Re: [EM] Voting systems theory and proportional representationvssimple representation. (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)
At 09:46 AM 3/15/2010, Terry Bouricius wrote: Why would one want to have voters be restricted by the list order of one's favorite candidate, instead of allowing the voters themselves to reorder the party list (as happens with OPEN list systems - unlike closed party list PR)? Is the idea to allow candidates to list candidates outside their own party? Would parties put up with that from candidates they nominate, or wouldn't they insist on that level of party loyalty to receive the party's nomination? Candidate list is a proposal that is related to Asset Voting, only is fixed, single-ballot. Candidate list allows independent candidates to bypass political parties. Of course the parties would oppose it! Whether a party would actually allow this, though, depends on how they perceive it as affecting their power. Sure, you could set up rules to disallow candidates from nominating candidates outside the party. But could you come up with a public policy reason for this? (For the health of our political system, we must discourage any difference of opinion within political parties, and require parties to make single, monolithic decisions. What does that sound like?) Candidate list, in the end, would return power to the electorate, which is no longer bound to support a party in order to cast an effective vote. As Lewis Carroll noticed, in 1883, voters know best who is their favorite, that information is relatively clean and solid. Expecting the average voter to know more than that is expecting what is probably impossible. Party list does deal with this, but effectively confines the voter to supporting a party, rather than individuals, thus deferring power into the hands of whatever process the parties use. Candidate list is quite direct. There is no need to restrict voters by the list order of one's favorite candidate. Rather, as I understand Carroll's proposal, I don't have the actual text of it, the method is STV. The reversion to the choices of the candidate is only if the voter's personal ballot becomes exhausted. It is to avoid wasting the vote. It is also possible to allow voters to vote for a party list. You'd rather support your favorite party than your favorite candidate? Fine. That, really, should be your choice. Power to the voters. Count all the Votes. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting systems theory and proportional representationvssimple representation. (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)
I have not had enough time to study this in depth but would personally support this method only if it were counted using a Condorcet-like method and thus avoids all the flaws such as nonmonotonicity, and unequal treatment of voters' that STV exhibits. I don't know what the best method would be to count these, but this system sounds good if it were monotonic and equitable, therefore STV counting methods would not work, but I don't claim to know the best method to use to ensure approximate proportional representation that is simple enough to count to make it easily audited for accuracy and is fair to all voters and monotonic. Kathy On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: At 09:46 AM 3/15/2010, Terry Bouricius wrote: Why would one want to have voters be restricted by the list order of one's favorite candidate, instead of allowing the voters themselves to reorder the party list (as happens with OPEN list systems - unlike closed party list PR)? Is the idea to allow candidates to list candidates outside their own party? Would parties put up with that from candidates they nominate, or wouldn't they insist on that level of party loyalty to receive the party's nomination? Candidate list is a proposal that is related to Asset Voting, only is fixed, single-ballot. Candidate list allows independent candidates to bypass political parties. Of course the parties would oppose it! Whether a party would actually allow this, though, depends on how they perceive it as affecting their power. Sure, you could set up rules to disallow candidates from nominating candidates outside the party. But could you come up with a public policy reason for this? (For the health of our political system, we must discourage any difference of opinion within political parties, and require parties to make single, monolithic decisions. What does that sound like?) Candidate list, in the end, would return power to the electorate, which is no longer bound to support a party in order to cast an effective vote. As Lewis Carroll noticed, in 1883, voters know best who is their favorite, that information is relatively clean and solid. Expecting the average voter to know more than that is expecting what is probably impossible. Party list does deal with this, but effectively confines the voter to supporting a party, rather than individuals, thus deferring power into the hands of whatever process the parties use. Candidate list is quite direct. There is no need to restrict voters by the list order of one's favorite candidate. Rather, as I understand Carroll's proposal, I don't have the actual text of it, the method is STV. The reversion to the choices of the candidate is only if the voter's personal ballot becomes exhausted. It is to avoid wasting the vote. It is also possible to allow voters to vote for a party list. You'd rather support your favorite party than your favorite candidate? Fine. That, really, should be your choice. Power to the voters. Count all the Votes. -- Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting 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 http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting systems theory and proportional representationvssimple representation. (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)
At 06:56 PM 3/20/2010, Kathy Dopp wrote: I have not had enough time to study this in depth but would personally support this method only if it were counted using a Condorcet-like method and thus avoids all the flaws such as nonmonotonicity, and unequal treatment of voters' that STV exhibits. I don't know what the best method would be to count these, but this system sounds good if it were monotonic and equitable, therefore STV counting methods would not work, but I don't claim to know the best method to use to ensure approximate proportional representation that is simple enough to count to make it easily audited for accuracy and is fair to all voters and monotonic. http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf We are so accustomed to the problems of single-winner elections that we fail to notice that multiwinner elections, where accurate representation is the goal, operate under almost completely different criteria, at least for the bulk of the representatives. Single Transferable Vote used for proportional representation isn't an ordinary election. Why does every voter only get one vote? Think about it, please! In Plurality-at-large, often used for multiwinner here, every voter gets as many votes as there are seats to be filled. How does that work? In a well-run STV election, with enough seats and not way too many candidates, seats start to be assigned before there are any eliminations. All these seats are clearly appropriate! Every one is given to a candidate who was preferred by a quota of voters. I have not described how candidate proxy would work in an STV election, and I don't like candidate list, precisely because the rigidity requires circumstances where there might be monotonicity and other failures. I just think that candidate list is better than party list. In candidate proxy, otherwise known as Asset Voting, there would really not be any eliminations. Rather, there would just be the creation of seats by the assemblage of a quota of votes. If the quota is V/N, the Hare quota, what can happen is that there are unassigned seats, which means there are unused votes. Any time those holding those votes can assemble a quota, a new seat is created. It's a deliberative process, negotiation. STV is, however, much better for PR than it is single-winner. The problems arise with the last elections, and the very last one is, in fact, just an IRV election. Candidate list would allow completion without ballot exhaustion, and good voting strategy by the candidates would really prevent most problems. Vote for someone who uses bad strategy? Well, you voted for the person to sit in the Assembly or whatever, that would be even worse, surely! Please understand this: for proportional representation, it is a goal that is not utterly ridiculous that every seat is elected unanimously. The PR Method assembles the coalitions that do that. Candidate and party list STV, with as many seats per district as possible, would be better than any other method currently in use for public elections. Condorcet methods don't apply to multiwinner, not on the principle of preferred or chosen representation, which is not about contest. