Another issue is the fact that the resulting legislature would end up using majority rule for making decisions.
A legislature of 60) A 0) C 40) B gets the A faction almost all of its policies and the B faction nothing. Replacing that by 0) A 100) C 0) B means that the A faction loses some of its policies, as C compromises. Thus the A faction will refuse. Control of 60% of the legislature is better than 60% chance of control of 100% of the legislature. I think to make it so the compromise works, you still need the random element. It is the threat that the "other-side" could win everything that causes compromise. If power was actually shared in the legislature, then that issue goes away. For example, the rule could be that the national budget is shared equally between all legislators. A funding bill might require support from 1/3 of the legislature in addition to legislators willing to pledge a portion of their funding allocation. Another option would be to give legislators a finite number of votes and allow them cast more than 1 per motion. Alternatively, you could introduce a small random element. The fall back could be standard list-PR, however 1/4 of the seats are reserved as bonus seats and given to one party. The odds of a party getting the bonus would be proportional to the number of votes it receives. This means that a faction with 1/3 or more of the votes who wins the lottery will have a majority. They would get 1/3 of the 75% standard seats + 25% of the seats from the bonus, giving them more than half. However, a minor faction would still need the support of other parties, even if they win the lottery (though their influence would be greatly enhanced for that 1 term). Another issue is that it would make parties much harder to manage. A party couldn't offer potential legislators the potential of being careen politicians. This may or may not be a good thing. However, it does mean that the degree of representativeness of the legislature would vary over time. Sometimes there would be wide representation and sometimes there would be narrow representation. One option would be to make the bonus seats the only seats that are subject to the lottery/compromise system. This means that there is more stability. The voting system could be Each party submits a list The votes would be - voter marks at most 1 party as favorite - voter marks any number of parties as approved - voter marks any number of parties as acceptable If the most approved party is acceptable to 90% of the voters, then it is given the bonus seats. Otherwise, a party is picked at random using the favorite votes and that party is given the bonus seats. I haven't been keeping up to date on Jobst's latest single seat proposals, so there could be a better way to handle the specifics. Another problem is one legislature taking decisions that bind later legislatures. For example, a legislature could increase the national debt or enter in long term agreements. A party which is unlikely to have power after the next election is likely to try to take as many irreversible decisions as possible. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
