Tim Hull wrote:
> So far, all I have came up with which seems to potentially be a good > method is a variant of sequential proportional approval voting. Under > the system, single winner elections would be simple approval voting. > However, for multi-winner elections each student would begin with a > set number of "points" equal to the number of seats to be elected. > Votes would be counted as in normal SPAV, and each weighted according > to the number of points each student has remaining. Every time a > voter elects one of their choices, they would "use up" one of their > points. This seems a little more understandable than standard SPAV, > and it hurts groups that share some preferences with the majority less. Tim, Your gives voters a very big incentive to not vote for someone who they believe will win anyway. In the extreme case there could be a very popular candidate X that fails to be elected because everyone "knew" that X would win the first seat, so didn't vote for X to avoid losing ("using up") a point. Take this election for 4 seats. 11: ABCD 05: D 09: EF By my calculations with your suggested method, it elects DEAF. The ABC faction erred by approving D. 11: ABC 05: D 09: EF Now the winners are AEBF. That isn't a proportional or fair result. D has a Droop Quota and should be elected (or squeezed out in a tiebreaker, but here the EF "list" easily wins the last seat). The winners should be D, two from ABC and one from EF. For a good single-winner method, I suggest DMC(Ranking). Voters rank candidates they approve, equal-ranking allowed. Elect the Condorcet winner if there is one. Otherwise eliminate the least-approved candidate until one of the remaining candidates X is pairwise undefeated by any of the other remaining candidates. Elect the first X to appear. I also very much like the "full" version of DMC (that allows voters to rank among unapproved candidates by entering an approval cutoff/threshold). Even "3-slot DMC" that uses a 3-slot ratings ballot, top two slots interpreted as approval and default placement in bottom slot, is in my opinion better than Approval or any other 3-slot method. http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/DMC I might have some PR suggestions in a later message. Chris Benham ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info