In defence of IRV
Certainly at the state representative level, multimember districts are not unconstitutional in Vermont.
So besides IRV vs. Condorcet, my other fight in Vermont is this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f3NY4MXgnmVuO1zT_eakWht4HOmmd8Dx/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CN1qD-8mkMzqckzC6XDaUC8APAJAJvth/view
They're playing the race card in the whitest, least racially diverse state in the U.S.
--
r b-j
On 11/15/2021 4:04 PM Daniel Carrera dcarrera@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 15, 2021 at 2:49 PM Jan Šimbera simbera.jan@gmail.com wrote:
As an aside since the debate has broadened considerably anyway:
To me, a Central European, it is still quite strange how little the
American debate on electoral reform focuses on the option of multimember
constituencies (the reform of House elections from single-member
districts to a per-state PR method perhaps being the most obvious candidate).
The main argument I find for the "first show support, then negotiate"
paradigm is that it gives the votes more expressive power
AND makes the negotiation process more transparent and observable
for the general public.
Yeah. I think multimember precincts are a brilliant solution but my impression is that anglo-saxon countries are really stuck on the idea of single member districts (Ireland being a notable exception). The argument I've heard is that the elected official is there to represent their particular region, but I've never been persuaded by that argument. I've lived in three anglo-saxon countries (Canada, UK, US) and national politics are always national. I've never heard of an MP or member of congress actually push for a little parochial issue that is specific to their particular spot in the country. It all seems to be party-line votes regardless. If politicians are going to behave that way, then we might as well just have a system with proportional representation. I would love to see STV in more places. I think in the US specifically there are constitutional barriers to multi-member districts.
--
Dr. Daniel Carrera
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Iowa State University
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
In the United States there is no constitutional barrier to PR, with two
partial exceptions (more on that below). The Apportionment Act of 1842,
cited by Jan Simbera, was the first legislative mandate for
single-member districts, but not the last. The most recent was passed in
1967 following the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The motive in 1967 was to
prevent Southern states from using at-large plurality (called "multiple
non-transferable vote" or MNTV by political scientists) to deny
representation to black voters. (MNTV is majoritarianism on steroids
since a cohesive majority of voters can win all the seats.) PR would
have accomplished this aim much better, but the political class in the
U.S. was and still is extremely afraid of PR.
The constitutional partial exceptions are (1) the Senate, in which each
state has two representatives, regardless of population. And (2) seats
in the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states
according to population. Congress could mandate PR in states with two or
more House members but the electoral threshold and degree of
proportionality would have to vary by state.
A few states only have one seat in the House of Representatives, and a
few more only have two. To remedy this for the sake of PR and still
comply with the Constitution, Congress would have to increase the number
of seats from 435 to at least 1,135 and even that number would only give
the state of Wyoming two seats (Wyoming has about 0.18% of the country's
population). In a House of that size, the state of California would have
roughly 135 seats.
--Bob Richard
------ Original Message ------
From: "Jan Šimbera" simbera.jan@gmail.com
To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Sent: 11/15/2021 1:28:30 PM
Subject: Re: [EM] In defence of IRV
I think in the US specifically there are constitutional barriers to
multi-member districts.
As far as I understand both the US Constitution and [1], the barrier is
not constitutional but on the level of a congressional act, making it
much easier to change. Please correct me if I'm wrong!
[1]: The Apportionment Act of 1842: “In All Cases, By District” | US
House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
https://history.house.gov/Blog/2019/April/4-16-Apportionment-1/
On Mon, Nov 15, 2021 at 10:05 PM Daniel Carrera dcarrera@gmail.com
wrote:
On Mon, Nov 15, 2021 at 2:49 PM Jan Šimbera simbera.jan@gmail.com
wrote:
As an aside since the debate has broadened considerably anyway:
To me, a Central European, it is still quite strange how little the
American debate on electoral reform focuses on the option of
multimember
constituencies (the reform of House elections from single-member
districts to a per-state PR method perhaps being the most obvious
candidate).
