Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
On Apr 22, 2007, at 6:44 , Tim Hull wrote: > Anyway, as this does require a 2/3 vote of the Assembly, I face > quite a battle. Good luck! Maybe your positive efforts will be rewarded. > Also, they are skeptical of any system that reduces student control > over the result (such as party list Please make a clear difference between open and closed list based methods. They are quite different with respect to student power. (There are also enhancements to open lists.) > Given the fact that I'm going to face an uphill battle - and will > need to cite examples that show that my new system has benefits - > what would be the best > approach? There are of course tens of approaches here. I just note two that could be used in proving the benefits. If the students are "conservative", use some real life examples of well known, well working and tested methods. If the students are "radical", add some flavour of "latest innovations, maybe still untested, but good" so they will get interested. > I like the idea of reweighted range voting, but it hasn't been > implemented anywhere of significance. Compare also with Proportional Approval Voting (see Wikipedia). These methods are interesting but not problem free. > For single-winner, despite its flaws it seems like instant-runoff > voting is the best bet, as it is the same as STV with one winner > and is one again a widely used system. IRV is not all bad, but note that STV with multiple winners avoids some of the problems of the single winner version. IRV may be liked by large parties (that you seem to have in your set-up) since it to some extent favours them. > Range voting once again seems like a good idea, but also has the > major drawback (at least as far as supporting arguments) of not > being used in a real election of any significance. Compare to Approval voting. In a competitive environment Range may become Approval in practice (if all give only min and max votes to the candidates). > I don't even want to THINK about Condorcet, due to the fact that a > random unknown candidate can easily win in a race with two > polarized candidates. Not even think? This sounds like you have received a heavy dose of anti-Condorcet influence somewhere :-). Condorcet has its well known and studied problems but despite of these it is considered by numerous experts to be the best family of single winner methods (in competitive environments). In almost all set-ups Condorcet is likely to be quite problem free. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] election-methods Digest, Vol 34, Issue 22
On Apr 22, 2007, at 7:37 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>> Some voters may trust trust the candidates, some not. Both OK. The
>> new method may be so good that it makes the candidates/
>> representatives less corrupt than before. But there is also the risk
>> that candidates will use their negotiating power (e.g. in Asset
>> voting) to gain personal benefits.
>
> Risk? I find this astonishingly naive. We are talking about
> candidates for public office, who will serve in assemblies with
> legislative power. The *status quo* is that many representatives
> already "use their negotiating power to gain personal benefits."
Are you saying that this status quo would vanish overnight when
moving to an Asset voting based system?
> What is so frequently overlooked by commentators on Asset Voting
> and Delegable Proxy is that there is *already* negotiation for the
> exercise of power, but it happens at the next state, in the
> legislature
Yes, negotiations are needed at many phases. To me the question is
how many layers there are. When compared to traditional
representative democracy, Asset voting seems to introduce one
additional layer of indirection/negotiation while direct democracy
seems to eliminate one ("direct" as opposed to "representative").
> So the question is not whether Asset will lead to the abuse of
> negotiating power, for such abuse, if it is abuse, already exists.
> The question, rather, is whether or not it will make it worse or
> better.
I think it opens one new layer of negotiation, which increases the
risks. I'm not saying though that there would not be any impact in
the opposite direction too (e.g. publicity).
> I know where my votes went, generally. If they go somewhere due to
> corrupt influence, why would I be satisfied with this?
The candidates probably will not advertise being corrupt, and will
present their whatever "interesting" viewpoints and whatever
negotiation results they were dragged into in the most positive light
they can find. This applies in all systems.
>> Some may consider it better not to
>> open doors for the temptations,
>
> If it weren't so damaging, this would be hilarious. We operate in a
> system which is thoroughly vulnerable and manipulable by special
> interests. The door is wide open *now*. With Asset, we can start to
> watch the door!
I guess this is a reference to the U.S. system. There are many
alternative paths forward. Ones where current rules are not modified
or are just improved in small scale, one could touch the rules of
funding, increasing the number of parties etc.
