Greetings list members, To have the party of the vacant member choose a successor would be acceptable for the Party List method of PR, because the voters have decided how many seats each party is to receive and therefore it is only proper that the now vacant seat belongs to the same party, but STV is a different species of a PR election method. In STV the voters have the choice to cross party lines, that is, they may cast enough votes to elect a candidate who happens to belong to political party `B', but these same voters are not required to cast their next preferences for a candidate of the same party `B'.
No indeed, these voters may feel that no other candidate of party `B' is good enough for them to support with any lower preferences. This is the right of the voters in a STV election and this right should be protected by not handing over the selection of the voter's next preferences to some political party. If the voters wanted a candidate of the same party they would have selected someone of the same party as the runner-up. If we don't want to rework the ballots from the original election then we should merely select the first runner-up as the person to fill the vacancy. Doing this is acceptable because the first runner-up has more votes than any other unelected candidate and would most likely win the seat if the ballots were reworked. The runner-up may or may not be of the same party as the now vacant member, regardless he is the only correct person to fill the vacancy because he was elected to the runner-up position by the voters in a STV election. And if this runner-up has been kept active as an alternative member, he will be up to speed and qualified to fill the seat. Regards, Donald ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info