I wanted to add personally that increasing the import of "more local" elections is critical for transferring more decision-making to "more local" gov't and giving folks more say-so in their gov't. But most "more local" single-winner elections are rarely competitive due to de facto segregation and our two-party dominated system. However, with 3 seat LR Hare the third seat would be competitive most of the time*, and so folks would get more interested in "more local" elections and issues which would then have a trickle-up effect on "less local" elections by evening the power structure between the two major parties at the state level and thereby helping small LTPs be potential swing-voters who also help to increase voter turnout and the circulation of issues in the public square.
dlw * LR Hare has one vote per voter and one candidate per party and one or two vice-candidates on the party-list who win the extra seats if a party's candidate wins multiple seats. But the top candidate would have to beat the third place candidate by more than one-third of the vote to win two seats and (s)he'd have to beat the 2nd place candidate by more than two-thirds of the vote to win all three seats. So if the vote %s were 40:30:20:10 then there'd be 3 winners. If they were 50:35:10:5 then the top candidate would win two seats and her/his vice-candidate would hold the second seat. If they were 80:10:5:5 then the top candidate would win all three seats and get to choose two vice-candidates (or have her/his list specified before the election) but that outcome is not likely outside of Russia or other DINO areas. dlw ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: <[email protected]> Date: Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:02 PM Subject: Election-Methods Digest, Vol 107, Issue 21 To: [email protected] Send Election-Methods mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Election-Methods digest..." Today's Topics: 1. wrt Fobes (David L Wetzell) 2. Re: wrt Fobes (Richard Fobes) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 17:24:05 -0500 From: David L Wetzell <[email protected]> To: EM <[email protected]> Subject: [EM] wrt Fobes Message-ID: <CAMyHmncpUn4xdi_DEGLrJYhj_BxxUOe=je4mfdezocrcdrm...@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" It may not be fair but in the status quo US system there are networking effects in activism and voter education about electoral reform. Given the need to deal w. rational ignorance about politics, and even moreso electoral rules, there is a need for marketing short-cuts. FairVote does that well in simplifying the message for low-info voters ignorant about electoral rule analytics. So reform in a system where economies of scale are exacerbated by the status quo is not fair and there's scope for a 2nd best approach based on networking externalities and marketing advantages that include over-simplifications or statements of tendencies as absolutes. I agree w. your focus on primary systems where the no. of candidates on average wd tend to be higher. My agenda is to defend iRV for single-winner gener'l elections and redirect energy to complenting such with American forms of Proportional Represetnation that similarly won't so much challenge the US's 2-party dominated system but keep it from tilting to one-party domination and make it work a lot better, as I belive would be inevitable if the proliferation of LTPs were incentivized by the use of Am forms of PR that make it easy for a small, local third party to win represetnation. dlw ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 14:48:45 -0700 From: Richard Fobes <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [EM] Re2: Fobes wrt IRV w. relatively few competitive candidates. Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed A clarification would be helpful in this discussion (below). David seems to be talking about the number of candidates in _general_ elections. I am more focused on the number of candidates in _primary_ elections. This is where the greatest unfairnesses now occur. This is where there should be more candidates. Specifically, in a congressional election where the district boundaries do not ensure victory for the incumbent's party, the other party should have about four to seven credible candidates in their primary election. IRV cannot handle that many credible candidates. Richard Fobes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: < http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20130529/6c9a9390/attachment.html > ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 23:43:28 -0700 From: Richard Fobes <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [EM] wrt Fobes Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 5/29/2013 3:24 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: > My agenda is to defend iRV for single-winner gener'l elections and > redirect energy to complenting such with American forms of Proportional > Represetnation that similarly won't so much challenge the US's 2-party > dominated system but keep it from tilting to one-party domination and > make it work a lot better, as I belive would be inevitable if the > proliferation of LTPs were incentivized by the use of Am forms of PR > that make it easy for a small, local third party to win represetnation. Interesting. You/David seem to be focused on the balance of power between left versus right, whereas I'm focused on the balance of power between voters ("up") versus special interests ("down"). In my book I promote ways for U.S. elections to produce more proportional results, but I'm sure the approach is unlike whatever you have in mind, which I presume is STV. If your perspective is shared by the Green party, that could explain why the Green party says they promote the use of IRV, yet they do not use it for their own primary elections. I think that one of the best ways to promote election reform (of any/all types) is for a third party to adopt any method -- even IRV -- for their primary elections because that would force state election organizations to accommodate it on the ballot. Or if a state's election rules do not allow it, then that party would do well to offer a candidate for Secretary of State (or whichever office handles election issues) and highlight the issue in the voter's pamphlet. More realistically I expect election-method reform to come to the United States after it has occurred in other nations, which is the same pattern that occurred for women getting the right to vote. Richard Fobes On 5/29/2013 3:24 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: > It may not be fair but in the status quo US system there are networking > effects in activism and voter education about electoral reform. Given > the need to deal w. rational ignorance about politics, and even moreso > electoral rules, there is a need for marketing short-cuts. FairVote > does that well in simplifying the message for low-info voters ignorant > about electoral rule analytics. > > So reform in a system where economies of scale are exacerbated by the > status quo is not fair and there's scope for a 2nd best approach based > on networking externalities and marketing advantages that include > over-simplifications or statements of tendencies as absolutes. > > I agree w. your focus on primary systems where the no. of candidates on > average wd tend to be higher. > > My agenda is to defend iRV for single-winner gener'l elections and > redirect energy to complenting such with American forms of Proportional > Represetnation that similarly won't so much challenge the US's 2-party > dominated system but keep it from tilting to one-party domination and > make it work a lot better, as I belive would be inevitable if the > proliferation of LTPs were incentivized by the use of Am forms of PR > that make it easy for a small, local third party to win represetnation. > > dlw ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Election-Methods mailing list [email protected] http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com End of Election-Methods Digest, Vol 107, Issue 21 *************************************************
---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
