At 01:03 PM 11/17/2009, Raph Frank wrote:
I am not sure referring to "racism" is a good plan :).
The word "racist" was used. A more politically correct term would be "factionally affiliated" or "factionally dedicated."
Something like "Any group representing more than N/M of the voters, where M is the number of seats to be filled, must be able to guarantee that N of their candidates are elected (assuming they run enough candidates)". I think all PR methods meet this (as it is the Hare quota).
Because Asset Voting is a system which can create an electoral college that elects the assembly, I prefer the Hare quota, but, of course, this leaves the question of dregs: after all the seats are assigned from candidates who are elected and the easy vote transfers are done, there may be votes which "belong" to candidates not elected and they are having difficulty finding a suitable compromise. If any votes are left unused, of course, there is then a vacant seat, and, less likely, more than one vacant seat. Is it necessary to fill this seat?
The importance of it is not necessarily clear. The Election Science Foundation is currently used Asset Voting, experimentally, to select a steering committee of three members. It's pretty unlikely that more than one seat would remain unallocated if the Hare quota is used, but one empty seat is reasonably possible. That represents what could be approaching one-third of members who aren't represented. Now, if direct voting on issues is allowed -- if this is to become a board of a corporation, there could be some legal problems with both direct voting and the possibility of unequal voting powers, but decision-making is a separate issue from voting and voting method, per se -- and if the members of the unrepresented group still have a means to bring some matter to the attention of the "short committee," it's not particularly harmful. Decisions could require, I believe, a majority of the board, which with two members requires unanimity. That, again, might not be harmful. The organization is proposing to have a separate presiding officer who would be elected by the committee, and who could vote to break ties. So, again, it would take unanimity to elect this officer, so the officer is likely to represent a compromise who would satisfy at least two-thirds of the members. Not bad.
But it would be better if the remaining voters are represented. So what happens if we use the Droop quota? We end up with a single-winner election for that last seat, with the voters being those who are unrepresented plus excess votes from those elected. This member of the board might represent a fairly small number of voters, but gets equal voting power (normally). This is the reason I prefer the Hare quota, it's exact, every member elected does represent a specific group of voters, the same as the quota, with the same percentage of voting power in the committee. And then the elected board can make whatever special rules it finds appropriate to secure representation for the remaining voters. It can even, as I'd implement Asset, pick an entirely new candidate, who was not on the ballot. Ideally, for that last seat, it would maximize representation, encouraging a broad compromise among the remaining voters, and it could be flexible. The quota could be adjusted down for the last seat, but that lowering could also be restricted so that disparity of representation doesn't exceed a limit. There is little harm if a small faction has a slightly higher voting power; by definition in our problem here, it is a small faction that can only exercise power through coalition, and if the disparity is limited, it would, in a practical sense, not have true excess power, because actual voting is limited.
The goal in an elected committee or assembly, as I see it, is to fairly represent as much of the electorate as possible. When the number of seats is small, that becomes quite important, how that last seat is chosen. With a hundred seats, it wouldn't be so important but, on the other hand, an assembly with a hundred seats is pretty large, it really needs to function through a (sub)committee system, direct meeting for most business becomes too cumbersome.
Normally, supermajority of a deliberative body can change or suspend the rules. So ... rules could provide that, say, two-thirds of the assembly (full size, so this is an absolute supermajority based on the full assembly assuming all seats had been elected) can determine how the last seat is chosen, within certain simple parameters designed to prevent serious abuse. Note, however, that if two-thirds of any body with power wants to abuse, it can. Period. An absolute majority can, not merely a supermajority, that's the "Nuclear Option" in the U.S. Senate. And the nuclear option has never been exercised, to my knowledge, because of the recognized damage to the traditions of the Senate. It was bad enough that the Senate changed the cloture rule from two-thirds to three-fifths, that was a small loss for democracy. Even though the purpose was apparently "noble." The road to hell is paved with noble intentions....
The goal, as I see it, of the committee's process in choosing the final seat (or seats, with a larger assembly) would be to maximize representation, so that as many members of the society as possible think of the committee as "their committee," and feel represented on it by someone they chose, directly or indirectly. Not having that last seat be automatically assigned provides incentive for those voters to compromise, to find someone they all -- or almost all -- can accept as their common representative. It does not paralyze the asssembly, which can begin to conduct business with an empty seat. It simply needs a somewhat larger majority, in effect. With a 3-person nominal size, 2 elected, it needs unanimity among the two. If two people representing two-thirds of an organization can't find agreement on important things, the organization is in serious trouble and needs to address *that* problem. In addition, there are likely some left-over votes from the election of the two. These voters don't have specific representation, in the sense of an assigned seat elected with their vote, but they are still defacto represented by someone who has the power to insist on no action without his or her consent. That's not shabby, and it points out that the two-thirds I mentioned is probably more than two-thirds.
I'm suggesting that the Election Science Foundation use the Hare quota, initially, because it gets the committee going, and the committee can go ahead and elect a presiding officer; I think that the goal was that the presiding officer not be one of the members of the committee. Whomever the two elect could have been elected anyway regardless of the vote of the third. No harm is done. When the bylaws are written the committee can be specifically charged with the task of maximizing representation on the committee, which is seriously advantageous to the organization. The biggest loss of support for organizations is from members who feel left out, who have no say in how the organization proceeds. Not everyone wants that say, but everyone appreciates the *possibility* of having a say. And when a decision comes up that turns out to be important to the member, it matters very much.
What if the Center for Proportional Representation had, as Clay Shentrup is fond of saying, "eaten its own dog food," and set up a membership structure with ... proportional representation on a steering committee. Where would FairVote be today?
It's possible, indeed, that there would be less usage of IRV for single-winner elections, but it's also possible that a democratic Center would influenced deeper changes, would have wider support from academics and experts on voting systems, or would be on its way. Instead, the CPR was formed as a lobbying group with a tight core in control, classic political structure, solicited funds, eventually set up staff, etc., and these things take on a life of their own.
From my understanding of the history, some or maybe even many of those who were involved in the founding meeting ended up out in the cold, as a political strategy developed to implement IRV because it used the same expensive voting system as used for STV-PR. Thus, it was apparently thought, we'd be one step closer to PR. In addition, there are a few deluded individuals who do imagine that IRV is a decent single-winner system, but, unfortunately, pursuing this will-o-the-wisp, they are damaging the most advanced voting system in wide use: top two runoff. Top two runoff with some tweaks would be an extraordinarily powerful voting system. For example, if write-ins are allowed (they are in some places, such as California by default), and if the runoff is, say, Bucklin, Condorcet failure should be very, very rare. It might never happen. Bucklin is much better than IRV at finding a true majority, because it counts all the votes, discarding none. IRV, in nonpartisan elections that go to runoff, and with a substantial candidate field (perhaps more than three) almost never finds a majority. Bucklin may pick up about half of these, avoiding half the runoffs if a majority is required.
In fact, the lessons of history have been overlooked. There was widespread implementation of preferential voting in the U.S. in the first two decades of the twentieth century, and some of these systems survived into the forties, I think. Only Cambridge, with its PR council, remained. Those implementations included Bucklin and IRV, and they all were swept away. By what? My impression is, generally, top two runoff. It was discovered that preferential voting wasn't living up to its promise to find majorities without runoff elections. Apparently, after a time, most voters don't add additional preferences. Lewis Carroll could have told them this would happen in the 1880s. That's why he invented Asset. By being oversold, preferential voting was later rejected. And that's exactly what FairVote has been setting up, and the reversals are starting to happen.
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