I tread more lightly regarding multi-winner RCV than I do for single-winner RCV and what is the correct method regarding "The Method". In any case, the goal is to truly value our votes equally.
Single-Winner - Here there is no proportionality to be had. It's winner-take-all. A governor or mayor is not 60% one party and 40% another. Then the only way to value our votes equally is to have the majority rule. If more voters mark their ballots preferring Candidate A over Candidate B than the number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, then Candidate B should not be elected. If Candidate B *were* to be elected, that would mean that the fewer voters preferring Candidate B had cast votes that had greater value and that effectively counted more than those votes from voters of the simple majority preferring Candidate A.
Multi-Winner - Here there *is* some proportionality to be had. Somehow if 60% of a 3-winner district is Democrat and 30% of the same district are GOP, then the Republicans should be able to get a seat without being shut out 3 to 0 by the majority-Democrat district. 2 to 1 seems fairer when the portion of the electorate is 60% to 30%.
Apportioning delegates for the DNC or RNC to candidates in the Presidential Primary - Here, we *don't* want to shave off and transfer surplus votes because a presidential candidate deserves more delegates if they get more votes. The only thing to do is to determine which primary candidates get at least one delegate. (This might be with repeated STV rounds.) Then this is already a solved problem with the U.S. Government and that mathematical solution is the Huntington-Hill method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington%E2%80%93Hill_method .
The heavy lift, I think, is the legitimacy of advantaging parties over independent candidates even more than they are presently. Major parties and even minor parties already have an advantage over independent candidates because of Duverger's Law (some people are less likely to vote for a candidate they don't think has a chance in winning).
In order to get on the ballot in the general election, the requirement for candidates running independently of any party should be the same as those for candidates that are listed on the ballot associated with a party. Whether it's the number of petition signatures necessary to get on the ballot or it's winning one of the top 4 or top 5 in a "jungle" primary, the requirement for ballot access should be the same. (And for the "jungle primary", the requirement to get on the primary ballot should be exactly the same, whether the candidate is associated with a party or not.)
So, in order to not *officially* discriminate against candidates that are independent of any party, then I don't think Party List is in the cards. But we can *still* use RCV to be used in Proportional Representation. It might have to be STV, but it doesn't have to be "Bottom-up" STV (which is just IRV that stops when the number of remaining candidates is the same as the number of winners), and it shouldn't be.
To be PR, It should be an STV method with a Droop quota and transferred surplus votes. Maybe specifically the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method (WIGM): https://prfound.org/resources/reference/reference-wigm-rule/ . This is the method that, besides Bottom-up, comes in Dominion "Democracy Suite - EMS Results Tally & Reporting" software for RCV elections.
It should be deterministic, unlike just drawing random surplus ballots from a pile (as has been done in some PR STV elections). And it will likely have fractional-vote precision, which looks sorta ugly.
even Gregory system with fractions can make less ugly vote transfer tables by simply dropping the fraction when vote tallies are recorded.
random transfer of surplus votes is no biggie - if at least when the next marked preference is considered. the "Exact method" used in Ireland and Malta for last hundred years , and i think used in Cambridge.
the lower preference piggy-backed on the ballot may not be used later anyway. it depends if vote is again transferred.
so there is random and then there is really random. even really random way may reflect the proportional transfer (Gregory) just fine or close enough. usually a change of 50 or a hundred or 500 votes has no effect on who is elected.
Chicago I think it was used to use non-random random where ballots on a stack were numbered and if one-fourth had to be transferred then every fourth numbered ballot was moved. likely result was just as random (and representative) as blind sampling but it looked more organized.
I recommend Montopedia wix.site blog on surplus transfer to get list of the various methods used for surplus transfers that i have heard about.
note: only a small number of vote transfers are transfers of surplus votes one less than the number of seats at the most. and not all surp. transfers allow a choice anyway.
"even Gregory system with fractions can make less ugly vote transfer tables by simply dropping the fraction when vote tallies are recorded."
