Ziu Reform Possibilities

[Françal I. Lux]

I'm not suggesting we abandon party politics and I'm not explicitly commited to STV, but I'd like for everyone to consider shifting elections to focus more on individual candidates running for office instead of accepting them in bulk on a party list.

We should give the electorate the option to choose which candidate(s) they want to represent them while also forcing the candidates themselves to actually campaign for votes instead of relying on the party to carry them.

How is it democratic when we allow parties to curate who the candidates will be beforehand then present a list of people to the electorate as if to say these are your options, now pick. If John Smith likes MC A from Party 1 but also MC B from Party 2, why shouldn't he have the option to split his vote? What if John Smith doesn't like MC C from Party 1 because, say, they're not a very active public servant? In a party list, he has no choice but to vote for that candidate because he has no other option since Party 1 best represents his vote.

If we allow individuals to run on their own merits, then candidates would be compelled to defend their own ideas, campaign for their own success, and it'd likely discourage anyone who isn't really serious or committed to public service from running.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

It's even less democratic when the party leader just picks the MCs, unrestricted by any list.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

The goal of any Ziu reform should be to increase transparency in government and to give back power to the people, instead of centralising it in party bigwigs. Party lists are a simple way of ensuring transparency (even if the current laws concerning off-listers are way too lax), but still rest all power in the bigwigs as Françal rightfully pointed out.

I personally champion a form of Sequential Proportional Approval Voting as a voting system that is partyless, fair, and easy to explain and implement (feel free to ask me if you want to hear details), but any reform that furthers the principles of transparency and returning power to the people will do. Conversely, any reform idea that seeks to systematically deceive voters and trick them into helping people into power against the popular will is dead on arrival.

[Françal I. Lux]

It's even less democratic when the party leader just picks the MCs, unrestricted by any list.

Isn't this, in practice, the current system we have now?

What I have in mind is simple: Anybody is free to associate with whatever party they want, but running in an election would be the individual candidate's choice, no lists needed, and the onus is on them to take lead in running their own campaign.

Since we're moving to a 20-seat Cosa, I would argue that individual candidates' ideas and principles should be scrutinized more during an election and voters should have a direct say in who's representing them instead of being forced to pick lists of people.

[Françal I. Lux]

I personally champion a form of Sequential Proportional Approval Voting as a voting system that is partyless, fair, and easy to explain and implement (feel free to ask me if you want to hear details), but any reform that furthers the principles of transparency and returning power to the people will do. Conversely, any reform idea that seeks to systematically deceive voters and trick them into helping people into power against the popular will is dead on arrival.

I'd like to hear more about this and how we would implement it in Talossa.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Isn't this, in practice, the current system we have now?

At the moment, at least 2/3 of the MCs have to be on a list of candidates that the voters saw at election time and approved of. I think it should be 100%. Because party leaders have just brought people into the Cosa who have no democratic mandate at all.

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

It's even less democratic when the party leader just picks the MCs, unrestricted by any list.

Isn't this, in practice, the current system we have now?

As Miestra pointed out, this is not quite the system we have; party lists do provide restriction on who the leader may appoint to seats in the Cosa. Granted, at least one party leader seems to disagree, but that's a job for the judiciary at the moment.

Since we're moving to a 20-seat Cosa, I would argue that individual candidates' ideas and principles should be scrutinized more during an election and voters should have a direct say in who's representing them instead of being forced to pick lists of people.

This is just my two bence, but I would argue that the provincial seats in an MMP setup could satisfy this preference, no? Yes, it does still factor into a partisan distribution of seats, but hear me out:

* Talossa as a country does have a fair amount of its activity revolve around politics, regardless of what one may think of this.
* Quite a few Talossans prefer a political system that actually features, well, politics. Discussion, debate, and organization based on ideological and ethical stances, as opposed to politics-as-a-popularity contest. (Some Talossans, to be fair, clearly do not share this preference.)
* An electoral system that seeks to balance the evaluation of individual candidates and evaluation of ideological groupings would, to my eyes, function as a compromise between these two approaches to Talossan politics.
* If we have an MMP system and the party list seats are also chosen via an open-list system, that would be a massive shift towards an individualized approach to politics, but it doesn't completely abandon modern, ideology-based partisan politics, either.

[Françal I. Lux]

This is just my two bence, but I would argue that the provincial seats in an MMP setup could satisfy this preference, no? Yes, it does still factor into a partisan distribution of seats, but hear me out:

* Talossa as a country does have a fair amount of its activity revolve around politics, regardless of what one may think of this.
* Quite a few Talossans prefer a political system that actually features, well, politics. Discussion, debate, and organization based on ideological and ethical stances, as opposed to politics-as-a-popularity contest. (Some Talossans, to be fair, clearly do not share this preference.)
* An electoral system that seeks to balance the evaluation of individual candidates and evaluation of ideological groupings would, to my eyes, function as a compromise between these two approaches to Talossan politics.
* If we have an MMP system and the party list seats are also chosen via an open-list system, that would be a massive shift towards an individualized approach to politics, but it doesn't completely abandon modern, ideology-based partisan politics, either.

