Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stc!root44!hamish
From: hamish@root.co.uk (Hamish Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Electoral systems (Was: Big Brother)
Message-ID: <665@root44.co.uk>
Date: 11 Jan 89 17:04:31 GMT
References: <8901010855.AA11720@violet.berkeley.edu> <17958@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: hamish@root44.UUCP (Hamish Reid)
Organization: UniSoft Ltd, London, England
Lines: 34

In article <17958@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes:
>In article <8901010855.AA11720@violet.berkeley.edu>,
>mwm@VIOLET.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike Meyer) writes:
>>We might consider "Australian rules" voting ("'s becuase that's what
>>I've heard it called - I have no idea what, if any, relation it has to
>>Australia).
> [...]
>     This is called the "single transferrable vote" system of voting.
>It's used in a few places to elect at-large councils and similar groups.
>But it isn't really that useful when electing for a single office.

Why ever not? In a sense, that's exactly what it's used for (Federally)
in Australia - to pick the single representative for each lower house
electoral area.  Of course, the upper house (the Senate) uses
Proportional Representation (of a kind) - but that's a different story.
Both systems are, in my opinion, fairer than either the US or UK
systems....

>     The Hare System of Proportional Representation is similar in purpose.
>The Irish Dail and the City Council of Cambridge, MA are elected using the
>Hare system.  

Also used (in a slightly-modified form called the Hare-Clark system),
in Tasmania (the little bit usually left off the bottom of maps of
Australia).

>     Both systems are a legacy of the populist era of the 1930s.  Both are
>hard to tabulate, although today, this should be much less of an issue.

"Legacy of the ... of the 1930's"? Not in Australia, they weren't.
Hard to tabulate? Gosh, if us Australians can do it... :-)
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