[Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions

[James Gilmour]

Markus Schulze  > Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 8:45 AM
>  > If you are going to mess about with MMP to the
>  > extent that you suggest in the hope of making
>  > some significant improvements to what is
>  > basically a very poor voting system, why not
>  > just adopt STV-PR and do the job properly?
> 
> When you promote pure STV in a country that
> already uses proportional representation by
> party lists, then you will be accused immediately
> that you were dishonest and that your real aim
> was to increase the effective threshold to gain
> representation.
> 
> My own experience says that, when you want to
> promote STV in a country that already uses
> proportional representation by party lists,
> then your proposal must contain provisions
> to compensate party proportionality on the
> national level. Otherwise, your proposal is
> a non-starter.

Markus, you make a very valid point which I, as a practical reformer, fully appreciate.  Any reform proposal, and the campaign to
support it, must be wholly appropriate to the local political circumstances.

It would certainly not be part of my agenda to increase the representation threshold for any political purpose, but I do recognise
the political problems that can be created by very low effective thresholds (e.g. Israel).  It must, however, be accepted that many
party list systems (including MMP systems) have imposed thresholds and that these thresholds are completely arbitrary, e.g. 5% of
the party list vote nationally  -  but why not 4% or 6%? . If you are going to impose such an arbitrary threshold, why go the bother
of summing the votes nationally?  Why not just use the effective thresholds that would result from the underlying regional structure
that exists in many countries and is built into in their voting systems (e.g. where parties present lists on a regional basis)?

It must also be appreciated that the effective threshold to gain representation in STV-PR is lower than a simple analysis based on
dividing the national first preference vote by the average quota would suggest, for two reasons.

In STV, the vote transfers are extremely important and when these are taken into account, the effect on "small" parties and
candidates with less support can change the perspective very dramatically.  For example, in the 2007 local government elections in
Scotland (3 and 4-member districts) the lowest proportions of quotas secured by winning candidates of the five main parties were:
0.32, 0.42, 0.42, 0.46, 0.48,   Malta shows the dangers of getting hung up on first preference votes when the main feature of the
STV voting system is that the votes are transferable.   It is also an unsafe assumption that every first preference vote for a
particular candidate is a "party vote" for that candidate's party.

Parties and candidates (usually) respond to the characteristics of whatever voting system is in use.  Thus the approach adopted by
smaller parties where it is STV-PR, is to concentrate their resources where their support is strongest and so achieve the local
threshold.  That's how the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, with about 2% of the first preference votes province-wide, won 2% of
the seats overall in the Northern Ireland Assembly (1998) when the district magnitude was only 6 (Droop quota threshold = 14.3%).

There is always a trade-off between guaranteed local representation (small districts) and proportionality (large districts),
whatever the voting system.  While STV-PR, as normally implemented, might reduce the effective threshold to gain representation for
parties nationally, that loss has to be set against the gains for the voters of more localised representation and of shifting the
balance of power and accountability from the parties to the voters.  How that balance is best presented depends on local politics.
No matter how enthusiastic the electors may be, such a change will nearly always be opposed by the larger political parties and
their backers!!

James

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