Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 8, August 2019

Stephen Bosworth, Anders Corr and Stevan Leonard¹

Abstract

Unlike any existing voting method for a representative democracy, this article describes a new method that gives every voter every appropriate reason to be pleased with the results. It is called Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR). EPR guarantees that each citizen’s vote will continue to count proportionately in the deliberations of a legislative body, such as a city council. After assessing the ideal qualities needed by the office, citizens grade each candidate as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or “Reject” (completely unsuitable). Each voter can give the same grade to more than one candidate. Each candidate not graded is automatically counted as a “Reject” by that voter. These grades can be counted by anyone who can add and subtract whole numbers or by the algorithm provided. Each EPR citizen’s vote adds proportionately to the voting power in the legislature of a winner. Initially, EPR’s count provisionally determines the number of highest grades (votes) each candidate has exclusively received from all the voters. However, no winner is allowed to retain enough votes to dictate to the legislature. Therefore, our simulated election limits the percent of votes any winner can retain to 20%. This ensures that at least three members of the legislature will have to agree for any majority decision to be made. We call a candidate who has received such a percentage super popular. Any non-super-popular candidate is eligible to receive at least one of the extra votes initially held by a super-popular candidate. Each extra vote is transferred to the remaining eligible candidate on this voter’s ballot who has been awarded the highest remaining grade of at least Acceptable. If such a candidate is absent, this ballot becomes a proxy vote that must be publicly transferred to an eligible winner judged most fit for office by this super-popular candidate. Similarly, all the votes provisionally held by an unelected candidate must be transferred to an eligible winner. The final number of votes received by each winner is the weighted vote each will use during the deliberations of the legislature. No vote is needlessly wasted. Each citizen is given every appropriate reason to be pleased.

Of course, voting using existing methods is very important, at least as a performance of a civic duty. Additionally, it is praiseworthy when a citizen votes in an attempt to make a constructive contribution to the democratic life of one’s community. Also, we assume that each voter desires that their own concerns, values, and ideas be accurately represented in the legislative body. Unfortunately and needlessly, all of the existing voting methods do not fully guarantee this level of representation. Consequently, many citizens have very good reasons to be displeased because their votes have been needlessly wasted in one or both of the two senses defined next.

Votes Wasted Quantitatively and Qualitatively

We see a citizen’s vote as entirely wasted quantitatively when it does not help elect any candidate they see as acceptable.  Also, when each representative has only one vote in the legislature, a citizen’s vote is partly wasted quantitatively when it is given but not needed to elect one’s favored representative.  If instead, this representative had a weighted vote in the legislature equal to the total number of votes they had received from citizens, no quantitative waste would occur.  Each citizen’s vote would continue to count equally and proportionately.

A citizen’s vote is wasted qualitatively when it fails to increase the voting power of the member that citizen sees as most fit for the office. This might be a winner they trust most to speak, work, and vote as they would themselves if they had the time, energy, skills and opportunity to do so. A vote is partially wasted qualitatively to the extent that it is given to an elected member seen by the voter as less fit for office than another candidate.

One example of needless qualitative waste is provided by a city council that requires each of its members to be elected only by the voters who reside in one of its districts. Each voter will have only the few candidates to choose from who are running in their district, rather than from all the candidates in the city. A voter is not allowed to help elect a candidate running from another district who they judge to be Excellently capable of serving the needs of the city, rather than the best candidate running from their own district who they judge only to be Good. Even if this citizen’s vote is perhaps not wasted quantitatively by helping to elect this Good candidate, it is at least partially wasted qualitatively by being needlessly excluded from the Excellent candidate. An EPR ballot allows every citizen to grade any or all the candidates in the city, with or without districts.

In fact, needless waste is present in all the existing voting methods, whether the method asks voters to rank,² score³, or approve⁴ as many of the candidates as they might wish. This is because they do not allow any discerning voter fully to express their judgments regarding the suitability of each of the candidates for office. The full extent of such resulting qualitative waste is hidden by such systems. Such waste is most dramatic in the method used by most nations where each citizen is only allowed to mark one of the candidates: plurality or first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting as used in the USA, UK, and India. All such qualitative waste is also compounded by the fact that these methods can needlessly waste more than 50% of the votes quantitatively when there are more than two candidates for a given office.

