Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
I commented in another mail that any system where people can change the system itself can be said to be a democracy. Even a two party system that bans third parties may still fall within this definition. Also multi-party systems have the same problem although in a milder form. The representatives of the voters may well make decisions that the voters do not approve, and they may not make decisions that the voters want. That is possible as long as the representatives do not get so arrogant in doing this that the voters would use their power to focus on this particular question in the (few) coming elections an force the system to change. Direct democracy is more direct than the two above mentioned forms of indirect representative democracy. (I'll once more advocate tree voting a bit. One key idea behind it is that it would be possible that members and voters of all leading parties would form a pro-x interest group within their own party. Once all these subgroups within each party would grow and together reach >50% of all the seats then that change (x) would happen. This change would take place in a very peaceful way, allowing the voters to stay within their "own" parties without the need to abandon them or vote against them or disagree with them, just slowly changing the opinion balance within these parties.) Juho On Nov 3, 2009, at 7:45 PM, James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 4:34 PM James Gilmour wrote: Why in any country that would merit the description "democracy" would you want to impose a "two-party system" when the votes of the voters showed that was not what they wanted? That is my question, too. Maybe what the "two-party" advocates really want is guaranteed single-party majority government. If that IS what they want, there is a VERY simple and effective electoral solution. If no party wins an absolute majority of the votes and seats, give 55% of the seats to the party that wins the largest number of votes and divide the remaining seats among the other parties in proportion to the their shares of the votes. It has been done and it works. Importantly, it's honest. It sets out clearly what is considered to be the over-riding electoral criterion and it fulfils it. In the UK we suffer from a lot of nonsense about the desirability of single-party majority government and even worse nonsense about the importance of FPTP in securing that. In fact, in two of the most critical elections since 1945, when the government of the day (one Labour, one Conservative) was seeking a renewed mandate for the continuation of its policies, FPTP elected the wrong government. In both cases the outgoing government won the referendum on its policies (votes) and lost the election (seats). James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.698 / Virus Database: 270.14.47/2478 - Release Date: 11/03/09 07:36:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Nov 3, 2009, at 5:27 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Juho wrote: If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That would solve the spoiler problem :-). Who is this "one"? Since that one is at odds with the voters, that's not very democratic, is it? I was thinking about the voters or their representatives who want to have a two-party system. Those groups can be considered to be the key decision makers in a democratic system. I guess that one "democratic" way of doing it would be to have the question itself posed to the voters, but with a suitable low-pass filter (e.g. supermajority required to change it, or a majority over a long time); though then I think it'd be better just to have the filter on the decision process itself. This is a good definition of democracy. I tend to think that if the voters have the opportunity to change any old rule if they really so want, then that society can be called democratic. (Also the two-party status (=one current practice of decision making) can be a topic to be changed.) From this point of view e.g. the US system is not really intended to be a two-party system but just a system (target state unspecified) that has some problems with third parties. That's most likely the case. AFAIK, the founding fathers just copied Britain's election methods (first past the post, etc.), and by the time parts of the US noticed this wasn't really optimal, those who benefitted from said methods' unfairness had acquired enough power to block the adoption of better methods (e.g. the red scare campaign leading to STV's repeal in New York). One old proverb says that people tend to get the kind of government that they deserve. If people want change in a democratic system they should 1) understand and 2) act/decide. There are some exceptions. To my knowledge, some state governors are elected by runoff rather than just "winner takes it all". FPTP runoff may fail (such as with Le Pen in France, or more relevant - the "better a lizard than a wizard" second round in Louisiana), but at least it can't elect the Condorcet loser, which plain old FPTP has no problem doing. The Le Pen case was maybe not a full failure. Although it was shocking to many that a candidate that large majority of the voters definitely didn't want to elect got to the second round he was not elected anyway. (Btw, I think it is ok to elect the Condorcet loser in some extreme situations. If for example the target is to elect a candidate that would be stable in the sense that there is no major interest to replace her soon after the election with some other candidate then Condorcet loser can be a better candidate than any of a badly looped Smith set. Group opinions are not linear and therefore the fact that one of the candidates seems to be "last" can not be automatically taken as a conclusion that some other candidate should win.) Juho On the other hand the option of third parties could be left in the rules intentionally. The voters are given a chance to change one of the two parties to some third party if they want that so much that despite of the associated spoiler problems they will eventually give the third party enough votes to beat one of the leading parties. Actually two-party systems need not be based on two parties only nation wide. In principle each district could have its own two parties that are independent of what the two parties are in other districts. There is however some tendency to end up with two or small number of parties nation wide. As another reply mentioned, this has happened in Canada. With very local exceptions, it hasn't happened in the US - at least not recently. I think a key difference is that the large US parties can gerrymander, whereas that is not the case in Canada (since Elections Canada does the redistricting there). When parties can pick their constituents before the constituents can pick their representatives, competition suffers because third parties can't get off the ground. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: >> The effect is that it is harder for parties to get their first seat. >> Parties with 2 or more seats are no affected. > > Is that true? Consider a maximally unfair variant, something like > 2.999, 3, 5, 7, 9... > > Now the larger parties can get many seats before the intermediate and small > parties get in the running. This naturally decreases the number of free > seats that may be allocated to the small parties. A party which was going to get 2 seats would still get 2 seats. In fact, it makes it easier for them. It is like as if the smaller parties don't get any seats, and thus there are more available for the parties which can get 2+ seats. The parties which lose out would be the ones who would have originally obtained only 1 seat. > STV has an advantage in that it doesn't need to care about parties. I'd > prefer to preserve that in any competing method. Well, I was just thinking out loud. I agree that this is one of the main benefits of PR-STV. >> Also, if the districts are only 5 or so seats in size, then it doesn't >> really help that much at all, as only large parties will get more than >> 1 seat anyway, though it could help medium parties get a 2nd seat. > > Yes. If complexity is not a problem, Schulze's MMP proposal could be used to > fix that. Norway has something like "party list MMP": a certain number of > seats are top-up and allocated to maximize proportionality after the > district seats are allocated, with proportionality presumably being defined > according to a national Modified Sainte-Laguë count. Yeah, that is probably an easier method. However, I like my earlier proposal better. I don't agree with the principle of deciding party support based on first preference votes. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 4:34 PM > > James Gilmour wrote: > > Why in any country that would merit the description "democracy" would > > you want to impose a "two-party system" when the votes of the voters > > showed that was not what they wanted? > > That is my question, too. Maybe what the "two-party" advocates really want is guaranteed single-party majority government. If that IS what they want, there is a VERY simple and effective electoral solution. If no party wins an absolute majority of the votes and seats, give 55% of the seats to the party that wins the largest number of votes and divide the remaining seats among the other parties in proportion to the their shares of the votes. It has been done and it works. Importantly, it's honest. It sets out clearly what is considered to be the over-riding electoral criterion and it fulfils it. In the UK we suffer from a lot of nonsense about the desirability of single-party majority government and even worse nonsense about the importance of FPTP in securing that. In fact, in two of the most critical elections since 1945, when the government of the day (one Labour, one Conservative) was seeking a renewed mandate for the continuation of its policies, FPTP elected the wrong government. In both cases the outgoing government won the referendum on its policies (votes) and lost the election (seats). James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.698 / Virus Database: 270.14.47/2478 - Release Date: 11/03/09 07:36:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Raph Frank wrote: On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Raph Frank wrote: If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop. There is a typo there, I meant 4 seats and 20%+ (I replied in a different post). How about Sainte-Lague/Webster's? Since it's a divisor method, it would (seldomly) violate quota, and so a ballot-based version of it couldn't meet the DPC. Yet, I would say that such a version would (absent other flaws) be proportional - I just don't know how to actually construct it. That might be possible by reducing the quota. However, doing that could result in to many candidates winning a seat. Webster's method adjusts the divisor until it gives the right result. Perhaps something similar could be done with the quota? Adjust towards Hare until there are too many seats, then back off a bit. However, the quota doesn't use rounding, so the analogy to the divisor fails at that point. If there are 4 seats, then a party is entitled to get 1 seat if they get between 0.5 and 1.5 "seat's worth of votes". In a 2 party situation, where 1 party gets 12.5%+ of the vote, the smaller party will still get 1 seat, even though it is only much lower than the Droop quota. This is why most jurisdictions don't use the standard version. Instead of dividing by 1,3,5,7,9,... they divide by 1.4,3,5,7,9,... To my knowledge, this was actually a compromise between the largest party and the smaller parties, at least here in Norway: the largest party wanted Sainte-Laguë with the divisor at 1.5 whereas the smaller parties wanted Hare (because it did not discriminate against them). The former system was D'Hondt - and the compromise worked out to Sainte-Laguë with the first divisor at 1.4 (in exchange for the parties' cooperation regarding some other laws). The effect is that it is harder for parties to get their first seat. Parties with 2 or more seats are no affected. Is that true? Consider a maximally unfair variant, something like 2.999, 3, 5, 7, 9... Now the larger parties can get many seats before the intermediate and small parties get in the running. This naturally decreases the number of free seats that may be allocated to the small parties. Applying that to PR-STV could be something like -> candidates must designate what party they are members of Initially, the Droop quota is used as Quota_single, but it might take a bit of tweaking to find one that gives the right number of seats, in any given election (like Webster's method). When a party has some members elected, the quota is reduced for all other members of the party (but max 1 candidate may be elected at a time). [snip] STV has an advantage in that it doesn't need to care about parties. I'd prefer to preserve that in any competing method. My "Setwise Highest Average" method treats solid coalitions as parties (roughly speaking, perhaps better is to consider them parts of a party with a tree structure) - this might be a way to do what you propose, but without explicit party information. On the other hand, Setwise Highest Average, is severely nonmonotonic, and it's not house-monotone either. Also, if the districts are only 5 or so seats in size, then it doesn't really help that much at all, as only large parties will get more than 1 seat anyway, though it could help medium parties get a 2nd seat. Yes. If complexity is not a problem, Schulze's MMP proposal could be used to fix that. Norway has something like "party list MMP": a certain number of seats are top-up and allocated to maximize proportionality after the district seats are allocated, with proportionality presumably being defined according to a national Modified Sainte-Laguë count. If the limitations of apportionment methods are true for party-neutral multiwinner methods as well, then it's impossible to have both population pair monotonicity (what we usually call "monotonicity") and to always obey quota. Well, PR-STV doesn't meet the monotonicity criterion. I am not sure if an alternative elimination ording could help there, but probably not. If my reasoning is correct, then no tinkering with the elimination ordering would solve the problem completely, because the resulting method would in any case still always obey quota, and we can't have both quota and population-pair monotonicity. