I assume that you are not advocating cumulative voting for single winner elections, but are saying that Tom's idea might be a good way to get proportional representation in multi-winner elections.
Forest On Sat, 5 Jan 2002, Bart Ingles wrote: > > > Forest Simmons wrote: > > > > Bart, > > > > this discussion reminds me of the time Tom Ruen was toying with the idea > > of modifying Approval by requiring all of the approved candidates on one > > ballot to share one vote equally, i.e. if you approve three candidates > > they each get one third of your vote, a kind of constrained cumulative > > voting where all of the non-zero votes on your ballot have equal value. > > This may actually be the most practical form of cumulative voting. I > think in most cases, the best strategy is usually to divide one's vote > equally anyway (otherwise, the candidate who gets fewer votes will > probably lose & his votes wasted, so that his voters would have been > better off concentrating their votes on the remaining candidates). > > In the relatively rare situations that could benefit from unequal > voting, such as two factions each with their own candidate but sharing a > third, you can overcome this restriction using the same cooperative or > stochastic strategies. So each group gives 2/3 of its voting power to > its dedicated candidate, and the remaining 1/3 to the shared candidate > (or let individual voters roll the dice to make the choice). > > The fact that this strategy requires a conscious effort would serve to > keep voters from blindly assiging points without regard to consequences, > or based on sentiment, etc. > > Bart >