Of course, even if a citizen’s vote is wasted in either or both of these above senses by the existing methods, each vote cast for a candidate who is not elected still has the value of partly informing others about the quantity of support enjoyed by that candidate, and this may be useful for future elections.

Evaluative Proportional Representation Introduced

Nevertheless, assuming that each citizen wants to be accurately and equally represented in the legislative body, this article describes a new method called Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR) ⁵ that gives every voter every appropriate reason to be pleased with the results of the election. This is because it wastes no citizen’s vote needlessly. Each citizen is invited to consider all the qualities required by the office and then on their ballot to grade the suitability for office of each of the candidates as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or “Reject” (completely unsuitable). Each voter can give the same grade to more than one candidate. Each candidate not graded is then automatically counted as a “Reject” by that voter. As a result, each citizen is assured that their vote will proportionately continue to count during the deliberations of their legislative body. More exactly, the voter’s winner will be the candidate who receives the voter’s highest grade of at least Acceptable, except in two cases: 1) this candidate received too many votes (is super popular), 2) or this candidate received too few votes to be elected.

The first exception arises in order to remove the anti-democratic possibility of any winner retaining enough votes to dictate to the legislative body by receiving at least 50% plus one of all the votes. For example, our simulated EPR election limits the percent of the votes any super-popular winner can retain to 20% (see Simulated Election Output and other external references).¹² This would mean that at least three winners would have to agree before any majority decision could be made.

Consequently, a super-popular candidate’s extra vote provided initially by a particular citizen’s ballot is automatically transferred by the algorithm to the remaining eligible candidate on this ballot who they awarded the highest remaining grade of at least Acceptable. If such a candidate is absent, this ballot becomes a proxy vote that must be publicly transferred to an eligible winner judged most fit for office by this super-popular candidate. Similarly, all the votes provisionally held by an unelected candidate must be transferred to an eligible winner. The final number of votes received by each winner is the weighted vote each will use during the deliberations of the legislature.

As a final result, each citizen’s ballot will proportionately increase the voting power in the legislature of their winner.⁶ EPR fully satisfies the demand that in the best representative democracy, no citizen’s vote is needlessly wasted, quantitatively or qualitatively.

Evaluative Voting and the Development of EPR

Until now, none of the available electoral systems could avoid displeasing some voters by wasting their votes. The most recent refinement that has made waste-free voting possible is an adaptation of Balinski and Laraki’s general argument in their book, Majority Judgment (2010 MIT).² Their method prompts citizens to consider the qualities required by the office being sought.

Accordingly, these authors cogently argue that rather than asking citizens to rank, score, or mark candidates for a single office in some other way, they should evaluate (or grade) them. To do this, citizens grade each candidate’s fitness for office as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or Reject (entirely unsuitable). These grades let voters more discerningly express meaningful and informative choices than does the use of preferences, numeric scores, Xs or ticks.⁷ Grading makes it more likely that the highest quality candidates available will be elected, and that in the eyes of the electorate the highest possible quality president or legislative body will be elected.

Each candidate who is not explicitly graded is counted as Reject by that voter. As a result, all candidates have the same number of evaluations, but a different set of grades received from the voters. In a single-office election, the Majority Judgment (MJ) winner is the one who has received grades from an absolute majority of all the voters that are equal to, or higher than, the highest median grade given to any candidate. This median grade is found as follows:

1. Place all the grades, high to low, top to bottom, in side-by-side columns, with the name of each candidate at the top of each of these columns.
2. The median grade for each candidate is the grade located half-way down each column, in the middle if there is an odd number of voters, or in the lower middle if the number is even.²

If more than one candidate has the same highest median grade, the MJ winner is discovered by removing (one-by-one) any grades equal in value to the current highest median grade from each tied candidate’s total until only one of the previously tied candidates currently has the highest remaining median grade.⁸

In contrast to using ranking, scoring, or approving methods, MJ’s and EPR’s different ways of counting the grades also offer voters fewer incentives and opportunities to vote insincerely or manipulatively.⁹ Additionally, it is easier to grade a large number of candidates than to rank them. Consequently, MJ and EPR offer citizens every appropriate incentive not only to vote, but to reveal their honest evaluations of each candidate.

EPR adapts MJ

We have adapted these MJ features to create EPR for multi-office elections. While MJ must still allow up to 50% minus one of all citizens’ votes to be wasted quantitatively and qualitatively, EPR has the advantage of allowing every citizens’ vote to continue into the legislature through the weighted vote¹⁰ of their winner who at least received their proxy vote.

