VoteFair Ranking

VoteFair Ranking is a group of vote-counting methods that increase voter representation for single-winner elections, multiple-seat elections, and legislative voting.

VoteFair Ranking includes the following components:


 * VoteFair popularity ranking is the single-winner election method known as the Kemeny-Young method. This method identifies the most popular candidate, second-most popular candidate, and so on down to the least-popular candidate. Specifically it rearranges pairwise counts in a table until the biggest pairwise counts are in the upper-left triangular area of the table and the smallest pairwise counts are in the lower-right triangular area (assuming the diagonal line of empty cells starts in the upper-right corner). This counting method is also used within the other ranking methods that follow. (As a clarification, the method created by John Kemeny minimizes opposition whereas VoteFair popularity ranking maximizes support, yet both methods yield the same result.)
 * VoteFair representation ranking is a house monotone proportional-representation (PR) vote-counting method that elects a second-seat winner who represents the voters who are not well-represented by the first-seat winner. This method can be repeated, such as to select the winners of the second and fourth seats in a five-seat district.
 * VoteFair party ranking is a vote-counting method that identifies the popularity of political parties for the purpose of identifying how many candidates each political party is allowed to offer in a non-primary election. This limit is useful in elections that otherwise would attract too many candidates from unpopular parties. It allows, and encourages, two or three candidates from the two most popular parties.
 * VoteFair partial-proportional ranking repeatedly fills extra statewide or nationwide seats based on which party has the biggest gap between seats already won and seats deserved based on party popularity. The winning candidate is the not-yet-winning candidate, from any district, who gets the most votes from voters who prefer that party as their first choice. This approach prevents party insiders from having any control over which of their candidates fill "their" statewide or nationwide seats.
 * VoteFair negotiation ranking does calculations that enable a legislature or parliament to rank competing proposals to identify which compatible (non-competing) proposals are likely to be acceptable to a large majority of legislators or MPs (members of parliament). This method extends VoteFair representation ranking to include calculations that give representation to small minorities. In addition to being useful for passing groups of laws, the method can be used to select cabinet ministers. The method allows all legislators to propose specific laws (or cabinet minister assignments), and continuously rank all the proposals. One or more trusted moderators specify which pairs of proposals are incompatible. The resulting suggested combination of proposals are either accepted or rejected in a separate vote that can require more than a simple majority (50 percent) support.

History
VoteFair Ranking was created by Richard Fobes. Most of it is described in the book titled Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections. VoteFair negotiation ranking was developed as part of creating the interactive website at NegotiationTool.com.