[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics

[James Gilmour]

Juho > Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 10:31 PM
> Single-seat districts (the usual ones) provide very tight regional  
> representation / proportionality.

True, if you are prepared to accept that you have "regional representation"
when a majority of those elected are elected on minority votes.

 Political proportionality on the  
> other hand is very poor.
> 
> Multi-member districts provide less strict regional proportionality  
> but better political proportionality.

If the numbers of electors per member are similar, I don't see why the
regional proportionality should be any less.  (With STV-PR, strictly you
have adjust on the assumed quota because the absolute value of the Droop
quota increases with district magnitude.  But that's all unnecessary anyway
because the differences in turnout will make a complete nonsense of all the
efforts to obtain perfect equality of numbers!)


> The number of seats per district is important. If one district has 5  
> seats and another has 10 seats the chances of small groups to get  
> their candidates elected is different. The number of seats sets a  
> limit on the size of the parties that they must reach to get their  
> first seat (the case with one seat only is an extreme case that  
> typically favours two large parties with about 50% support each).

You must be careful to distinguish here between the proportion of votes to
win one seat and the actual number of votes to win one seat.  In a smaller
district (fewer seats), the proportion is higher but the number of votes is
smaller, and vice versa for a larger district.  

I think the key aspect of district magnitude that matters to electors is the
number of different groups of voters who can obtain direct representation.
So in a 5-member district only five different groups could be represented
directly, but in a 10-member district, ten different groups could be
represented directly.  Of course, in both districts, the voters could choose
direct representation of only two or three groups, but that would be the
voters' choice.


> In Finland there is currently one electoral reform proposal (with  
> support of majority of the parties) under discussion. The current  
> proposal gets rid of the current calculation rules that threat  
> different size districts differently. The basic idea is that the  
> number of representatives that each party will get will be counted  
> first at national level, and then the seats will be distributed to  
> the districts so that both political and regional proportionality  
> requirements will be met.
> 
> In the proposed system votes of a small group will thus be summed up  
> at national level. Even if the votes at some district would not be  
> enough to get even one seat the sum of votes in several districts may  
> be enough to guarantee one seat (that will be allocated to 
> that group  in one of the districts).
> 
> (The proposed system contains currently also a general threshold  
> level that parties need to reach to get any seats, but that's 
> another  story.)

Why go to the bother of summing the votes at national level to get better
proportionality if you are then going to impose an arbitrary threshold?   It
is a very common feature of party list PR systems, but it seems crazy to me,
especially as the threshold is completely arbitrary.


> The system is not STV based but open party list based, so it is quite  
> straight forward to sum up the votes of candidates of each opinion  
> group although the candidates are different at different districts.
> 
> It is thus possible to implement both regional and political  
> proportionality at the same time. And that is possible even if the  
> voters (of small parties/groupings) would be "forced" to vote  
> candidates of their own district.

Of course, STV-PR is about proportionality of a different kind, that cannot
be measured by summing votes regionally or nationally according to some
party label.  But THAT is, indeed, another story.

James
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