EPR would enable citizens to elect any legislative body, large or small. However, for simplicity, we will only describe how it would elect a city council composed of 7 members.¹¹

Again, EPR does not ask citizens to mark only the one candidate they wish to be elected, though their vote will still count even if they choose only to do this. Nor does it ask citizens to rank, score, or merely approve as many of the candidates as they might wish. Instead, EPR asks them to evaluate as many of the candidates as they wish. Each voter can grade any number of candidates on their qualitative suitability for being a member of the legislature: Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or Reject (entirely unsuitable). Each candidate not explicitly graded is counted as Reject by that voter.

Alternatively, if a citizen wants their vote to count but feels that they do not yet know any of the candidates well enough to grade them, see how the EPR Sample Ballot, shown below, allows a citizen secretly to write in the code of the Registered Elector who will publicly use this proxy vote to grade the candidates on the citizen’s behalf. In this way, EPR continues exactly to count how many citizens have given their highest available grade directly or indirectly to elect one member of the legislature. This number becomes the weighted vote that each member will use during the deliberations and decisions made by the legislative body.¹⁰ Each citizen’s vote continues through the weighted vote of their member. Consequently, this method of social choice ensures proportionate representation of each voting citizen, as well as of each self-identifying group of voters: minority or majority.

Again, keeping to the principle of one-citizen one-vote, all voters’ evaluations of all the candidates can be counted simply but laboriously by anyone who can add and subtract whole numbers. Of course, the available EPR algorithm EPRv2.r completes its count in a few seconds. Exactly how this is done is described in EPR Figurative Explanation and in much greater detail in EPR Count: Detailed Description.¹²

Summary

In contrast to all existing multi-winner voting systems, EPR explicitly prompts citizens to consider what qualities are ideally required by the office being sought. By allowing citizens to express the full range of their evaluations of as many of the candidates as they wish, an EPR election process lets voters make more discerning, meaningful, and informative choices than alternative voting methods. This is illustrated by the fact that grades cannot be deduced from expressions of preference, but preferences can be deduced from a voter’s list of grades. Consequently, EPR is more likely to elect the highest quality legislative body available from the point of view of each member of the electorate.

Unlike other methods, the equality that EPR offers to each citizen is exact because only EPR enables each citizen to know that their one vote will continue to count both quantitatively and qualitatively and as fully as possible in the legislative body. Such a body most accurately represents the hopes and concerns of the whole electorate. Our simulated election, shown in EPR Figurative Explanation and Simulated Election Output, elects the 7 members of a city council.¹² These 7 members allow up to 7 somewhat different sets of hopes and concerns, present in the minds of citizens, to be enthusiastically, skillfully and proportionately represented.

Consequently, an EPR council is more likely to help solve the city’s real economic, social and political problems. This is in part because each EPR council member is more likely to be trusted to negotiate any necessary compromises with opposing members. At the same time, members would be more accountable to their electors because any representative whose behavior failed to match the expectations of their electors could be easily replaced by one of the larger number of more attractive candidates which are likely to be available during the next EPR election. This larger number from which EPR voters could choose is a likely result of EPR allowing citizens to grade any of all the candidates running in the whole city, or, nation. Also, a larger total number of available candidates could result from the fact that an EPR election would not need to be preceded by an existing type of primary election that would needlessly eliminate some attractive candidates.

In contrast to methods that ask voters to rank, score or approve as many candidates as they might wish, EPR provides fewer incentives and less scope for citizens to vote dishonestly (manipulatively, strategically, or tactically).⁹ This in part is because the EPR citizen knows from the start that their vote has increased the weighted vote in the legislative body of the winner who either received their highest grade, who received the highest remaining grade on their ballot, or who received their proxy vote .⁶  Therefore, EPR voting is easier, and more accurate, satisfying, and user-friendly than current methods. Because of this, EPR provides every appropriate democratic incentive for every citizen to vote, to vote honestly, and to be pleased. No citizen’s vote is needlessly wasted, quantitatively or qualitatively.

