--- On Fri, 6/3/09, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-el...@broadpark.no wrote:
Juho Laatu wrote:
Is the target here to have a method
that would allow and encourage having
multiple candidates? (to allow the
people of Owego to select the winner
themselves instead of others/parties
telling them what their choices are)
The target here, I think, is to have a method that uses
another method of discovery than that of having the
candidates push that information onto the people. This is
based on that the usual method favors the candidates who
have greater strength of dissemination, which translates to
expensive campaigning budgets, which translates into that
the candidates that do appear viable are either very rich or
have the backing of external forces that demand quite
significant favors in return (be those forces the rest of
the political party, or lobbyists).
Or in short, the rationale for finding another method is
that the current method favors those in power. Hence those
in power gain more power, which is undesired positive
feedback.
Yes. I see at least three different
needs here. 1) risks of money based
decisions, 2) a permanent political
elite, 3) limited set of options to
select from.
This can be taken as an independent
challenge. Which methods / systems
lead to having numerous candidates?
(I limit the scope of discussion to
single-winner elections, and exlude
primaries and other party internal
candidate selection and hierarchical
proxy based methods.)
Fred's method could be used to select a single winner.
Would you call it a hierarchical proxy?
My intention was that it would
be in this category (although
maybe a special member of this
category).
There is somewhat of
a proxy thought in that the continuing candidates from each
council represent the councils below, but it's not as
thorough or direct as with say, delegable proxy, because the
structure is fixed and one may argue that the lower councils
select good candidates rather than candidates that
represent the council.
Plurality certainly is not the method.
It typically has only two candidates
with chances to win, and others are
easily spoilers.
I think one could make Duverger's law more general. If the
method limits the voter to ranking k candidates, then the
system tends towards a k-party state. For plurality, k = 2,
since if you vote for A and only A and B are relevant, then
that in essence is A B.
However, the grip of that law is weaker as k increases.
Consider a country like Canada, for instance. In it,
different provinces have different strong parties (e.g. BQ).
Local support keeps the system from degenerating into a
two-party state. As k increases, the possibility that each
local area will have different strong parties also
increases: with k = 2, each local area can only have two
strong parties, but with k = 3 they may have three, etc.
Yes. In Finland the proposed
electoral reform quite clearly
emerges from the problems of small
districts (and generalized
Duverger's law). The smallest 6
member districts appear to elect
from three major parties (+ a bit
more thanks to coalitions). There
are also many additional disturbing
factors but it seems that the
generalized Duverger's law should
point at 6 not to 6 parties but
to some smaller number of them.
Approval discourages nomination of
more than one candidate per party
or section.
It also has the Bush-Gore-Nader problem (if Nader is
relatively popular). Both of these problems disappear if
voters use strategy and know the others' sincere votes, but
I've mentioned before why I don't like Approval (let's not
have the entire VNM debate again).
Incidentally, Range supporters say that Range would be a
method such as you're seeking. The idea is this: if the
candidate is viable or really matters (McCain or Obama, for
instance), then voters would max-min strategize, but if the
candidate doesn't (Baldwin, McKinney, Barr), voters would
vote honestly; thus third parties receive more support than
one would expect if everyone voted honestly, since their
significant competitors would be rated disproportionately
low.
In competitive Range elections the
Approval strategies may work quite
well.
IRV also carries some risk of early
elimination of potential winners if
one party has several candidates.
Also exhausted ballots may be a
problem if some section has numerous
candidates. IRV is however probably
better than the previous two.
Condorcet seems to work a bit better
than IRV.
IRV has troublesome discontinuities. More significantly, it
seems to lead to two-party domination (as in Australia).
There are two possible explanations: either single-round
single-winner elections in general increases the strength of
the two most powerful parties, or IRV in particular distills
the ballots badly enough to give a bias to the two major
parties.
In addition to the Duverger effects
