On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[email protected]> wrote: > Kathy, it seems that, to a degree, your thinking about proportional > representation has been colored by the problems of STV as applied to > single-winner elections. Let me suggest that you back up a bit and reflect > on the purpose of representation in decision-making as distinct from > decision-making itself. Single-winner elections represent a decision. > Proportional representation does, it might seem, need to make decisions, > too, but they are decisions of a different kind. > > Let's start with imagining ideal representation. There have been various > proposals that would, in some aspect or other, be ideal. It was proposed > (for a city at one point about a century ago), that those elected to a city > council would have as many votes in council process as they received in the > election. Without getting into gory practical details, could you agree that, > to the extent that this could be done, it would be a kind of ideal > representation?
Well that would certainly be a way of overcoming any effective minority representation in legislatures by always making sure that the representative elected by a majority made all the decisions. Not sure if I agree necessarily with giving more votes to one legislators than others, and that idea certainly is in sync with the way IRV/STV gives more effective votes to some voters than other voters during the counting process. > > However, for a peer assembly, there is another variation. The original used > STV, but that actually complicates it as far as a qualitative understanding. > Imagine that it is vote-for-one. If it is desired to create N seats, perhaps > N is considered an ideal size for an assembly, and there are V voters, who > vote for the candidate they most trust, we can assume. Any candidate who > gets N/V votes (Q, the Hare quota) is elected. > > But there is a problem, obviously. There might be no such candidate, if > there are enough candidates. And some candidates will get more than Q votes. > Is it fair that they have the same voting power in the Assembly as another > who only got the minimum? > > Lewis Carroll, studying STV in 1884, noticed that most voters really only > had enough information to pick their favorite. So he got the idea, what if > with any exhausted ballot (all candidates on it have been eliminated -- or, > for that matter, elected, but by more than the quota of votes, so there are > "excess votes") the candidate could recast the vote at will, "as if it were > his own property.") So those holding votes could put together, collectively, > assemblages of Q votes, electing seats that didn't make it in the first > pass. He considered that this revoting power would be in the hands of the > favorite on the ballot, I believe. I personally prefer party list systems where the voters know in advance what candidates will get any excess support, and where voters can suggest a reordering of the list itself, rather than allowing candidates to choose, although I suppose allowing candidates to choose could be done in a fair, auditable way as well. > > Would you agree that, if this were done, it would be fair, that every voter > would be fairly represented in the Assembly? Some directly, some indirectly. Not sure what you mean by "this" exactly, but maybe so. > The electors, I call the candidates holding the votes, vote publicly, so > every voter knows where his or her vote went, and exactly whomo it elected. > > This is very, very different from a contested election, in which some voters > lose. In this, all voters win. (Except for what can be called the "dregs," > which reduces to a very small problem with Asset Voting like this, and what Well the benefit of Asset voting over party list voting might be that the ballot is simpler and perhaps, I don't know, it'd be an easier sell. Although there are lots of party list systems internationally that seem to work well, and I haven't heard of existing asset systems. > you would do is, if you want N seats, you'd allow the election of "as many > as N + X seats." Where X is a variable determined from experience to > represent the level of non-negotiable differences among the electors. If by > some miracle they all agree, you actually get N + X seats, a small problem, > maybe even not a problem at all. Huh? Wouldn't funding, office space, facilities in the legislaturs be a problem if no one knows in advance how big the legislature will be? Never heard of variable-sized legislatures before. Doesn't sound very saleable. > > But look what happens to the votes: This is an STV election! The only > difference is that the vote transfers are in the hands of chosen electors, If the STV method is used within asset voting, then I oppose it strongly because STV has all the same counting flaws as IRV including nonmonotonicity, unequal treatment of voters' votes, and not being precinct summable. > instead of being determined by a ranked ballot. Each vote only is used once > to actually elect. That's the "Single" in "Single Transferable Vote." > > For fairness, in single-ballot STV for proportional representation, as a > ballot is part of a quota for election, the ballot then counts fractionally > for any subsequent uses. > > The non-monotonicity of STV arises in the last seats to be elected, it > arises from elimination before all the votes have been considered. > Basically, to ensure that a vote is only counted once (If we imagine that > instead of N votes being divided up and reduced fractionally according to > excess votes, the pile of ballots can be physically divided -- and that's > actually done in some STV implementations -- though it's not as fair as > uncovering the next preference and casting fractional votes for it, so each > ballot gets its fair share of representation), it is only allowed that one > vote at a time be "active." But that's a practical detail. The nonmonotonicity and non-precinct-summability of both IRV and STV arises due to its unequal treatment of voters' votes. I strongly oppose any method that treats voters' votes unequally in the counting process. > > You should realize that those who are elected before eliminations, with STV > (and this includes IRV!) are obviously appropriate winners. Yes. I agree with that. > The flaws arise > in elimination rounds. Get rid of eliminations, but sequentially pick > winners, that problem disappears, and you are left with only the problem > that if you use a single ballot, there will likely be seats where nobody > gets the quota. So what do you do? Not sure about that. Depends on if the reallocations if treatment of votes is equal for all voters or not I suppose. > > You can't hold a "runoff election," and here is why: Some voters already got > their candidate. A runoff under these conditions has no way of knowing who > "won" and who didn't. You only want those who didn't "win" to be able to > vote. Asset Voting avoids this problem. Every ballot is available to be > voted. (I would recommend that every candidate be required to designate a > proxy, to vote for the candidate if the candidate becomes unavailable. > Consider how much easier this would be than holding a special election! And > that choice would be public record, I presume. No surprises.) If asset voting is *not* like STV and is monotonic, precinct-summable, fair and equitable etc. I would probably not oppose it, but personally I prefer the party list system with voter ability to alter the list order based on Condorcet counts better. > > Asset will work with STV, and my prediction is that not too many will use > additional ranking on the ballot. It probably becomes unnecessary. Asset > would also work with IRV! It would make IRV into an excellent voting method. > No majority, no election, runoff of some kind. If holding a runoff is a > problem, it would be obvious who could be blamed for it! Candidates who were > unwilling to compromise. If that's a majority, I'd say this electorate has a > problem! Normally it won't be. If IRV/STV counting methods are used, I oppose it due to its inequities and the vagaries the inequities cause. > > STV for proportional representation, even with eliminations, is much better > than multiseat methods in use. But I'm hoping that we can look at ways to do > it even better, and what Asset would do is to create a penumbra of electors > that stand between the voters and those who are actually elected to the > Assembly. They generally represent the voters to those whom they elect. This > "Electoral College" is *fully representative,* along the lines of that old > proposal for a city council where the winners exercise the number of votes > they got in the election. They are public voters. > > And there goes the need for campaign financing. Spending a lot of money to > get elected would become a suspicious action! Rather, increasingly, electors > would not be candidates with a chance of winning, except in small > jurisdictions. They would be people, your neighbors for the most part, > interested in helping see that the people are represented in the Assembly. > You would know them personally, almost always. You could talk to them. And, > because it's known who they voted for in the actual seat elections, they > could talk to the seat holders directly, as people with real political > power, the power to elect, known and identified. Don't know about that. It sounds nice. Gotta get back to more coursework. Kathy > > -- Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 "One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts." Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Checking election outcome accuracy http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
