[EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czech green party)

[VoteFair at SolutionsCreative.com]

Peter Zborník wrote:

> I would like to ask you if you could help finding
> some short and to the point arguments (preferably
> with some real-life examples). We need to explain
> why a political party would benefit from electing
> their representatives to the different party
> councils proportionally instead of using the
> winner-takes-it-all methods (block-voting) which
> are in use today.

> Such power arguments could be a help when I try to
> sell the idea of proportional elections in the
> Czech Green party.

I suggest trying an argument like this -- with adjustments
that reflect the nature of your sub-groups:

"The members of our Green Party have different priorities.
Some members are in the party to reduce greenhouse gases,
others want to protect forests, others want to promote the
use of solar panels, others want to promote election reform,
and so on.  [Obviously I don't know which sub-groups are
dominant in the Czech Green Party.]  If non-proportional
methods are used, only the agenda of the most numerous
members will be promoted, and other not-as-popular agendas
will be neglected."

"As a simple example, if 60 percent of the members want to
reduce greenhouse gases, and the other 40 percent want to
promote forest conservation, traditional voting methods
would elect only greenhouse-gas-issue members to the
council.  The forest conservationists would get no
representation in the council.  In contrast, a proportional
voting method would ensure that both greenhouse-gas-issue
members and forest conservationists are elected to the
council.  In this case, because of the 60-versus-40
imbalance, more council members would be of the
greenhouse-gas-issue type, and fewer council members would
be forest conservationists.  This result reflects the
diverse priorities of the voters, instead of giving the
majority an overwhelming win, which would result in a very
narrow agenda that ignores what many Green Party members
want."

The method you have in mind proposing, namely the Schulze
proportional method, may not correctly fill the council with
smaller sub-groups -- such as members who comprise 15
percent of the Green Party -- so I don't suggest saying that
those smaller sub-groups will get representation.  I presume
that the Schulze proportional method at least gives
representation for both a majority group and an opposition
group (which is often a virtual coalition), so that's what I
suggest focusing on.

As I've said before, it's difficult to get proportional
representation for more than the two main sub-groups (the
opposition side of which is often a virtual coalition) if
the voters do not indicate on their ballot which sub-group
best represents them.  Yes, their highest-ranked choice
appears to help elect someone of their specific
small-subgroup type, but strategic voting methods and
method-design flaws can override the ability to produce
"full" proportionality.

(Although I have not yet seen a description of the Schulze
proportional method, I'm confident that it has to be much
better than your current approach of using single-mark
ballots.)

As for real-life examples, if you should want a testimonial
about the proportional benefits of VoteFair representation
ranking, remember there is one on the testimonials page of
the VoteFair.org site.

Richard Fobes