Mr. Davison, first, thanks a lot for the explanations.
2 questions: > 1) The new elimination rule makes it easier to tally the mix of candidate >and party votes, because now the party votes are carried separate from the >candidate votes. I have been considering such kind of ballot (an open MMP list I think it is called) But I finally rejected it because I was against the following case: Let us suppose a party that promises to get rid of a tax, in its political program or plan for example, but no politician for this party defends the idea because they know they would have to explain how to find the money somewhere else... After the elections, candidates from this party get an average 24% votes, but the party gets 55% of the votes. Most voters wanted the tax abolition but several knew the candidate they were offered would not do it... But finally no other candidate from the party would. This behaviour is very realistic, we have seen this in Canada on a smaller scale when electors vote for a party and not for a candidate... Using your rule, candidates from this party will stay longer than they deserve. I find the average of the votes gathered by all candidates of a party a better representation of the real support than the votes in favour of a party - aka a vote in favour of ideas without knowing the who and how of their application . Don't you think so? I think you can adapt your model in consequence. >It should be rare, but it is possible for the average votes of a party to >be greater than the quota. If this happens, enough surplus votes are to be >transferred from the sum of the party and party candidate votes such that >the average is reduced down to the quota. The rest was crystal clear. Could you give an example to illustrate what you mean with this last paragraph? Maybe I did not get the way you transfer both the votes in favour of a candidate and the votes in favour of parties (if those are transferred too)... Do you rank parties too or do you just pick one? Thanks, St�phane Rouillon.
