On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 6:51 AM, Juho <[email protected]> wrote: > If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level that fixes > the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best in small > districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it typically leaves > some space to distortion in proportionality as caused by the district > structure.
While I would agree there is a compromise between distict size and complexity for the voter, I don't agree that PR-STV is at its best with a small districts. Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable proportionality. > List based methods have also similar problems but in them it is > easier to have the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality > but weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional > proportionality")) I think they also suffer from the same trade-off, between giving voters max choice and preventing them being overloaded with options. Under a tree system, you still need to list all the candidates in the country. However, granted the voter just needs to pick one candidate to vote for. > or they can be easily extended to count the "political > proportionality" at national level but still allocate the seats in the > districts (and thereby maintain also "regional proportionality" and more > local representation). I think this is reasonable. I made a suggestion about how to allow that while retaining the spirit of PR-STV locally. http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg04272.html This gives allows candidate level elections locally while allowing any wasted votes to be distributed to parties nationally. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
