Archive for the 'Proportional Voting' Category

A Hacienda of Cards? The Mexican Congressional Election and the ‘Voto Nulo’ Movement

June 24th, 2009
Forrest Barnum

One day after the United States celebrates its founding, Mexicans will go to the polls to elect new members to the lower house of Congress.  All 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies will be up for election on July 5, 300 chosen through the plurality system familiar to Americans, with 200 ‘top-up’ seats allocated [...]

Return of Cumulative Voting in Illinois?

June 18th, 2009
John Parker

During the past legislative session in Illinois, Republican state senator Chris Lauzen of Aurora proposed a change to the Illinois constitution which would restore multi-member legislative districts for state representatives. Under Lauzen’s plan, the Illinois state house would have 117 members from 39 districts. Currently, there are 118 members for 118 districts.
From 1870 to [...]

Choice Voting: A Short Operational Primer

June 17th, 2009
Forrest Barnum

“All the spods, geeks and nerds who have spent too long thinking about it end up supporting the Single Transferable Vote (STV)”
After composing several jeremiads touting the benefits of Single Transferable Vote (STV) systems (known as choice voting in the States), I realized that some readers might not be familiar with how STV actually works. [...]

UK European Elections: Would First-Past-the-Post Really be a Better Choice?

June 16th, 2009
Forrest Barnum

Much fuss has been made about the extreme parties elected in Britain’s recent European Parliamentary Election. Many have argued the unprecedented second-place result for the Euro-skeptic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the astonishing two seats earned by the far-right British National Party (BNP) should give devotees of proportional representation pause. In an earlier post, [...]

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