Donald Davison wrote: >02/03/02 - STV for Candidate Lists: > >Dear Adam, >You wrote: " While it [Party List] is not quite as efficient in making >every vote elect a representative as STV is, it is highly proportional, >highly democratic, and extremely simple to implement and understand. " > >Donald: While I agree to the good things you say about Party List, it does >have a number of faults. > >One: Its high proportionality is only for party. > >Two: The voter is not allowed to cross party lines. > >Three: The order of the candidate list of each party is suspect. > >The mathematical correct way to determine the order of candidates for a >party would be to use STV, but then why not use STV for the entire election >and drop Party List? >Yes indeed, why not? >
I think that closed party list has a lot to say for itself. 1. It allows districts/constituencies to be eliminated. They tend to corrupt the process. 2. It provides a high degree of proportionality. 3. It is simple both to use and understand. Voter's need not even be literate. 4. More importantly, the elections themselves are easier to understand, because they are so partisan. Purely local races are confusing to voters, and require a lot more money in order to educate/propagandize them. This is why American style personality politics has the problems it does. Voter's are confused, and politicians are constantly desperate for large sums of money from people like the folks at Enron. 5. Although there are strategy issues, party list doesn't have many of the peculiarities of other methods. For example, in STV and cumulative voting there are strategies involving getting an even split of supporters between the candidates of one party. In mixed systems, there are strategies involving getting a district candidate who shares one's ideology, but not party affiliation. 6. Voters are voting for a known entity, a pre-determined party list. Voter's aren't forced to make every decision, but they are able to respond effectively when list makers make bad choices. That's a more realistic model of democracy than the micro-management model. Let me point out that even in STV it will still be necessary for parties to choose which candidates represent them, although they do not put them in order. Presumably Donald would find this choice "suspect" as well. And what on earth does he mean by "mathematically correct"? Mathematics has no preference as to how we govern ourselves, or even whether we live or die. --- Blake Cretney