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 3:27 PM Juho wrote: If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That would solve the spoiler problem :-). Who is this "one"? Since that one is at odds with the voters, that's not very democratic, is it? I guess that one "democratic" way of doing it would be to have the question itself posed to the voters, but with a suitable low-pass filter (e.g. supermajority required to change it, or a majority over a long time); though then I think it'd be better just to have the filter on the decision process itself. Why in any country that would merit the description "democracy" would you want to impose a "two-party system" when the votes of the voters showed that was not what they wanted? That is my question, too. The only way I see that there might be a conflict is with long term versus short term, hence the filtering/supermajority idea; but then I considered, since more parties provide a greater variety of opinions, then if short-term populism is a problem, it'd be better to put the supermajority/consensus requirements into the decision process rather than on the question of how many parties one should have. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 3:27 PM > > Juho wrote: > > If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change > > that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That > > would solve the spoiler problem :-). > Who is this "one"? Since that one is at odds with the voters, > that's not very democratic, is it? > > I guess that one "democratic" way of doing it would be to have the > question itself posed to the voters, but with a suitable low-pass filter > (e.g. supermajority required to change it, or a majority over a long > time); though then I think it'd be better just to have the > filter on the decision process itself. Why in any country that would merit the description "democracy" would you want to impose a "two-party system" when the votes of the voters showed that was not what they wanted? James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.698 / Virus Database: 270.14.47/2478 - Release Date: 11/03/09 07:36:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Juho wrote: If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That would solve the spoiler problem :-). Who is this "one"? Since that one is at odds with the voters, that's not very democratic, is it? I guess that one "democratic" way of doing it would be to have the question itself posed to the voters, but with a suitable low-pass filter (e.g. supermajority required to change it, or a majority over a long time); though then I think it'd be better just to have the filter on the decision process itself. From this point of view e.g. the US system is not really intended to be a two-party system but just a system (target state unspecified) that has some problems with third parties. That's most likely the case. AFAIK, the founding fathers just copied Britain's election methods (first past the post, etc.), and by the time parts of the US noticed this wasn't really optimal, those who benefitted from said methods' unfairness had acquired enough power to block the adoption of better methods (e.g. the red scare campaign leading to STV's repeal in New York). There are some exceptions. To my knowledge, some state governors are elected by runoff rather than just "winner takes it all". FPTP runoff may fail (such as with Le Pen in France, or more relevant - the "better a lizard than a wizard" second round in Louisiana), but at least it can't elect the Condorcet loser, which plain old FPTP has no problem doing. On the other hand the option of third parties could be left in the rules intentionally. The voters are given a chance to change one of the two parties to some third party if they want that so much that despite of the associated spoiler problems they will eventually give the third party enough votes to beat one of the leading parties. Actually two-party systems need not be based on two parties only nation wide. In principle each district could have its own two parties that are independent of what the two parties are in other districts. There is however some tendency to end up with two or small number of parties nation wide. As another reply mentioned, this has happened in Canada. With very local exceptions, it hasn't happened in the US - at least not recently. I think a key difference is that the large US parties can gerrymander, whereas that is not the case in Canada (since Elections Canada does the redistricting there). When parties can pick their constituents before the constituents can pick their representatives, competition suffers because third parties can't get off the ground. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Nov 3, 2009, at 3:47 PM, Raph Frank wrote: On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Juho wrote: If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That would solve the spoiler problem :-). What about a 2 stage process. Ask voters to vote "What party is your favourite party?". Only the top-2 parties are then allowed to run candidates for the main election. Yes, that works in the sense that it would make it easier to change the leading parties. Looks like a special version of Top Two Runoff. You could use Asset voting to decide on the 2 parties if they don't manage to more than 1/3 of the vote each. Each "party" might end up being a coalition of parties. The two parties of a two-party system can be seen to be coalitions of "left" and "right" wing people. I think organizations have a general tendency to become centrally coordinated (that is in the interest of the leaders and people working for the organization) and therefore time might unify the parties of the coalition and collect them under one umbrella. Juho In principle each district could have its own two parties that are independent of what the two parties are in other districts. There is however some tendency to end up with two or small number of parties nation wide. This is seen in Canada with the Quebec party. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Juho wrote: > If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change > that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That would > solve the spoiler problem :-). What about a 2 stage process. Ask voters to vote "What party is your favourite party?". Only the top-2 parties are then allowed to run candidates for the main election. You could use Asset voting to decide on the 2 parties if they don't manage to more than 1/3 of the vote each. Each "party" might end up being a coalition of parties. > In principle each district could have its own two > parties that are independent of what the two parties are in other districts. > There is however some tendency to end up with two or small number of parties > nation wide. This is seen in Canada with the Quebec party. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: > Raph Frank wrote: >> If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are >> guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop. There is a typo there, I meant 4 seats and 20%+ (I replied in a different post). > How about Sainte-Lague/Webster's? Since it's a divisor method, it would > (seldomly) violate quota, and so a ballot-based version of it couldn't meet > the DPC. Yet, I would say that such a version would (absent other flaws) be > proportional - I just don't know how to actually construct it. That might be possible by reducing the quota. However, doing that could result in to many candidates winning a seat. If there are 4 seats, then a party is entitled to get 1 seat if they get between 0.5 and 1.5 "seat's worth of votes". In a 2 party situation, where 1 party gets 12.5%+ of the vote, the smaller party will still get 1 seat, even though it is only much lower than the Droop quota. This is why most jurisdictions don't use the standard version. Instead of dividing by 1,3,5,7,9,... they divide by 1.4,3,5,7,9,... The effect is that it is harder for parties to get their first seat. Parties with 2 or more seats are no affected. PR-STV is inherently made up of single candidate parties, so this defect is much worse. St. Lague divisors can also be specified as 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, This gives a better comparison to d'Hondt. Using d'Hondt for the first seat and St. Lague for the rest gives 1, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, This is a little more severe of a penalty that the standard modification. However, it would reduce the "tiny party" exploit. Applying that to PR-STV could be something like -> candidates must designate what party they are members of Initially, the Droop quota is used as Quota_single, but it might take a bit of tweaking to find one that gives the right number of seats, in any given election (like Webster's method). When a party has some members elected, the quota is reduced for all other members of the party (but max 1 candidate may be elected at a time). No elected party members Quota = Quota_single At least one party member elected Quota = Quota_single*(0.5 - (Quotas held by elected members - seats held)) Surpluses are only transferable if the candidate exceeds Quota_single Thus if a party had won 2 seats, and both had achieved the full quota, then the next party member would only need 0.5 quotas to get elected, as the party would have 2.5 quotas at that point (and that would be rounded upwards to 3). It might even be possible to adjust this in order to remove the requirement that candidates declare which party they are members of. It is a lot of complexity in order to remove the large party bias. Some of the other methods like CPO-STV and Schulze might achieve the same thing. Also, if the districts are only 5 or so seats in size, then it doesn't really help that much at all, as only large parties will get more than 1 seat anyway, though it could help medium parties get a 2nd seat. > If the limitations of apportionment methods are true for party-neutral > multiwinner methods as well, then it's impossible to have both population > pair monotonicity (what we usually call "monotonicity") and to always obey > quota. Well, PR-STV doesn't meet the monotonicity criterion. I am not sure if an alternative elimination ording could help there, but probably not. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That would solve the spoiler problem :-). From this point of view e.g. the US system is not really intended to be a two-party system but just a system (target state unspecified) that has some problems with third parties. On the other hand the option of third parties could be left in the rules intentionally. The voters are given a chance to change one of the two parties to some third party if they want that so much that despite of the associated spoiler problems they will eventually give the third party enough votes to beat one of the leading parties. Actually two-party systems need not be based on two parties only nation wide. In principle each district could have its own two parties that are independent of what the two parties are in other districts. There is however some tendency to end up with two or small number of parties nation wide. Juho On Nov 3, 2009, at 9:22 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Juho wrote: On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: Is this acceptable PR? I hope your answer is "of course not" (if it isn't, we can have that discussion). I note that a two-party system can be seen as one style of democracy that may be chosen intentionally. But if the target is to have PR then such single-seat FPTP systems are of course not good at all. If the people truly want a two-party rule, then using STV (or some other party neutral PR method) can't hurt - they'll have that two- party rule if they want, and can at any moment escape from it if they change their minds. See Malta. In addition, if the method is any good "between the hard limits" specified by the DPC or analogous proportionality criterion, then there will be competition between the candidates inside of the party. STV is IRV between the hard limits, so one may doubt how good it is at this, but in reality, it does at least provide some measure of that; my clustering methods are much more Condorcet and so presumably would provide greater such competition. My proportionality simulator shows it to be much better than STV, but I've discovered that said simulator also has a significant small- party bias, so I'm taking the results with some salt until I can get proper correlation going. