In my research of voting systems, PR, etc, I've been trying to come up with the most simple candidate-based PR system that I can possibly devise that uses votes for candidates and no other factors to determine the winners (i.e. open list and asset voting don't count for this purpose). I know simplicity is not the most essential aspect of such a system, but I was just interested due to the fact that complexity acts as a barrier against adoption and also due to the fact that all the candidate-based PR systems out there are quite complex.
Anyway, I came up with an interesting idea - combine cumulative voting (in particular the equal-and-even variant) with IRV-style elimination. It seems that this would transform CV from a semi-proportional system into a proportional system, while not complicating things excessively. It also seems that it may be superior to the various "proportional approval voting" schemes put forward... This system would work as follows: 1. Voters vote for up to n candidates - n being either # of open seats or # of candidates 2. Each voter has one vote equally and evenly divided among the candidates they voted for. 3. After doing the first count, eliminate the candidate with the fewest votes. 4. Recount all ballots, dividing votes equally and evenly among *remaining candidates only* 5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 until there are only as many candidates remaining as there are open seats. 6. The remaining candidates shall be declared elected. Any comments on this method? It seems like it may be reasonably usable, unless I'm overlooking something - i.e. some reason it's not true PR or another obvious or non-obvious pitfall. STV is probably better (due to the simple fact that you rank candidates), but it seems that this is an interesting idea... Tim
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