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Bill Clark wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Agreed. But independently, I
still thought that the choice was between<br>
Geographic Representation and a system that gave political parties
a<br>
priveleged status (such as party list systems of PR
do.)</blockquote><br>
If you're married to the idea of geographic representation (I'll admit it
has some advantages) then there's still a few options for MMP:<br><br>
1) German-style multi-member proportionality. Everyone votes
for local representatives, who all declare party affiliations. Then
at the end, extra representatives from the appropriate parties('s lists)
are sprinkled in to make overall proportionality correct. So if
Greens get 8% of the vote and 1% of the district seats, they will get a
bunch of national representatives to fill the difference.<br><br>
MMP has some disadvantages, notably that it gives the parties extra power
and it can fail to represent all sides of local issues. But it does
give both proportionality and local representation.<br><br>
2) Moderate-sized districts. Especially in densely populated
areas, it's pretty easy to get both local representation and
proportionality. The New York metroplotian area has 13
representatives, 12 Democrats and one Republican. If it was one
meta-district, you'd probably see something more like (wild guess here)
6/5/2 between Dems, Republicans, and Greens. In other areas where
the population is a little more spread out, you can still get some
proportionality by going to 3-5 member districts. My opinion is
that you want at least 7-8 member districts for good proportionality, but
the point is that a balance can be struck.<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>All of the examples of PR I'd ever
seen always dealt with party list<br>
systems, so I thought that's all there was (and consequently didn't
follow<br>
up with the additional research that I apparently should have.)<br><br>
> If you were to adopt any party list system of PR (closed list,
open<br>
> list, MMP) you would give the parities more leverage. But if
you<br>
> adopted STV-PR (Choice Voting) you could shift the balance of
power<br>
> away from the parties to the voters.<br><br>
I'll look into STV-PR, then. Stephane Rouillon has also suggested
to me<br>
that I examine SPPA, which I believe may be a variant of (or at
least<br>
similar to) STV-PR.</blockquote><br>
Yes, and STV-PR has lots of subtle variations, too (notably Hare quota
vs. Droop quota).
<a href="http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/vote/vote.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/vote/vote.html</a>
has a good operational definition of STV.<br><br>
I also suggest you check out proportional approval voting (PAV). Here's the initial thread about it:<br><br>
<font color="#0000FF"><u><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/6367" eudora="autourl">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/6367</a><br><br>
</u></font>and here's some commentary I had before:<br><br>
<font color="#0000FF"><u><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/8744" eudora="autourl">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/8744<br><br>
</a></u></font>-Adam</html>