And that causes a little error. Sometimes elections are close and the accumulated error from multiple roundings could affect the outcome.
"...random transfer of surplus votes is no biggie - if at least when the next marked preference is considered. "
Well, of course the outcome of the election may depend on how the deck is shuffled.
It's a mild form of sortition. Now, if you or your candidate is on the losing end of a randomly-shuffled pile of ballots, how are you going to feel about prevailing by the numbers (the votes) but losing because of random chance?
Only when there is a dead tie, and there is no other basis in which to prefer one candidate over another, only then should a coin be tossed. Everything else should be deterministic. Especially in the cases where the margin is very small.
And the Cast Vote Record will always allow the public to learn that the "majority" (in some sense) was robbed in the election. When that happens, effectively, the fewer voters whose candidate wins, their votes effectively counted more than those votes from the larger group of voters whose candidate did not win.
Sortition is fine (and correct) for selecting juries for trials. Not for elections (except for breaking a dead tie). Elections should be deterministic and repeatable (i.e. same outcome in a recount of the same ballot data, but ordered differently).
"the "Exact method" used in Ireland and Malta for last hundred years , and i think used in Cambridge."
I saw a video, I think at RCVRC, that seemed to say that Cambridge randomly draws off surplus ballots. I can only shrug my shoulders. Eventually the CVR data will be regularly examined and reported. When a significant faction of voters find out that the value of their votes were reduced (relative to the winning faction) just because of the random selection of the surplus ballots, there will be a sense of loss of legitimacy for the winner and for the method.
dropped fractions - I mean instead of writing 1003.33 votes just saying 1003 votes. I don't think there are multiple rounds of rounding involved, nor that the diff is worth the complicated vote count table.
I still say "...random transfer of surplus votes is no biggie - if at least when the next marked preference is considered. "
the "Exact method" where the next marked preference is considered, is 100 percent the same transfer as Gregory concerning how votes carry what next preference -- the Exact Method is only random IF the piggybacked lower preferences are used, which is not always the case.
as I say there are random methods and there are really random methods. Exact method, is not really random but it is often lumped in with really random.
exact method is not a randomly shuffled pile of ballots. under exact method successful A's votes are sorted into separate piles for next choice. - B pile , C pile EC. then from each of those piles the propseramount are taken. secondary preferences are piggybacked and that is where randomness comes in but those secondary preferences might never be used.
(more info in Montopedia blogs on surplus vote transfers --
Here's big point - the vote transfers seldom make much difference in who wins. most, sometimes all, the winners in an STV election were in winning positions in the first count.
But results, already mostly established in first round of STV vote count, are much different than FPTP or Block Voting results.
each voter has one vote in multi-member district -- that is backbone of STV.
okay, Cambridge uses random, but that is not the only way to transfer without going to the extent of using Gregory method with its fanatical factions.
Ireland and Malta uses Exact Method, transferring whole votes, not random at all as to first next usable preference. it has worked for 100 years.
all transfers have little effect on who wins - transfers seldom change many winners, and sometimes not at all, compared to first round of the count.
even fewer changes are produced by surplus transfers, which are few in number in any STV district contest. Four at most in a district with five seats.
Some Gregory methods use only "last parcel" to formulate transfers so sure it is not random but not necessarily reflective of all the supporters who voted for the successful candidate. transfer was done by using only certain of the winner's votes to formulate transfer. (it is complicated)
Cambridge likely is fine to use really random because -- sheer randomness is likely proportional. odds are anyway; votes are not examined so see how off it may be; seldom does a few votes here or there make a diff.
that the result is mixed, balanced and roughly proportional mostly is done in first round before any transfers are done.
look at Vanuatu's elections - no transfers at all (SNTV) and result is dependably more balanced than any Block voting or FPTP.
every district elects mixed rep. no artificial regionalism/geographical polarization.
that shows how little effect transfers have. But STV is better - it polishes the fairness even more.