Juho
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Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
I know closed and open party list systems are different in that voters can influence what party candidates are elected. However, I'm shying away from that because it ties every vote to a party and makes it count towards other party candidates - even if some candidates in the same party may have vast differences (as they tend to in our system at times). Also, when I talk of IRV, I'm only talking of the single-winner variant. I didn't even know there WAS a multi-winner IRV as distinct from STV. I'm assuming this is just STV without the transfers of surplus votes - am I right? Just to clarify the situation, there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 47 representatives on the Assembly. They are currently elected in two elections (half in each of them) - the President is elected in the Winter term one. The representatives are divided into constituencies based on school/college. The largest such division has 19 representatives, followed by 7 for the next largest, followed by a 6-seat one, a 3-seat one, and several 1 and 2 seat ones. I am currently not proposing to change this - I would merely use a PR system under the current setup in each constituency. I MAY propose eliminating the "midterm" election, though - it tends to attract low turnout as-is, and electing all seats at once would increase proportionality. Anyway, as you can see the multi-winner case is the largest concern - and it really seems like STV is the runaway winner there. As far as STV rules, I'm currently thinking standard fractional-transfer STV with voters allowed as many rankings as there are open seats allowed. That would limit rankings, but would keep the ballot the same as it is currently (as it is, you rank as many as there is open seats, and Borda is used). Single-winner is tougher, but I think I'd use IRV or Plurality there to avoid confusion concerning different single-winner and multi-winner election systems. Any more thoughts? P.S. Here is why I don't like Condorcet - it allows weak or eccentric centrists to win. Consider the following example: a Republican, a Democrat, and a pro wrestler are running for U.S. president Votes are as follows 48% - Democrat/Pro Wrestler/Republican 5% - Pro Wrestler/Democrat/Republican 47% - Republican/Pro Wrestler/Democrat The pro wrestler beats the Democrat, 52-48, and the Republican 53-47, and thus wins. Under IRV, the Democrat would have won. The only system other than IRV that I know of that doesn't suffer this issue is Range/Approval... On 4/22/07, Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Apr 22, 2007, at 6:44 , Tim Hull wrote: > Anyway, as this does require a 2/3 vote of the Assembly, I face > quite a battle. Good luck! Maybe your positive efforts will be rewarded. > Also, they are skeptical of any system that reduces student control > over the result (such as party list Please make a clear difference between open and closed list based methods. They are quite different with respect to student power. (There are also enhancements to open lists.) > Given the fact that I'm going to face an uphill battle - and will > need to cite examples that show that my new system has benefits - > what would be the best > approach? There are of course tens of approaches here. I just note two that could be used in proving the benefits. If the students are "conservative", use some real life examples of well known, well working and tested methods. If the students are "radical", add some flavour of "latest innovations, maybe still untested, but good" so they will get interested. > I like the idea of reweighted range voting, but it hasn't been > implemented anywhere of significance. Compare also with Proportional Approval Voting (see Wikipedia). These methods are interesting but not problem free. > For single-winner, despite its flaws it seems like instant-runoff > voting is the best bet, as it is the same as STV with one winner > and is one again a widely used system. IRV is not all bad, but note that STV with multiple winners avoids some of the problems of the single winner version. IRV may be liked by large parties (that you seem to have in your set-up) since it to some extent favours them. > Range voting once again seems like a good idea, but also has the > major drawback (at least as far as supporting arguments) of not > being used in a real election of any significance. Compare to Approval voting. In a competitive environment Range may become Approval in practice (if all give only min and max votes to the candidates). > I don't even want to THINK about Condorcet, due to the fact that a > random unknown candidate can easily win in a race with two > polarized candidates. Not even think? This sounds like you have received a heavy dose of anti-Condorcet influence somewhere :-). Condorcet has its well known and studied problems but despite of these it is considered by numerous experts to be the best family of single winner methods (in competitive environments). In almost all set-ups Condor
Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
