--- On Wed, 24/12/08, James Gilmour <jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
> I do not think you have to be anywhere near the zero > first-preferences Condorcet winner scenario to be in the > sphere of "politically > unacceptable". I am quite certain that the 5% FP CW > would also be politically unacceptable, and that there would > political chaos in > the government in consequence. The forces opposed to real > reform of the voting system (big party politicians, big > money, media > moguls, to name a few) would ensure that there was chaos, > and the electors would have an intuitive reaction against a > weak Condorcet > winner so they would go along with the demands to go back > to "the good old ways". > ... the Condorcet voting system will never get off the ground > so long as a 5% FP Condorcet winner is a realistic scenario, > as it is when > the current (pre-reform) political system is so dominated > by two big political parties. The question is if methods that may regularly elect a 5% first place support Condorcet winner can be politically acceptable. One reason supporting this approach is that most single-winner methods are designed to always elect compromise winners. (Some methods like random ballot are an exception since they give all candidates a proportional probability to become elected.) Using single-winner methods to implement multi-winner elections is a weird starting point in the first place. This approach works for two-party systems, although PR of those two parties will not be provided. If one uses a compromise / best winner seeking single-winner method like Condorcet for multi-winner elections (using single-seat districts) it is in principle possible that all the districts will elect a 5% FP support candidate. In the worst case there are the two old major parties with close to 50% support and then one or few compromise candidates in the middle. The proportionality of this single-winner single-seat district based Condorcet for multi-winner elections may thus be quite biased. The same applies to all similar misuse of single-winner methods. What is the fix then? One approach is to use a single-winner methods that do not aim at electing the best (compromise) winner in each case. Random ballot would be one. We would get quite decent PR this way. But the random nature of the method is maybe nor what people want. Another approach is to use IRV or some other method that favours the large parties. No proper proportionality provided but this approach is close to the current plurality based approach in many two-party countries. This approach may thus be acceptable in wo-party countries (but probably not elsewhere). A third approach would be to implement some PR method. Typically this means use of multi-winner districts (although not mandatory since one can do this in principle also with single-seat or few-seat districts). One can interpret this as one argument in favour of IRV-like methods that will to some extent maintain the dominance of the old large parties, or as a warning against trying to achieve PR by using single-winner methods for multi-winner elections. - - - Since I mentioned option of having PR and "few-candidate districts" here is also one sketch of such a method. Each district has two seats. Votes for each party are first counted at national level and the number of seats will be allocated to them proportionally. At the second phase seats are allocated in the districts. The district that has strongest support of some single party gets the first seat. A quota of votes is deducted from its votes. Next the second strongest claim will be handled. Claims that would exceed the two seats per district limit or the national level allocation of seats to each party will be skipped. The process continues until all seats have been allocated. One can expect that each two-seat district got at least one representative that the voters clearly wanted. The second seat will in some cases go to some small party that didn't get as much votes in this district as some other party did. This violation of "local proportionality" is needed to maintain the "national proportionality" and the "two-seat district approach". (Mixed member systems would be another approach.) Juho ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info