> "Cambridge likely is fine to use really random because -- sheer randomness is likely proportional. "
With ensemble averages, yes, I would expect sheer randomness to be proportional.
Ya know, we could do mark-only-one FPTP ballots, put them all in a bin, shake it up and draw out one ballot and elect the candidate marked on that randomly-drawn ballot. Run this experiment a million times and average the results and those averaged results would be proportional.
I just didn't know, before that vid, that Cambridge was not using a deterministic method. I knew they were STV multi-winner were since, i dunno, the 50s. Several decades. I didn't know which STV, I just didn't expect it would be a little sortition when there are deterministic methods to do the same thing in a repeatable manner.
I don't know deterministic - I just know that the Cambridge results are more balanced and mixed and proportional than Block Voting or FPTP in so many single-member districts.
Even Gregory surplus transfers are not reflective of all the votes held by the successful candidates, not when only the last parcel received by the successful cand. is the basis for the transfer.
maybe this further comment is un-necessary, but for sake of compete-ness would like to say --
the "Cast Vote Record" under any STV election would show that a high proportion of cast votes were used to elect the winners, no matter how the few surplus transfers were done.
in Cambridge, 20,920 votes actually elected someone out of 23,339.
just slightly more than one quota were not used effectively.
all nine elected in the end were in winning position in the first round, which can happen or come close under any STV system.
(see Bass division, Tasmania 2024 state election where seven elected, using Droop and Gregory method. Wood with 1900 votes in first round jumped ahead of Armstrong with initial 2000. but otherwise all seven were most popular in first round and went on to win. Wood was able to aggregate many votes because three Liberals were excluded and had their votes transferred, while only two Lambie candidates were not elected.)
Wood elected at the end with 1000 more votes than last unsuccessful candaitre so not likely even a random transfer in the six surplus transfers that were done would have had any effect on who won.
2023 Cambridge
23,339 valid ballots.
Electing 9 candidates.
Quota is 2334 votes. (1/10th of valid votes , plus 1)
There were 173 invalid ballots.
20,920 votes used to elect the winners.
Cambridge eleciton method statement says every nth votes used for surplus votes. so apparently they use "non-random random" that I described before. (Chicago style, I think it was called)
proper PR systems means that you don't need primaries in advance of the real election, and I would call RLPR a proper PR system.
although i don't know why Nick is so worried about what he called "vote leakage among parties". When vote crosses party line in STV (PRCV) is because voter says if his first (or upper) choice cannot be elected, he wants the vote to cross party lines.
sometimes this is because he likes the individual indicated so much that even if candidates of his preferred party still are in running , he wants his vote to cross party lines.;
other times it is because his party's last candidate is out of the running and choice is vote will die or be moved across party lines.
either way it is choice of the voter.
a system like RLPR may not secure minority party rep. any better than STV. if vote cannot cross party lines, it will die if that party does not have quota.
RLPR is not any better at securing minority rep within a party than STV, it seems to me.
the most-popular candidate on a party slate are elected under both systems.
under STV a candidate must aggregate quota to be elected (or win by plurality at end).
under RLPR party must have quota to give to the candidate.
same difference. minority within party is not better produced under RLPR than STV, unless zipper is used or a similar mechanism.
Is he worried because party proportionality under STV looks bad when he uses votes as first placed to determine Gallagher index or something. but STV does not use votes as first placed to determine winners so don't use votes as first placed to determine proportionality.
it is like saying in IRV if the first-round leader is not elected, then result is undemocratic. some do say this but we know they don't understand term majority.
In STV people who want party proportionality based on first round votes don't understand goal of vote transfers is that few (perhaps just one quota ) are not used to actually elect someone. you can't do this without allowing votes to cross party lines.
District magnitude is more imp. than the election system used, to produce PR.
at least that is my assessment from a cursory look at Nick's RLPR essay.
Your mentioning Berlin's much larger council, and even London's somewhat largeer council, compared to many big US cities, seemed like it was going to be a set-up for mentioning council expansion simultaneous with an electoral system revision. Portland was willing to do that, as you know, partly to improve representation by cutting the number of residents each councilor must try to represent. (With our small council sizes, it's no wonder people feel dissociated from their local government.)