> Tim Hull timhull2 at gmail.com > Also, when I talk of > IRV, I'm only talking of the single-winner variant. I didn't even know > there WAS a multi-winner IRV as distinct from STV. I'm assuming this is > just STV without the transfers of surplus votes - am I right? Right, if you have PR-STV with only one seat you get IRV. > The largest such division has 19 representatives, > followed by 7 for the next largest, followed by a 6-seat one, a 3-seat one, > and several 1 and 2 seat ones. I am currently not proposing to change this > - I would merely use a PR system under the current setup in each > constituency. I MAY propose eliminating the "midterm" election, though - it > tends to attract low turnout as-is, and electing all seats at once would > increase proportionality. It would definitely be worth keeping the 19 district elected in 2 elections. That would mean a 10 and a 9 election. A 19 seat district would result in quite a large ballot if you did it all at once. However, voters would still only have to rank 3-4 candidates. In PR-STV, you get most of the value out of your vote as long as you rank 2-3 candidates who end up actually getting elected. For example, if a voter votes for a no-hoper for their first choice and then candidates who are likely to get elected for the next 3, the voters vote might split: First choice: 0% (didn't get elected) Second choice: 60% Third choice: 25% Fourth Choice: 10% Exhausted: 5% wasted For the smaller districts, i.e. the 3's, 2's and 1's, it might be worth combining them (presumably the 1's already only have one election?). However, having different rules for different districts might cause resistance. Also, if you leave them in, it gives a slight advantage to the larger parties as they would likely win those ones. This might help get them to support the idea. > > Anyway, as you can see the multi-winner case is the largest concern - and it > really seems like STV is the runaway winner there. As far as STV rules, I'm > currently thinking standard fractional-transfer STV with voters allowed as > many rankings as there are open seats allowed. A better rule here would be to just allow people to rank as many candidates as they want. Would the plan be that all the candidates are on the ballot and the voter just writes the number beside each candidate ? If so, then there is no benefit in limiting the number of ranks a voter can use. If a ballot gets to the end of the rankings, then it becomes exhausted. I have written on another thread about handling exhausted ballots, but it is a minor issue and there is no point in initially making the system complex (the problem only occurs when there are very close seats and/or lots of exhausted ballots). > Single-winner is tougher, > but I think I'd use IRV or Plurality there to avoid confusion concerning > different single-winner and multi-winner election systems. This favours the major parties. However, if they are the only 2 choices, then IRV is better than plurality. I would suggest approval as a simple system for electing a single candidate. You could use the example of a voter approving all the candidates to show that allowing people vote for more than 1 candidate doesn't actually increase the strength of their vote. However, as you say, at least with IRV, you only have to explain 1 method. > P.S. Here is why I don't like Condorcet - it allows weak or eccentric > centrists to win. > Consider the following example: a Republican, a Democrat, and a pro > wrestler are running for U.S. president > > Votes are as follows > > 48% - Democrat/Pro Wrestler/Republican > 5% - Pro Wrestler/Democrat/Republican > 47% - Republican/Pro Wrestler/Democrat > > The pro wrestler beats the Democrat, 52-48, and the Republican 53-47, and > thus wins. Under IRV, the Democrat would have won. The only system other > than IRV that I know of that doesn't suffer this issue is Range/Approval... You are assuming a small number of candidates. Condorcet has the advantage that there is no spoiler effect, so a candidate can appear that agrees with the (prior) winner on everything except one issue. This candidate would then win if his opinion on that issue was preferred by the majority. This should cause the candidates to cluster around the center on not just one issue. In the above example a centerist who wasn't a pro-wrestler could also enter. The votes could then be 48% - Democrat/Centerist/Pro Wrestler/Republican 5% - Centerist/Pro Wrestler/Democrat/Republican 47% - Republican/Centerist/Pro Wrestler/Democrat The results are then: Centerist (beats all candiates) beats Dem: 52-48 beats PW: 100-0 beats Rep: 53-47 Pro Wrestler (beats all bar centerist) beats Dem: 52-48 beats Rep: 53-47 loses Cen: 0-100 Democrat (only beats Republican) beats Rep: 53-47 loses Cen: 48-52 loses PW: 48-52 Rep (loses to all) loses Dem: 4
Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
At 06:42 AM 4/22/2007, Tim Hull wrote: >48% - Democrat/Pro Wrestler/Republican >5% - Pro Wrestler/Democrat/Republican >47% - Republican/Pro Wrestler/Democrat > >The pro wrestler beats the Democrat, 52-48, and the Republican >53-47, and thus wins. Under IRV, the Democrat would have won. The >only system other than IRV that I know of that doesn't suffer this >issue is Range/Approval... Most of us, I think, consider the Pro Wrestler the best winner in this election. Whether or not this is true, however, would depend on preference strengths, which are not expressed in pure ranked systems. If, for example, the Pro Wrestler is the first or second choice of all voters, and the preference strength of the Democrat over the Pro W. is weak for the Dems and similarly weak on the Rep side, the Pro Wrestler is *clearly* the best winner. And you can make it similarly doubtful by assuming preference strengths in the other direction. I'm not sure which candidate Mr. Hull would prefer see win this election. There is majority failure. Lots of systems would then have a runoff between the Dem and the Rep. Which guarantees that whoever wins, more than half of the population would have preferred someone else. Not exactly a formula for unity. Some people don't value organizational unity, they prefer to see their own faction "win." Consider the above election using Range: Dem PW Rep 48 10 9 0 5 5 10 0 47 0 9 10 - sums16 28 10 Under Range, it is not even close. And it's quite clear that this is an electorate