I don't like this system because, given that the categories have no influence on the actual results, the strategic thing to do is to completely ignore them and just vote for which party you like best. If you have three parties and preferences Red > Yellow > Blue, then you have no incentive to ever give the Blue party credit for anything, even if you think they are the best on certain issues, because that could only increase the number of seats they get in the legislature. In fact, it will basically always be most strategic to just give 100% of your vote to the Red party.
The only real advantage this system would have is that it supposedly gives parties more information, but they could just get that information through regular polls, rather than elections. Polls are imperfect, but so is the information you get from an election where people are strategically voting and most people are just going to ignore the categories. In fact, I suspect the information would be much worse.
If we actually want to use a department voting system, it should be something like, "Voters get to directly select which party heads certain departments or committees, not just how many seats they have." Then you could vote for the Blue party on the issues that you actually prefer them on without having to worry about increasing their power overall on the issues you don't like them on.
I don't like this system because, given that the categories have no influence on the actual results, the strategic thing to do is to completely ignore them and just vote for which party you like best. If you have three parties and preferences Red > Yellow > Blue, then you have no incentive to ever give the Blue party credit for anything, even if you think they are the best on certain issues, because that could only increase the number of seats they get in the legislature. In fact, it will basically always be most strategic to just give 100% of your vote to the Red party.
The only real advantage this system would have is that it supposedly gives parties more information, but they could just get that information through regular polls, rather than elections. Polls are imperfect, but so is the information you get from an election where people are strategically voting and most people are just going to ignore the categories. In fact, I suspect the information would be much worse.
If we actually want to use a department voting system, it should be something like, "Voters get to directly select which party heads certain departments or committees, not just how many seats they have." Then you could vote for the Blue party on the issues that you actually prefer them on without having to worry about increasing their power overall on the issues you don't like them on.