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References

BALINSKI, Michel and LARAKI, Rida. 2010. Majority Judgment, MIT

ERDMAN, Sol. 2010. ‘To Reverse America’s Decline, We Have to Fix Congress’s Dysfunctional Incentives’, Center for Collaborative Democracy, 7—17, Appendices III-V,
https://www.olssons.us/thelibrary/Center%20for%20Collaborative%20Democracy_%20Case%20for%20PAR.pdf

ERS97 STV Rules, Available at http://www.electoralreform.org.uk/votingsystems/stvrules.htm

GREEN-ARMYTAGE, James. 2010. ‘Voluntary delegation as the basis for a future political system’, Available at http://econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/proxy2010.pdf 

GREEN-ARMYTAGE, James. 2004. ‘A Survey of Basic Voting Methods’ Available at http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/voting/survey.htm#_ftn12, also see: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/voting/

HEGEL, G.W.F. 1965. Philosophy of Right, tr. by T.M. Knox, Oxford: Oxford, paragraphs 229, 251, 263, 270, 276, 288, and 308

ELECTOLOGY, https://www.electology.org/bucklin-voting

MEEK, Brian. 1994. ‘A New Approach to the Single Transferable Vote’ Paper I, pp.1-7 and Paper II, pp.8-11. Voting matters, Issue 1, March 1994. Available at www.votingmatters.org.uk

MILL, J.S. 1962. ‘Representative Government’ (1861) in Utilitarianism; Liberty; Representative Government, Everyman’s Library, 1962, pp.261-8

MILLER III, James C. 1969. ‘A Program for Direct and Proxy Voting in the Legislative Process’ Public Choice (Fall), 107-113

SIMMONS, Forest (http://rangevoting.org/Asset.html; http://www.rangevoting.org/AssetSumm.html)

TULLOCK, Gordon. 1967. Toward a Mathematics of Politics, University of Michigan Press, pp. 145-8)

Endnotes

1. Stephen Bosworth (stevebosworth@hotmail.com) is a retired Professor of Political Philosophy and Comparative Politics. He taught at universities in the UK, California, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Dr. Anders Corr (corr@canalyt.com) is publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. Stevan Leonard (ngc1432@yahoo.com) is the computer programmer who modified and finalized our EPR algorithm. Contact Dr. Bosworth for more details on EPR, and Stevan Leonard or Dr. Corr for details on the algorithm and computer simulation. This paper is a revision of an earlier version published here: https://www.jpolrisk.com/legislatures-elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-a-new-algorithm/.
2. Two different types of voting method ask voters to rank as many of the candidates they might wish: Instant Run-off Voting (IRV – also called Rank Choice Voting (RCV)) and the Condorcet methods. With IRV, voters are asked to rank the candidates 1, 2, 3, etc. If no candidate receives at least 50% plus one of the 1st choices made, the candidate who has received the fewest number of 1^st preferences is eliminated. The votes of the citizens who had given their 1^st preferences to this eliminated candidate are now given to their respective 2^nd preference candidates (if any). This process is repeated until one of the remaining candidates has received a majority of the remaining active ballots. Single Transferrable Voting (STV) is an adaption of IRV for the election of multi-winners. See the following example of how IRV type systems can waste votes and even eliminate, rather than elect, the most preferred candidate.

Example: If 100 citizens vote in the following way, IRV would make candidate C win. B would be eliminated even though they are preferred by more citizens: 20 citizens’ 1^st preference votes and by 80 citizens’ 2^nd preference votes. Candidate C is supported only by 40 1^st preference votes and by 20 2^nd preference votes. Candidate A is supported only by a different group of 40 1^st preference votes. Still IRV elects C in this example.

100 CITIZENS:

40 prefer A over B over D

40 prefer C over B

20 prefer B over C

When C is elected, also notice that all votes cast by the 40 voters (who preferred A over B over D) are wasted both quantitatively and qualitatively in the senses defined in the Votes Wasted Quantitatively and Qualitatively section of this article.  Also, the 20 votes that eventually were added to C’s victory were wasted qualitatively in part.

Of course, we argue that it would be better to use Majority Judgment (MJ) instead for such elections.  Unfortunately, the resulting two sets of results that would follow from these two methods cannot be compared exactly.  This is because grades cannot be deduced from preferences. For example, the 40 voters that gave their first preference to A might award A either an Excellent or a Very Good, the 40 voters that gave their first preference to C might either award C an Excellent, a Very Good, or a Good, and the 20 voters that gave their first preference to B might award B either an Excellent, a Very Good, or a Good.  Nevertheless, we will use the following unnecessary possibility for one comparison between the two methods: each first preference means Excellent, each second preference means Very Good, each third preference means Good, and no preference mentioned means Reject.  With this last group of assumptions, both B and C would initially have the same median grade of Very Good.  But by also using MJ’s method for breaking ties, candidate B becomes the absolute majority winner by retaining the median grade of Very Good, while C’s median grade iteratively becomes Reject.

