[EM] [Election-Methods] [english 94%] PRfavoringracialminorities

[James Gilmour]

Juho  > Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 6:08 AM
> To: Election Methods Mailing List
> On Aug 16, 2008, at 0:51 , James Gilmour wrote:
> >   Lists of
> > any kind will always be constraining.  And they are unnecessary (as
> > well as, in my view, undesirable).
> 
> Constraining in the sense of not being most flexible, yes. 
> Why do you see lists as undesirable?

Because they shift the balance of power and accountability away from the voters in favour of the party machines that make and
register the lists.


> I thought you were promoting the idea of allowing the voters to  
> express themselves in richer ways. Why not go in that direction?  
> (maybe you think STV-PR is already a good enough solution for all  
> needs and therefore intermediate solutions are not needed??)

I don't think you can get a much richer way than having total freedom to record as many or as few preferences as you wish and in any
order that you may want. STV-PR (except in Australia) provides that and I see any "intermediate solution" as a constraint on that
freedom.



> I see two evolution paths here. One from closed lists to open lists  
> and trees, and one that uses candidate level granularity and voter  
> specific ordering. (maybe something like simplicity and 
> structure vs. freedom of expression).

To move from closed lists to open lists would certainly be progress, and here in the UK we are campaigning for that, but only as a
very much second-best reform.  If we know, as we do, that STV-PR will deliver what is really needed, why promote something less?  It
is amazing how often the opponents of voting reform in the UK (and elsewhere) play the "simplicity" card to justify FPTP in
single-member districts!




> >>> To allow for diversity in representation you also need a  reasonable
> >>> minimum, so that the larger parties will be "forced" to nominate
> >>> at least two candidates each, so that the voters get some choice
> >>> within parties as well as between them.
> >>
> >> Are there problems with having too few candidates somewhere?
> >
> > Yes, most definitely.  In Scotland our 1,222 councillors (in 32  
> > Councils) were all elected from wards returning either 3 or 4
> > councillors.  In many wards even some of the larger parties put up  
> > only one candidate, so that the supporters got no choice of
> > representative WITHIN the party.  You'll find a lot of excellent  
> > analysis of those 2007 Scottish Local Government elections on the
> > Electoral Reform Society's website.  Many of us campaigned for more  
> > flexibility in district magnitude while the legislation was
> > going through the Scottish Parliament, but 3s and 4s was a done  
> > deal between the then coalition government parties.  There is no
> > good reason why cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh should not have  
> > wards returning 7 or 8 councillors.  Then the larger parties would
> > have no option but to offer real teams of candidates and their  
> > supporter would choose among them.
> 
> I just note here that it may be useful to have districts that are  
> about equal in size to keep the "party cutoff levels" (=  
> proportionality level with respect to minority opinions) roughly at  
> the same level everywhere (or alternatively use some additional  
> balancing mechanisms).

This concern with "equalness" can become something of an obsession, especially where there are differences in support for parties
between rural and urban areas and the proposal is to have larger districts (more members) in the urban areas and smaller districts
(fewer members) in the rural areas.  It has been an issue here in Scotland.  But there is more to equality of representation than
having exactly equal numbers of electors per elected member and having equal numbers of elected members in every electoral district.
The realities and practicalities of effective representation in the geographically different areas should not be ignored.  No matter
how hard you strive for "equalness" in every parameter, the voters will screw it up for you because you cannot ensure equal turnouts
in all of the "equal" districts (unless you have compulsory voting, perhaps!).



> > There are some very large difference in voter behaviour in STV-PR  
> > elections.  In Malta, voting the party ticket is almost universal,
> > to the extent that the two main parties sometimes nominate 12  
> > candidates for the 5-member electoral districts.  (The "spares" are
> > used to fill any casual vacancies during the life of the  
> > Parliament.)  In Ireland, typically fewer than half of the  supporters of
> > either of the two larger parties will vote the party ticket.  In  
> > Northern Ireland, voter behaviour lies somewhere between these two.
> 
> Don't know the details of these mechanisms but tickets seem to me  
> like add-ons that may have both good and bad effects. They do reduce  
> the problems of vote splitting due to short votes.

I should perhaps have used a different description.  All I meant by "vote the party ticket" was to mark preferences for all of the
candidates of the preferred party before marking preferences for candidates of any other party.  There is NO formal "ticket"
mechanism in any of these STV elections  -  nothing at all like the Australian "above the line voting" (thank goodness!!).


> I tend to favour counting exact proportionalities at national (=whole  
> election) level ((if one wants PR in the first place)). I also tend  
> to think that most old stable democracies do not need explicit or  
> implicit cutoffs "to maintain the stability of the system" since most  
> of them seem to have more problems with having the same old boring  
> parties in power continuously rather than having problems with  
> fighting against too many diverse viewpoints. I also tend to favour  
> more fine-grained expression of opinions, as in STV or with trees, as  
> a way to allow the voters to better influence the direction the  
> system takes (reduces the risk of stagnation and alienation of the  
> voters from the "parties and politics that continue as before no  
> matter how we vote").

I don't know what "exact proportionalities" might be when a preferential voting system is used.  And there are certainly major
problems in trying to measure such proportionalities, exact or otherwise.  Malta has got itself into some very serious political
problems by taking the first preference votes as the "correct" expression of party proportionality that should be reflected in the
seats won.  But that ignores completely the effect of the transfers of votes according to the voters' preferences, the very essence
of STV-PR.  We all tend to use the first preferences in STV-PR elections as the "best" indicator of relative party support, but that
assumption must have so many caveats attached to it that no-one would think of using it to calculate the "exact" proportionalities
at national level (except in Malta!).

James



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