[EM] Competitive Districting Rule

[Juho]

> I don't think an electorate like ours would tolerate
> your proposed re-allocation of some of the
> single-district winners to achieve party
> party balance.

Few remaining comments on this topic:

As said, I think it makes sense to look at these matters from the point of view of unavoidable rounding errors. In the method I presented (which is not one of my favourite methods) we achieved extreme locality (single member districts) and very good PR (party based). The price for these had to be paid by giving up the stong link/correlation between local representatives and the locally largest party. (Note that in single member districts it is anyway impossible to achieve good PR locally.) It is a matter of taste (and of whatever general targets one has for the EM) if these mentioned characteristics are needed in some particular environment.

In the traditional FPTP countries the presented method would certainly cause some initial confusion like you propose since some districts would not elect the candidates from the biggest parties. Maybe one must in this case change the viewpoint a bit. Let's tell to the voters that getting national PR is the main target. Local needs like arrangig funding for a local hospital can be seen as a goal that unites all local voters and all local candidates across party borders.

Btw, the biggest problem I see in the described method is not the lack of correspondence between local representative and strongest party (which is not really "horrendous anomalies" like you proposed but characteristics that may well be ok somewhere) but maybe the risky nature of the process to the candidates. It makes too much sense for them to move to some district that doesn't have too well known competitors. And if one does not do that, some very good candidates will not be elected.

At least in multi-party settings it typically makes sense to relax the locality requirement a bit and elect more than one representative from each district (in line with your campaign). There are different methods to implement the PR (= STV, parties).

One can implement PR nationally (like in the method that I described) or independently within each district. National levwl PR calculations are typically needed if one wants to achieve maximum PR. I.e. to cover also to the smallest parties/groupings that will get only about 1/n of the votes (where n is the number of representatives to be elected). PR may thus be with or without cut-off. STV based methods don't normally use the concept of parties/groupings and therefore counting the votes of e.g. all animal protection oriented candidates together (nation wide) to achieve one seat is not possible. (and as a result a cut-off (which is one type of a rounding error) (or maybe intentional in some cases) is introduced at some level)

BR, Juho

_____ Original message _____
Subject:	Re: [EM] Competitive Districting Rule
Author:	"James Gilmour" <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk>
Date:		20th July 2006 2:7:15 

Juho> Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 9:12 PM
> Thanks for explaining what the situation in Scotland is. It 
> really seems that Scots have been working against the 
> Duverger's law for some time now.
> 
> The MMP method of the Scottish Parliament certainly turns the 
> Scottish party system in the direction of a multi-party 
> system, but I guess the tendency to move in the multi-party 
> direction existed already before the MMP started influencing.

Yes, long before we had MMP.  We had and have four main parties, but in 2003 we elected six parties to the SP each with at least six
MSPs (6, 7, 17, 18, 27, 50) plus one very small party (1 MSP) and three independents.


> But whatever the timing, at least now there seems to be a 
> clearly identifiable conflict between two-party (Westminster 
> Parliament) and multi-party (Scottish Parliament) political 
> arrangements. Having a two-party EM in use at the same time 
> with a multi-party style MMP EM is a conflict situation. It 
> is hard to make the party system work sometimes as if it 
> would consist of two parties and sometimes as in a 
> multi-party configuration.

At present there is no conflict because the Labour Party is the UK government in Westminster (London) and the Labour Party is the
largest party in Scotland and the lead party in the majority two-party coalition in the Scottish Parliament.  It might be different
if the Conservatives formed the UK government.


> You have a campaign to reform the Scottish Parliament EM. Do 
> you have plans to do something with the Westminster Parliament 
> EM too (i.e. the Scottish branch of it)? It is ok to improve 
> one thing at a time, but on the long run I think some 
> improvements would be good to alleviate the problems related 
> to hanging between two and multiple parties.

The Electoral Reform Society was formed to promote STV for the Westminster Parliament in 1884!!  We have been working at it every
since.  I wasn't there at the start (!!), but I have been an active member of the ERS for more than 40 years.

We have achieved STV-PR for local government elections in Scotland, with the first STV elections in May 2007.

Of course, Northern Ireland (part of the UK) has used STV-PR for all its public elections since 1973 except the election of its
Westminster MPs.

ALL the voting reform in the UK in the past ten years has been to introduce some form of PR, all controlled by the Labour Government
at Westminster: Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, Scottish Local Authorities, London Assembly, European Parliament MEPs for all
parts of the UK.  Sadly it hasn't all been STV-PR, but almost any PR is better than the FPTP we had before.  But, of course, neither
the Labour Government nor the Conservative opposition want PR for the UK Parliament!!


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

I don't think there is much doubt about that.

> 
> STV-PR allows the voters to express their opinions with 
> extreme flexibility. There are also interesting party based 
> and hybrid methods that are maybe less flexible but 
> interesting and expressive. Btw, when talking about improved 
> party based methods I typically think about open lists, not 
> about the closed ones. And STV-PR may well be good for 
> Scotland although I have interest in improving other methods too. :-)
> 
> 
> > This sounds very like MMP, which we use to elect the Scottish 
> > Parliament
> 
> The method I described was at least close to a MMP method (as 
> defined in wikipedia).
> - it is a MMP method that fully compensates/balances the 
> results so that full PR is achieved
> - it is a MMP method where no additional seats are allocated 
> to balance the results => single member results are 
> (re)calculated (= some plurality winners changed to others) 
> so that full PR will be achieved
> - it differs at least (from the wikipedia definition) of MMP 
> in that no separate party votes are given (each candidate of 
> a single member district is assumed to belong to some 
> party/list and PR is derived from this)

I can see what you are trying to do, but I do not like your system and I could not support it.  Firstly because it is a party-PR
system.  I believe elections in a representative democracy should be about much more than just party PR.  Secondly because I don't
think an electorate like ours would tolerate your proposed re-allocation of some of the single-district winners to achieve party
balance.  The anomalies that would create (losers with small percentages of the local votes displacing FPTP winners!) could be
horrendous.

James


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