On Aug 25, 2008, at 7:28 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Jonathan Lundell wrote:
Apropos this general subject, David Hill wrote an article on the
subject of STV with constraints (Voting matters <http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE9/P1.HTM
>). He concludes (and I agree):
I believe that the approach given above is the best way, within
STV, to implement constraints but that they should not be employed
unless it cannot be avoided.
The mechanisms of STV are already designed to give voters what
they want, so far as possible, in proportion to their numbers. It
should be for the voters to decide what they want, not for anyone
else to tell them what they ought to want.
The magazine Punch in 1845 included "Advice to persons about to
marry - Don't". My advice on constraints is similar.
Dividing a nation into districts before performing STV elections is
itself a constraint on the geographical distribution of the
candidates. If constraints should be done away with, do you think
that nations employing STV should have only one district? If not,
why not?
I think it's reasonable to restrict the size of an STV ballot somehow;
presenting hundreds of candidates to a voter doesn't strike me as a
great idea. Does the restriction need to be geographic? Perhaps not,
but we see from the proliferation of mixed-member list systems that
the idea of local access to representatives is attractive.
I suppose that with electronic voting, you could have the voting
machine recommend candidates, Amazon.com-style. "Other voters who
voted for Candidate X also voted for the following candidates...."
(That was a joke.)
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