On 20 Mar 2003 at 10:02, Forest Simmons wrote: > Here's another idea for PR that makes use of Borda style ballots: -snip-
I like PR methods in principle, because like the best single-winner methods they don't suffer as much from spoiling. But primitive PR methods tend to distort the public's perception of "popularity" by equating the number of seats won by a party with its popularity. Typically, the party that wins the most seats forms controls the agenda and, in parliamentary systems, also controls the executive branch. For example, the Nazi party in 1933 won the most seats and went on to be granted a lot of power, but they won a minority of seats and were probably the least preferred party of a majority of the voters. A party that wins fewer seats could be preferred by a majority over the party that wins the most seats, and in that sense is more popular, and should be distinguished as such by the voting system. So I prefer a PR system such as the following: Each voter ranks the parties from most preferred to least preferred, then seats are awarded to each party in proportion to the number of voters that ranked it topmost, with the following exception: The voters' rankings would also be tallied by a good single-winner method (such as MAM), the winning party according to that method would be awarded enough extra seats to make it the largest party. Also, that party would be given control over the legislative agenda (assuming the legislature operates under typical primitive rules like Robert's Rules of Order that require agenda control, instead of a modern asynchronous online system that allows each member to propose issues, propose alternatives, post arguments, and rank the alternatives). Another advantage of allowing each voter to rank the parties is that the voters' relative rankings of the viable compromises become known, and that may be much more important that learning each voter's favorite party. -- Steve Eppley _______________________________________________ Election-methods mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com
