[EM] Accountability under.. ] The MMPP MMP method

[Craig Carey]

At 14:39 30.11.99 , DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:
>D- The below was put on the Canada Votes email list 
>(canada-votes at egroups.com) on Nov. 29, 1999 by Mr. Frampton (not me).
>------
...
>This shows a major flaw of MMP -- and any other mixture of constituency and
>list systems.  MPs defeated at the constituency level can -- and very often
>do -- get right back in by winning a List seat.  This violates the basic
>principle of representative government my effectively preventing the voters
>from removing an MP who has lost their confidence.
>
>Bill Frampton, V.P.
>Freedom Party of Ontario
>http://www.freedomparty.org/
>billfr at iosphere.net



              Preferential voting applied to party lists


Suppose that MMP were modified so that the "party vote" was not a single
 tick (or cross), but instead voters were given the full party list and
 were allowed to indicate preferences (1,2,3,...) for party list
 candidates.

They could carry to the voting booth, sticky stickers containing their
 number, and once in the voting booth, they could pick the party list
 paper of the party that they would give their party vote for. They would
 apply the sticker to the paper, and also write in the numbers 2, 3,
 and so on beside the party candidates. The paper would have been printed
 to show that the first preference was for the party leader.

For the country, and for each party, all the voters' preferential party
 votes would be added to a somewhat comparably weighted collection of votes
 supplied by the party. Then STV or any better preferential voting system
 would be used to pick the number of list MPs. The seats in the
 parliamentary chamber would, as in MMP, be filled in proportion to the
 ratios of the (adjusted) party votes.

This is a modified Mixed Member Proportional scheme, which I'll named the
 Mixed Member Preferential Proportional method, MMPP (is that taken?).

(Perhaps the Freedom Party of Ontario will explain whether MMP is surely
 flawed by lacking a veto when one of its variants seems to be not flawed
 in that way? [different name?].)

(For interest, how would politicians argue that a method like this be
 rejected?.)


                                --------
I note that the page here:

   http://worldpolicy.org/americas/democracy/table-pr.html

records the method of election of unicameral legislature or lower houses of
 bicameral legislatures as being "mixed member" "proportional" for only,
 and all of, these countries:

   Bolivia
   Germany
   Hungary
   Italy
   Mexico
   New Zealand   (is MMP)
   Venezuela.



Mr Craig Carey, Auckland, New Zealand, 30 November 1999