--- James Gilmour <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a �crit�: > > Kevin wrote (in part) > > > > Is it wise to permit independent candidates to > run? > > Why would you want to put artificial constraints on > democratic representation?
I don't really. I should've asked, "Is it wise to run as an individual candidate?" What happens if 10% of the national electorate votes for an individual candidate? He should receive those seats in some form, I think. I suppose STV just trickles the excess votes to secondary choices. > > > I still don't think STV (etc.) can improve PR. To > run > > on the party list, candidates will need to conform > to > > their parties. They will not be able to > individually > > campaign, because nobody will see the need to > spend > > money on such campaigns. They will be elected or > not > > elected solely based on party affiliation. Am I > > wrong? > > Yes, very wrong so far as STV-PR is concerned. The > whole point about STV-PR is > that, uniquely among PR systems, it allows the > electors to vote for all the > candidates as individuals. So it is the voters who > decide which candidates take > the seats. I am aware that with STV, the voters select which candidates are elected. But I think there are some factors that cause the vast majority of voters to be indifferent towards individual candidates. The biggest factor, as I see it, is the parliamentary nature of Canada (the locale of Stephane's proposed system). In such systems the important thing is to get your party's members into the cabinet, and the "government" crafts most of the legislation. I don't think the voters will care about who the individual MPs are, and they are probably right for not caring. It just doesn't matter enough. In the U.S. it might work better, because the government is not staffed by the legislature. The independence of the legislature and President permits the legislature to play a much more significant role in creating laws. But even if it did work better here, I worry that we might see such problems as exist in Brazil. They are also presidential, and use open-list PR to fill the legislature. There are accountability problems because the elected deputies have little way of knowing what sort of voters elected them. That, or they realize they were elected for no reason of their own, as parties get popular people to join their lists, and they individually receive so many votes that many other candidates from that party can be seated. Once elected, deputies switch or drop their party affiliations frequently. (I believe all of this description to be correct, but I may stand to be corrected if I've twisted the scenario.) Anyway, it doesn't sound promising to me. If there is a country using party lists where the electorate is concerned with individual candidates, I would be very interested in learning more about it. Stepjak ___________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en fran�ais ! Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
