Adam wrote > While I agree wholeheartedly with the desire to limit the influence > political parties have over their candidates, it seems to me that this is > mostly a property of CLOSED party list PR. In open list PR, candidates > don't have to play nice to move up the list, since the voters decide which > candidates on the list get elected. Also, in theory one could run as an > independent in list PR, although it's unlikely that a single candidate > would break the quota. So I do see the benefits of STV. I see PAV as even > better, though - especially if there aren't many seats to allocate.
There are two fundamental advantages of STV-PR over all forms of Party List PR (PL-PR). First, the sole objective of PL-PR is to secure PR of parties and other pre-registered groups. With STV-PR the objective is to secure PR of what the voters want, as expressed by their responses to the candidates who offer themselves for election. Where the voters "vote the party ticket", party PR will be the outcome of STV-PR, but it is not the objective. Where voters are motivated not to "vote the party ticket" you will not see PR of the political parties, but you will still get PR of the voters' views. Second, even with "open list" PL-PR, you cannot obtain PR of the voters' views WITHIN the parties. PL-PR gives you PR only among the parties. To obtain PR within a party, the votes need to transferable among the candidates within that party. If you are going to allow transferable votes within parties, why not go the whole hog and allow transferable votes between parties? Then you have re-inverted STV-PR. These two differences are fundamental. They make STV-PR uniquely different from all other forms of PR. Party apparatchiks may be content with PL-PR or even oppose STV-PR. But elections are for electors. James ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
