On Apr 6, 2007, at 19:17 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 09:52 AM 4/6/2007, Juho wrote:
Here's one method for PR multi-winner elections. [...]
Candidates (or parties) are free to form any kind groups. Some
typical groups are parties and regions. The groups are allowed to be
hierarchical and to overlap. Also mandatory groups can be covered
within the method (all candidates might e.g. be mandated to represent
one of the regions).
Is Juho aware of the use of Asset Voting that I have proposed? It
seems far simpler and more flexible than what Juho has proposed,
with similar effect.
Yes I'm aware of Asset Voting. There are similarities but also lots
of differences. Maybe the biggest differences come directly from the
tradition. The MultiGroup method fine-tunes the traditional party and
region system and (as I mentioned, at least in the vanilla version)
the votes are very simple votes to one candidate. When compared to
that, Asset Voting seeks totally new tracks.
Another existing stream with connections to multiple interests is the
possibility to give proxies to different persons on different topics.
Asset Voting...
A political party that was small and spread thin, but with enough
loyal voters, state-wide, to gain a quota of votes, would gain
representation state-wide. A party with even less support than
that, could cooperate with other similar groups to create a seat
that represents more than one party, presumably with similar
agendas or interests.
I tried to go also further, to allow even country wide small (roughly
quota size, cross region, possibly cross party) groups to get one
representative. That is, if such groups are allowed by the system
(and by the parties if these candidates come from existing parties).
(I mean that MultiGroup is basically just a calculation method that
can support all this, but on the other hand can be used in many
different, also limiting ways in different countries, within
different parties etc.)
Asset Voting...
It takes no complex, top-down, imposed system. All it takes is
allowing votes to amalgamate intelligently, i.e., under the
direction of a trusted candidate.
I wouldn't call political party strycture of a democratic political
system an "imposed system". In many existing political systems there
are characteristics that resemble that though. And the intention of
MultiParty is to alleviate those. A "party-less bottom up" generation
of the "leading class" and political groupings is another approach
(with + and -).
What Juho is trying to do is to automate a process, using fixed
rules, instead of allowing human intelligence, which is far more
flexible and which can deal with unanticipated contingencies, etc.,
to allocate votes and seats.
Also, to give more power directly to the voters, while maintaining an
easy way to vote, easy understanding of what the candidates stand
for, and with accountability.
It wasn't clear to me how Juho's scheme really differs from Asset
Voting
I have the feeling that the differences may be more numerous than the
similarities, so I don't really know which properties to comment.
Right now the topmost thing in my mind is the difference that in
MultiParty candidates declare their affiliations/preferences/policy
before the election, for the voters to make their pick, while in
Asset Voting the system is based on bottom up votes/trust and
negotiation process that eventually leads to formation of the groupings.
Juho
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