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting systems theory and proportional representationvssimple representation. (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)
Why would one want to have voters be restricted by the list order of one's favorite candidate, instead of allowing the voters themselves to reorder the party list (as happens with OPEN list systems - unlike closed party list PR)? Is the idea to allow candidates to list candidates outside their own party? Would parties put up with that from candidates they nominate, or wouldn't they insist on that level of party loyalty to receive the party's nomination? Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com To: kathy.d...@gmail.com Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 5:34 AM Subject: Re: [EM] Voting systems theory and proportional representationvssimple representation. (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax) On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 7:09 AM, Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com wrote: Yikes Raph. I didn't know that the method was potentially nonmonotonic. I oppose all nonmonotonic methods. Yeah, I know. I brought it up in the interests of honesty. However, there is another thread titled A monotonic proportional multiwinner method, that may have a method for combining ranked votes in a way that is proportional and is monotonic. It should be possible to run the method on a candidate list system. I would think that you could simple set a threshold number of votes to win a seat and then redistribute all excess votes for candidates to the 1st candidates on their own lists, then redistribute all the excess votes that resulted from that redistribution, etc. until there are no excess votes and all positions are filled. Yeah, that is what I was thinking, though I would redistribute based on the next preference on the candidate who transferred in the vote. However, I think the method is non-monotonic, as it is basically the same thing as PR-STV, but with restricted ballots. Yes, it would be much more complex than party list systems where none of the candidates were on more than one party list, but what about party list systems with shared candidates? It is more complex, but the complexity would occur during tabulation. The election results would just be a list of votes received by each candidate. Anyone would then be able to run the algorithm. 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] Voting systems theory and proportional representationvssimple representation. (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:46 PM, Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net wrote: Why would one want to have voters be restricted by the list order of one's favorite candidate, instead of allowing the voters themselves to reorder the party list (as happens with OPEN list systems - unlike closed party list PR)? Open list doesn't really allow re-ordering of the party lists. The method uses multi-seat plurality to decide which party candidates are elected. It is better than having the party list decided centrally. There is a possible system where all voters can vote for a few candidates and then a party list as their last choice. However, that still leads to a large number of choices. For example, if there were 50 candidates and 5 parties, then the number of possible ballots would be 50*49*5 = 12250. Is the idea to allow candidates to list candidates outside their own party? Would parties put up with that from candidates they nominate, or wouldn't they insist on that level of party loyalty to receive the party's nomination? Quite possibly. However, even if the party insisted on party members being put first, it would allow party members to decide how to order other party members. Also, it reduces the power of the party over candidates. If a party tries to throw its weight around, the candidate has the option of running as an independent and just listing some of the other party members as high ranks. It is a trade-off. Ideally, there would be one district and everyone would be elected at once using some form of PR-STV. However, this would be logistically difficult to achieve. It would place a large load on the voters, as they would have to rank a larger number of candidates, and also on the counting process due to the large number of rounds required. The candidate list method gives some of the flexibility of PR-STV and the national level proportionality of party list systems. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting systems theory and proportional representationvssimple representation. (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:46 PM, Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net wrote: Why would one want to have voters be restricted by the list order of one's favorite candidate, instead of allowing the voters themselves to reorder the party list (as happens with OPEN list systems - unlike closed party list PR)? Open list doesn't really allow re-ordering of the party lists. The method uses multi-seat plurality to decide which party candidates are elected. It is better than having the party list decided centrally. There is a possible system where all voters can vote for a few candidates and then a party list as their last choice. However, that still leads to a large number of choices. For example, if there were 50 candidates and 5 parties, then the number of possible ballots would be 50*49*5 = 12250. More than that in the US where partially filled rank choice votes are legal votes too. I like the idea of choice, but also of simplicity, equality and monotonicity. I don't have time to devote to studying this enough now. Kathy Is the idea to allow candidates to list candidates outside their own party? Would parties put up with that from candidates they nominate, or wouldn't they insist on that level of party loyalty to receive the party's nomination? Quite possibly. However, even if the party insisted on party members being put first, it would allow party members to decide how to order other party members. Also, it reduces the power of the party over candidates. If a party tries to throw its weight around, the candidate has the option of running as an independent and just listing some of the other party members as high ranks. It is a trade-off. Ideally, there would be one district and everyone would be elected at once using some form of PR-STV. However, this would be logistically difficult to achieve. It would place a large load on the voters, as they would have to rank a larger number of candidates, and also on the counting process due to the large number of rounds required. The candidate list method gives some of the flexibility of PR-STV and the national level proportionality of party list systems. -- Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting 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 http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
