[GA] A Resolution to Improve Voting Methods

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Constellation

Constellation

TNPer
The World Assembly,

Noting the predominance of First-Past-the-Post (FPtP) voting systems worldwide,

Acknowledging the detriment of the Spoiler Effect when advancing the will of the people,

Realizing the effects of Duverger's Law hinder new ideas, parties, and candidates from gaining traction,

Hereby declare that

1. All representatives elected in member states and their political subdivisions currently using a First-Past-the-Post system shall henceforth be elected using

A. Approval voting
B. the Alternative vote (also referred to as Instant Runoff Voting)
C. the Single Transferable Vote
D. Any similar Condorcet method not explicitly mentioned above

2. Voting systems inside legislative bodies for passing/amending/dismissing legislation shall not be affected by this resolution.

3. If a national referendum, plebiscite, or any similar measure contains only two options (pass/fail), they may be excluded from this resolution; the aforementioned methods of direct democracy, should they contain multiple options, will be affected.
 
You need to tighten up Clause 1. STV (incl IRV) are not Condorcet.

Clause 2 should just be an exclusion clause from any votes within an elected legislature. They do a lot more than just "passing/amending/dismiss legislation".

Clause 3 is just silly. STV with two options is exactly the same as FPTP, so there's no need to include any exclusion clause.
 
Personally I dont see this going anywhere without a massive overhaul. There are many different types of voting systems that are better then FPTP.

There are hybrid systems like MMPR, Mixed-Member Proportional Represention. That can use FPTP or AV for local representation while keeping a check on that through a national or provincial party votes.

Also I would like to point out that neither AV or STV is a Condorcent Methods. Condorcent Voting Methods match up each candidate in a race against each other one on one and choose the candidate the wins the most races.

While STV and AV cut the person with the lowest number of votes, reallocate their votes to their next choice until one or more candidates have reached a threshold.

And Condorcet Methods have some major drawbacks on their own. Under some Condorcet systems this scenario can happen.

Say in a district there are 5 people running from 5 different parties. The district is made of 45% Right Wing voters, 45% Left Wing voters, and 10% Centre-Left voters.

Far-Right Nationalist
Moderate Conservative
Independent Centrist
Moderate Liberal
Far-Left Communist

Each person would vote in 9 different one on one scenarios.
The Conservative wins very narrowly 50.5% to 49.5% against the Nationalist, Centrist and Communist.

The Liberal loses very narrowly to the Centrist and Communist 49.9% to 50.1% but wins handily against Conservative and Nationalist 60% to 40%.

Even though the Liberal is closer to everyone's choice and the Liberal handily beats the conservative one on one. By virtue of some Condorcet systems the Conservative would win by virtue of wining more races to the detriment of the 60% of people who would rather have the Liberal then the Conservative.
 
An additional issue with this proposal is that it is very focused on one particular kind of problem. That's not to say that it won't be passed; however, given that many nations in NationStates are not democracies, it will have a limited impact, and I could also see a number of individuals vote against for that reason.

That's not something that needs to result in changes to your proposal, per se, but I'd recommend considering what your answer will be when you're asked why the GA should pass this resolution due to it's impact on potentially a limited number of member nations around the world.
 
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