

Yes, I should have specified this: This is a poll about single-winner
methods.

Multi-winner methods should be a separate poll.

Though PR is discussed here too, single-winner methods have always been the
main topic here.

Reasons why:

Many EM members are in the U.S., where multi-member congressional-districts
are illegal.

People in PR countries have good reason to be satisfied with their
electoral-system, & not looking for reform.

When I suggested what became EM, I proposed it by the name Singe-Winner
Committee.

What would I prefer?

An at-large (no districts, no gerrymandering) proportional Parliament (no
president), elected by Sainte-Lague (SL) or Bias-Free (BF). SL has long
precedent & great obvious natural simplicity. …& is very nearly unbiased,
with no significant amount of bias (minuscule bias towards the large).

But, in practice I might well propose d’Hondt (DH) because it’s
predominant. The differences among those 3 allocation-rules aren’t really
significant.

Preferably closed-list. Who knows the candidates & their suitability to
carry-out the platform, than the central-committee that wrote the platform?
What, they wrote the platform but we can’t trust them to order the
candidate-list?  …but, given the party-phobic culture here, I’d propose
open-list.

Some open-list systems use Cumulative Voting to vote for candidates, but it
seems to me that a first-proposal should be simple. …with each ballot
voting for only one candidate.

An advantage of voting only for one list-candidate is that the system is
implamentable at zero expense.

Then voting for candidates would amount to an SNTV election among the
proposed candidates. Nothing wrong with that.

One solution that has been used in SNTV was for a faction to suggest that a
certain specified set set of its members vote for each particular one of
the candidates that it’s numerous enough to elect.

That member-set could be designated by a range of member-numberings  or by
name, based ranges of the right size chosen in the alphabetical ordering of
member-names. Or even by region-boundaries chosen to contain the right
number of members.

But there’s something simpler:

Each individual voter could probabilistically  implement Cumulative voting
by randomly choosing among the set of voters that hir faction is big enough
to elec all of.

If your faction is big enough to elect 3 candidates, then randomly choose
one of those 3 to vote for.

Finland exemplifies what I’m referring to. A standout exemplary simple
open-list system. But, as I mentioned, I wouldn’t use districts.

A quota of people in a region are free to elect someone in their region…or
not. Anyone there should also be free to help elect anyone anywhere.

Slovakia elects at-large. …& Slovakia has population size similar to an
average U.S. state.

Netherlands elects at-large. …& Netherlands ha several times the population
of an average U.S. state.

So there’s no reason to say that states are to big for at-large PR.

I just wanted to emphasize that I’d prefer a list-PR Parliament.

PR should be offered among a set of proposals for state electoral-reform.

But admittedly PR is a bid drastic fundamental change, arguably harder to
get than a better single-winner method.

So we in the U.S. are more interested in the more feasible single-winner
reform.

On Fri, Apr 5, 2024 at 07:03 Filip Ejlak <tersander at gmail.com> 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.
>
>
>
> Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes, that’s true. It’s the reason why reform is needed, & the reforms
>> should be compared to the worse current alternatives to show the need.
>>
>> I nominate:
>>
>> Approval
>> RP(wv)
>> Schulze
>> MinMax(wv)
>> IRV
>> Plurality
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 4, 2024 at 04:06 John T Whelan <john.whelan at astro.rit.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Given the purpose of the poll, I think FPTP should also be included,
>>> since that's what the real world propositions are presumably to replace.
>>>
>>> John Whelan
>>> jtw24 at cornell.edu
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>> *From:* Election-Methods <election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com>
>>> on behalf of Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
>>> *Sent:* Thursday, April 4, 2024 1:13:28 AM
>>> *To:* EM list <election-methods at electorama.com>
>>> *Subject:* [EM] Poll on voting-systems, to inform voters in upcoming
>>> enactment-elections
>>>
>>> EM used to do a lot of polls, but now never does. So I wouldn’t propose
>>> one, if it weren’t for the fact that, this year, the voters of at least two
>>> states are going to vote on whether to enact a certain voting-system.
>>>
>>> It seems to me—tell me if I’m wrong—that those people have a right to
>>> know how people familiar with voting-systems feel about the relative merits
>>> of some voting-systems.
>>>
>>> So, though I claim that polls are valuable for demonstrating the
>>> experience of using the voting systems, & how they work, & what they’ll
>>> do—& are therefore useful & worthwhile for their own sake—this poll that I
>>> now propose isn’t a poll for its own sake.
>>>
>>> It is, as I said, proposed for the important practical purpose of
>>> letting the voters in the upcoming enactment-elections know how we feel
>>> about the relative merits of some voting-systems, including the one that
>>> they’re about to vote on the enactment of.
>>>
>>> The voting-method for the poll:
>>>
>>> It seems to me that Schulze is the most popular ranked voting-system,
>>> among the people at EM.
>>>
>>> …& it seems to me that the last time we voted on EM’s collective
>>> favorite voting-system, Approval won.
>>>
>>> Those seem the top-two, in EM popularity.
>>>
>>> I prefer RP(wv) to Beatpath, mostly for its simple, intuitively natural
>>> & obvious rule, but also for its LIIAC compliance, & the fact that its
>>> winner usually pairbeats Schulze’s winner.
>>>
>>> But I guess Schulze is more popular due to its more efficient algorithm.
>>>
>>> Anyway so I suggest that the poll I propose have a Schulze balloting &
>>> count, & an Approval balloting & count.
>>>
>>> Voting would consist of posting a ranking & an approval-set, in one post.
>>>
>>> Candidate voting-systems:
>>>
>>> My purpose isn’t an all-inclusive poll among all proposed
>>> voting-systems. …just a very few ones that are the most popular here at EM,
>>> solely to have a little comparison to the main voting system being publicly
>>> voted on this year.
>>>
>>> So it should just be among a few voting-systems. Additionally, no reason
>>> to make the alternatives-lineup too time-consumingly large by including
>>> methods unlikely to win anyway.
>>>
>>> I’ll suggest a few obvious inclusions. But, of course every poll here
>>> should have the possibility of nomination of whatever alternative anyone
>>> wants to nominate.
>>>
>>> I’ll list my nominations in this post, & I claim that those few are all
>>> the alternatives needed for the poll.  …& anyone can nominate anything
>>> during a 1-week nomination-period.
>>>
>>> I suggest the following voting-systems as candidates in the poll, the
>>> alternatives among which to vote:
>>>
>>> Approval
>>> RP(wv)
>>> Schulze
>>> IRV
>>>
>>> (Schulze & RP are often said to be the ranked-methods most popular among
>>> single-winner reform  community, & that seems true at EM.)
>>>
>>>
>>> Is there any need for more alternatives than that?
>>>
>>> I suggest a nomination period of exactly one week, starting at the time
>>> recorded as the posting-time-&-date of this post.
>>>
>>> After which a voting-period of exactly one month would start…at the
>>> exact time as the end of the nomination-period.
>>>
>>> If there are no nominations (I suggest that none are needed) during the
>>> nomination-period—& if, during the nomination-period, no one posts the
>>> words “I second the suggestion of a poll”—then of course there’d not be a
>>> poll.
>>>
>>> Again, I realize that polls are no longer popular here, but this is a
>>> special situation, bringing a need for voters in the upcoming public
>>> enactment-election to have a chance to hear how people at EM feel about
>>> relative merit among voting-systems. So let’s make an exception to the
>>> absence of polls here, for voters in the next election.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----
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>>
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