Also, I was wondering why you didn't including MMP in an "Open vs Closed vs MMP" section, since you mentioned MMP earlier.
Using expansion to combine current districts with a like-sized compensatory tier is a low-disruption approach (especially in Philadelphia) that nontheless can result in an attainably low election threshold whereby small parties might win a seat as the starting point for demonstrating they are not wasted votes. This approach avoids the exhaustion differential that arises when minority or less educated voters use ranked ballots. Maybe a future article?
Having now endorsed a position I offered years ago (no new nonpartisan elections in cities), are you now going to take back the mean things you said on this blog about me, Lee Drutman, Matthew Shugart, Mike Latner, and others who have been proposing party lists for half a decade?
Hi Jack, nice of you to stop by the DSOS Tavern again. I can't tell from your comment if you are joking or serious. If you are serious, it seems you have misunderstood my article. To be clear, I believe STV (Proportional RCV) would be the best system for NYC, as well as Philadelphia and Baltimore, and it would work fine to combine it with NYC's current party-based elections, since that is what NYC currently has. As you know, NYC once used STV in party-based elections, and as my article points out, that system worked extremely well in providing diverse and proportional representation. I have never been opposed to partisan elections in cities, and I am not wedded to non-partisan elections either. As a reformer trying to pass reform, I have found the chances of success are greatest when you change as little as possible, so the partisan/nonpartisan nature of city elections I have never felt strongly about, one way or another. In the campaigns I have led, we retained whatever partisan condition pre-existed.
In addition, I believe that transferable ballots are one of the wonders of modern democratic practice. If you see my Feb 13 article, you will see that I recommend ranked ballots for the recent German elections, retaining Germany's List PR but allowing voters to rank multiple parties to prevent the wasted votes that occurred when both the FDP and BSW just missed the 5% threshold. So ranked ballots can have lots of different applications, they truly are a wonder, in my view. And they would do amazing things in NYC elections using party-based STV, since the ranked ballots would facilitate a lot of coalition-building among grassroots groups, ensure that multiple candidates of color don't spoil each other, and other good things.
In terms of the East coast cities that already have party-based elections, I have never believed it was necessary for these cities to convert to nonpartisan elections -- are you implying otherwise? I can't tell. And I don't believe non-partisan cities need to convert to party-based election, STV just worked well recently in Portland, which already had nonpartisan elections, no need to change their elections to party-based. With STV, it works well in both party-based and nonpartisan situations.
The reason I wrote that article, to be honest, was in the hopes that people like you, Drutman, Dan Cantor, et al might actually role up your sleeves and get to work toward your goal of party-based PR. Because yes, you have indeed been proposing it for "half a decade," as you wrote. Isn't that long enough to actually propose a plan and start executing that plan? I made your case for you in that article, pointing out that you have some great opportunities in these East coast party-based cities to ACTUALLY MAKE IT HAPPEN. Are you ready, willing, able? I would love to see it happen. And that would provide a good example in the US of how List PR could work. Maybe a state would then adopt it down the road. That's how it worked with single-winner RCV -- first we passed it in a number of cities, then Maine adopted it, then Alaska. Start local, work your way up to state-based. That's a successful strategy, in my experience. Are you guys ready to roll this effort out, or are you going to debate it for another 5 years? LOL
And for the record, if you are serious in your comment about my saying "mean things," I don't agree that I have ever been mean to you, but I do have principled, substantive and well-reasoned differences with you. Which I will continue to express when I feel it is appropriate. I am guessing you are just joking about that, but it's hard to tell.
Thanks for hanging out at the DSOS Tavern for a bit. All the best, Jack.
I tread more lightly regarding multi-winner RCV than I do for single-winner RCV and what is the correct method regarding "The Method". In any case, the goal is to truly value our votes equally.
