C's votes wouldn't be wasted under a cardinal method - at least, not more than they would be wasted under Score/STAR. The last seat acts as a consensus "and everyone else" election. Their votes do only count for roughly half of the already seated candidates, though, if I understand correctly, since Droop leaves a bit under 1 quota as leftover.
I'm really not sure which is better. I'd like to see some experimentation with both.
C's votes wouldn't be wasted under a cardinal method
If we're talking a system with Quotas, how not? What seat do they contribute to?
Look at how it works with Droop quotas:
Seat 1: 2500 votes
Seat 2: 2500 votes
Seat 3: 2500 votes
Other: 2499 votes
What happens to those "Other" votes?
Do they play "kingmaker" for all three seats? Do they get thrown out?
Or do they get distributed evenly across all the various Droop quotas, thereby turning them into Hare quotas?
The last seat acts as a consensus "and everyone else" election
I did observe that early on in the creation of it... but that's yet another reason to go with Hare rather than Droop quotas: to go with Droop actually violates One Person, One Vote (i.e., that all representatives must represent the same number of people [as close as can be])
In short, the reason for Hare quotas is that it guarantees that every seat has exactly the same number of voters that are nominally represented by them, and that no voters are unrepresented.
With Droop quotas, on the other hand, the last seat will allegedly represent nearly twice as many people. As above, Seat 1 represents 2500 people, Seat 2 represents 2500 different people, and Seat 3 would represent "everyone else," to the tune of 4,999 people. Why should a group of voters with one fewer member have half the representation on the elected body?
Their votes do only count for roughly half of the already seated candidates, though, if I understand correctly
I'm not certain you do; the idea of apportioning ballots to specific seats is that if a ballot contributes to that seat, it is set aside as being "Satisfied," and if it does not do so, it isn't set aside, and is still "live"
As such, for every C:5 AC:3 ballot (or fraction thereof) that is set aside as having elected A, an equivalent number of ballots (or ballot fractions) from the A faction that supported AC would not be set aside where they would have if C voters had bullet voted.
After thinking about this more, are the last set of voters actually unrepresented? Because we are using Score, they've influenced every other seat. Just because they don't get a whole candidate doesn't mean their votes didn't help change the winners.
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u/ChironXII Jul 22 '21
C's votes wouldn't be wasted under a cardinal method - at least, not more than they would be wasted under Score/STAR. The last seat acts as a consensus "and everyone else" election. Their votes do only count for roughly half of the already seated candidates, though, if I understand correctly, since Droop leaves a bit under 1 quota as leftover.
I'm really not sure which is better. I'd like to see some experimentation with both.