that is going to be quite happy with the election of the PW as their governor. Yet the ranked votes are as shown above, exactly the same. So why would you seem to conider it obvious that the PW shouldn't win? It is out of some assumption that a "compromise" candidate is weak or wimpy or somehow lesser than one who is the strong favorite of some faction. It's a familiar argument to us. And, as shown above, it can be totally without foundation. The Majority Criterion, so often assumed as a basic standard for democracy to follow, is defective. You wouldn't use it choose pizzas, why use it to choose officers? (The Majority Criterion is confused with the Majority Principle, which means that the majority should prevail in any deliberated Yes/No decision. As I have often pointed out, standard deliberative process, used for elections, will generally select the Condorcet winner, if we assume fixed preferences. In fact, preferences are not fixed and can shift based on how participants value maximizing the satisfaction of *others*, and thus we may see results that will be more likely to select the Range winner.) (If you don't understand why standard deliberative process, with all votes being Yes/No to motions, as amended, will choose the Condorcet winner, then I'd suggest a little thought!) We don't use deliberative process to choose among multiple candidates for election because it is considered impractical, not because the results are considered inferior. If they weren't inferior, indeed, we would use "election methods" more widely in other applications, i.e., in selecting among the universe of options available for ordinary motions, such as motions to set a budget.) election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
Tim Hull wrote: > [...] > > I didn't even know there WAS a > multi-winner IRV as distinct from STV. Actually, there are (at least) one or two, depending on how far you stretch the definition of single-winner IRV. Some local elections in Australia are counted like STV without surplus transfers (just successively eliminate defeated candidates). They call this "bottoms up". I'm told that it results in a little bit of proportionality but definitely not the same results as STV. And, unfortunately, the U.S. state of North Carolina recently came up with a multi-winner version of the contingent vote. This is just my own opinion, but I think it's actually worse than block voting because it eliminates the usefulness of bullet voting. They came up with it to replace multi-winner top-two (my name for it), in which 2 * S candidates advance to the second round, where S = number of seats. > [...] > > As far as STV > rules, I'm currently thinking standard fractional-transfer STV with > voters allowed as many rankings as there are open seats allowed. That > would limit rankings, but would keep the ballot the same as it is > currently [...] I think this materially affects the representativeness of STV results and should be avoided if humanly possible. It reintroduces spoilers and strategic voting -- at the slate/party level rather than the level of individual candidates. If I use all of my available rankings on the slate I most prefer, I am no longer able to help my second-choice slate defeat my last-choice one. Eventually, slates learn to run only as many candidates as they think will win (roughly the same problem as cumulative voting). I'm pretty sure this effect is larger in smaller constituencies with fewer seats to fill. (Can anyone help me clarify that point?) See below for more on constituency size. > Just to clarify the situation, there is somewhere in the > neighborhood of > 47 representatives on the Assembly. They are currently elected > in two elections (half in each of them) - the President is elected in > the Winter term one. The representatives are divided into > constituencies based on school/college. The largest such division has > 19 representatives, followed by 7 for the next largest, followed by a > 6-seat one, a 3-seat one, and several 1 and 2 seat ones. I'm not clear about the staggered terms. Are the 19 seats all filled at once, or are they filled 10 at one election and then 9 at the next? I agree with you about staggered terms in general (the interfere with STV), but 19 is a very large district magnitude for STV. I doubt that there's any agreement about the "best" upper bound on magnitude; I personally think it's about 9 or 11 seats. Is there any natural subdivision of the 19-seat constituency (e.g. East Campus vs. West Campus or Science vs. Humanities)? Otherwise you may actually need the staggered terms for that one school or college. My two cents, Bob Richard Publications Director Californians for Electoral Reform http://www.cfer.org P.O. Box 235 Kentfield, CA 94914-0235 (415) 256-9393 election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
Regarding the constituencies, the 19-seat one is elected 10 seats one semester, 9 seats the other. The other multi-seat constituencies are similarly divided. I would say that none of these can be combined for a simple reason - they do represent a clear group (each individual school/college within the University) as opposed to being a territorial district. Additionally, each such group has its OWN student government - which makes them somewhat resemble "states". Thus, combining the single-seat districts would make about as much sense as combining several of the one seat at-large Congressional districts for small U.S. states for STV purposes. Likewise, there is no logical subdivision for the 19-seat grouping - any such division would be an arbitrary new construction. One might be able to split based on class status or on off-campus/on-campus residency, but such designations tend to change much more than