Dave Ketchum said: > If I really wanted to broaden the field, I might get into ways for the > people being represented to control who got to be officials, and > when officials got replaced, WITHOUT doing elections.
Here's a simple scheme along those lines. Surely it can be improved, and as set forth it's only for legislatures, but it's a way to proceed. Each eligible voter has one vote. At any time he can give it to any representative or would-be representative that he wishes to. As long as a representative has a certain threshold of support he retains his seat in the legislature. Proportionality is achieved because as soon as a group gets enough people on board to elect one representative, it will start recruiting voters for another. Groups will add representatives until they've maxed-out. Recall is simple: If enough voters withdraw support from one representative and transfer it to another the representative loses his office. Maybe there could be a grace period, so that he has a certain interval of time to regain support before losing office. But that's a detail. As I think of it, here's one of many possible embellishments: Give each person TWO votes, which must be given to two different representatives or aspiring representatives. A person may be reluctant to relinquish representation temporarily by transfering votes to somebody else who has not yet attained a quota. People may be more willing to do so if they have two votes. Or, let people make provisional transfers: Let people indicate that they're willing to transfer a vote to candidate X, but only if enough other people are also willing to do so. Anyway, there are all sorts of ways to flesh out this framework. I don't present it as a finished plan, just as a starting point. Of course, these direct representation schemes have even less chance of implementation than the most complicated Condorcet-IRV-Approval hybrids that we might devise. But they're fun to contemplate, and they may find application in private organizations. Alex ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