Immediately before proposing EPR, Dr. Bosworth favored a modification of Single Transferrable Voting (STV). STV is the usual modification of Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) for electing multi-winners. He called his version Associational Proportional Representation (APR). The key differences between EPR and APR is that EPR counts the evaluations rather than any rankings that citizens have made of the candidates. This enables EPR to offer all the advantages of APR, but more completely. As illustrated above, unlike APR or any other form of IRV (or RCV), EPR cannot eliminate any candidate who is preferred by more citizens than one who is elected.

Condorcet methods also ask citizens to rank as many of the candidates as they might wish. In a single-winner Condorcet election, each Condorcet method seeks to discover the candidate who is preferred by the largest number of voters when compared with each other candidate. However, one trouble is that there is not always such a winner. Two or more candidates may be tied, neither with an absolute majority. Ties must be broken in ways that are somewhat arbitrary (i.e., unlike Majority Judgment (MJ)^3,7,9). No variety of Condorcet guarantees that the resulting winner will be the one preferred by an absolute majority of all the voters. Nor is it ever discovered whether the winner is also the one most highly regarded by the voters who were counted as having preferred this winner. This last flaw stems from the fact that, unlike both IRV and EPR, no Condorcet count takes notice of the different intensities with which each candidate is or is not valued over each of the other candidates. This is true even though each citizen’s completed ballot does provide some of this information. Similar flaws remain when any Condorcet method is also used to elect multi-winners. Also, all the Condorcet methods need to be counted by a complex method that most ordinary citizens would find very hard to understand.

3. Typically, using the SCORE voting method for a single-winner asks citizens to give a score of 0 to 9 for each of as many of the candidates as they might wish. The winner is the candidate who receives the highest total or average score. If every candidate who is not expressly scored by a voter is counted as having received a 0 from that voter, this prevents the following type of candidate from winning: a candidate who is expressly scored most highly, but only by a few voters. However, unlike EPR, this rule still allows the principle of one-citizen one-vote to be violated by SCORE voting. This is because the high score from one citizen has more weight than any low score from another citizen. Especially in contrast to EPR (and MJ^2,7,9), this reality prompts more voters to score candidates strategically, rather than honestly. However, this difference would be somewhat reduced if the SCORE winner were instead the candidate who had received the highest median score (not the one with the highest average). This change to SCORE voting would make it closer to MJ, especially if it is possible that scores were limited from 1 to 6. This would accord with Balinski & Laraki’s argument that most people cannot distinguish between more than 7 levels of desired human behavior.⁷ This version of SCORE would still not allow discerning voters fully to express their judgments about the suitability of each candidate for office. Numbers are less meaningful, informative and stable than the grades used by MJ and EPR. The qualitative meaning each voter might give to each of these numbers is probably less clear and consistent when compared to the 6 grades used by MJ and EPR: Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or Reject (entirely unsuitable).
4. Approval voting asks citizens expressly to approve or disapprove of as many of the candidates as they might wish. The candidate with the most approvals wins. In contrast to MJ^2,7,9 and EPR, this method does not allow voters to express the different intensities with which they approve, disapprove, or value each candidate. Nor does the Approval method guarantee that the winner will have received approvals from at least 50% plus one of all the voters. It also prompts more strategic voting.
5. EPR is new in the sense that it applies Majority Judgment’s evaluative voting to the election of a legislative body, such as a city council or a state’s legislature. The EPR algorithm r used to count all the voters’ evaluations of the candidates is also new.^2,7,8,11,12
6. In addition to this outline of EPR’s count, this endnote briefly describes the four stages of its count:

Stage 1 counts how many of all the highest grades given by all the voters must be exclusively but provisionally added to the running total of votes that are currently held by each candidate. While Stage 1 provisionally distributes a highest grade on each voter’s ballot to a different candidate’s running total, Stage 2 may require some of these ballots to be transferred to prevent any winner retaining enough votes to dictate to the council by holding at least 50% plus one of all the votes. Therefore, our EPR simulated election limits the percent of votes any winner can retain to 20%. This ensures that at least three members of the legislature will have to agree for any majority decision to be made. We call a candidate who has received such a percentage super popular. Any non-super-popular candidate is eligible to receive at least one of the extra votes initially held by a super-popular candidate. Each extra vote is transferred during Stage 4 to the remaining eligible winner on this voter’s ballot who has been awarded the highest remaining grade of at least Acceptable. If such a candidate is absent, this ballot becomes a proxy vote that must be publicly transferred during Stage 4 to an eligible winner judged most fit for office by this super-popular candidate.