school/college, leaving some students who run for the seat they are eligible for becoming ineligible to hold it the next semester. Regarding major party domination of such districts - often these seats are not even contested by the "parties", and half of them are won with a few votes by independent write-ins. This does present a somewhat weird situation as far as PR and elections, though it seems as if the best solution would be to leave the division of representatives alone. However, the division between two elections is something to consider. According to what people think in here, it seems that this may be good for the 19-seat constituency. However, it seems like it may not be for the others (especially the 2 and 3-seat constituencies, but also the 6 and 7 seat). The problem, though, with doing this (combining some multi-seat elections and dividing others) is that each election is contested by only half the campus (whereas now, each election is contested by 90% of students - everyone minus the 1-seaters not up for election). Thus, advertising and getting turnout becomes more of a problem. Any comments on this? As far as single-winner goes, I see IRV as being the likely choice with STV used in multi-winner due to the fact that it would reduce the amount of explaining (as opposed to doing something like Condorcet). As far as approval, I really don't see that working very well - only voters who think their favorite has NO CHANCE to win would vote for more than one. In this case, it seems like IRV is better. Tim P.S. Under my "pro wrestler" example, I was assuming that the voter would, under a range system, give the pro wrestler a 3 or a 2 out of 10, except for those who prefer them first. In this case, both IRV and Range would not elect this candidate. election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
How about the Borda Count? "Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible." --_God and the World: Believing and Living in Our Time_, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), Ignatius Press, 2000, pgs 78-9. http://www.ignatius.com/ViewProduct.aspx?SID=1&Product_ID=292&AFID=12&; Note: That statement essentially condemns the battery cage factory farm system of egg production, and suggests that, until the US follows the lead of the EU by banning it, consumers ought to buy cage-free eggs. For more info, see: 'No Battery Eggs' Campaign http://NoBatteryCages.org __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
Tim Hull wrote: > Single-winner is tougher, but I think I'd use IRV or Plurality there > to avoid confusion concerning different single-winner and multi-winner > election systems. Plurality is terrible. I somewhat prefer IRV to Approval and Range. How many candidates normally or typically stand for the single-winner elections? IRV tends to behave worse with many candidates. > P.S. Here is why I don't like Condorcet - it allows weak or eccentric > centrists to win. > Consider the following example: a Republican, a Democrat, and a pro > wrestler are running for U.S. president > > Votes are as follows > > 48% - Democrat/Pro Wrestler/Republican > 5% - Pro Wrestler/Democrat/Republican > 47% - Republican/Pro Wrestler/Democrat > > The pro wrestler beats the Democrat, 52-48, and the Republican 53-47, > and thus wins. Under IRV, the Democrat would have won. If the Democrat and Republican supporters really have a strong preference for the wrestler over their least preferred candidate, what is the problem? If they don't, they have the option of preventing the wrestler from winning by truncating. But I agree that Later-no-Harm is nice. Chris Benham election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
At 01:58 PM 4/22/2007, Tim Hull wrote: >P.S. Under my "pro wrestler" example, I was assuming that the voter >would, under a range system, give the pro wrestler a 3 or a 2 out of >10, except for those who prefer them first. In this case, both IRV >and Range would not elect this candidate. With that assumption, the analysis is correct. What this points out is how, to actually get reasonable outcomes, it is necessary to collect and use preference strength. And this, necessarily, involves violating the Majority Criterion in a single-step method. This is most important with single-winner. While preference strength does have the same kind of effect in multiwinner election methods, when representation is involved, it is important, in fact, to have first-place preferences be the ones chosen for the majority, preferably the large majority, of voters. And with first-place preference, strength is not so important. It still matters, though, when we get down to gathering the dregs, the scraps of votes left after nearly all winners have been determined. It's easiest to see, of course, for the last seat, since at that point the election has been reduced to single-winner. But it really begins to matter as soon as second-preference votes are being used. Asset Voting avoids the whole problem through a trick: it is not a complete election method, rather it creates a class of electors who then can use deliberative process (which includes negotiation) to complete the process. I would find it socially beneficial if student governments would experiment with advanced methods. Oddly, though, there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest. Are students today satisfied with the status quo? One would think not, but, then again. we don't see a lot of interest from students. When I talk to them personally, they often like the delegable proxy ideas and the like (which, in the end, are, shall we say, anarchist-compatible without being *radical* except in the sense of stepping out of the box). But that has yet to translate into any action. What I've seen, perhaps, could