Glad to see thinking, though we part company on some details.
On Aug 13, 2011, at 5:25 PM, Greg Nisbet wrote:
All current forms of party list proportional representation have
each voter cast a vote for a single party. I say this is inadequate
since a small party can be eliminated and hence denied any
representation (this is particularly relevant if the legislature has
a threshold). However, votes for a party that doesn't have
sufficient support to win any seats in the legislature are simply
wasted. Thus I propose an alternative method.
That some party may get zero seats, that does NOT make their attempt a
pure waste:
. If they are growing, they are on the way - and a warning to other
parties that their apparent goals deserve more attention - perhaps to
be honored by those who do get seats.
I would base the voting and counting on the ranking we do in Condorcet
for single seats - same N*N matrix and whoever would be CW be first
elected, with next the one who would be CW if the first CW was excluded.
. If the above could elect too many from any one party, exclude
remaining candidates from that party on reaching the limit.
. Note that the N*N matrix has value that does not often get
mentioned - it is worth studying as to pairs of candidates, besides
its base value of deciding the election.
Each voter votes for as many parties as they wish in a defined
order. My vote might be democrat>green>libertarian>republican or
something like that.
Anyway, first we calculate each party's "weight". Weight is
calculated simply by counting the number of times the party appears
on a voter's ballot in any position (this should be reminiscent of
approval voting). Each party also has a status "hopeful", "elected",
or "disqualified".
Next, pick your favorite allocation method. D'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë,
Largest Remainder, anything else you can think of, with or without a
threshold.
We then use this allocation method to determine each party's mandate
if everyone voted for their first preference. If every hopeful party
has at least one seat, then all the hopeful parties are declared
elected. If at least one hopeful party has no seats at all, the
party with the lowest weight is disqualified, its votes are
redistributed, and the allocation is done again with the new list of
hopeful parties.
I see "first preference" and think of avoiding IRV's problems - which
the above ranking attends to.
I am assuming candidates identified with their parties, and parties
getting seats via their candidates getting seats. Thus, once all the
seats get filled, remaining parties - due to their lack of strong
candidates - get no seats.
This method has some advantages over traditional systems. People
would not be motivated to betray their favorite party for fear that
it will lack enough support to win any seats in the legislature and
hence their vote would be wasted. This method can also be slightly
modified into a cardinal method, with a voter's first choice being
defined as the highest rated party on their ballot remaining and
weight being calculated by the arithmetic mean of a party's rating à
la Range Voting. This class of voting method is probably compatible
with MMP, but I haven't yet worked out the details of how that would
work.
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