Single-Winner - Here there is no proportionality to be had. It's winner-take-all. A governor or mayor is not 60% one party and 40% another. Then the only way to value our votes equally is to have the majority rule. If more voters mark their ballots preferring Candidate A over Candidate B than the number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, then Candidate B should not be elected. If Candidate B *were* to be elected, that would mean that the fewer voters preferring Candidate B had cast votes that had greater value and that effectively counted more than those votes from voters of the simple majority preferring Candidate A.
Multi-Winner - Here there *is* some proportionality to be had. Somehow if 60% of a 3-winner district is Democrat and 30% of the same district are GOP, then the Republicans should be able to get a seat without being shut out 3 to 0 by the majority-Democrat district. 2 to 1 seems fairer when the portion of the electorate is 60% to 30%.
Apportioning delegates for the DNC or RNC to candidates in the Presidential Primary - Here, we *don't* want to shave off and transfer surplus votes because a presidential candidate deserves more delegates if they get more votes. The only thing to do is to determine which primary candidates get at least one delegate. (This might be with repeated STV rounds.) Then this is already a solved problem with the U.S. Government and that mathematical solution is the Huntington-Hill method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington%E2%80%93Hill_method .
The heavy lift, I think, is the legitimacy of advantaging parties over independent candidates even more than they are presently. Major parties and even minor parties already have an advantage over independent candidates because of Duverger's Law (some people are less likely to vote for a candidate they don't think has a chance in winning).
In order to get on the ballot in the general election, the requirement for candidates running independently of any party should be the same as those for candidates that are listed on the ballot associated with a party. Whether it's the number of petition signatures necessary to get on the ballot or it's winning one of the top 4 or top 5 in a "jungle" primary, the requirement for ballot access should be the same. (And for the "jungle primary", the requirement to get on the primary ballot should be exactly the same, whether the candidate is associated with a party or not.)
So, in order to not *officially* discriminate against candidates that are independent of any party, then I don't think Party List is in the cards. But we can *still* use RCV to be used in Proportional Representation. It might have to be STV, but it doesn't have to be "Bottom-up" STV (which is just IRV that stops when the number of remaining candidates is the same as the number of winners), and it shouldn't be.
To be PR, It should be an STV method with a Droop quota and transferred surplus votes. Maybe specifically the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method (WIGM): https://prfound.org/resources/reference/reference-wigm-rule/ . This is the method that, besides Bottom-up, comes in Dominion "Democracy Suite - EMS Results Tally & Reporting" software for RCV elections.
It should be deterministic, unlike just drawing random surplus ballots from a pile (as has been done in some PR STV elections). And it will likely have fractional-vote precision, which looks sorta ugly.
even Gregory system with fractions can make less ugly vote transfer tables by simply dropping the fraction when vote tallies are recorded.
random transfer of surplus votes is no biggie - if at least when the next marked preference is considered. the "Exact method" used in Ireland and Malta for last hundred years , and i think used in Cambridge.
the lower preference piggy-backed on the ballot may not be used later anyway. it depends if vote is again transferred.
so there is random and then there is really random. even really random way may reflect the proportional transfer (Gregory) just fine or close enough. usually a change of 50 or a hundred or 500 votes has no effect on who is elected.
Chicago I think it was used to use non-random random where ballots on a stack were numbered and if one-fourth had to be transferred then every fourth numbered ballot was moved. likely result was just as random (and representative) as blind sampling but it looked more organized.
I recommend Montopedia wix.site blog on surplus transfer to get list of the various methods used for surplus transfers that i have heard about.
note: only a small number of vote transfers are transfers of surplus votes one less than the number of seats at the most. and not all surp. transfers allow a choice anyway.
"even Gregory system with fractions can make less ugly vote transfer tables by simply dropping the fraction when vote tallies are recorded."
And that causes a little error. Sometimes elections are close and the accumulated error from multiple roundings could affect the outcome.
"...random transfer of surplus votes is no biggie - if at least when the next marked preference is considered. "
Well, of course the outcome of the election may depend on how the deck is shuffled.
