13 songs & 1 thought

02.25.2005

I posted a new iMix. Of the 6 hours of music I played today during my shift at Rocket Star? Only 13 songs are available on iTunes.

Reading over recent Journal of Democracy articles, a thought struck me. Here goes:

I'm interested in possible solutions to Bolivia's mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system. It's probably too late to go back to regular list proportional representation (List-PR), and a radical solution like an alternative vote (AV) probably won't work (since it requires voters to rank order candidates, which is rather complex, in any country). So how to create incentives for moderated coalition-making?

A solution might be for candidates in the single-member, first-past-the-post (FPTP) districts to pool their votes, if they don't win an absolute majority (they currently win w/ simple pluralities, which is often around 20%). Instead, losing candidates could transfer their votes to other candidates, until one candidate has an absolute majority. This would encourage candidates to campaign w/ an interest to build connections w/ a broader base.

Essentially, this would work just like an AV electoral system, but w/o the complexity of having to individually recount individual ballots each time. Instead, candidates would publicly state who they'd pool their votes for (in rank order preference) and each time votes were counted, the candidate w/ the least votes would be dropped, and its votes pooled to another candidate.

I'm preliminarily calling this a "pooled single transferable vote" (pooled-STV) electoral system.

Posted by Miguel at 03:57 PM

Comments

I linked to the iMix, and apparently downloaded some software. Then was prompted to purchase your mix.

Music looks good, but I'm too cheap to spend 13 bucks!

Amazing how fast tech is changing the way music and visual media is changing.

Posted by: tom at February 26, 2005 12:47 AM