[EM] Competitive Districting Rule

[James Gilmour]

Juho Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 10:22 PM
> The Scottish situation sounds to me like a multi-party system 
> (that has emerged under different rules) has gotten trapped 
> in a two-party EM, and this kind of mixture is not a pretty 
> match (looks actually quite terrible).

No, not at all.  For UK (Westminster) parliament elections the whole of the UK has used only FPTP (simple plurality) in
single-member districts for many decades, in most case for more than 100 years.  We all also used the same voting system
for local government elections (the only other public elections we had until comparatively recently).  In the elections
after the 1939-45 war, the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) got around 90% of the total vote (96.8% in 1951).
The third party was the Liberals (now Liberal Democrats) who, in elections after 1945, got around 9% of the vote, but
only 1% of the seats.  Despite Duverger's "law", support for the Liberal Democrats has grown and in 2005 they had 25% of
the vote and 9.6% of the seats.  Eight smaller parties also have seats in the UK Parliament.  So there has been a
three-party system across the whole of the UK for some time.

In Scotland the SNP (Scottish National Party - campaigning for independence) became a significant force in 1970, gaining
11% of the vote, again despite Duverger's "law".  In the October 1974 election the SNP peaked at 30.5% of the vote, and
they now get around 20% of the vote (but far fewer seats).  So In Scotland we have had a four-party system for the past
30 years, all based on single-member districts and the simple plurality (FPTP) voting system.


> I guess the other three parties were fed up with 
> conservatives taking too many seats (more than PR would 
> allow?) and decided to join forces.

No, the Conservatives were UNDER-represented in Scotland.  In the 1992 election they got 26% of the votes but only 15%
of the seats.  But the Conservatives had formed the UK Government (the only government we then had) since 1979, a period
of 18 years when the 1997 election was called.  The Conservative Government was increasingly disliked (!!) in Scotland.


> The others obviously got 
> their revenge and now took more seats than PR would allow :-).

No, this was NOT a move by the other parties.  The "Scotland Tory-free" campaign was a grass-roots campaign among
electors.  There were some websites exchanging information among electors, but the parties all stayed very quiet on the
subject.


> I tend to think that if voters are clever enough to make the 
> 1997 tactic work, they would also be able to use full PR 
> right if they would be given the chance.

Yes indeed!  The Scottish Parliament is elected by MMP and our electors have (mostly) shown great ability to manipulate
that voting system (so far).


> A good voting system 
> is anyway such where one can vote based on one's sincere 
> preferences. And I do believe better EMs exist than the poor 
> multi/two-party combination of 1997.

STV-PR is probably the best way of allowing voters to express their sincere preferences.


> On STV:
> STV gives at least the option of giving first position to a 
> local candidate and second to some non-local alternative.

I don't understand this comment.  With STV-PR as I know it, ALL the candidates are local, ie all within one
locality-based multi-member district.  If any party is so stupid as to include some carpet-baggers in its team of
candidates, the voters will deal with them very severely.  When you have community-based multi-member districts for
STV-PR, the term "local" takes on a new meaning, especially in rural areas where there are likely to be several
significant clusters of population.  Then you want to make sure your team of candidates do not all live and work in the
same part of the district.  This applies even in densely populated cities.


> This scenario has however the problem that typically voters 
> tend to vote well known candidates, and they often come e.g. 
> from the capital, not from the local community. I guess this 
> is one reason why EMs often force people to vote only the 
> local candidates.

STV-PR encourages the electors to learn more about more candidates, but they can vote however they want, eg by party, by
locality, by women before men, by ethnic community, by some pressing local issue, by any combination of these, etc.  I
may not think much of the criteria you used to select your preferences, but they are your criteria and in a democracy,
your criteria are as valid as mine or anyone else's.

I know that by promoting STV-PR I shall help to secure the election of some candidates whose political views I oppose,
and I know that I shall be helping to empower some voters who, in my view, make very poor choices based on very poor
criteria.  But that's democracy and I do believe in democracy.


> STV style has the problem that voters need to have lots of 
> information about the candidates. Or maybe they'll just vote 
> the most famous ones. My ideal ballot (from the completeness 
> point of view, maybe not if need to avoid complexity is 
> there) would be one with both STV style ability to set voter 
> specific preferences but also party based groupings 
> (including subdivisions, areal criteria and party alliances). 
> I might e.g. vote "James > local conservatives > other conservatives".
> 
> (We could also force regional balance (regional PR) even if 
> people would not vote "regionally enough" in the same way the 
> method I describes forced changes in the "single winners" of 
> the districts to gaon national ideological PR.)
> 
> Note that subdivision of parties and their alliances and 
> whatever other groupings add tools to the voter to express 
> what she wants. Also models where STV like ordering is not 
> used but the vote to James automatically goes to the smallest 
> group that James belongs to, then to the next bigger group 
> etc. may work better than current more rough "vote party 
> only" or "vote party member only" arrangements.

This all sounds very like the "above-the-line" voting that is used in the Australian Federal Senate elections.  It has
perverted STV-PR very severely, so that that implementation is really nothing more than closed list party PR.


> In the party subdivision EMs I see potential for making the 
> votes influence the party opinions more than what the case 
> often is today (i.e. when parties often seem to be deaf and 
> push the party office line instead of the supporters' line.

That's why I favour STV-PR over party list PR  voting systems.  STV-PR puts the power in the hands of the local voters
and so makes the elected representatives much more accountable to those voters.


> I still have to say that the simple method that I described 
> (single member districts + national PR) would fulfil some of 
> the key targets you maybe had (PR, locality in the UK/US 
> traditional style, more sincere votes), although it had also 
> some "rounding errors" like giving victory in some districts 
> to other than the plurality winner.

This sounds very like MMP, which we use to elect the Scottish Parliament (implemented by region, not nationally).  It is
better than FPTP in single-member districts, but it is a very poor voting system compared to STV-PR.  For a full
presentation of the arguments in relation to the Scottish Parliament, see:
http://www.arbuthnottcommission.gov.uk/docs/Consultation%20Responses/Civic%20Organisations%20and%20Bodies/Fairshare.pdf

James