>B) Do we give the party votes a list of choices like an Open Party List? > This is better, but the lowest candidate will receive little if any >benefit from the party votes.
I'm still not sure I understand Open Party list. I provided an example in my last post which illustrated how I think Open party list works. While it is not quite as efficient in making every vote elect a representative as STV is, it is highly proportional, highly democratic, and extremely simple to implement and understand. >It can be argued that the party votes were intended to help every >candidate of the party as much as possible without harming any candidate. It could also be argued that the party votes were intended to help the top candidates of the party more. Or just the candidates that the person supports the most. We don't really know the voter preference here. >C) Do we divide the party votes in proportion to the votes of the candidates? > This is also better but still not good enough, the lower candidates are >still not being protected enough. Protection means that every candidate of >the same party, is to be helped to avoid as many elimination cycles as >possible. While I agree that dividing in proportion to votes is bad, I disagree with the implicit assumption that voters want to help everyone in the party equally as soon as their vote transfers to "party." In particular, while they may want to guarantee that their vote elects the maximum number of people out of that party,.they may want to insure that their vote does NOT help a certain member of that party. It would be nice to provide a way to do this that does not require listing every other member of the party. >a new elimination rule for STV that >would do a very good job of protecting, as much as possible, all the >candidates of a faction/party. That rule is as follows: > > "The candidate to be eliminated shall be the lowest candidate > of the faction with the lowest average votes per candidate." This seems like an excellent rule that further guarantees proportionality. I haven't thought hard about how it will work towards the end, but it's hard to imagine it will perform any worse than normal STV. Nevertheless, using this rule does not require that you make "party" votes remain unassigned to a particular candidate. I prefer making a "party" vote imply the insertion of the party list into the ballot, excluding any candidates listed elsewhere on the ballot. Otherwise, while you have allowed voters to express a set of favorite candidates from within the party (by ranking them in advance of the party) you have not allowed them to effectively express a set of disfavored candidates within the party (by ranking them after the party). -Adam