It's a mild form of sortition. Now, if you or your candidate is on the losing end of a randomly-shuffled pile of ballots, how are you going to feel about prevailing by the numbers (the votes) but losing because of random chance?
Only when there is a dead tie, and there is no other basis in which to prefer one candidate over another, only then should a coin be tossed. Everything else should be deterministic. Especially in the cases where the margin is very small.
And the Cast Vote Record will always allow the public to learn that the "majority" (in some sense) was robbed in the election. When that happens, effectively, the fewer voters whose candidate wins, their votes effectively counted more than those votes from the larger group of voters whose candidate did not win.
Sortition is fine (and correct) for selecting juries for trials. Not for elections (except for breaking a dead tie). Elections should be deterministic and repeatable (i.e. same outcome in a recount of the same ballot data, but ordered differently).
"the "Exact method" used in Ireland and Malta for last hundred years , and i think used in Cambridge."
I saw a video, I think at RCVRC, that seemed to say that Cambridge randomly draws off surplus ballots. I can only shrug my shoulders. Eventually the CVR data will be regularly examined and reported. When a significant faction of voters find out that the value of their votes were reduced (relative to the winning faction) just because of the random selection of the surplus ballots, there will be a sense of loss of legitimacy for the winner and for the method.
Thank you for your response.
dropped fractions - I mean instead of writing 1003.33 votes just saying 1003 votes. I don't think there are multiple rounds of rounding involved, nor that the diff is worth the complicated vote count table.
I still say "...random transfer of surplus votes is no biggie - if at least when the next marked preference is considered. "
the "Exact method" where the next marked preference is considered, is 100 percent the same transfer as Gregory concerning how votes carry what next preference -- the Exact Method is only random IF the piggybacked lower preferences are used, which is not always the case.
as I say there are random methods and there are really random methods. Exact method, is not really random but it is often lumped in with really random.
exact method is not a randomly shuffled pile of ballots. under exact method successful A's votes are sorted into separate piles for next choice. - B pile , C pile EC. then from each of those piles the propseramount are taken. secondary preferences are piggybacked and that is where randomness comes in but those secondary preferences might never be used.
(more info in Montopedia blogs on surplus vote transfers --
https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/transferring-surplus-votes-the-various-methods
https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/the-whole-vote-exact-method-of-transferring-surplus-votes-and-other-means-of-vote-transfers-under)
Here's big point - the vote transfers seldom make much difference in who wins. most, sometimes all, the winners in an STV election were in winning positions in the first count.
But results, already mostly established in first round of STV vote count, are much different than FPTP or Block Voting results.
each voter has one vote in multi-member district -- that is backbone of STV.
okay, Cambridge uses random, but that is not the only way to transfer without going to the extent of using Gregory method with its fanatical factions.
Ireland and Malta uses Exact Method, transferring whole votes, not random at all as to first next usable preference. it has worked for 100 years.
all transfers have little effect on who wins - transfers seldom change many winners, and sometimes not at all, compared to first round of the count.
even fewer changes are produced by surplus transfers, which are few in number in any STV district contest. Four at most in a district with five seats.
Some Gregory methods use only "last parcel" to formulate transfers so sure it is not random but not necessarily reflective of all the supporters who voted for the successful candidate. transfer was done by using only certain of the winner's votes to formulate transfer. (it is complicated)
Cambridge likely is fine to use really random because -- sheer randomness is likely proportional. odds are anyway; votes are not examined so see how off it may be; seldom does a few votes here or there make a diff.
that the result is mixed, balanced and roughly proportional mostly is done in first round before any transfers are done.
look at Vanuatu's elections - no transfers at all (SNTV) and result is dependably more balanced than any Block voting or FPTP.
every district elects mixed rep. no artificial regionalism/geographical polarization.
that shows how little effect transfers have. But STV is better - it polishes the fairness even more.
> "Cambridge likely is fine to use really random because -- sheer randomness is likely proportional. "
With ensemble averages, yes, I would expect sheer randomness to be proportional.
