Dear Jameson,
yes your argument is similar to the one of Terry Bouricius ("the
wisdom of crowds", and yes it is a good one.
Diversity also has an appeal to a diverse set of voters, allowing for
improvements in voter preferences.
That is a good line of argument, thanks.
A very nice argument for proportional elections would be one founded
in welfare economic theory.
That would be very interesting at least for me, and I quess this
argument should not be too difficult to formulate for elections (but I
have no clue how)
I am not sure if the resulting argument would be interesting for
normal party members, but I think it is an important and very
fundamental question to answer.
I have seen technical arguments flying around in this forum (Bayesian
regret, socially optimal pareto fronts, and Kristian's intruigung
graph at: http://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/multiwinner_tradeoffs/),
which I haven't been able to understand.
What I do understand is that we have a preference ordering when
voting, which can be used in social welfare functions (see
http://aede.osu.edu/programs/Anderson/trade/Welfare5rev.pdf, page 8
and on).
Maybe it can be shown that proportional elections are better than
winner-takes-it-all elections for a wide range of social welfare
functions.
_Some wild speculation about things I don't understand very well:_
Selecting a social welfare function (i.e. selecting between a
utiltarian, bernoulli-nash or rawlsian social welfare function) can
indeed be a voting task itself. I just don't have the proper training
in economy to understand the details, like the publication below:
I quote a publication I found:
"The isoelastic SWF [see the publication /PZ comment/] takes on a
number of familiar foms depending on the value of */p. /*When */p
/*=O, it is the classical utilitarian. The limit as p-1 is the
Bernoulli-Nash *(linear *in the logarithms). *And *as */p-m, /*it is
the Rawlsian maximin fom. These cases are characterized by the shape
of the social indifference curves shown in Figure 2.1. Because it is a
function (i.e. the inverse) of the elasticity of substitution along
*these *indifference curves. p reflects society's willingness to
made-off utility berween individuals. *A *greater value of */p
/*reflects greater social aversion to inequality . Therefore, */p
/*may be considered an equity parameter, chosen by consensus or some
other political means."(see page 24-25
in _https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/10891/1/NQ27722.pdf_)
Threse publications seems to be on a path which could have something
to do with voting (selects the bernoulli-nash social welfare function):
Economic analysis and distributive justice, page 49:
http://people.ku.edu/~dburress/econ-ana.pdf
<http://people.ku.edu/%7Edburress/econ-ana.pdf>
Page 9: http://www.cherry.gatech.edu/mod/pubs/proceed3/c14_burr.pdf
Isoelastic function again: Page 9, equation 10:
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/fnu-files/publication/tol/ereaggregation.pdf (there
is even a maximin function)
I personally like the Bernoulli-Nash welfare function on page 13, as
it has good properties, where the utilities are multiplied instead of
added (i. the form is the same as the other functions in the Pareto
framework ii. it gives logaritmic weighs to utility by multiplying
them efficiently preferring more "equal" utility distributions without
demanding that utility should be distributed equally). Samuelson and
Bergson proposed the Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function themselves.
Ok, I am not sure if I made things clear or not, i touched (very
lightly) upon this stuff in my studies. Seems to be an area which is
not well understood.
Best regards
Peter Zborník
On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 5:55 PM, Jameson Quinn
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
The whole point of having a representative body is that it
represents the diversity of an organization. It's not just a
matter of diversity of opinion; it's a diversity of strengths, of
outlooks, of focus, which makes the organization stronger than any
one person. A non-proportional system tends in the other
direction, of electing N clones of the same bland majority
candidate. Selecting only for broad appeal means selecting only
for bland schmoozing; certainly a valuable skill in politics, but
not the only skill you want your party to cultivate.
Is that a good start?
Jameson Quinn
2010/5/19 Peter Zbornik <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
Dear all,
just a post scriptum to the email below to make things clear:
I wonder if there is a short and to the point argument for
dummies, why proportional elections (say elections meeting the
droop quota) leave the voters happier than winner-takes it all
elections.
This "for dummies" explanation of the advantages of
proportional voting could be combined with a longer technical
explanation, perhaps using social welfare functions. for
people with time and interest to understand the argument in full.
I don't mean that the argument above would be the best
argument, but it could be a really interesting one.
Best regards
Peter Zborník
On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 4:58 PM, Peter Zbornik
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Kristoffer, dear readers,
Kristofer, you wrote below: "A minor opinion within the
party might need time to grow, and might in the end turn
out to be significant, but using a winner-takes-it-all
method quashes such minority opinions before they get the
chance."
Thanks, yes I have used this line of argument a lot (we
actually have a global charter of the greens, according to
which the greens are obliged to put the same principles
into practice in thei organizations as they work for in
society).
The problem is, that this argument does not "stick", it is
simply not sexy.
Would it be possible to measure the "utility"
or "happiness" among the voters in the party compared to
different election methods. I saw you Kristofer did some
work on this but I didn't understand it, I guess I lack
the preliminaries.
I guess the notion of "Bayesian regret" or something
similar could be used to argue that proportional elections
are better than block-voting, but I have no idea of how to
explain this, as I don't know the subject at all (pareto
optimal social allocations, or whatever).
It seems intuitive that economic tools could be used (I
know almost no economics), since ranked ballot elections
simply are explicitly stated preference orderings.
I guess that voting and elections, could be indeed one of
the best imaginable real-world examples, where preference
orderings of the actors actually are known, and thus all
of the machinery of economic equilibria and social welfare
functions could be applied (like the Bernoulli-Nash social
welfare function).
I am personally interested in the possiblity of measuring
utility, is there some (preferably short) literature
on social welfare, utility and voting theory for
proportional elections (I know some undergrad maths and
statistics)?
Best regards
Peter
On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Peter Zbornik wrote:
Dear all,
thank you for your help with the election system
for the council elections of the green party.
I will try to move on with technical testing of
Schulze's methods and the specification of the
elections to the party lists as soon as time allows.
Thanks all for the support and all methods supplied.
I never could imagine that I would get such a
response.
When advocating proportional elections in the
party, I have found it difficult to explain to
other members of the green party why proportional
elections to our party organs is a good thing.
As far as I remember, your party, the Czech Green
Party, is a minor party. Therefore, it might be
possible to draw an analogy to the proportional
methods used by the Czech Republic itself. Without
proportional representation, the Green Party would
have next to no chance of ever getting into
parliament. However, since your nation does use
proportional representation, there is some chance.
The same argument could be used within the party.
Since the Green Party is a minor party, I reason that
the party membership honestly believes the presence of
that party is a good thing. Thus, they would also know
(to some extent, at least), that minor groups of
opinion - like their own party in comparison to the
major parties - can be good and can add valuable ideas
to governance. Then could not the same argument be
used for the party itself? A minor opinion within the
party might need time to grow, and might in the end
turn out to be significant, but using a
winner-takes-it-all method quashes such minority
opinions before they get the chance.
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