VoteFair representation ranking

VoteFair representation ranking is a proportional-representation (PR) vote-counting method that uses ranked ballots and selects a candidate to win the second seat in a two-seat legislative district. The second-seat winner represents the voters who are not well-represented by the first-seat winner. Any single-winner election method that uses ranked ballots can be used for the popularity calculations.

Description

This method first identifies which voters are well-represented by the first-seat winner. Then a reduced influence is calculated for these ballots. Their influence is determined by the extent to which they exceed the 50% majority minimum that is needed to elect the first-seat winner. The remaining ballots have full influence. Using these adjusted influence levels, the most popular of the remaining candidates becomes the second-seat winner.

This method ignores which political party each candidate is in, yet the winners typically are from different political parties.

This method can be repeated. For example, if the district has 5 seats, the third-seat winner and the fourth-seat winner are identified using the same steps that were used to fill the first two seats. In this case the fifth-seat winner would be determined by asking voters to indicate their favorite political party, calculating which party is most under-represented, looking at just the ballots that indicate that party as their favorite, and identifying the most popular candidate from that party.

Calculation steps

After the winner of the district's first seat is identified, the following steps calculate which candidate wins the second seat.

1. Identify the ballots that rank the first-seat winner as their first — highest-ranked — choice.
2. Completely ignore the ballots identified in step 1, and use the remaining ballots to identify the most popular candidate from among the remaining candidates. This candidate will not necessarily be the second-seat winner. Instead, this candidate is used in step 4 to identify which ballots are from voters who are well-represented by the first-seat winner.
3. Again consider all the ballots.
4. Identify the ballots in which the first-seat winner is preferred over the candidate identified in step 2. This step identifies the ballots from voters who are well-represented by the first-seat winner. Note that he only way for a voter to avoid having his or her ballot identified in this step is to express a preference that significantly reduces the chances that the preferred candidate will be ranked as most popular.
5. Proportionally reduce the influence of the ballots identified in step 4. This calculation uses the following sub-steps:
   1. Count the number of ballots that were identified in step 4.
   2. Subtract half the number of total ballots.
   3. The result represents the ballot-number-based influence deserved for the ballots identified in step 4.
   4. Divide the ballot-number-based influence number by the number of ballots identified in step 4.
   5. The result is the fraction of a vote that is allowed for each ballot identified in step 4.
6. Based on all the ballots, but with reduced influence for the ballots identified in step 4, identify the most popular candidate from among the remaining candidates. This candidate becomes the second-seat winner.

History

VoteFair representation ranking was created by Richard Fobes while writing the book titled Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections, and is described in that book as part of the full VoteFair Ranking system.

This method has been used anonymously by non-governmental organizations that conduct their elections using the VoteFair.org website.

External links

Open-source VoteFair Ranking software which calculates VoteFair representation ranking results, and uses the Condorcet-Kemeny method for popularity calculations