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing against party politics at all, I'm just not a fan of lists in principle because, in my view, it robs the voters choice. As I stated previously, it forces voters to elect their representatives as a block and prevents them from scrutinizing individual candidates. Let's say I ideologically align with Party A, but there's one or two individuals on their party list I disagree with for whatever reason, why should I be forced to elect them into office? What if I want to split my vote because there's someone in Party B who I actually know will be a good MC despite some political disagreements we might have?

Again, with a 20-seat Cosa, I would argue it's even more important that voters get to scrutinize individual candidates and ascertain whether they'd be good, responsible and serious public servants. Having to rely on a party list prevents that from happening because the party itself can pave over whatever flaws their candidates may have. If someone running for office can't stand on their own two feet and articulate why they should be in the Cosa, or if they lack the commitment or time to truly be present and active enough, I'd argue they have no business running for office.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

I personally champion a form of Sequential Proportional Approval Voting as a voting system that is partyless, fair, and easy to explain and implement (feel free to ask me if you want to hear details), but any reform that furthers the principles of transparency and returning power to the people will do. Conversely, any reform idea that seeks to systematically deceive voters and trick them into helping people into power against the popular will is dead on arrival.

I'd like to hear more about this and how we would implement it in Talossa.

The way it works is that voters would be given a ballot with all the candidates on it, and then would be asked to vote for every candidate they approve of. There is no minimal or maximal number of approvals, and no ranking between approved candidates, every approval is worth the same. You can think of it as "building your own party list" if you like.

Ballots would then be counted in rounds, one round for each open seat. In the first round, the candidate with the most total approvals wins. Before every subsequent round, ballots are weighted: ballots who approve of one winner are worth 1/2, those that approve of two winners are worth 1/3, those that approve of three are worth 1/4 etc, and after the weighting is done you count the totals and whoever has the highest total wins that round. Repeat until all seats are filled.

This sort of voting system is proportional thanks to the ballot weighting mechanism, partyless because party affiliation doesnt matter for a candidate's victory, and much easier to implement than STV (speaking from first-hand experience); switching the database over to this kind of voting system would as far as I can tell not be super difficult, and the counting and weighting steps are very easily automatisable.

I also think the explanation is simpler than for STV (especially with regards to like, how to handle fractional overflow or what have you) but I'm biased so I'll let you be the judge of that.

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing against party politics at all, I'm just not a fan of lists in principle because, in my view, it robs the voters choice. As I stated previously, it forces voters to elect their representatives as a block and prevents them from scrutinizing individual candidates. Let's say I ideologically align with Party A, but there's one or two individuals on their party list I disagree with for whatever reason, why should I be forced to elect them into office? What if I want to split my vote because there's someone in Party B who I actually know will be a good MC despite some political disagreements we might have?

Again, with a 20-seat Cosa, I would argue it's even more important that voters get to scrutinize individual candidates and ascertain whether they'd be good, responsible and serious public servants. Having to rely on a party list prevents that from happening because the party itself can pave over whatever flaws their candidates may have. If someone running for office can't stand on their own two feet and articulate why they should be in the Cosa, or if they lack the commitment or time to truly be present and active enough, I'd argue they have no business running for office.

I appreciate you going into further detail! In addition to the SPAV system Sir Marcel is a fan of, you may also be interested in panachage, at least based on that bit I've bolded.

@Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP , could you maybe elaborate a bit on what happens in the event there are fewer than 20 candidates on the ballot? Would everyone end up getting a seat and then we cycle around to the beginning and do the whole thing again until all 20 seats are allocated? My concern there is that in such a scenario, larger parties may unduly benefit by virtue of being able to field more candidates. It becomes less about your share of the vote and more about how many names you can put on the ballot, if that makes sense. Alternatively, could we rework the system to give someone a second seat if they've earned it before everyone else has been given one?

I'm also wondering if there's an easy way to work in a "disapproval vote" into an open-list method. That may technically also fall under the panachage umbrella, now that I think about it.
- Vote for party of preference
- Give a +1/0/-1 to every candidate on said list.
- Party gets seats proportional to list vote.
- Candidates with negative totals are not granted seats.
- Everyone else receives seats in order of total score, cycling back around to "top" of party list as necessary.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

@Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP , could you maybe elaborate a bit on what happens in the event there are fewer than 20 candidates on the ballot?

If there are fewer candidates than seats to fill, then every candidate would get in and the rest is left empty. Needless to say, the system only works if we have enough people to actually run, and if we cant get at least 20 people to run, then maybe 20 seats is too much still...?

This, by the way, is why the Pseudo-Real Cosă is called pseudo: I was afraid that we might not have enough candidates to fill 20 seats, so the old assign post-hoc system would stay in place until a proper Real Cosă can be implemented faithfully.