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Raph Frank wrote: On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Juho wrote: I agree that DPC is a nice criterion. In practice I'm not that strict since I believe also methods that are close to DPC work quite well. For example basic d'Hondt with party lists may be close enough to PR although that method slightly favours large parties (when allocating the fractional seats). d'Hondt is the same as Droop (assuming that all parties vote as a single block). If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop. How about Sainte-Lague/Webster's? Since it's a divisor method, it would (seldomly) violate quota, and so a ballot-based version of it couldn't meet the DPC. Yet, I would say that such a version would (absent other flaws) be proportional - I just don't know how to actually construct it. If the limitations of apportionment methods are true for party-neutral multiwinner methods as well, then it's impossible to have both population pair monotonicity (what we usually call "monotonicity") and to always obey quota. Although I haven't checked this in detail, it does seem like the limitations would hold, because: otherwise, assume some party-neutral multiwinner method X passes both - then you could just have everybody vote party list style in X, and so use X as an apportionment method, but that would cause a contradiction. So if that reasoning is correct, then in order to have a monotone multiwinner method (I don't know of any), we must accept that it some times fails the DPC. Of course, if the DPC is the only acceptable criterion of proportionality, then no "proportional" multiwinner method can be monotone. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Juho wrote: On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: Is this acceptable PR? I hope your answer is "of course not" (if it isn't, we can have that discussion). I note that a two-party system can be seen as one style of democracy that may be chosen intentionally. But if the target is to have PR then such single-seat FPTP systems are of course not good at all. If the people truly want a two-party rule, then using STV (or some other party neutral PR method) can't hurt - they'll have that two-party rule if they want, and can at any moment escape from it if they change their minds. See Malta. In addition, if the method is any good "between the hard limits" specified by the DPC or analogous proportionality criterion, then there will be competition between the candidates inside of the party. STV is IRV between the hard limits, so one may doubt how good it is at this, but in reality, it does at least provide some measure of that; my clustering methods are much more Condorcet and so presumably would provide greater such competition. My proportionality simulator shows it to be much better than STV, but I've discovered that said simulator also has a significant small-party bias, so I'm taking the results with some salt until I can get proper correlation going. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Juho wrote: > Droop guarantees the first seat already with somewhat less than votes/seats > number of votes but d'Hondt does not => ?? Sorry meant a 4 seater. In a four seater, a party with 20%+ of the vote is guaranteed a seat no matter how the other votes go, d'Hondt and Droop. A party with 79% of the vote and 3 seats will have a divider of 4 and will thus be unable to take the last seat, as the 20%+ party will have a divider of 1 and 79/4 is less than 20. Also, in d'Hondt splitting a party into 2 sub-parties can never result in an increase in the number of seats. Thus, no matter how that 79% is split between other parties, the 20%+ party is guaranteed to at least retain its seat. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Nov 2, 2009, at 11:40 PM, Raph Frank wrote: On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Juho wrote: On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts, all (of course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and Republican seats is surprisingly close to representing state party registration. Yes, FPTP in single-seat districts is statistically proportional, but of course it very strongly favours large parties. This is thus proportional in some sense but doesn't fit well in my definition above since deviation from full proportionality (that would allow also smaller groups to survive) is much larger than what would be necessary. That is a surprising election result. Did they intentionally gerrymander it to work that way? Normally, with impartial districting, the result isn't actually proportional. Normally, the larger party will get more seats than it is entitled to. If you have 60% of the votes, and your supporters are spread randomly, then it is pretty sure than you will have, say 55-65% of the votes in every district. This amplification like effect leads to more stable governments (which is argued to be a good thing for parliamentary systems). Two-party systems can in general be claimed to produce more stable (single party) governments than multi-party systems. Also multi-party governments can be very stable since typically politicians love the power when they manage to get it in their hands :-). Two-party systems also tend to set the border line between the parties at some median set of opinions. Individual district opinions may deviate from this median opinion set. That means that one party wins most of the time. Also in this situation voters are likely to get fed up with the ruling party and therefore the other party may win occasionally. Maybe this means proportionality in time (on party rules >50% of the time). And that could mean also that the number of districts that each party wins may on average follow quite closely the party registration numbers (but not necessarily steadily). I agree that DPC is a nice criterion. In practice I'm not that strict since I believe also methods that are close to DPC work quite well. For example basic d'Hondt with party lists may be close enough to PR although that method slightly favours large parties (when allocating the fractional seats). d'Hondt is the same as Droop (assuming that all parties vote as a single block). Droop guarantees the first seat already with somewhat less than votes/ seats number of votes but d'Hondt does not => ?? If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop. Yes, I think STV s a quite natural step for countries that have a two-party history. MMP could be popular since it can offer some form of "single local representative". That sounds safer to voters and politicians that are used to the very local representatives (=one of the good points of FPTP) of the single-seat district style of FPTP. Ironically, PR-STV creates an even stronger local link. It is one of the main complaints about PR-STV here in Ireland (at least by politicians). The effect is that politicians have a local rather than a national perspective. Yes, locality may be also too strong. Maybe one medicine could be to increase the size of the districts, or maybe to allow votes to any candidate of any district (as discussed above). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Nov 2, 2009, at 11:30 PM, Raph Frank wrote: On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Juho wrote: On Nov 2, 2009, at 1:53 PM, Raph Frank wrote: Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable proportionality. I guess there is some practical limit to how may candidates the voters are willing to evaluate and rank. Districts of 7+ already offer reasonable proportionality (approximate quite well the x% of votes => x% of seats principle). Also the number of candidates should be small enough in this case so that the voters need not rank too many candidates (e.g. 10 candidates from each party). Well, even with a larger number of seats, a voter would waste very little of their vote, even if they only voted for 2-3 candidates. Assuming you only ranked 3 candidates and they all get elected with double the quota, only 12.5% of your vote would be exhausted. Number of candidates is maybe the actual problem and the number of seats mainly influences the number of candidates. If the number of candidates is large then it may be necessary to rank numerous candidates to be sure that at least one of them will be elected (and the vote is not wasted). There is also the risk that voters will vote for the strongest candidates and not their (possibly weaker) favourites because of this problem. I'm thinking e.g. the Finnish elections where currently there can be some 150+ candidates to rank. It might be necessary to rank quite many candidates if I don't want to support the incumbents. In practice it is rare that candidates get much more than 10% above the quota (except the candidates who are elected on the first count). A reasonable rule would be to keep ranking until you hit a candidate who has a reasonable chance of being elected, but isn't so popular that he will gain much more than a quota in the first round. Yes. But maybe I should rank until I'm quite sure that at least one of the ranked candidates will be elected. In elections where there are numerous candidates (ref. Finland) it is also important to rank those good candidates that may not be elected this time but whom I want to promote so that they will be elected in the next elections (i.e. the next time potential winners will be picked by the voters in these elections and not by the party officials (that may offer just a limited set) just before the next elections). Also the number of districts has an impact here. If there are e.g. 10 districts of size 7 there could be a party with 10% support and no seats although from a nation wide perspective 10% of the votes would justify 7 seats. True, however that assumes that the party has very constituent support. Yes, districts tend to favour local groupings over evenly spread ones. If it varies a little from region to region, then maybe they would win a few seats at least. The could also decide to focus their resources from the whole country on the 7 regions that they are most likely to win a seat in. (though that might get a backlash due to using "outsiders"). Yes, districts with independent elections set similar limitations in all systems. In list based systems it is just somewhat easier to extend them e.g. so that proportionality will be counted at country level. Candidate lists could still be regional if one so wants (the summed up votes would determine proportions at the country level, and seats could then be propagated back down (as in the Finnish proposal)). You could also pretend that there is just 1 national constituency and voters just happened to only vote for local candidates. Yes. Usually the number of seats in each district is based on population. It would be an interesting trial if the number of seats in each district would be based on the number of valid votes in that district. That might improve the turnout :-). Also, you could list local candidates on the ballot, but give a write-in slot. The write in could allow voters to vote for a candidate from other regions. One could also allow anyone to vote any candidate from any region but still allocate a fixed number of seats to each district. The voter could then vote for her favourite (and thereby guarantee that she will be elected) even if that favourite would be from another district. Juho This reduces the complexity of the ballot for locals, but also allows voters to vote for a write in candidate if they wish. Yes, this is one way to extend STV to offer better proportionality at the country level. This method seems to combine some list type features with STV voting. (Btw, did you consider the possibility of parties running their most popular candidates (that will be elected in any case) outside the party list. Is that a valid strategy in this method?) It depends on what you mean here. It doesn't suffer from the same problem as MMP, where you can gain extra votes by using a decoy list. Only votes which would otherwise be
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Raph Frank > Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 9:41 PM > >> To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts, all (of > >> course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and Republican > >> seats is surprisingly close to representing state party registration. > > > > Yes, FPTP in single-seat districts is statistically proportional, but > > of course it very strongly favours large parties. This is thus > > proportional in some sense but doesn't fit well in my definition above > > since deviation from full proportionality (that would allow also > > smaller groups to survive) is much larger than what would be > > necessary. > > That is a surprising election result. > Did they intentionally gerrymander it to work that way? > Normally, with impartial districting, the result isn't actually proportional. > Normally, the larger party will get more seats than it is entitled to. As I have written several times previously, the results of FPTP elections in the USA are the ones that are anomalous because the US results are much more proportional and there are fewer "minority members" than for FPTP elections in most other countries that use FPTP (e.g. UK, Canada). Successful incumbent gerrymandering in the US is probably the main factor in producing these anomalous results. The holding primary elections may also be a contributing factor. > If you have 60% of the votes, and your supporters are spread > randomly, then it is pretty sure than you will have, say > 55-65% of the votes in every district. Not necessarily so. In many countries there are clear urban-rural differences in support for different political parties. In many cities there are similar clear differences between poorer inner city areas and more prosperous suburbs. In these circumstances (e.g. UK), FPTP produces "electoral deserts" where one party or another appears to have no support at all because it wins no seats. But the votes tell a different story. These distortions of representation have dangerous political effects on government policy as the .government party has little or no representation from one area or the other. > This amplification like effect leads to more stable > governments (which is argued to be a good thing for > parliamentary systems). Such governments are "stable" only in that they have a large overall majority as a result of the defective FPTP voting system. There is no real stability because at the next election the distortion may go the other way. Then you have reversal of policy and no stability at all. Look at the political history of the UK from 1945 for a prime example of such instability with severely detrimental effects on the country in almost every branch of policy: economic, social, educational, health, etc, etc. