On 9/5/08, Stéphane Rouillon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public/get_involved/submission/R/ROUILLON-65 > You are welcome to comment. At least I hope you have fun reading it if you > find the time.
Your implementation of IRV is non-standard (though I agree with the none of the above change and it is needed for your 2nd step). Perhaps, votes would only go to none if the voter actually ranks none. E.g. A 1 B C None 2 would transfer to none if A is eliminated, but would be exhausted if the voter didn't vote for None. However, that would mean that the voter has no effect on the PR stage, so probably a bad idea. it might be better to use a divisor method (d'Hondt or Webster's methods) to share out the seats. This has some advantages in terms of resistance to weird effects (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_paradox#Alabama_Paradox ). Your method looks like the largest remainder method. I also don't agree with independents getting a seat with 0.51 seats worth of votes, but that is another discussion (see previous PR thread) Also, you could include the None votes as a None-party. This party could be assigned seats. They would be left vacant. My opinion is that they should be considered to vote against every bill (though with the crutch option, it probably doesn't matter). Alternatively, they could just trigger a by-election. For example, of all the valid arrangements (each party has the correct number of seats), find the one where the elected representatives have the highest total votes. I am not sure I agree with the 'crutch' but, if you must have it, I would suggest a modification. After the election, the new parliament tries to nominate a PM. First they vote to keep the current PM. If he fails to get a majority, he becomes a caretaker-PM and he and the cabinet can't excersise major powers, without consent of the House. They can then try to nominate others in the ordinary way. If after 1 month, no nomination motion has obtained majority support, they can attempt to use the crutch rule. Any member of the House may stand as a candidate. The House holds three sequential votes. In the first round, an approval ballot is used. For the last 2, each member votes for 1 candidate. The candidate who wins the plurality of the vote is considered nominated to be PM (with crutch support). The additional candidates are added, but they only remain members of the House for as long as the PM remains PM. Also, they cannot vote in motions which nominate someone else to be PM (or motions which declare that the PM has gained support of the majority of the House). They also cannot vote in motions which call for a new election to be held. The term limit is reduced on a pro-rata basis. If the PM is PM for 1 year and then they manage to get a majority, then under your example, that would count as 7/4 * 1 year = 1.75 years used. Thus the term would have 2.25 years left (of 4). This system has the advantage that it allows the smaller parties the option to try to form a coalition. If the split was 40%, 30%, 30%, under your rule, the 40% party could declare a minority government against the wishes of the 60% of the other 2 parties. It also allows 2 parties which has a larger vote between them access to the crutch system. For example, if the split was 40%, 30%, 15%, 9%, 6%. It would allow a coalition of the 30%+15% parties to form the minority government as it has more votes than the 40% party. In addition, it allows a moverment by the House back to a majority government. In the above example, if the 40% party finally managed to get the 9% and 6% parties into a coalition, they could vote to nominate the leader of 40% party as PM. The additional members due to the crutch would not be allowed to vote for this motion, so the new coalition would win by 55% to 45%. It might also be worth allowing them to switch crutch-coalition. For example, once the 40% party gets support of the 6% party, it now has the plurality of the vote. It might also be worth having a rule that within 1 year of the end of term, the crutch rule cannot be used. I was thinking that a better way of having Heterogeneous districts would be to based them on polling stations. If each district needed 10 polling stations, then you could randomly allocate polling stations to districts. This doesn't get perfect blinding, but is much easier to implement. This might be better than social security number as the districts could be completely different each election. Also, social security numbers are static (and set by the government), so districts might have overlap from the previous election. If you waited until the last possible moment to decide the polling stations, then a politician wouldn't know where to direct pork and in any case, it would be hard to direct it at a specific polling station area. I don't know if a party 'front-bench' member would actually be willing to stand against the cabinet. Even if more than 1 of them can be elected from the same district, the odds of more than 1 are reasonably low. I think the strategy would actually be to try to find a district that nobody 'important' was standing in. It does mean that a cabinet member would need to make sure his policies have the support of the majority. I actually don't know if this is a good thing. Sometimes, it is helpful to implement unpopular policies (e.g. a 'basket' of policies might have 70% support, even though some individual policies have support of less than the a majority.) Your system has an unusual blend. Each party gets a PR share of the seats, but a random sample of the voters get to decide which party members actually get elected. I think this may lead to the more off-centre parties only nominating a fixed number of candidates. Otherwise, the majority might elect all their inexperienced members. It might even be worth running as independents for non-centerist parties. This is especially true since your method favours independents. This means that a known party member gets elected based on the party's vote. Ofc, that prevents the party from combining its vote over multiple districts, so may be not. Also, an actual independent is not likely to win. He would need to have large support nationwide. However, if that is the case, it would be expected that he would be in one of the mainstream parties. Btw, have you considered Fair Majority Voting. This also elects candidates based on a combination of PR and districts. Unlike, MMP, it doesn't have top-up seats. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