The main argument I find for the "first show support, then negotiate"
paradigm is that it gives the votes more expressive power
AND makes the negotiation process more transparent and observable
for the general public.
Yeah. I think multimember precincts are a brilliant solution but my
impression is that anglo-saxon countries are really stuck on the idea
of single member districts (Ireland being a notable exception). The
argument I've heard is that the elected official is there to represent
their particular region, but I've never been persuaded by that
argument. I've lived in three anglo-saxon countries (Canada, UK, US)
and national politics are always national. I've never heard of an MP
or member of congress actually push for a little parochial issue that
is specific to their particular spot in the country. It all seems to
be party-line votes regardless. If politicians are going to behave
that way, then we might as well just have a system with proportional
representation. I would love to see STV in more places. I think in the
US specifically there are constitutional barriers to multi-member
districts.
--
Dr. Daniel Carrera
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Iowa State University
To all, re KM on STV,
Small districts are in no way integral to STV. Clarence Hoag and George Hallett introduced at large districts to US cities. New York was at-large STV. That's why it could boast a communist or two, whose main purpose was to uphold the rights of marginalised labor. Hallett made the point that you didn't need primaries with STV because STV secured them (in an at large election).
Cambridge still has an at-large STV 9 member constituency.
The introducing of more than one voting method in any election is a bad idea, because science aspires to one truth, not two. But MMP already is two contradictory methods, both wrong. And two wrongs don't make a right.
Regards,
Richard Lung.
On 15 Nov 2021, at 9:57 pm, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_elmet@t-online.de wrote:
On 15.11.2021 22:04, Daniel Carrera wrote:
I've lived in three anglo-saxon countries (Canada, UK, US) and national
politics are always national. I've never heard of an MP or member of
congress actually push for a little parochial issue that is specific to
their particular spot in the country. It all seems to be party-line
votes regardless. If politicians are going to behave that way, then we
might as well just have a system with proportional representation. I
would love to see STV in more places.
I agree. It's not like the US is completely foreign to the concept - New
York used STV to temporarily break the political machine there (until it
struck back and got it repealed by red-baiting).
And I would prefer STV (with single-ticket MMP if that's not too
complex) to party list because STV also allows the voters to express
preferences for factions within a party while these factions are too
small to form parties of their own.
The downside of STV compared to party list is that the relatively small
district sizes reduce party proportionality, which is why it ideally
should have an MMP component (and ideally, the list ticket should be
constructed from the voters' preferences like Schulze's MMP proposal
does). But that might be a little too much to ask for in one go.
-km
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
On 15.11.2021 23:11, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
Certainly at the state representative level, multimember districts are not unconstitutional in Vermont.
So besides IRV vs. Condorcet, my other fight in Vermont is this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f3NY4MXgnmVuO1zT_eakWht4HOmmd8Dx/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CN1qD-8mkMzqckzC6XDaUC8APAJAJvth/view
They're playing the race card in the whitest, least racially diverse state in the U.S.
What election method would be used to elect the representatives in the
multimember districts?
-km
On 16.11.2021 13:22, Richard Lung wrote:
To all, re KM on STV,
Small districts are in no way integral to STV. Clarence Hoag and
George Hallett introduced at large districts to US cities. New York was
at-large STV. That's why it could boast a communist or two, whose main
purpose was to uphold the rights of marginalised labor. Hallett made the
point that you didn't need primaries with STV because STV secured them
(in an at large election).
Cambridge still has an at-large STV 9 member constituency.
The introducing of more than one voting method in any election is a
bad idea, because science aspires to one truth, not two. But MMP already
is two contradictory methods, both wrong. And two wrongs don't make a right.
I don't think that follows.
To use a Norwegian example: Currently we use what is essentially party
list with top-up seats (called "levelling seats"). How this works is
that first the county (district) seats are allocated according to the
support in each county[1] using modified Sainte-Laguë, then the top-up
seats (one per county) is allocated, using a separate greedy algorithm,
to increase nationwide proportionality among the parties who pass the
threshold.
So this is two voting methods and two wrongs, right?