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.698 / Virus Database: 270.14.44/2475 - Release Date: 11/01/09 19:39:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Juho wrote: > On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: >> To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts, all (of >> course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and Republican >> seats is surprisingly close to representing state party registration. > > Yes, FPTP in single-seat districts is statistically proportional, but of > course it very strongly favours large parties. This is thus proportional in > some sense but doesn't fit well in my definition above since deviation from > full proportionality (that would allow also smaller groups to survive) is > much larger than what would be necessary. That is a surprising election result. Did they intentionally gerrymander it to work that way? Normally, with impartial districting, the result isn't actually proportional. Normally, the larger party will get more seats than it is entitled to. If you have 60% of the votes, and your supporters are spread randomly, then it is pretty sure than you will have, say 55-65% of the votes in every district. This amplification like effect leads to more stable governments (which is argued to be a good thing for parliamentary systems). > I agree that DPC is a nice criterion. In practice I'm not that strict since > I believe also methods that are close to DPC work quite well. For example > basic d'Hondt with party lists may be close enough to PR although that > method slightly favours large parties (when allocating the fractional > seats). d'Hondt is the same as Droop (assuming that all parties vote as a single block). If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop. > Yes, I think STV s a quite natural step for countries that have a two-party > history. MMP could be popular since it can offer some form of "single local > representative". That sounds safer to voters and politicians that are used > to the very local representatives (=one of the good points of FPTP) of the > single-seat district style of FPTP. Ironically, PR-STV creates an even stronger local link. It is one of the main complaints about PR-STV here in Ireland (at least by politicians). The effect is that politicians have a local rather than a national perspective. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Juho wrote: > On Nov 2, 2009, at 1:53 PM, Raph Frank wrote: >> Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable >> proportionality. > > I guess there is some practical limit to how may candidates the voters are > willing to evaluate and rank. Districts of 7+ already offer reasonable > proportionality (approximate quite well the x% of votes => x% of seats > principle). Also the number of candidates should be small enough in this > case so that the voters need not rank too many candidates (e.g. 10 > candidates from each party). Well, even with a larger number of seats, a voter would waste very little of their vote, even if they only voted for 2-3 candidates. Assuming you only ranked 3 candidates and they all get elected with double the quota, only 12.5% of your vote would be exhausted. In practice it is rare that candidates get much more than 10% above the quota (except the candidates who are elected on the first count). A reasonable rule would be to keep ranking until you hit a candidate who has a reasonable chance of being elected, but isn't so popular that he will gain much more than a quota in the first round. > Also the number of districts has an impact here. If there are e.g. 10 > districts of size 7 there could be a party with 10% support and no seats > although from a nation wide perspective 10% of the votes would justify 7 > seats. True, however that assumes that the party has very constituent support. If it varies a little from region to region, then maybe they would win a few seats at least. The could also decide to focus their resources from the whole country on the 7 regions that they are most likely to win a seat in. (though that might get a backlash due to using "outsiders"). > Yes, districts with independent elections set similar limitations in all > systems. In list based systems it is just somewhat easier to extend them > e.g. so that proportionality will be counted at country level. Candidate > lists could still be regional if one so wants (the summed up votes would > determine proportions at the country level, and seats could then be > propagated back down (as in the Finnish proposal)). You could also pretend that there is just 1 national constituency and voters just happened to only vote for local candidates. Also, you could list local candidates on the ballot, but give a write-in slot. The write in could allow voters to vote for a candidate from other regions. This reduces the complexity of the ballot for locals, but also allows voters to vote for a write in candidate if they wish. > Yes, this is one way to extend STV to offer better proportionality at the > country level. This method seems to combine some list type features with STV > voting. > > (Btw, did you consider the possibility of parties running their most popular > candidates (that will be elected in any case) outside the party list. Is > that a valid strategy in this method?) It depends on what you mean here. It doesn't suffer from the same problem as MMP, where you can gain extra votes by using a decoy list. Only votes which would otherwise be exhausted are transferred to the national level. A voter who votes for an independent doesn't also get to cast a party vote, so you can't have your supporters support a fake independent locally while still voting for the party with their party vote. However, the method would still have the standard issues with vote management. This is pretty much inherent to PR-STV. If party supporters vote for the weaker party candidates instead of a very popular candidate, then when the popular candidate is elected, fewer of the party supporters' votes are used up. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Nov 1, 2009, at 10:51 PM, Juho wrote: I wouldn't be as strict as saying that Droop proportionality is an absolute requirement. I'd be happy to classify all methods that approximate the principle of x% of votes means x% of seats as "acceptable PR". I'd like to see a definition of what that really means. I don't have any exact formulation, but the idea is that one can deviate from the basic principle only because of rounding errors, moderate distortion caused by districting, maybe some generally accepted thresholds to party size etc. Not very exact but the meaning is exact, implement full proportionality except where there are valid (practical) reasons to (slightly) deviate from it. To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts, all (of course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and Republican seats is surprisingly close to representing state party registration. Yes, FPTP in single-seat districts is statistically proportional, but of course it very strongly favours large parties. This is thus proportional in some sense but doesn't fit well in my definition above since deviation from full proportionality (that would allow also smaller groups to survive) is much larger than what would be necessary. Is this acceptable PR? I hope your answer is "of course not" (if it isn't, we can have that discussion). I note that a two-party system can be seen as one style of democracy that may be chosen intentionally. But if the target is to have PR then such single-seat FPTP systems are of course not good at all. The important thing about DPC is that it guarantees proportional representation to solid coalitions. The PR isn't dependent on strategic nomination or voting, on segregated or gerrymandered districts, or on fortunate accident. If we didn't have DPC methods, then we'd certainly be justified in finding alternative "acceptable" methods. But since we do, it seems to me that alternative methods have a high bar to meet. (I'd class party lists as at least potentially meeting the DPC, within whatever nomination and threshold constraints they have.) I agree that DPC is a nice criterion. In practice I'm not that strict since I believe also methods that are close to DPC work quite well. For example basic d'Hondt with party lists may be close enough to PR although that method slightly favours large parties (when allocating the fractional seats). As already noted districting typically causes larger deviation from PR than the algorithm that is used within each district. There are many ways to implementing PR "well enough". Maybe in most cases there are no major strategy and fairness related problems although DPC was not met fully. _Approximation_ of DPC is however a requirement if one wants "reasonable PR". Note that even if some method strictly follows e.g. Droop proportionality there may be other factors that distort the picture. It is for example typical that the size of electoral districts causes bigger deviation from proportionality than the method that is used within each district. In the extreme case single member districts may give disproportional power to few (e.g. two) parties (even if the actual method would be proportional (like plurality in a way is for single member districts :-)). Also e.g. 10 districts of 10 seats each typically means considerable bias in proportionality in favour of the large parties. If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level that fixes the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best in small districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it typically leaves some space to distortion in proportionality as caused by the district structure. List based methods have also similar problems but in them it is easier to have the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality but weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional proportionality")), or they can be easily extended to count the "political proportionality" at national level but still allocate the seats in the districts (and thereby maintain also "regional proportionality" and more local representation). Certainly if we had national PR in the US (or even statewide PR in the larger states), we'd have a degree of locality--STV within multi- seat "superdistricts", say, or some variation of MMP. Yes, I think STV s a quite natural step for countries that have a two- party history. MMP could be popular since it can offer some form of "single local representative". That sounds safer to voters and politicians that are used to the very local representatives (=one of the good points of FPTP) of the single-seat district style of FPTP. Also other paths are possible in politics although in these questions I expect many important players to have
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Nov 2, 2009, at 1:53 PM, Raph Frank wrote: On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 6:51 AM, Juho wrote: If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level that fixes the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best in small districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it typically leaves some space to distortion in proportionality as caused by the district structure. While I would agree there is a compromise between distict size and complexity for the voter, I don't agree that PR-STV is at its best with a small districts. Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable proportionality. I guess there is some practical limit to how may candidates the voters are willing to evaluate and rank. Districts of 7+ already offer reasonable proportionality (approximate quite well the x% of votes => x % of seats principle). Also the number of candidates should be small enough in this case so that the voters need not rank too many candidates (e.g. 10 candidates from each party). The targets may be different in different places though. Finland has found its smallest districts of size 6 to be unacceptable (people have moved away from those regions and therefore the sizes have gone down) and plans a reform (largest district = 34 seats). Small parties can not currently get any seats in those small districts (they may however try by joining in larger alliances). The new proposal aims at (close to) full proportionality counted at country level. Also the number of districts has an impact here. If there are e.g. 10 districts of size 7 there could be a party with 10% support and no seats although from a nation wide perspective 10% of the votes would justify 7 seats. List based methods have also similar problems but in them it is easier to have the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality but weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional proportionality")) I think they also suffer from the same trade-off, between giving voters max choice and preventing them being overloaded with options. Under a tree system, you still need to list all the candidates in the country. However, granted the voter just needs to pick one candidate to vote for. Yes, districts with independent elections set similar limitations in all systems. In list based systems it is just somewhat easier to extend them e.g. so that proportionality will be counted at country level. Candidate lists could still be regional if one so wants (the summed up votes would determine proportions at the country level, and seats could then be propagated back down (as in the Finnish proposal)). or they can be easily extended to count the "political proportionality" at national level but still allocate the seats in the districts (and thereby maintain also "regional proportionality" and more local representation). I think this is reasonable. I made a suggestion about how to allow that while retaining the spirit of PR-STV locally. http://www.mail-archive.com/election-methods@lists.electorama.com/msg04272.html This gives allows candidate level elections locally while allowing any wasted votes to be distributed to parties nationally. Yes, this is one way to extend STV to offer better proportionality at the country level. This method seems to combine some list type features with STV voting. (Btw, did you consider the possibility of parties running their most popular candidates (that will be elected in any case) outside the party list. Is that a valid strategy in this method?) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Kathy Dopp wrote: Condorcet is only a single seat method. Yes but it can be expanded to be proportional mutli-seat and to be winner-take-all multi-seat. I was really talking about the IRV properties of STV, since STV is essentially IRV with surplus vote transfer added on top. There are lots of alternative proportional multi-seat methods such as the ones mentioned by Ab dul and others on this list in response to my original email such as the tree method, list method and others mentioned by Abd ul - all of them better by far than STV. STV isn't as bad as you are exaggerating it too be and it's the only one that has any chance of ever passing, besides party lists. Again, STV does not achieve proportional representation unless the number of candidates running who represent each interest group is also proportional to the number of members of each interest group. Other methods achieve proportionality more reliably and also lack the severe flaws that STV/IRV exhibit. I am not sure where you are getting this bizarre property. STV can sometimes distort proportionality if you are using the Hare quota and you run more candidates than you have seats. But this can be largely avoided in the Droop quota. I prefer Condorcet for single seat districts any day over STV. Any voting method on the planet is better than IRV/STV short of dictatorship (OK I exagerate this point) Just a tiny bit. Cheers, Kathy On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 2:52 AM, Anthony O'Neal wrote: I was thinking of a simialar system before - but not for the same reasons you are. It was after the BC-STV debacle, and I named it "simplified STV". My thoughts were that an STV system without the complications of the second part, and only the part that made it proportional, would be easier to sell and less easy to attack by infusing confusion in the population. I know, however, that such a compromise would actually make the system less than ideal, and my primary hope in proposing such a simplified system is that we could go back and change it later on. My usual thought about IRV is that it basically takes the largest group, and has that group decide amongst itself whom their candidate will be. Condorcet, on the other hand, takes the largest group, and has that electorate at whole decide who their favorite candidate out of said group will be. That isn't necessarily an advantage for Condorcet - often people who are voting for more "moderate" candidates are simply doing so out of spite, and so their opinion is of less usefulness. I don't think a moral argument can really be made for one or the other, but Condorcet is harder to sell and susceptible to more obvious strategy problems. Kathy Dopp wrote: People keep asking me how to achieve a proportional representation system so talking out loud... A fair proportional multiseat STV representation system could be made by eliminating STV's elimination rounds but using the rank choices to transfer partial votes to a 2nd choice candidate in cases where more voters than needed for the threshold for each candidate voted for the same 1st choice candidate. If the rank choices were limited to a 1st choice and a 2nd choice candidate only, unlike Fairytale Vote's IRV/STV method this method would would be monotonic and precinct-summable (and so be OK to manually audit and countable in the precincts) using an n x n matrix where n is the number of candidates running for office. In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters' 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already transferred votes. However, just like with Fairytale Vote's STV system whether or not this system actually results in proportional representation still depends on how much vote-splitting results when more or fewer candidates run for office in proportion to the total number of candidates running for office, as compared to the proportion of voters whose interests they represent. I.e. too many candidates running who represent your interests, or too few and proportional representation is not achieved using either the Fairytale Vote's STV method or my (maybe someone else thought of it before) new improved monotonic, fairer STV method sans any elimination rounds. Therefore, a better alternative proportional representation system is the "party list" system where as many candidates on each party list take office in proportion to the number of voters who vote for that party, but this new version of STV I figured out this a.m. (maybe someone else has thought of it before) would work fine as well as long as the voters were restricted to ranking only a 1st and 2nd choice candidate. Any method of proportional representation must be precinct-summable in a reasonable fashion and give all voters' votes equal treatment, unlike with the current version of
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Kathy Dopp > Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 1:20 PM > Vote-splitting does mean less proportional > representation using STV if more candidates run relative to > some groups' constituency share compared to other groups. Must be some misunderstanding here. Because the surplus votes of elected candidates and the votes of eliminated candidates are transferable, the votes will progressively concentrate onto the appropriate number of candidates to represent each group proportionately. > That and all STV's other extreme flaws is why any of the > other better proportional systems are more proportional and > also better in a host of other ways. Proportionality is dependent solely on district magnitude. For the same district magnitude, STV-PR is as proportional as any other PR voting system - no more, but no less. "Extreme flaws" and "better" both require definition and exposition. For many voters, the ability to rank all the candidates freely on any basis whatsoever makes STV-PR "better" than any other PR voting system. One reason why these voters consider that "better" is the effects it can have on the relationships between the elected members and the local voters, between the elected members and their parties, and between the elected assembly and the executive, especially where the executive is based within the assembly (as in "parliamentary" system). These "political" effects (beyond simple PR) are important considerations, especially from the voters' perspective. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.698 / Virus Database: 270.14.42/2473 - Release Date: 10/31/09 21:14:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Nov 1, 2009, at 10:51 PM, Juho wrote: I wouldn't be as strict as saying that Droop proportionality is an absolute requirement. I'd be happy to classify all methods that approximate the principle of x% of votes means x% of seats as "acceptable PR". I'd like to see a definition of what that really means. To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts, all (of course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and Republican seats is surprisingly close to representing state party registration. Is this acceptable PR? I hope your answer is "of course not" (if it isn't, we can have that discussion). The important thing about DPC is that it guarantees proportional representation to solid coalitions. The PR isn't dependent on strategic nomination or voting, on segregated or gerrymandered districts, or on fortunate accident. If we didn't have DPC methods, then we'd certainly be justified in finding alternative "acceptable" methods. But since we do, it seems to me that alternative methods have a high bar to meet. (I'd class party lists as at least potentially meeting the DPC, within whatever nomination and threshold constraints they have.) Note that even if some method strictly follows e.g. Droop proportionality there may be other factors that distort the picture. It is for example typical that the size of electoral districts causes bigger deviation from proportionality than the method that is used within each district. In the extreme case single member districts may give disproportional power to few (e.g. two) parties (even if the actual method would be proportional (like plurality in a way is for single member districts :-)). Also e.g. 10 districts of 10 seats each typically means considerable bias in proportionality in favour of the large parties. If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level that fixes the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best in small districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it typically leaves some space to distortion in proportionality as caused by the district structure. List based methods have also similar problems but in them it is easier to have the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality but weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional proportionality")), or they can be easily extended to count the "political proportionality" at national level but still allocate the seats in the districts (and thereby maintain also "regional proportionality" and more local representation). Certainly if we had national PR in the US (or even statewide PR in the larger states), we'd have a degree of locality--STV within multi-seat "superdistricts", say, or some variation of MMP. My point thus is that proportionality should be observed at the "national level", taking into account also factors like districts and number of available candidates and parties, cutoffs, restrictions in nomination etc. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
I agree that the Droop quota or some similar quota should try to be satisfied. STV doesn't always satisfy it due to exhausted ballots. Vote-splitting does mean less proportional representation using STV if more candidates run relative to some groups' constituency share compared to other groups. That and all STV's other extreme flaws is why any of the other better proportional systems are more proportional and also better in a host of other ways. On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Raph Frank wrote: > On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote: >> I believe that you misunderstood what I was saying below. It is the >> relative *number* of candidates who run for office relative to the >> number of the voters they represent compared to the same ratio for all >> other candidates that determines whether or not STV achieves >> proportional representation. I.e. STV is subject to vote splitting or >> insufficient candidates running to represent any group of voters. > > Vote splitting is not a major issue with PR-STV. (it is also less of > an issue with IRV than it is with plurality). There can be some > tactics required due to the fact that voters don't always vote based > on party. > > If a party has 20%+ of the support in a 4 seater, it will get 1 seat. > (Assuming that the voters rank all the party's candidates as the top > ranks). > > As for insufficient candidates, well if a party doesn't run enough > candidates, then it is their own fault. > > It can be a problem where an incumbent doesn't want a 2nd candidate > from the party running, in case the 2nd candidate ends up winning a > seat. > -- Kathy Dopp Town of Colonie, NY 12304 phone 518-952-4030 cell 518-505-0220 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 6:51 AM, Juho wrote: > If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level that fixes > the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best in small > districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it typically leaves > some space to distortion in proportionality as caused by the district > structure. While I would agree there is a compromise between distict size and complexity for the voter, I don't agree that PR-STV is at its best with a small districts. Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable proportionality. > List based methods have also similar problems but in them it is > easier to have the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality > but weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional > proportionality")) I think they also suffer from the same trade-off, between giving voters max choice and preventing them being overloaded with options. Under a tree system, you still need to list all the candidates in the country. However, granted the voter just needs to pick one candidate to vote for. > or they can be easily extended to count the "political > proportionality" at national level but still allocate the seats in the > districts (and thereby maintain also "regional proportionality" and more > local representation). I think this is reasonable. I made a suggestion about how to allow that while retaining the spirit of PR-STV locally. http://www.mail-archive.com/election-methods@lists.electorama.com/msg04272.html This gives allows candidate level elections locally while allowing any wasted votes to be distributed to parties nationally. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