be explained by a situation that I've mentioned before. People who want to reform democracy often have an additional agenda: they favor this or that political position. And setting up a totally open system -- which is what true democracy demands -- might not favor that! This is quite specifically the reason why democracy reform organizations are, typically, not democratically organized themselves. Democracy is for some other organization, not ours. We wouldn't want to be diverted from our purpose! The irony of this is mostly lost on them, I've described this situation -- which is not in doubt, it's clear -- and the result in one case was that, for no specified offense and without warning, I was banned from the relevant mailing list. Yet I believe that organizations have a right to be undemocratic! election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
On Apr 22, 2007, at 13:42 , Tim Hull wrote: I know closed and open party list systems are different in that voters can influence what party candidates are elected. Ok, this part clear. However, I'm shying away from that because it ties every vote to a party and makes it count towards other party candidates - even if some candidates in the same party may have vast differences (as they tend to in our system at times). Note that the possible enhancements to the basic open list method may include making the structure more fine grained. For example the green wing of a conservative party could stick together. Votes to them would be counted also for conservatives. If the voter doesn't like conservatives, maybe some other parties have green wings too, or maybe the green party has a wing that the vote likes. (And further, if all the greenish people (from all parties as well as candidates that are not members of any parties) would like to join together, it is possible to support that (complexity of the calculation process however grows).) I can understand that some people want to cut out all the references to parties and other groupings, but one should note that clear indication of links to some ideological groupings are also a positive thing (informal and/or as formal part that influences the selection process) (because of the resulting clarity and simplicity of voting when compared to just having a long list of candidates). I also understood that you had strong groupings already in place. They may or may not fear a method that is free of parties. Just to clarify the situation, there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 47 representatives on the Assembly. They are currently elected in two elections (half in each of them) The largest such division has 19 representatives, followed by 7 for the next largest, followed by a 6-seat one, a 3-seat one, and several 1 and 2 seat ones. Small numbers (elections split in two and small divisions) make the system less proportional. You may consider this to be a problem (or alternatively not). One could have a method that takes also the seats in the other half into account when allocating seats in the following elections (this would probably mean a party based method). Also full PR with small schools/colleges is possible but you'd need to do the unavoidable rounding errors somewhere else (e.g. not elect the "most liked" candidates in each school/college to get this proportionality). These tricks may not be very critical if PR need not be 99% exact. I MAY propose eliminating the "midterm" election, though - it tends to attract low turnout as-is I think high level of involvement (and feeling of involvement) is an important property of a democratic system. Anyway, as you can see the multi-winner case is the largest concern - and it really seems like STV is the runaway winner there. As far as STV rules, I'm currently thinking standard fractional-transfer STV with voters allowed as many rankings as there are open seats allowed. Good, if you can push the old STV back in. (I accept open lists too, but that is partially a matter of taste. :-) One of the negative properties of STV is that it requires long votes. Limiting the length of them has implications (as already discussed on this list). Single-winner is tougher, but I think I'd use IRV or Plurality there to avoid confusion concerning different single-winner and multi-winner election systems. These would work at least somehow :-). You might consider also "top two runoff" (=two rounds of plurality, top two participating at the second round) instead of Plurality (at least a bit better, except that more complex). And don't forget Approval. I'd however still pick Condorcet over any of these in most set-ups, including the one you described. The simplest versions of Condorcet are also not that difficult to explain (=> e.g. "elect the candidate that needs least additional votes to beat all others pairwise"). P.S. Here is why I don't like Condorcet - it allows weak or eccentric centrists to win. Consider the following example: a Republican, a Democrat, and a pro wrestler are running for U.S. president Votes are as follows 48% - Democrat/Pro Wrestler/Republican 5% - Pro Wrestler/Democrat/Republican 47% - Republican/Pro Wrestler/Democrat The pro wrestler beats the Democrat, 52-48, and the Republican 53-47, and thus wins. Under IRV, the Democrat would have won. The only system other than IRV that I know of that doesn't suffer this issue is Range/Approval... If most of the voters hate the Pro Wrestler they definitely should not vote "My Party/Pro Wrestler/The Other Major Party". In Condorcet the voter should vote in line with his/her sincere preference order (with exceptions that are in practically all normal cases (in large public elections at least) marginal and theoretical). If th
Re: [EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?
