[Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions

[James Gilmour]

raphfrk  > Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 1:48 PM
> > From: James Gilmour   
> > There is always a trade-off between guaranteed local representation 
> > (small districts) and proportionality (large districts),
> > whatever the voting system.
>                                  
> Local representation isn't that important.  The benefit that 
> is called 'local representation' is the ability of the voters 
> to directly control their representative.

My 45 years of campaigning for practical reform of voting systems lead me to disagree with you, at least so far as the UK is
concerned.  I suspect much the same applies in other countries that have had many decades of the appalling British legacy of
single-member districts - hence the attraction of MMP, that APPEARS to offer "the best of both worlds".  It is not just direct
control and accountability  -  there is definitely a geographical localism in what electors say they want.


< CUT> 

> > While STV-PR, as normally implemented, might reduce
> > the effective threshold to gain representation for
> > parties nationally,
>                                  
> I assume that you mean 'increase' not 'reduce'?

Yes, my mistake  -  thanks for the correction.


> However, ignoring logistics, PR-STV with a single 
> constituency would not have any tradeoff.  There would be 
> (near) perfect PR and each voter would be directly 
> represented by someone they choose.

For the reasons given above, I cannot agree with this statement.  There is always a trade-off between overall proportionality and
local representation.  In the 1890s some UK advocates of STV-PR wanted the whole UK to be one electoral district, so the voter in
Caithness (extreme north) and the voter in Cornwall (extreme south) could both vote for and be represented by the candidate from
Cambridge (middle England) if they thought that candidate would best represent their views.  Of course, practical reformers never
promoted such "perfect PR" ideas because they realised the importance of geographically local representation to the real electors in
the real world  -  to say nothing of the opposition from the politicians (who cannot be ignored if you want to achieve reform).



> The logistics ofc are the big problem. 

I don't think the logistics are "the big problem".  The "big problem" would be lack of political acceptability to the electorate.
We already transport all our ballot boxes to counting centres, for all types of public election  -  that's 32 centres for Scotland,
for example.  If STV-PR were to be adopted with one national electoral district, as it could be to elect our future 6 members of the
European Parliament, it would be possible to transport all the ballot boxes to one national counting centre for a manual count.
Candidates and their agents wouldn't like that very much, but some candidates in local government elections already have to travel
long distances to the relevant counting centre.  Alternatively, the ballot papers could be scanned at the more local counting
centres and the vote files consolidated nationally for the count.  That raises issues about the acceptability of such technology and
there have been a few genuine problems, but the hostility to the use of such technology in public elections goes well beyond the
actual problems.


> I think a reasonable 
> compromise would be to have local candidates only on the 
> ballot and have spaces for write in codes for all candidates 
> in the country.
>                                  
> Maybe, each candidate would be allowed to pick which polling 
> stations that he is on the ballot for.  The limit could be 
> polling stations covering around 4-5 seats worth of voters.  
> This limit might be increased for candidates who were already 
> elected or managed to reach a threshold in a previous election.
>                                  
> In effect, each candidate would create his own district., so 
> gerrymandering becomes less relevant.

These ideas are all non-starters, at least in the UK.  Our electors like candidates tied to specified geographical areas (even if
these areas are multi-member electoral districts).  We don't use a "write-in" approach in any public elections and I have never
heard any support for it here.  Our electors would not want anything that could be portrayed as allowing each candidate to create
his own district. 

Once you have a reasonable average size of multi-member electoral district, gerrymandering becomes irrelevant  -  it has little
effect even with the 3 and 4-member STV electoral wards we used for the 2007 local government elections, but I would always
recommend a greater average district magnitude than that.

James

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