At 06:59 AM 12/24/2008, James Gilmour wrote:
As I have said many times before, it is my firmly held view that single-winner voting systems should NEVER be used for the general election of the members of any assembly (city council, state legislature, state or federal parliament, House of Representatives or Senate). All such assemblies should be elected by an appropriate PR voting system.
I'll agree on that, and would go further. All officers should be elected in the assembly. Make sure that the assembly is truly representative, then allow it to "hire" officers. And fire them.
Using deliberative process for elections avoids the whole mess of election paradoxes, and does, indeed, guarantee majority support for a winner.
Abuse of this process is usually related to disproportional representation, not to true proportional representation.
Asset Voting, which produces, in theory, nearly perfect PR, on the cheap, can also keep the assembly representative, if the electors, the public voters in Asset, can recall seats and reform them.
---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
