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

[Juho]

On May 17, 2010, at 3:25 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> thank you for your help with the election system for the council  
> elections of the green party.
> I will try to move on with technical testing of Schulze's methods  
> and the specification of the elections to the party lists as soon as  
> time allows.
> Thanks all for the support and all methods supplied.
> I never could imagine that I would get such a response.
> When advocating proportional elections in the party, I have found it  
> difficult to explain to other members of the green party why  
> proportional elections to our party organs is a good thing.
>
> So far my argument has been the following:
> The leadership of the party should represent all members.
> Otherwise infighting will follow, which weakens the party both  
> internally and in the eyes of the voter.
> A member of the green party without any representatives he/she likes  
> is likely to either
> (i) leave the party or
> (ii) try to get representation of his/her faction by removing all  
> the current party representatives, which the current representatives  
> naturally do not like, so both sides spend a great deal of time on  
> positional battles instead of working for the party.
> An other argument is, that it is much easier to tear down a party's  
> reputation than building it up.
>
> I guess I would need more help with propagating proportional  
> elections within my party
>
> I would like to ask you if you could help finding some short and to  
> the point arguments (preferrably 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.
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník

- Maybe there is no need to defend proportional representation.  
Proportional representation should in principle be taken as granted  
since that is the way the whole country operates.

- One approach to this question is to say that the already used method  
is already a serious attempt to implement proportional representation  
but that it is not good enough and does not meet the standards that  
are generally used in proportional systems.

- I think practically all political systems have a representative body  
that is in some sense proportional. Governments may be majoritarian  
but usually governments are not the only representative bodies.

- It very common that the largest groupings (that currently have the  
power) don't want to distribute power any more than they have to, in  
any political system. But maybe also they agree that reasonable level  
of proportionality is what the party wants. And then the question is  
if the current method is bad enough to be upgraded.

- You mentioned that some people might leave the party. They could  
also well establish a competing party. Since your party is small it  
can not afford fragmentation. A better strategy would be to collect  
all the similar minded people from all greenish segments of the  
society together and that way gain more weight. This means that all  
segments need to be respected and be represented.

- You mentioned earlier that the first vice president should come from  
a different grouping than the president. If people agree with this,  
then they should agree that similar principles should apply also to  
the rest of the council.

- If the members will decide, then they may like the fact that  
proportional representation means that higher number of them will have  
some of their favourites in the council.

- You could also explain why the current system does not work. (But be  
constructive and not destructive.:-)

- The first practical example in my mind is one where in a good  
council all the imagined groupings will have their representative in  
the council while in a bad council, that could be elected with the  
current method, things would not look as rosy.

- A working demo may also interest some people. Maybe better focus on  
some imaginary situation first and not directly on how the new method  
would change the current leadership to something better :-).

Juho



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