I wouldn't be as strict as saying that Droop proportionality is an absolute requirement. I'd be happy to classify all methods that approximate the principle of x% of votes means x% of seats as "acceptable PR". Note that even if some method strictly follows e.g. Droop proportionality there may be other factors that distort the picture. It is for example typical that the size of electoral districts causes bigger deviation from proportionality than the method that is used within each district. In the extreme case single member districts may give disproportional power to few (e.g. two) parties (even if the actual method would be proportional (like plurality in a way is for single member districts :-)). Also e.g. 10 districts of 10 seats each typically means considerable bias in proportionality in favour of the large parties. If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level that fixes the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best in small districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it typically leaves some space to distortion in proportionality as caused by the district structure. List based methods have also similar problems but in them it is easier to have the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality but weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional proportionality")), or they can be easily extended to count the "political proportionality" at national level but still allocate the seats in the districts (and thereby maintain also "regional proportionality" and more local representation). My point thus is that proportionality should be observed at the "national level", taking into account also factors like districts and number of available candidates and parties, cutoffs, restrictions in nomination etc. Juho On Nov 1, 2009, at 9:03 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Oct 31, 2009, at 7:29 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote: 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple mathematical fact. STV satisfies the Droop Proportionality Criterion. Any competing proposal for a proportional system must accomplish at least that, it seems to me, to be taken seriously. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote: > I believe that you misunderstood what I was saying below. It is the > relative *number* of candidates who run for office relative to the > number of the voters they represent compared to the same ratio for all > other candidates that determines whether or not STV achieves > proportional representation. I.e. STV is subject to vote splitting or > insufficient candidates running to represent any group of voters. Vote splitting is not a major issue with PR-STV. (it is also less of an issue with IRV than it is with plurality). There can be some tactics required due to the fact that voters don't always vote based on party. If a party has 20%+ of the support in a 4 seater, it will get 1 seat. (Assuming that the voters rank all the party's candidates as the top ranks). As for insufficient candidates, well if a party doesn't run enough candidates, then it is their own fault. It can be a problem where an incumbent doesn't want a 2nd candidate from the party running, in case the 2nd candidate ends up winning a seat. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Oct 31, 2009, at 7:29 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote: 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple mathematical fact. STV satisfies the Droop Proportionality Criterion. Any competing proposal for a proportional system must accomplish at least that, it seems to me, to be taken seriously. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
The basic idea of PR methods is to create an assembly that represents the voters. While voters don't neatly fall into categories, we can measure the performance of the systems as if they did. In the end, the only category that matters is who the voter trusts most to represent them. So if there is an assembly with N seats, and V voters, and there are V/N voters who prefer, out of all possibilities, a candidate, we can define a Proportionality Criterion. That candidate must be elected if the voters express this preference on the ballot. Asset Voting satisfies this, so does Candidate Proxy. Both are simple methods; Candidate Proxy (which has been used to refer to a method where candidates state a preference order, before the election, and this order is used with the counting system to apply to the voter's ballot, it essentially substitutes for the voter's ballot. Asset Voting is more flexible and could theoretically allow for a candidate to be chosen who wasn't on the ballot and received no votes in the election at all. "Win" must be interpreted as "has the right to unconditionally declare a person elected, which could be the candidate himself or herself, or anyone else eligible for the office." And then more detailed criteria could be defined, like the Distributed Proportionality Criterion. If there is a set of M candidates who received together a sum of V/N votes as most-preferred, those candidates, by cooperating, could unconditionally elect a winner. This, to my mind, satisfies the intention of proportional representation even where no candidates, by themselves, gain a quota. To try to simulate this with a single-ballot method can get tricky, but it could be done. However, I'll suggest this simple method: Bucklin ballot. For simplicity, I'm not going to allow multiple votes in each rank, but it would be improved if multiple votes are allowed, it simply complicates the counting and calculations. First rank choices are counted. If any candidate gains a quota (for a single-ballot method, it must be a Droop quota, not the Hare quota that makes more sense with pure Asset Voting), that candidate is elected. This is done for all candidates who are direclty elected with a quota in the first round. The ballots with that candidate in first preference position are segregated. By the condition, the total vote count, T(C1), is at or over the quota. If only one seat were elected with these votes, it would be disproportionate, the voters would be underrepresented. So there must still be effective votes left to be exercised of T(C1) - Q. So each ballot is devalued by the ratio of (T(C1 - Q)) / T(C1). These ballots are then counted separately to examine the next rank listed, and those votes are multiplied by the devaluation factor and added in to the totals, and this is repeated as needed until no more ranks are available. At each point, the number of remaining votes to be distributed are V minus Q times the number of candidates elected thus far. It may be easier to understand than to describe! If a ballot has a candidate in first position who is not elected, when all candidates which can be elected as described are elected, the ballot is opened to the next rank, and those votes are added in (from all ballots except those that are completely exhausted -- which is unlikely, for it to happen an candidate would have to be elected by an exact quota of votes.) While your second rank choice may "harm" your first rank choice, it never actually reduces the chance of that candidate being elected unless the candidate wasn't going to gain a quorum of votes. The possibility that your ballot might elect your lower-ranked choice is balanced by the fact that your favored candidate might be elected by a lower-ranked choice of another. And because there are no eliminations, except of elected candidates, the "harm" would only occur at the very end of the process, and with one seat at stake, and, yes, Virginia, if you want to be represented by the best possible representative, you must be willing to make compromises. Hopefully, they are not large ones. If voters voted in blocks, and each block wanted their favorite to be elected, and the block was Q in size or larger, all preferring the same candidate, the candidate would be elected provided they vote their sincere preference. As well, if a block places two candidates at the top of their preference lists, and votes the preference, and is 2 * Q in size, both candidates would be elected. If two blocks exist, one voting A>B>all others, and one voting B>A>all others, and the two blocks together are 2 * Q in size, then both A and B will be elected. Has this method been described by anyone? If forget how Proportional Approval Voting is run, but I'd guess it would look like this, with just one Approval stage, i.e., as if all ballots in the Bucklin system I described were collapsed at once. I described a metho
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
> >>> (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people > >> the right to achieve the political balance using two-party systems if > >> they so want.) > >> > >> How would this decision be made? Majority rule? > > > > It's not hard to imagine a referendum with that kind of effect. I > > don't see how you can get away from majority rule; even if we elect a > > body using PR-STV to vote on the party system, that's still majority > > rule (or a super-majority rule with a possibility of no outcome), it's > > just different people voting in the end. If you genuinely have a two party system, you have no problem. The "problems" arise when significant numbers of voters do not vote for either of the two largest parties, but the politicians of the two largest parties want the political system to function as if there were only two parties and a guaranteed single-party majority after every election. If you believe in representative democracy and believe that the "representative assemblies" in such a democracy (city councils, state legislatures) should be fairly representative of those who vote, then you must be prepared to accept the representation the voters say they want. If the voters fall into two main categories, so be it. But if the voters are divided among three, four or five significant groups, so be it, too - that's what the voters say they want. One of the advantages of STV-PR is that it is party-neutral and it allows the voters to have a direct influence on party behaviour. For example, for the first 40 years of STV-PR in Malta the voters elected members of 3, 4 or 5 parties to their parliament. But for the past 40 years of STV-PR all the members of the Maltese parliament have elected from only two parties. That change was brought about by the voters because more than two parties still contest the elections. So the representation in the parliament could be different IF the voters wanted that. > PR-STV was used in quite a few US cities in the first half of the 20C. > Mostly, it got repealed when the local majority party realized that > they could benefit from majority-take-all voting, and could avoid > sharing power by repealing PR. Big party politics, big business and big media combined in some VERY dirty campaigns to dump fair representation of ordinary voters! > One can imagine establishing a "culture of PR" where even members of > the majority support the idea that others should be represented; this > seems to be the case in various places outside the US, and for > whatever reason in Cambridge MA. But this has certainly not been the > rule in the US. It may come as shock to many in the USA, but most countries in Europe elect their national, regional and local assemblies by some system of proportional representation. Rarely are the voters divided into only two blocks, so single-party majorities are rare. In Europe, it is the UK that is the exception, where despite having a genuine multi-party system political system we cling to the discredited FPTP voting system with single-member districts that artificially (and wrongly) manufactures single-party majority government against the voters' wishes. Sometimes our governments have obscenely large majorities despite having only minority support among these who voted - currently a majority of 66 seats (out of 646) with only 35% of the votes. But that's party politics! James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.698 / Virus Database: 270.14.39/2469 - Release Date: 10/30/09 07:52:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Oct 31, 2009, at 11:08 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote: (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people the right to achieve the political balance using two-party systems if they so want.) How would this decision be made? Majority rule? It's not hard to imagine a referendum with that kind of effect. I don't see how you can get away from majority rule; even if we elect a body using PR-STV to vote on the party system, that's still majority rule (or a super-majority rule with a possibility of no outcome), it's just different people voting in the end. I don't have a counter-suggestion, but there does seem to be a practical problem here. PR-STV was used in quite a few US cities in the first half of the 20C. Mostly, it got repealed when the local majority party realized that they could benefit from majority-take-all voting, and could avoid sharing power by repealing PR. One can imagine establishing a "culture of PR" where even members of the majority support the idea that others should be represented; this seems to be the case in various places outside the US, and for whatever reason in Cambridge MA. But this has certainly not been the rule in the US. