On May 5, 2010, at 1:36 PM, Markus Schulze wrote:
Dear Juho,
I wrote (4 May 2010):
This is my proposal:
--Use the Schulze proportional ranking method.
--The top-ranked candidate becomes the president.
--The second-ranked candidate becomes the vice president.
--If the first two candidates happen to be male, then,
when you calculate the third-ranked candidate, restrict
your considerations to female candidates.
If the first two candidates happen to be female, then,
when you calculate the third-ranked candidate, restrict
your considerations to male candidates.
The third-ranked candidate becomes the 2nd vice president.
--The fourth-ranked candidate becomes the 3rd vice president.
--The fifth-ranked candidate becomes the 4th vice president.
--If 4 of the already elected candidates happen to be male,
then, when you calculate the sixth-ranked candidate, restrict
your considerations to female candidates.
If 4 of the already elected candidates happen to be female,
then, when you calculate the sixth-ranked candidate, restrict
your considerations to male candidates.
The sixth-ranked candidate becomes the 5th vice president.
--The seventh-ranked candidate becomes the 6th vice president.
You wrote (5 May 2010):
In the description of Markus Schulze there were two steps
where the male/female proportionality was handled. That
approach works if there are separate requirements for the set
of three first (vice)presidents and the rest of the council
members. My understanding is that in the Czech Green Party
there are no such requirements on the presidents. In that
situation it may be better to push the forced male/female
election to the end of the list.
I prefer my proposal because of two reasons.
First: In my proposal, the fourth and the fifth candidate reduce
the distortion of proportionality that might be caused by the
specific choice of the third candidate. The seventh candidate
reduces the distortion of proportionality that might be
caused by the specific choice of the sixth candidate. In your
proposal, there are no candidates who reduce the distortion of
proportionality that might be caused by the gender requirements.
In all the proposed serial election based methods the later
representatives do balance the imbalances caused by the earlier
choices. The most crucial balancing move is the last seat since that
reslt will not be fixed any more (Raph Frank addressed this problem in
his proposal). The last seat (or two if a bigger fix is needed) can
fix more or less well all the earlier imbalanced decisions. If we
assume that there are many enough male and female candidates left at
the end of the race then the need to balance both political
proportionality and male/female proportionality at the last step is
not much more difficult that balancing the political proportionality
only.
Another reason why I wanted to avoid making the male/female balancing
decisions at the beginning of the process is that the first elected
seats are more critical/important than the others. I understood that
Peter Zbornik wanted to guarantee that the president will be elected
from clean table with no additional restrictions like limiting the
choice to the already elected council members. For this reason
probably we should also avoid distorting the election of the president
with the male/female rules. For similar but milder reasons also the
second vice president could be elected so that the most preferred
(proportional) candidate wins, and the male/female questions could be
solved when electing the regular council members.
Pushing the male/female decisions to the end also guarantees in
general that the most liked candidates will be elected. It is possible
for example that the third representative is clearly the most liked
candidate of the third largest grouping (or the third most liked
candidate in general). The male/female rule at the third position
could force this candidate (X) to be replaced with a much less liked
candidate (Y) of opposite sex. And if Y is ideologically close to X
then that choice could reduce the support of X in the counting process
so much that X will not be elected in the council at all. Use of the
male/female rules at fixed positions in the list may thus be harmful
in the sense that best candidates will not be elected. Also the
political proportionality may suffer if some obvious candidates (maybe
from some well defined quota size separate grouping) are not elected.
If we want to move the male/female decisions up from the last seats
then for example the Meek and two quotas based solution (that Raph
Frank proposed) would give better (less violent) results than using
fixed positions on the list to fix the male/female proportionality.
When we compare that Meek based approach to the end of list approach,
the Meek approach is less violent in its choices (if the change occurs
at the third position, then the male and female candidates are
probably almost as strong there) but on the other hand it lifts the
distortion from the last seats to the more important seats (one could
exclude the P+VP positions if one wants to elect strictly the best
candidates there but spread the distortion more evenly among the
regular council members).
Second: I formulated by proposal in such a manner that it can
also be used to create party lists. Here, the gender requirements
say that, for every possible number M, at least M of the first
3*M places must be filled by male candidates and at least M of
the first 3*M places must be filled by female candidates.
Yes, the approach in your proposal would meet such requirements for
the closed party lists. In the council election the number of seats is
however fixed so there is no need to use the same approach there. For
the closed list case one could use your approach or (if needed) some
smoother approach e.g. following the Meek philosophy or electing the
best set out of all possible sets of representatives that meet the
male/female criterion.
In summary, the end of the list approach is simple and wipes out the
problems of not electing the best candidates at the beginning of the
list. It may make more violent decisions among the last
representatives that e,g, the Meek based approach. If one wants to
spread the violent decisions wider, then one could spread them to the
regular members only (not P+VPs) and in some smooth way like the Meek
based approach. (This summary is based on the assumption that there
are no male/female requirements on the P+VPs, and that there is a
requirement that especially the P+VPs should be the very best but
still proportionally elected.)
Juho
Markus Schulze
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