On Apr 22, 2007, at 20:58 , Tim Hull wrote: > Regarding the constituencies, the 19-seat one is elected 10 seats > one semester, 9 seats the other. The other multi-seat > constituencies are similarly divided. I would say that none of > these can be combined for a simple reason - they do represent a > clear group (each individual school/college within the University) > as opposed to being a territorial district. Additionally, each > such group has its OWN student government - which makes them > somewhat resemble "states". Thus, combining the single-seat > districts would make about as much sense as combining several of > the one seat at-large Congressional districts for small U.S. states > for STV purposes. Likewise, there is no logical subdivision for > the 19-seat grouping - any such division would be an arbitrary new > construction. One might be able to split based on class status or > on off-campus/on-campus residency, but such designations tend to > change much more than school/college, leaving some students who run > for the seat they are eligible for becoming ineligible to hold it > the next semester. Regarding major party domination of such > districts - often these seats are not even contested by the > "parties", and half of them are won with a few votes by independent > write-ins. > > This does present a somewhat weird situation as far as PR and > elections, though it seems as if the best solution would be to > leave the division of representatives alone. However, the division > between two elections is something to consider. According to what > people think in here, it seems that this may be good for the 19- > seat constituency. However, it seems like it may not be for the > others (especially the 2 and 3-seat constituencies, but also the 6 > and 7 seat). The problem, though, with doing this (combining some > multi-seat elections and dividing others) is that each election is > contested by only half the campus (whereas now, each election is > contested by 90% of students - everyone minus the 1-seaters not up > for election). Thus, advertising and getting turnout becomes more > of a problem. > > Any comments on this? As far as single-winner goes, I see IRV as > being the likely choice with STV used in multi-winner due to the > fact that it would reduce the amount of explaining (as opposed to > doing something like Condorcet). Both IRV and Condorcet are based on rankings => equally complex to voters. IRV is a "single winner STV" so you save in words when explaining them to the decision makers, but simplest Condorcet methods are easy too (and complex ones more or less explainable too). The only reason favouring IRV I have seen in this stream is the simple explanation. I this is crucial, then that's maybe the way forward. Note that IRV and Condorcet differ also on their behaviour. IRV favours large parties. For example in the case of three parties the candidate of the smallest of them (in first place support) will be eliminated in all elections first, even if he/she would be a good compromise for all (would e.g. beat both others in pairwise comparisons). > As far as approval, I really don't see that working very well - > only voters who think their favorite has NO CHANCE to win would > vote for more than one. In this case, it seems like IRV is better. > > Tim > > P.S. Under my "pro wrestler" example, I was assuming that the voter > would, under a range system, give the pro wrestler a 3 or a 2 out > of 10, except for those who prefer them first. In this case, both > IRV and Range would not elect this candidate. Range is expressive and it is able to treat these two different types of "Pro Wrestlers" differently. Its problem is that it in practice easily becomes Approval (only min and max values used) in competitive elections. IRV and Condorcet pay no attention to the "numeric utility values", only to the relative preferences, and therefore can't make a difference between these two Pro Wrestler cases. (The reason why Condorcet (a ranking based method) is good despite of this is that it is not easy to get sincere "numeric utility values" from the voters, and it may be better not even try to use that information in the calculation process than to try and fail.) Juho ___ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
