Also, such a scheme would be, I think, highly susceptible to agenda
manipulation: who decides which issue is to be effectively on the
ballot, and who decides that the candidates associated with X and
not-X are sincere?
Citizens are free to form such lists. Each list may support and oppose
any topics, and the lists are supposed to collect similar minded
candidates together. Ballots may be just votes for individual candidates
(not for issues). I don't see any specific problems in this case.
Does that mean that a single candidate can be a member of more than one
list? If so, how are ties handled? Depending on how that's done, it
could cause complex interactions depending on which party a voter
decides to support.
If a single candidate can't be on more than one list, then agenda
manipulation still has some power. If a candidate has to commit to a
list that is based primarily on issue X, but where he also supports Y,
he has to make a choice (distinct from the choices voters make) of X
over Y. That could be technically solved by making 2^n "lists" for n
issues, but then you'd have to let candidates be on multiple lists, and
pure "party-neutral" PR becomes much simpler.
Tree lists would help, but say that a voter likes Y, but not X any more
than the candidate in question does. Then he wouldn't want to have his
vote contribute to any of the other X-favoring candidates.
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