Jonathan Lundell wrote:
On May 1, 2009, at 6:02 AM, Raph Frank wrote:
2009/5/1 James Gilmour <[email protected]>:
One problem with abandoning LNH is that it opens the way for
strategic voting, that is, when a voter ranks the candidates in
some
order other than the sincere 'first to last' order of preference
because the voter knows that some feature of the voting system will
enhance the changes of the real high preferences being elected if the
rankings marked on the ballot are distorted in a particular
way.
Unfortunately, strategy is often a part of methods that encourage
compromise.
Part of the point of PR, it seems to me, is to represent the voters, or
groups of voters with similar views, as accurately as possible, and to
push compromise to the resulting legislative body, where compromising
can be worked out dynamically one decision at a time, with discussion
and analysis.
Forcing the voters to make a rather "blind" compromise in advance
through strategic voting may be a necessary evil for single-seat
elections, but I don't agree with the notion that we ought to encourage
it in a PR system.
Any PR system would have elements both of compromise beforehand and
compromise in the legislative body. That is, since there are a limited
number of seats, it's not possible to give everybody a seat perfectly
representing their opinions.
Inasfar as the groups are large enough that the method can represent
them in the assembly without compromising a larger group, there can be
direct representation; but when that is not possible, there has to be
compromise. Also, when picking the representatives within each group,
there has to be compromise.
If there are two seats and the "left" and "right" factions are of equal
size, and both have respective centrists, the outcome should have a
"left centrist" (which is close to the median voter of the left faction)
and a "right centrist" (which is close to the median voter of the right
faction). That there is one member of the left group and one member of
the right group in the outcome is explicit proportional representation,
but that each representative is a centrist within his group is compromise.
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