[EM] STV and MMP are not Too Complicated.
Donald E Davison
donald at mich.com
Tue Dec 14 04:33:55 PST 1999
Greetings EM list members,
STV and MMP are not too complicated. The insides of your video recorder
are too complicated for most, but we do not need to understand the inside
in order to enjoy its function, as long as it does the job it was designed
to do. That's the main point.
That is also the main point of any election method, does the method do
the job it was designed to do? District STV and MMP do not.
In order to continue this subject, I must establish a standard of
Proportional Representation(PR) as follows: This standard of PR states
that each one percent of the votes will elect one member per 100 seats in
the entire election. (If anyone knows of a better standard, please inform
us, I am willing to learn.)
There are two methods that will meet this standard. STV used in an
One-Area election will elect one member for every whole percent each party
has. Party List will also be as good. (I advocate Open Party List).
But, District STV will not meet this standard, its member-elect party
proportionality will be off ten or twenty percent from Popular Vote
proportionality, depending on the size of the districts. District STV is
not the same as One-Area STV - it's a different ballgame.
This is where supporters of STV feed misinformation. When they say STV
is great, they are talking about its qualities when it is used in an
One-Area election, but then they will talk about District STV, falsely
inferring that it still has these great qualities - that these qualities
have somehow carried over to District STV. Not so!
This is one of the Dirty Little Secrets of STV. (STV has two more Dirty
Little Secrets).
MMP is better than District STV, not as good as One-Area STV or Party
List. MMP has the flaw of cross party voting, which causes distortions in
the proportionality by electing additional members. This is called
`OverHang'.
I agree with those who say we should not advocate any certain system
at this time. While the two One-Area systems, STV and Open Party List,
would both give us good PR, the district systems, District STV and MMP,
have flaws that their supporters seem not to be willing to face at this
time. So, being as the use of districts is favored, and the two main
district methods are flawed, it is best not to advocate either.
A person by the name of Chris was correct when he wrote: "My own
preference is a combination STV, open-list PR system." I have posted this
quote before, but it is worth repeating.
This future mix of STV and Open-List will be the best system, but some
members of this list will not be able to accept it until they are willing
to face the flaws of their current favored systems.
Each supporter of District STV should present an argument as to why
MMP is better than District STV, and each supporter of MMP should present
an argument as to why District STV is better than MMP. After they have done
this, then maybe they will realize that they are both wrong.
That will be the time when everyone can consider a system that is a mix
of STV and Open-List, as suggested by Chris.
In the meantime, here are some slogans you can use to promote PR:
"Your just representation is when you and twenty percent of the voters
elect twenty percent of the members, or when you and sixty percent of the
voters elect sixty percent of the members in the entire election."
"Your just representation is when the proportionality of the elected
members is the same as the proportionality of the popular vote across the
entire election."
"Each one percent of the voters should be able to elect one member per
100 seats."
Or, maybe someone will be able to design a better slogan, but a slogan
should be used by everyone to express PR. This will tell the public what is
our standard of belief. It is not enough to merely complain about the
current system.
These three slogans are all repeating the same standard in different
words - the same standard that I established at the top of this letter, and
the most valid standard, because, if you will think about it, this is the
exact same standard that people are alluding to when they complain about
elections not being proportional.
These people complain that the party proportionality of the members
elected is not close to the party proportionality of the popular vote.
These people are crying that the election does not meet a standard, which
happens to be the exact same standard that I have established for this
letter.
And then, can you guess what soom of these people will do? They will
go and advocate a system of District STV that will also not meet the
standard. Makes a person wonder why they are complaining about the current
election method - District STV is not much better.
The following chart shows the kind of results we can expect from the four
different election methods.
Popular | M E M B E R S E L E C T E D
Votes | One-Area Party District Top-Up
| STV List STV MMP
------- | ------- ------ ------- ------------
A 30% 30 30 44 31 29.5%
B 23 23 23 32 24 22.9%
C 20 20 20 10 21 20.0%
D 13 13 13 4 14 13.3%
E 10 10 10 0 11 10.5%
F 4 4 4 0 4 3.8%
----- ----- ---- ---- ---- ------
100% 100 100 100 105 100.0%
Going from One-Area STV to District STV is the same as imposing an
artifical threshold.
Before anyone embraces One-Area STV as their favored solution, I must
tell you that it has its own problems, some of which would change the
results from above.
* The question of District-Member Link.
* The high number of exhausted ballots.
* The second `Dirty Little Secret' is the rule that transfers
exhausted ballots to remaining candidates, who were not choices on the
exhausted ballots.
* The third `Dirty Little Secret' is the Droop Quota, which in the
case of a large One-Area STV election would have little influence because
it would be offset by the exhausted ballots. (Droop has a big `Bad'
influence in District STV,)
Party List also has its problems.
* The question of District-Member link.
* Closed Party List - the order of the list not determined by the
voters, which can be solved by Open Party List - having the order
determined by the voters. And, the best way to do that is use STV to
determine the order of the candidates on the lists.
This brings us back to the best future system, a mix of STV and party
list, which can also be used in districts, so that will solve the
District-Member link question.
Any questions?
Regards, Donald
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| Q U O T A T I O N |
| "Democracy is a beautiful thing, |
| except that part about letting just any old yokel vote." |
| - Age 10 |
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