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Hello, --- En date de : Sam 31.10.09, Jonathan Lundell a écrit : > De: Jonathan Lundell > Objet: Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential > round elimination is not > À: "Juho" > Cc: kathy.d...@gmail.com, "Election Methods" > > Date: Samedi 31 Octobre 2009, 12h26 > On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:25 AM, Juho > wrote: > > > (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people > the right to achieve the political balance using two-party > systems if they so want.) > > How would this decision be made? Majority rule? It's not hard to imagine a referendum with that kind of effect. I don't see how you can get away from majority rule; even if we elect a body using PR-STV to vote on the party system, that's still majority rule (or a super-majority rule with a possibility of no outcome), it's just different people voting in the end. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Yes, majority rule is the default mechanism (sometimes complemented with super-majority requirements in key decisions like this). Are there alternatives to this? In principle also ratings could be used somewhere to make the decision (if they would just work in practice), and other methods that are able to elect some consensus alternative even when there is a majority favouring some other alternative (tricky). In practice, majority rules. In addition to this people in good positions in the existing system typically fight against (or don't eagerly promote) any change that might change their status to something worse. Election methods are in the very core of this process from the point of view of parties and representatives. That is why improvements, even clear and sensible ones, are seldom effectively promoted and reach majority support. I tend to trust in open discussions and especially clear formulation of the alternative options for the future (e.g. by the EM people if not others). Also activism and movements outside the official political structure may impact the process. In principle the jointly agreed political structure should be enough to make things happen, but sometimes they need some "help to proceed". (Also media, the scientific process and books and opinions of respected citizens may be considered to be parts of the established process.) Juho On Oct 31, 2009, at 7:26 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:25 AM, Juho wrote: (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people the right to achieve the political balance using two-party systems if they so want.) How would this decision be made? Majority rule? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:25 AM, Juho wrote: (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people the right to achieve the political balance using two-party systems if they so want.) How would this decision be made? Majority rule? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
I agree with Raph Frank in that most EM activists probably have different opinions on IRV (for single winner elections) and STV (for multi-winner elections). Technically many of their properties are still the same but the final impact and nature of these elections (single winner vs. PR multi-winner) are quite different, and therefore one may not expect that people that promote IRV would promote STV and the other way around. I agree that traditional closed and open lists allow more candidates to run than STV. They offer also a very simple and summable counting process. (I believe you wanted to see such properties.) But also STV offers full PR (with some small rounding errors that include some (unwanted) IRV style decisions on which candidates will get a seat), and it may well be the method of choice if one wants to maximize the ability of the voters to express their opinions (that may deviate from the existing party structure) and to provide proportionality also within the parties. You mentioned also the possibility that candidates would determine their own preference (/vote inheritance) order. That would keep the ballots simple and summable (also in the more complex case where voters give two candidate names, and candidate given inheritance order could be used after that). In addition to these options I'd like to mention the tree based method that lies somewhere between candidate given preference lists and open list based methods. Votes are still simple (just name one candidate). Tree structure allows also multiple voter opinions to be taken into account (not just party affiliation) and offers at that level also party internal proportionality. (One could have e.g. green conservatives as well as conservative greens in the tree structure.) Trees differ from the candidate given preference lists in that only groupings are named (not full list of individual candidates) (derived from the tree structure) and in that the end part of the inheritance order is the same for all members of each grouping. One more argument in favour of trees is that in such structures the priorities of the candidates will be very clear to the voters and therefore the voters as well as elected representatives will know very well what the representatives are expected to promote. In some sense that gives the voters more power to determine the resulting political balance (e.g. if all parties have a pro-xyz grouping available). STV gives more freedom to the voters in expressing different vote inheritance orders and more fine grained proportionality within the parties/groupings. I'd say there are different needs and different traditions (including the ones related to the number of candidates, summability, need to protect against fraud etc.) and therefore different methods may be the best for different needs. (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people the right to achieve the political balance using two-party systems if they so want.) Juho On Oct 31, 2009, at 6:17 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote: Ralph, I believe that you misunderstood what I was saying below. It is the relative *number* of candidates who run for office relative to the number of the voters they represent compared to the same ratio for all other candidates that determines whether or not STV achieves proportional representation. I.e. STV is subject to vote splitting or insufficient candidates running to represent any group of voters. STV has all the same flaws of IRV and is hence unsuitable for use in any elections. Its flaws far outweigh its benefits, esp given the existence of methods that achieve proportional representation more reliably and without causing all the other problems that STV causes. Kathy 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple mathematical fact. Generally it does achieve reasonable proportional representation. Parties might get less than proportional in one constituency and more than proportionality in another, due to randomness. However, the smaller the constituencies the bigger the "seat bonus" given to larger parties. Again, the more seats per constituency, the better, as that gives better proportionality and makes it easier for smaller parties to get seats. -- Kathy Dopp Town of Colonie, NY 12304 phone 518-952-4030 cell 518-505-0220 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits http://electionmathematics.org/
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:29 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote: 5. It always amazes me how irrationally the supporters of IRV/STV support a nonmonotonic system that creates more problems than it solves when there are clearly better alternatives available that actually solve more problems than they create. so, Kathy, i am curious as to which of these better alternatives you promote? -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Ralph, I believe that you misunderstood what I was saying below. It is the relative *number* of candidates who run for office relative to the number of the voters they represent compared to the same ratio for all other candidates that determines whether or not STV achieves proportional representation. I.e. STV is subject to vote splitting or insufficient candidates running to represent any group of voters. STV has all the same flaws of IRV and is hence unsuitable for use in any elections. Its flaws far outweigh its benefits, esp given the existence of methods that achieve proportional representation more reliably and without causing all the other problems that STV causes. Kathy > >> 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless >> there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run >> who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like >> STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely >> assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more >> precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the >> number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple >> mathematical fact. > > Generally it does achieve reasonable proportional representation. > Parties might get less than proportional in one constituency and more > than proportionality in another, due to randomness. > > However, the smaller the constituencies the bigger the "seat bonus" > given to larger parties. > > Again, the more seats per constituency, the better, as that gives > better proportionality and makes it easier for smaller parties to get > seats. > -- Kathy Dopp Town of Colonie, NY 12304 phone 518-952-4030 cell 518-505-0220 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote: > Rather than reply individually to the three response to my former > post, I'll just make some observations: > > 1. It seems like the pro-IRV/STV group has begun to dominate this list, I am pro-PR-STV but against IRV. As with all election methods, it is a trade-off. The benefits of PR-STV outweigh the disadvantages. It gives max control to the voters while giving reasonable PR. The more seats elected the better. With small constituencies, it isn't so great. I guess my thoughts would be that PR is better than a single seat method, and PR-STV is better than a party list system. > 2. the assumption that "Later-no-harm" is a desirable feature of a > voting method is very odd. I would claim that the opposite is true, in > agreement with Abd ul Lomax. Later-no-harm is a feature that prevents > a voting method from finding majority-favored compromise candidates > and ensures that IRV/STV tends to find candidates supported by either > extreme leftist or rightist groups I agree with this too. The biggest weakness of PR-STV is that is collapses to IRV in the single seat case. I think that it might be worth looking at the elimination ordering to help with this. For example, you could have an approval vote held at the same time and eliminate the least approved remaining candidate, if no candidate is elected. This would collapse to (roughly) approval followed by (instant) top-2 runoff in the single seat case. The key point would be to use a different method for determining who is eliminated than is used to determine who is elected. The preserves the proportionality of the method while allowing it perform better in the single seat case. The problem is that PR-STV is already reasonably complex and most proposed changes make it even more complex. There are methods like CPO-STV and Schulze-STV which are similar to PR-STV. Both of these methods are condorect compliant in the single seat case (and so presumably break later-no-harm). However, that are so complex, that they would require a computer to perform the tally. > 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless > there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run > who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like > STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely > assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more > precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the > number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple > mathematical fact. Generally it does achieve reasonable proportional representation. Parties might get less than proportional in one constituency and more than proportionality in another, due to randomness. However, the smaller the constituencies the bigger the "seat bonus" given to larger parties. Again, the more seats per constituency, the better, as that gives better proportionality and makes it easier for smaller parties to get seats. > 5. It always amazes me how irrationally the supporters of IRV/STV > support a nonmonotonic system that creates more problems than it > solves when there are clearly better alternatives available that > actually solve more problems than they create. I think the issue is that you look at PR-STV and IRV and refuse to see any difference. Many people (including many on this list) feel that IRV is a bad method. However, PR-STV has some advantages over other PR methods. That is why people refuse to dismiss it out of hand. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Rather than reply individually to the three response to my former post, I'll just make some observations: 1. It seems like the pro-IRV/STV group has begun to dominate this list, 2. the assumption that "Later-no-harm" is a desirable feature of a voting method is very odd. I would claim that the opposite is true, in agreement with Abd ul Lomax. Later-no-harm is a feature that prevents a voting method from finding majority-favored compromise candidates and ensures that IRV/STV tends to find candidates supported by either extreme leftist or rightist groups 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple mathematical fact. 4. STV does not solve the spoiler problem and the vote-splitting problem 5. It always amazes me how irrationally the supporters of IRV/STV support a nonmonotonic system that creates more problems than it solves when there are clearly better alternatives available that actually solve more problems than they create. Oh, and for those of you who do not like IRV/STV and want to show your friends why, I've put up a new web page with links to some great new educational youtube videos showing how IRV/STV really works (doesn't find majority winners, eliminates the majority-favorite candidate, is nonmonotonic, etc.) Learn About Instant Runoff Voting Methods http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/index.php?/categories/2-Instant-Runoff-Voting Thassal. Cheers, Kathy Dopp Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
