[EM] Request for opinion

[Simon Gazeley]

Dear Robertas

In the United Kingdom, municipalities are already divided into areas
("wards") each of which returns 2, 3 or 4 councillors.  The Scottish
Parliament in Edinburgh is about to bring in PR for local government in
Scotland and has chosen STV.  Of course, there is a tradition of using
STV in Ireland (North and South), which means it is slightly less
unfamiliar to the Scots than it would be to Lithuanians.  

Nevertheless, in the circumstances you describe, I consider that STV in
(say) 4-member municipal wards would be the ideal solution.

1.	To get a seat in a 4-member ward, a party would have to get 20%
of the vote.  This would act against parties with little support;

2.	To get a seat, a candidate would have to appeal to a large
cross-section of the populace, possibly to supporters of parties other
than their own.  This would act against extremist parties;

3.	Parties might be encouraged to form alliances, in which each
encourages its supporters to rank candidates of the other party
immediately below their own candidates.  This would make for stability;

4.	Which of a party's candidates are elected depends entirely on
the voters and not at all on the party machines.  This gives the elected
members a legitimacy they would not have under a list system if they
depended entirely on the party to place them high enough up the list to
get a seat.

The Senate of the Republic of Ireland is elected at large by STV, but
the voters are themselves elected representatives, not the general
public.  I do not think that manual STV lends itself well to the
election of very large numbers of representatives due to the large
number of votes that become non-transferable during the count. Meek's
formulation of STV is better, but it requires a computer.  Having taken
part for many years in elections to 15 seats (The Council of the
Electoral Reform Society in England (ers at reform.demon.co.uk)), I can say
that the novelty of ranking up to 35 candidates in order soon wears off!
I do not think that STV is reasonable for more than about 7 or 8 seats
when you are asking the general public to vote.

I hope this is helpful.  Good luck!

Best wishes

Simon
 


-----Original Message-----
From: election-methods-electorama.com-admin at electorama.com
[mailto:election-methods-electorama.com-admin at electorama.com] On Behalf
Of robertas pogorelis
Sent: 25 September 2003 11:06
To: election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com
Subject: [EM] Request for opinion


Hello,


I am new to the list, and glad to discover that its so active. I am a 
political scientist currently based at Leuven, Belgium, though
originally 
coming from Lithuania.

I have been asked by the working group of the Lithuanian Parliament to 
produce an expert opinion about possible changes to the electoral system
of 
local (municipal) councils in Lithuania. As myself I am not sure which 
option is the best, I just though I would give you a chance to
contribute 
to the development of a new democracy by asking for your opinions, which

would finally help me formulating mine.

Current system: PR, one municipality-one constituency, 21 to 51 members 
elected from each (depending on the number of inhabitants). Vote for a 
party list, plus an optional preference vote for (up to three)
candidates 
on the chosen list; the party votes determine the number of seats for
each 
party (Hare quota); the preference votes determine the final list order.

Perceived problems:

- no scope for voting for independents (desirable at the municipal
level; 
in society, there is very strong anti-party disposition in general);

- high fragmentation, shaky coalitions;

- proliferation of extremist parties; a leaders popularity tends to 
attract votes for his party, and facilitates the election of additional 
candidates from the same list, who are often neither popular (as seen
from 
preferential votes) nor very educated;

- a bit strange to have open-list PR at the municipal level and a mixed 
system at the national one; on the other hand, most European countries 
employ some sort of PR at the municipal level. PR could strengthen
parties 
at grass-roots; however, in Lithuania this seems to have facilitated 
forming cliques and cartels unaccountable to the public;

- no territorial representation with such large districts (desirable at
the 
municipal level).


Possible solutions:

-         forming smaller districts (but this would be costly, so I
would 
presume the parliament may wish to retain the current ones). In your 
opinion, judging from the above, would this be a strong necessity?

-         Replacing PR with SNTV or some kind of Approval Voting. But
can 
Approval Voting be recommended in such large districts? Any countries 
employing this system for local elections?

-         STV would sound good as well but again, can it be applied in 
such large districts? Would it be worse than the current open-list PR?


I would appreciate your opinions very much (if possible, by this
weekend).


Many thanks,

Robertas

----
Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list
info