Stage 3 elects the winners by identifying the target number of candidates who currently hold one of the largest numbers of votes. Next, Stage 3 automatically transfers each of the ballots currently held by an unelected candidate to the running total of an eligible winner. Similar to each of the above extra votes from super-popular candidates being transferred to a remaining eligible candidate on a ballot who has been awarded the highest remaining grade of at least Acceptable, these votes currently held by an unelected candidate must be transferred. If such a candidate is absent from one of these ballots, it automatically becomes a proxy vote that must be publicly transferred during Stage 4 to an eligible winner judged most fit for office by this ballot’s unelected candidate.

The final number of votes received by each winner is the weighted vote each will use during the deliberations of the legislature. No vote is needlessly wasted. Each citizen is given every appropriate reason to be pleased.

These rules are more comprehensively described and illustrated in the external references.¹²

Finally, note that the Sample Ballot displayed in the article also allows a citizen’s vote to count even when they feel they do not know enough about any of the candidates to award them a grade of at least Acceptable. In this event, they need only write in the code of the Registered Elector who will publicly use their proxy vote to grade the candidates on the citizen’s behalf (see the last box on the Sample Ballot). The addition of this option is yet another element within our proposals which helps improve representative democracies by giving every incentive, encouragement, and opportunity for citizens to vote intelligently.

Note that the three above uses of proxy votes are varieties of “Asset Voting.”

7. Why the use of these six grades lets voters make more discerning, meaningful, and informative choices is carefully explained by Balinski & Laraki’s discussion (pp.171, 169, 283, 306, 310, & 389) of G.A. Miller, 1956, ”The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information”, Psychological Review 63: 89-97.
8. Balinski, Pp. 5, 17. It might be suggested that the widest possible majority support for the single winner would be found instead by electing the tied candidate who had received the largest number of grades equal to or higher than the highest median grade initially received by any of the candidates. This modification of MJ could be called MJ+.^2,7
9. Balinski, 14, 15, 19, 187-198, 374. Balinski and Laraki show, in contrast to other systems, how MJ cuts by almost “half” any scope or incentive to vote dishonestly.
10. Gordon Tullock included weighted votes in his own proposals. However, in Tullock’s case, these would have only been produced by using the existing FPTP or Plurality arrangements in the USA. Sol Erdman’s Personal Accountability Representation (PAR) proposals also include weighted votes that are to be discovered by using modified STV. Unlike EPR, the weighted votes proposed by Erdman are not derived by allowing citizens to evaluate as many candidates in the whole country as they might wish. Instead, his PAR limits each voter to ranking only the candidates who are seeking to represent the larger geographically defined electoral district in which they reside. Each such district is still much smaller than the whole state or nation.
11. EPR’s count easily enables each citizen voluntarily to elect their local council member at large (without districts), or alternatively from a district or official electoral association. However, the next planned article will explain how EPR can fully offer the same benefits when electing the legislature of a large and diverse state: On general election day, each citizen can choose to grade and help elect their own representative in the legislature from any of the large number of candidates seeking to represent any one of the districts or official electoral associations in their large state or nation. These electoral associations would have already been elected by citizens during a special EPR primary election by grading any of the relevant, voluntary organizations applying well before both this primary and the general election. Only these elected associations would be authorized to nominate the candidates to run in the general election. Some of these associations will be geographically defined (districts) as now, while others may be united only non-geographically and voluntarily by a common set of values and goals, such as political parties, interest groups, and voluntary societies. When these official electoral associations are added to EPR, this larger electoral system is called EAPR.
12. External references:

• EPR Count: Detailed Description
• EPR Figurative Explanation
• EPR algorithm EPRv2.r
• Simulated Election Output from EPRv2.r