> Now, first I'm going to introduce to you the idea of the proportional Condorcet winner. > The are several of these in an election, and the majority Conorcet winner is always > among them. A proportional Condorcet winner is the Condorcet winner of the > minority of the electorate. For instance, in a four seat election the a Proportional > Condorcet winner would be the Condorcet winner of 25% of the populace.
That is not a very clear definition. Are you saying that a candidate is a proportional condorcet winner if there exists a set of votes amounting to 25% (or more) of the electorate in which he counts as a condorcet winner ? If so, then in a 4 seat constituency, there is potentially more than 4 proportional condorcet winners. For example (just listing first preferences) A: 15% B: 15% C: 14% D: 14% E: 14% F: 14% G: 14% Any of the candidates in the above election is a proportional condorcet winner. The 25% that each candidate would pick would be his own supporters and 11% of the vote from some other supporter. He would be the condorcet winner as 14% rank him first and at most 11% rank any other candidate ahead of him. This means that there could be 7 proportional condorcet winners in a 4 seat constituency (maybe more). At least 3 of them must be eliminated. > Now, this method that I'm proposing differs slightly. It uses a normal STV method > for transferring the surplus votes. Then in the elimination of undervotes round, > instead of eliminating the one with the least votes and then transferring their > votes, you take a set of the least-vote getters equivalent to the amount of seats > in the election, plus 1, and eliminate the one who is the least preferred on the > ranked ballots by the the electorate, then transfer that person votes. Therefore, > a proportional Condorcet winner will never be eliminated, and they will always rise > to the top. You haven't said how the least preferred is to be determined (condorcet loser?). So, in a 4 seat constituency, the bottom 5 candidates are compared and the condorcet loser of that election is determined based on all the votes. Since, I don't know what you mean by proportional condorcet winner, I don't know what your claim that none of them can be eliminated actually means. In any case, there is an interesting effect if you use the Droop quota for electing candidates. After a candidate is elected, and their votes transferred, you can consider the remainder of the election as an election for one fewer seats. For example, if there was a 4 seater, the rounds might go like: Round 1: nobody elected (20% required) Bottom 5 candidates are compared Round 2: candidate gets >20% so is elected votes redistributed Election now considered a 3 seat election. Votes remaining: 80% of the original Target is droop quota = 80%/(3+1) = 20% of original vote so stays constant Round 3: nobody elected Bottom 4 candidates are compared (instead of 5) and so on. ___________________________________________________ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info