But now consider an alternative approach: you set up a matrix where each
row gives the support (in number of votes) for a given party in the
different countries, and each column gives the support for the different
parties in a county. Let the element corresponding to the support of
party p in county c be v_c,p.
Then there exists an algorithm that determines county and party divisors
(d_c, d_p) so that when the number of seats party p gets in county c is
round(v_c,p/(d_c * d_p)), the sum over all parties for a given county
equals the number of seats apportioned to that county; and the sum over
a given party for all counties is equal to the number of seats that
party would obtain if there was only one district.
This is the Pukelsheim method, biproportional apportionment. And it's
one procedure. Yet the outcome is much the same: local proportionality
is reduced so that national proportionality can be increased.
There are many reasons to favor the second over the first - for
instance, the greedy algorithm can get stuck in a local optimum that
seems obviously wrong. However, that one makes use of two procedures and
the other makes use of only one doesn't seem, to me, to be one of them.
They both aim to achieve the same objective; whether that objective is
desirable should, IMHO, be considered separately from what method might
be used to achieve it. And given some objective to be achieved, the
methods should be judged by how well they accomplish the task (and at
the cost of what kind of undesired behavior), rather than by the
particular construction of their algorithms.
-km
[1] Currently only some of the district constituencies match up with
county borders due to the last government's county reform. The current
government intends to revert some of these changes.
To KM and all,
The criticism is of mixed election systems on two principles, which happen to be contradictory, in the case of AMS/MMP, and both wrong!
Party list systems come under the caution: You can't derive an ought from an is. Just because they are prevalent does not necessarily mean they are right. Party list systems are not so much elections as partitions.
Regards,
Richard Lung.
On 18 Nov 2021, at 2:02 pm, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_elmet@t-online.de wrote:
On 16.11.2021 13:22, Richard Lung wrote:
To all, re KM on STV,
Small districts are in no way integral to STV. Clarence Hoag and
George Hallett introduced at large districts to US cities. New York was
at-large STV. That's why it could boast a communist or two, whose main
purpose was to uphold the rights of marginalised labor. Hallett made the
point that you didn't need primaries with STV because STV secured them
(in an at large election).
Cambridge still has an at-large STV 9 member constituency.
The introducing of more than one voting method in any election is a
bad idea, because science aspires to one truth, not two. But MMP already
is two contradictory methods, both wrong. And two wrongs don't make a right.
I don't think that follows.
To use a Norwegian example: Currently we use what is essentially party
list with top-up seats (called "levelling seats"). How this works is
that first the county (district) seats are allocated according to the
support in each county[1] using modified Sainte-Laguë, then the top-up
seats (one per county) is allocated, using a separate greedy algorithm,
to increase nationwide proportionality among the parties who pass the
threshold.
So this is two voting methods and two wrongs, right?
But now consider an alternative approach: you set up a matrix where each
row gives the support (in number of votes) for a given party in the
different countries, and each column gives the support for the different
parties in a county. Let the element corresponding to the support of
party p in county c be v_c,p.
Then there exists an algorithm that determines county and party divisors
(d_c, d_p) so that when the number of seats party p gets in county c is
round(v_c,p/(d_c * d_p)), the sum over all parties for a given county
equals the number of seats apportioned to that county; and the sum over
a given party for all counties is equal to the number of seats that
party would obtain if there was only one district.
This is the Pukelsheim method, biproportional apportionment. And it's
one procedure. Yet the outcome is much the same: local proportionality
is reduced so that national proportionality can be increased.
There are many reasons to favor the second over the first - for
instance, the greedy algorithm can get stuck in a local optimum that
seems obviously wrong. However, that one makes use of two procedures and
the other makes use of only one doesn't seem, to me, to be one of them.
They both aim to achieve the same objective; whether that objective is
desirable should, IMHO, be considered separately from what method might
be used to achieve it. And given some objective to be achieved, the
methods should be judged by how well they accomplish the task (and at
the cost of what kind of undesired behavior), rather than by the
particular construction of their algorithms.
-km
[1] Currently only some of the district constituencies match up with
county borders due to the last government's county reform. The current
government intends to revert some of these changes.