Ya know, we could do mark-only-one FPTP ballots, put them all in a bin, shake it up and draw out one ballot and elect the candidate marked on that randomly-drawn ballot. Run this experiment a million times and average the results and those averaged results would be proportional.
I just didn't know, before that vid, that Cambridge was not using a deterministic method. I knew they were STV multi-winner were since, i dunno, the 50s. Several decades. I didn't know which STV, I just didn't expect it would be a little sortition when there are deterministic methods to do the same thing in a repeatable manner.
I don't know deterministic - I just know that the Cambridge results are more balanced and mixed and proportional than Block Voting or FPTP in so many single-member districts.
Even Gregory surplus transfers are not reflective of all the votes held by the successful candidates, not when only the last parcel received by the successful cand. is the basis for the transfer.
maybe this further comment is un-necessary, but for sake of compete-ness would like to say --
the "Cast Vote Record" under any STV election would show that a high proportion of cast votes were used to elect the winners, no matter how the few surplus transfers were done.
in Cambridge, 20,920 votes actually elected someone out of 23,339.
just slightly more than one quota were not used effectively.
all nine elected in the end were in winning position in the first round, which can happen or come close under any STV system.
(see Bass division, Tasmania 2024 state election where seven elected, using Droop and Gregory method. Wood with 1900 votes in first round jumped ahead of Armstrong with initial 2000. but otherwise all seven were most popular in first round and went on to win. Wood was able to aggregate many votes because three Liberals were excluded and had their votes transferred, while only two Lambie candidates were not elected.)
Wood elected at the end with 1000 more votes than last unsuccessful candaitre so not likely even a random transfer in the six surplus transfers that were done would have had any effect on who won.
2023 Cambridge
23,339 valid ballots.
Electing 9 candidates.
Quota is 2334 votes. (1/10th of valid votes , plus 1)
There were 173 invalid ballots.
20,920 votes used to elect the winners.
Cambridge eleciton method statement says every nth votes used for surplus votes. so apparently they use "non-random random" that I described before. (Chicago style, I think it was called)
https://www.cambridgema.gov/Election2023/Official/Council%20Round.htm
Awesome piece, Steven! Check out Nick Stephanopoulos's recent piece on "Ranked List Proportional Representation": https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5099845
proper PR systems means that you don't need primaries in advance of the real election, and I would call RLPR a proper PR system.
although i don't know why Nick is so worried about what he called "vote leakage among parties". When vote crosses party line in STV (PRCV) is because voter says if his first (or upper) choice cannot be elected, he wants the vote to cross party lines.
sometimes this is because he likes the individual indicated so much that even if candidates of his preferred party still are in running , he wants his vote to cross party lines.;
other times it is because his party's last candidate is out of the running and choice is vote will die or be moved across party lines.
either way it is choice of the voter.
a system like RLPR may not secure minority party rep. any better than STV. if vote cannot cross party lines, it will die if that party does not have quota.
RLPR is not any better at securing minority rep within a party than STV, it seems to me.
the most-popular candidate on a party slate are elected under both systems.
under STV a candidate must aggregate quota to be elected (or win by plurality at end).
under RLPR party must have quota to give to the candidate.
same difference. minority within party is not better produced under RLPR than STV, unless zipper is used or a similar mechanism.
Is he worried because party proportionality under STV looks bad when he uses votes as first placed to determine Gallagher index or something. but STV does not use votes as first placed to determine winners so don't use votes as first placed to determine proportionality.
it is like saying in IRV if the first-round leader is not elected, then result is undemocratic. some do say this but we know they don't understand term majority.
In STV people who want party proportionality based on first round votes don't understand goal of vote transfers is that few (perhaps just one quota ) are not used to actually elect someone. you can't do this without allowing votes to cross party lines.
District magnitude is more imp. than the election system used, to produce PR.
at least that is my assessment from a cursory look at Nick's RLPR essay.
Well done!
