David L Wetzell wrote:
I blogged about this at my blog a while back in response to the args
given by the Electoral Reform Society of the UK against ordered party
list forms of PR.
http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2011/05/electoral-reform-society-united-kingdom.html
I think a better way to do a mixed method parliamentary election than
what is done in Germany is to have a large number of 4 seat
super-districts, where 3 seats would be elected with a 3 seat LR Hare
and the 4th seat would be elected by some [deliberately unspecified]
single-winner election rule besides FPTP.
That sounds a lot like the Loring Ensemble Rule. You might be interested
in reading about it at http://www.accuratedemocracy.com/e_ler.htm .
Loring argues that Plurality councils can swing wildly and deny
representation to people who should be represented, while PR councils
can still be off-center due to kingmaker scenarios, and that one should
therefore pick a center that can break ties while not giving any voting
bloc undue power.
He then proposes to use STV, but shield the CW from losing. The
Condorcet winner represents the center or common consensus position,
while the other winners represent the diversity of opinion among the
people. Because the process is done inside a single method, in the case
the CW is off-center, the proportional representation aspect of the
algorithm will even this out by compensating.
The same sort of shielding could be used in any type of multiwinner
system. If it's sequential, you just keep the CW from being eliminated.
If it's combinatorial (like Schulze STV), you only consider those sets
of winners that include the CW.
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