James Gilmour wrote: Kathy Dopp > Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 4:45 PM A fair proportional multiseat STV representation system could be made by eliminating STV's elimination rounds but using the rank choices to transfer partial votes to a 2nd choice candidate in cases where more voters than needed for the threshold for each candidate voted for the same 1st choice candidate. If the rankings were limited in this artificial way, the proportionality obtained would be poor, and very poor in some circumstances. I agree with what you're saying there. However... If the rank choices were limited to a 1st choice and a 2nd choice candidate only, unlike Fairytale Vote's IRV/STV method this method would would be monotonic and precinct-summable (and so be OK to manually audit and countable in the precincts) using an n x n matrix where n is the number of candidates running for office. As has been explained many times, it is not possible to devise a voting system that simultaneously meets all the "desirable criteria". Voting systems that comply with 'monotonicity' fail 'later no harm'. As has also been explained, monotonicity is of no importance whatsoever in public elections because it cannot be exploited either by the candidates or by the voters. In contrast, failure to comply with 'later no harm' opens the way for undesirable strategic and tactical voting. Also, compliance with 'later no harm' does seem to be important to real voters. Untrue. DAC and DSC meet monotonicity and either LNHelp or LNHarm. The thing which you can't have is both LNHelp and LNHarm, as well as monotonicity[1]. As for monotonicity itself: IMHO, it's not a strategy issue, but rather an issue of the method being in conflict with itself. Rather like, say, Condorcet Loser for Condorcet methods: the method claims some property is desirable, but also some times elects those that would lose when ranked according to that property. In the case of monotonicity, the method elects X due to support of X, but further support of X causes X not to be elected, and so the inconsistency is that the support both helps and harms. Finally, the Schulze method (as used by Wikimedia, Debian, and others) fails later-no-harm, something it must do since it's a Condorcet method. This fact doesn't seem to have upset the voters much. In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters' 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already transferred votes. If you cannot eliminate candidates and transfer their votes in accordance with the voters' instructions, you cannot obtain proportional representation (or only very poor PR). In my previous post, I gave an example of a method that doesn't use elimination. Schulze STV (but probably not CPO-STV) is another. Technically, my "Setwise Highest Average" method doesn't use elimination either, but you could argue that its use of Sainte-Laguë on the coalitions serves the same effect. Of course, if your point of view is that the voters' ballots are like the punchcards to the program - explicit instructions to the method itself about which candidates should be eliminated and in what order, then the above fails. By that reasoning, only the voters' intended method fits (be it STV, Bucklin with winner elimination, CPO-STV, whatever). - [1] Actually, I'm not even sure about this. Woodall's impossibility theorems listed in Voting Matters #6 say only that mutual majority (he calls it Majority), LNHelp and LNHarm implies nonmonotonicity. Perhaps a method can have both LNHs as well as monotonicity if it gives up on mutual majority. Plurality would be such a method (technically speaking), though it is a really bad one. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
Kathy Dopp > Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 4:45 PM > > talking out loud... You were indeed "talking out loud". >From you posts over several years it would APPEAR that you have no real >appreciation of the purpose of a proportional representation voting system. If you have such an appreciation, it is not apparent from your posts. Nor do you show any appreciation of the existence of two fundamentally different approaches to "proportional representation". These give very different answers to the question: "Proportional representation of what?" > A fair proportional multiseat STV representation system could be made > by eliminating STV's elimination rounds but using the rank choices to > transfer partial votes to a 2nd choice candidate in cases where more > voters than needed for the threshold for each candidate voted for the > same 1st choice candidate. If the rankings were limited in this artificial way, the proportionality obtained would be poor, and very poor in some circumstances. > If the rank choices were limited to a 1st choice and a 2nd choice > candidate only, unlike Fairytale Vote's IRV/STV method this method > would would be monotonic and precinct-summable (and so be OK to > manually audit and countable in the precincts) using an n x n matrix > where n is the number of candidates running for office. As has been explained many times, it is not possible to devise a voting system that simultaneously meets all the "desirable criteria". Voting systems that comply with 'monotonicity' fail 'later no harm'. As has also been explained, monotonicity is of no importance whatsoever in public elections because it cannot be exploited either by the candidates or by the voters. In contrast, failure to comply with 'later no harm' opens the way for undesirable strategic and tactical voting. Also, compliance with 'later no harm' does seem to be important to real voters. > In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional > representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and > count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters' > 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already > transferred votes. If you cannot eliminate candidates and transfer their votes in accordance with the voters' instructions, you cannot obtain proportional representation (or only very poor PR). > However, just like with Fairytale Vote's STV system whether or not > this system actually results in proportional representation still > depends on how much vote-splitting results when more or fewer > candidates run for office in proportion to the total number of > candidates running for office, as compared to the proportion of voters > whose interests they represent. I.e. too many candidates running who > represent your interests, or too few and proportional representation > is not achieved using either the Fairytale Vote's STV method or my > (maybe someone else thought of it before) new improved monotonic, > fairer STV method sans any elimination rounds. The whole purpose of the 'transferable vote' is obtain proportional representation from among a diversity of views. There should be, and need be, no artificial restriction on the diversity represented by the candidates who offer themselves for election. > Therefore, a better alternative proportional representation system is > the "party list" system where as many candidates on each party list > take office in proportion to the number of voters who vote for that > party, The purposes of party-list PR voting systems and STV-PR are fundamentally different. The objective of ALL party-list PR voting systems is to obtain PR of the registered political parties. In contrast, the objective of STV-PR is to obtain PR of whatever the voters want, as expressed by their responses to the candidates who have offered themselves for election. IF the voters in an STV-PR election vote for the candidates strictly by party, then party PR will result. But with this very important difference - the voters will have determined which of each party's candidates are elected. In a closed-list party-list PR voting system, the voters have no say at all - that gives more power to the party machines. In a typical open-list party-list PR voting system, the voters have some say, but such voting systems do not give proportionality WITHIN the various parties - and that can sometimes be as important as PR among the parties. There are a few open-list party-list PR voting systems that approach STV-PR in the flexibility they give the voters, but they are so complicated you may as well go all the way and give the voters the full freedom of STV-PR. > but this new version of STV I figured out this a.m. (maybe > someone else has thought of it before) would work fine as well as long > as the voters were restricted to ranking only a 1st and 2nd choice > candidate. As explained, above, this will not give PR, or a
Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote: > In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional > representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and > count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters' > 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already > transferred votes. That is technically 2 rounds. This would increase the number of voters who end up wasting their vote. Voting for a no-hope candidate first choice would be "throwing your vote away". PR-STV maintains proportionality no matter what order candidates are eliminated (assuming you don't eliminate candidates who have achieved the quota). I don't think this could be used to create a monotonic method though. > Any method of proportional representation must be precinct-summable in > a reasonable fashion The certainly isn't a required condition for it to be a PR method. > The party list system works much better for achieving proportional > representation as long as there is a party representing your > interests. It doesn't have to be a "party", but could just be that > each candidate chooses his own list of candidates below him/her to > pass excess votes down to. If each candidate was allowed to submit a list and candidates were allowed to be listed on more than 1 list, then you could have precinct summability while having (a weak form of) PR-STV. Each voter would vote for 1 candidate's list, rather than providing a full ranking and PR-STV could be used to combine all the votes. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
People keep asking me how to achieve a proportional representation system so talking out loud... A fair proportional multiseat STV representation system could be made by eliminating STV's elimination rounds but using the rank choices to transfer partial votes to a 2nd choice candidate in cases where more voters than needed for the threshold for each candidate voted for the same 1st choice candidate. If the rank choices were limited to a 1st choice and a 2nd choice candidate only, unlike Fairytale Vote's IRV/STV method this method would would be monotonic and precinct-summable (and so be OK to manually audit and countable in the precincts) using an n x n matrix where n is the number of candidates running for office. In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters' 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already transferred votes. However, just like with Fairytale Vote's STV system whether or not this system actually results in proportional representation still depends on how much vote-splitting results when more or fewer candidates run for office in proportion to the total number of candidates running for office, as compared to the proportion of voters whose interests they represent. I.e. too many candidates running who represent your interests, or too few and proportional representation is not achieved using either the Fairytale Vote's STV method or my (maybe someone else thought of it before) new improved monotonic, fairer STV method sans any elimination rounds. Therefore, a better alternative proportional representation system is the "party list" system where as many candidates on each party list take office in proportion to the number of voters who vote for that party, but this new version of STV I figured out this a.m. (maybe someone else has thought of it before) would work fine as well as long as the voters were restricted to ranking only a 1st and 2nd choice candidate. Any method of proportional representation must be precinct-summable in a reasonable fashion and give all voters' votes equal treatment, unlike with the current version of IRV/STV being pushed by Fairytale Vote which does neither and also in addition does not provide proportional representation due to vote-splitting when the number of candidates running who represent my interests is too great, or due to not enough candidates running in proportion to the voters who share my interests. That's why fundamentally the IRV/STV system is a lousy one for achieving proportional representation even if it were modified to treat all voters equally and be easily manually checked for accuracy. The party list system works much better for achieving proportional representation as long as there is a party representing your interests. It doesn't have to be a "party", but could just be that each candidate chooses his own list of candidates below him/her to pass excess votes down to. -- Kathy Dopp Town of Colonie, NY 12304 phone 518-952-4030 cell 518-505-0220 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