Your mentioning Berlin's much larger council, and even London's somewhat largeer council, compared to many big US cities, seemed like it was going to be a set-up for mentioning council expansion simultaneous with an electoral system revision. Portland was willing to do that, as you know, partly to improve representation by cutting the number of residents each councilor must try to represent. (With our small council sizes, it's no wonder people feel dissociated from their local government.)
Also, I was wondering why you didn't including MMP in an "Open vs Closed vs MMP" section, since you mentioned MMP earlier.
Using expansion to combine current districts with a like-sized compensatory tier is a low-disruption approach (especially in Philadelphia) that nontheless can result in an attainably low election threshold whereby small parties might win a seat as the starting point for demonstrating they are not wasted votes. This approach avoids the exhaustion differential that arises when minority or less educated voters use ranked ballots. Maybe a future article?
Having now endorsed a position I offered years ago (no new nonpartisan elections in cities), are you now going to take back the mean things you said on this blog about me, Lee Drutman, Matthew Shugart, Mike Latner, and others who have been proposing party lists for half a decade?
Hi Jack, nice of you to stop by the DSOS Tavern again. I can't tell from your comment if you are joking or serious. If you are serious, it seems you have misunderstood my article. To be clear, I believe STV (Proportional RCV) would be the best system for NYC, as well as Philadelphia and Baltimore, and it would work fine to combine it with NYC's current party-based elections, since that is what NYC currently has. As you know, NYC once used STV in party-based elections, and as my article points out, that system worked extremely well in providing diverse and proportional representation. I have never been opposed to partisan elections in cities, and I am not wedded to non-partisan elections either. As a reformer trying to pass reform, I have found the chances of success are greatest when you change as little as possible, so the partisan/nonpartisan nature of city elections I have never felt strongly about, one way or another. In the campaigns I have led, we retained whatever partisan condition pre-existed.
In addition, I believe that transferable ballots are one of the wonders of modern democratic practice. If you see my Feb 13 article, you will see that I recommend ranked ballots for the recent German elections, retaining Germany's List PR but allowing voters to rank multiple parties to prevent the wasted votes that occurred when both the FDP and BSW just missed the 5% threshold. So ranked ballots can have lots of different applications, they truly are a wonder, in my view. And they would do amazing things in NYC elections using party-based STV, since the ranked ballots would facilitate a lot of coalition-building among grassroots groups, ensure that multiple candidates of color don't spoil each other, and other good things.
In terms of the East coast cities that already have party-based elections, I have never believed it was necessary for these cities to convert to nonpartisan elections -- are you implying otherwise? I can't tell. And I don't believe non-partisan cities need to convert to party-based election, STV just worked well recently in Portland, which already had nonpartisan elections, no need to change their elections to party-based. With STV, it works well in both party-based and nonpartisan situations.
The reason I wrote that article, to be honest, was in the hopes that people like you, Drutman, Dan Cantor, et al might actually role up your sleeves and get to work toward your goal of party-based PR. Because yes, you have indeed been proposing it for "half a decade," as you wrote. Isn't that long enough to actually propose a plan and start executing that plan? I made your case for you in that article, pointing out that you have some great opportunities in these East coast party-based cities to ACTUALLY MAKE IT HAPPEN. Are you ready, willing, able? I would love to see it happen. And that would provide a good example in the US of how List PR could work. Maybe a state would then adopt it down the road. That's how it worked with single-winner RCV -- first we passed it in a number of cities, then Maine adopted it, then Alaska. Start local, work your way up to state-based. That's a successful strategy, in my experience. Are you guys ready to roll this effort out, or are you going to debate it for another 5 years? LOL
And for the record, if you are serious in your comment about my saying "mean things," I don't agree that I have ever been mean to you, but I do have principled, substantive and well-reasoned differences with you. Which I will continue to express when I feel it is appropriate. I am guessing you are just joking about that, but it's hard to tell.
Thanks for hanging out at the DSOS Tavern for a bit. All the best, Jack.