[Mbodell]

I think a different approach that could work, instead of proportional, is to do single transfer voting for a slate of candidates. Combine several districts (or just do all elections congress people in each state at once) and then do single transfer voting for the multiple representative. You factor people's votes when they elect someone, and you transfer people's vote when you eliminate a candidate. See link for more information. As long as you have large enough set of people running then you have the twin benefits of roughly proportionate outcomes and also the people directly vote for candidates and in effect choose the list for the parties, not rely on the parties to choose the list order.

[helene_t]

Vampyr, on 2013-September-24, 13:59, said:

Whatever. Bill was suggesting a change whereby the electors could change their vote.

Not really. He suggested that electors of 3rd party candidates would vote for one of the major party candidates once it's obvious that their own candidate has no chance.

[helene_t]

nigel_k, on 2013-September-24, 23:51, said:

We have this in New Zealand. It has a kind of mathematical appeal to fairness but it doesn't work that well in practice. There are two main reasons why:

1. Getting elected is more to do with having a high position on the list chosen by the candidate's party, than by appealing to voters.

2. Middle parties have too much power. At the moment, there are a lot of party line votes. Imagine a third party with 5% of the vote and how much power they would have.

As for 1, it doesn't have to be that way. In Denmark, most parties don't have a list order so in each constituency in which the party wins a seat, the seat goes to the most popular candidate of that party in that district.

As for 2, I am not sure if that a disadvantage. If
49% of the voters want 0 VAT,
2% want 15% and
49% want 30% VAT

it seems reasonable to me that we end up with 15% even though it is the preference of only 2% of the voters. But OK, there will be situations in which a small party choses to govern together with whichever major party is willing to give them concessions on the small party's idiosyncratic preferences. In the town I lived in in the Netherlands, for example, most shops were not allowed to be open on Sundays because some weird fundamentalist party refused to support the coalition unless they got the other coalition parties to agree to ban Sunday sales, something which probably only a small fraction of the electorate supported.

[Trinidad]

billw55, on 2013-September-24, 08:51, said:

kenberg, on 2013-September-24, 08:44, said:

We would vote for a party rather than a person?

Yes, and this is the biggest disadvantage of the system IMO. I want to vote for specific people.

You can obviously have your cake and eat it too. In many countries you vote for a person in a party.

If the person gathers enough votes by himself to get a seat, s/he will get it. If this person doesn't get enough votes for the seat, the votes will go to the party. The same is true for the excess votes that he gets. The party will assign the seats that they earn from these excess votes to candidates that didn't make it on their own through a predetermined system.

Suppose that there are 5 seats available and 500 votes are cast, this might lead to (votes - party/candidate):

Party 1: 309 Strong club
1. 113 Hrothgar
2.  83 Rhm
3.  62 Straube
4.  27 Zelandakh
5.  24 PrecisionL

Party 2: 191 Natural
1.  55 Kenberg
2.  11 Trinidad
3. 112 Helene_t
4.  12 Nigel_k
5.  11 Blackshoe

The natural party picked Kenberg as their top candidate, but Helene_t was more popular among voters. (Sorry, Ken.)

This means that 100 votes are required to gain a seat: Hrothgar (SC) and Helene_t (Nat.) are in. Nobody else got in on his own force. The Strong club party can divide 209 votes = 2 seats and they go to Rhm and Straube. The Naturals don't have enough for an extra seat. Four seats are given and we look at how many votes remain for the last seat: The Naturals have 91 "rest votes" which is more than the 9 that the Strong Clubbers have. The fifth seat goes to the Naturals and they pick Kenberg.

The BBF House will consist of:
Hrothgar (SC)
Rhm (SC)
Straube (SC)
Helene_t (Nat.)
Kenberg (Nat.)

Rik

[kenberg]

"If nominated I will not run, if elected i will not serve" (Sherman)

Vote Helene. Vote Helene. Go natural. Go Helene.

Do I have a future as a campaign adviser?

[y66]

kenberg, on 2013-September-25, 07:59, said:

"If nominated I will not run, if elected i will not serve" (Sherman)

Vote Helene. Vote Helene. Go natural. Go Helene.

Do I have a future as a campaign adviser?

You have good instincts for choosing candidates. What do the posters look like?

[Mbodell]

Trinidad, on 2013-September-25, 05:56, said:

This means that 100 votes are required to gain a seat: Hrothgar (SC) and Helene_t (Nat.) are in. Nobody else got in on his own force. The Strong club party can divide 209 votes = 2 seats and they go to Rhm and Straube. The Naturals don't have enough for an extra seat. Four seats are given and we look at how many votes remain for the last seat: The Naturals have 91 "rest votes" which is more than the 9 that the Strong Clubbers have. The fifth seat goes to the Naturals and they pick Kenberg.

But why let the party choose where the excess votes go or the votes for people who didn't run. Have the people voting put their 2nd preference, 3rd preference, etc. And then do the election redistributing extra votes and eliminated votes that way. Assuming everyone votes for all of one party before the other you'll get the same breakdown by party (but possibly different people if the list order doesn't match the order the electorate would follow). But some electors might mix their preferences more voting for people they like from either party before listing just the one party. This also allows a little better for 3rd party candidates, especially ones that have good secondary support in peoples preferences.