An unusual "absolving" PR method
Some methods are algorithmically simple by making the voters or
candidates do their work instead. For instance, Approval gets some of
its simplicity by telling the voters to figure out where to put their
cutoff. Let's say that such a method "absolves itself" of work that
other methods do (and the back-end complexity that arises as a consequence).
In that vein, here is one such PR method with parties: Voters rank party
candidates. An order of finish is computed using a majoritarian method,
say ranked pairs. Separately, each voter's ballot is counted as a vote
for whatever party their favorite candidate belongs to, like in ordinary
party list.
Then the method uses some well-known party list method (say Sainte-Laguë
with Pukelsheim's method) to determine the number of winners per party
per district. These winners get filled up with candidates in the order
of the district's order of finish.
For instance, if district A's order of finish is
R1>G1>B3>R2>G2>R3>G3>B2>B1 and the party list calculation gives the
district two seats to R and G each and one seat to B, then the
allocation is:
Red: R1, R2
Green: G1, G2
Blue: B3
Now, all else equal, you'd expect these seats to be filled up with
centrists since we're using a majoritarian method and candidates closer
to the median voter are preferred by it. But here's the "absolution":
the parties are motivated to retain their distinct identities. Knowing
that centrists will be elected, but that the party list component is
based on favorites, they may simply not nominate candidates who are too
centrist, because they're going to win the seat anyway and they don't
want to dilute their ideological position.
However, there is a tension to this reasoning. If they nominate a bounch
of extremists, then that will put voters off voting for them and they
lose first preferences. The parties thus have to find a balance between
not running too centrist candidates (who won't have an ideological base
in the party itself) and candidates who are too far into the wings.
In practice, this might just turn into ordinary party list PR, because
the tension that "if we run too extreme candidates, people won't vote
for us" also applies to ordinary party list. What it would do is keep
parties from fielding candidates beloved by the leadership but not the
people, as the outcome ordering would force these candidates to the back
and they wouldn't be elected -- unless everybody else on the list is worse.
-km
Good evening Kristofer,
I've played with basically the same system myself, though I go with
quadratic voting at the individual level in the name of countability.
Anyway, i don't think there'd be anything stopping the rush to the centre
here: parties would just have their national profile set at whichever
ideological equilibrium they need to tend to by nation-wide spots or
polemic, and have the local candidates rush one over the other to say
"well, the boys at central are a bit rough, but their heart is in the right
place. We'll find reasonable solutions here".
Regards,
On Fri, 12 Dec 2025, 10:42 pm Kristofer Munsterhjelm via Election-Methods, <
election-methods@lists.electorama.com> wrote:
Some methods are algorithmically simple by making the voters or
candidates do their work instead. For instance, Approval gets some of
its simplicity by telling the voters to figure out where to put their
cutoff. Let's say that such a method "absolves itself" of work that
other methods do (and the back-end complexity that arises as a
consequence).
In that vein, here is one such PR method with parties: Voters rank party
candidates. An order of finish is computed using a majoritarian method,
say ranked pairs. Separately, each voter's ballot is counted as a vote
for whatever party their favorite candidate belongs to, like in ordinary
party list.
Then the method uses some well-known party list method (say Sainte-Laguë
with Pukelsheim's method) to determine the number of winners per party
per district. These winners get filled up with candidates in the order
of the district's order of finish.
For instance, if district A's order of finish is
R1>G1>B3>R2>G2>R3>G3>B2>B1 and the party list calculation gives the
district two seats to R and G each and one seat to B, then the
allocation is:
Red: R1, R2
Green: G1, G2
Blue: B3
Now, all else equal, you'd expect these seats to be filled up with
centrists since we're using a majoritarian method and candidates closer
to the median voter are preferred by it. But here's the "absolution":
the parties are motivated to retain their distinct identities. Knowing
that centrists will be elected, but that the party list component is
based on favorites, they may simply not nominate candidates who are too
centrist, because they're going to win the seat anyway and they don't
want to dilute their ideological position.
However, there is a tension to this reasoning. If they nominate a bounch
of extremists, then that will put voters off voting for them and they
lose first preferences. The parties thus have to find a balance between
not running too centrist candidates (who won't have an ideological base
in the party itself) and candidates who are too far into the wings.
In practice, this might just turn into ordinary party list PR, because
the tension that "if we run too extreme candidates, people won't vote
for us" also applies to ordinary party list. What it would do is keep
parties from fielding candidates beloved by the leadership but not the
people, as the outcome ordering would force these candidates to the back
and they wouldn't be elected -- unless everybody else on the list is worse.
-km
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info
On 2025-12-13 09:11, Etjon Basha wrote:
Good evening Kristofer,
I've played with basically the same system myself, though I go with
quadratic voting at the individual level in the name of countability.
Anyway, i don't think there'd be anything stopping the rush to the
centre here: parties would just have their national profile set at
whichever ideological equilibrium they need to tend to by nation-wide
spots or polemic, and have the local candidates rush one over the other
to say "well, the boys at central are a bit rough, but their heart is in
the right place. We'll find reasonable solutions here".
Right, that's a good point. It's very dependent on strong central party
discipline.
In the lack of such, maybe the following sketch is better: For each
district, for each party, deweight voters who didn't count as voting for
that party in the list election, and usse Condorcet on post-deweighted
ballots to create an order of finish for the candidates of that party.
Pick winners from that "generated list".
But then the question becomes: how strongly do you deweight? You'd end
up with something that probably still fails the DPC - that's the cost of
the simplicity - but a choice of weight factor makes it more complex.
-km
Hi Kristofer,
For me, the sole allure of the very similar method I've been playing with
is to allow a permanent minority to influence the outcome of the permanent
majority, for which purpose you'd apply no de-weighting at all. Indeed,
you'd have the party and individual votes entirely independent of one
another, and no way to linkone to the other. The uber-open list, so to
speak.
Regards,
Etjon
On Sat, 13 Dec 2025, 10:51 pm Kristofer Munsterhjelm, <
km-elmet@munsterhjelm.no> wrote:
On 2025-12-13 09:11, Etjon Basha wrote:
Good evening Kristofer,
I've played with basically the same system myself, though I go with
quadratic voting at the individual level in the name of countability.
Anyway, i don't think there'd be anything stopping the rush to the
centre here: parties would just have their national profile set at
whichever ideological equilibrium they need to tend to by nation-wide
spots or polemic, and have the local candidates rush one over the other
to say "well, the boys at central are a bit rough, but their heart is in
the right place. We'll find reasonable solutions here".
Right, that's a good point. It's very dependent on strong central party
discipline.
In the lack of such, maybe the following sketch is better: For each
district, for each party, deweight voters who didn't count as voting for
that party in the list election, and usse Condorcet on post-deweighted
ballots to create an order of finish for the candidates of that party.
Pick winners from that "generated list".
But then the question becomes: how strongly do you deweight? You'd end
up with something that probably still fails the DPC - that's the cost of
the simplicity - but a choice of weight factor makes it more complex.
-km