[EM] Why is wikipedia so biased pro-IRV?

[James Gilmour]

Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 1:18 PM
> 
> James Gilmour wrote:
> > Kristofer Munsterhjelm  > Sent: Friday, February 25, 2011 2:29 PM
> >> I'm not a UK politics expert, but it seems this is a minimal concession,
> >> of the sort one would see in negotiation. AV/IRV doesn't really lead to 
> >> multiparty systems, if Australia is to be any judge. Instead, you get 
> >> two large parties and one middle sized party (as in Australia's Labor 
> >> and LibNats), which is an improvement from Plurality, and definitely so 
> >> from the point of view of the Liberal Democrats (who could become the 
> >> middle sized party).
> > 
> > The UK already has a multi-party system - all under FPTP.-  at least as  
> > measured by votes. Of course, not as measured by seats - but that's 
> > FPTP.
> 
> Although I was thinking of measured by seats, that's interesting. What 
> keeps the Liberal Democrat voters from going lesser-of-two-evils?

I can't answer that directly, except perhaps to suggest their supporters are more concerned to keep the political equivalent of "the
one true faith".  Support for the two largest parties is at the lowest it has been in "modern" times - see:
  http://www.jamesgilmour.f2s.com/Percentage-Votes-for-Two-Largest-Parties-UK-GEs-1945-2010.pdf

So far as Westminster elections are concerned, England has three significant parties, and as Bob has already pointed out, Scotland
and Wales both have four.

In the general election of 1997 there was a lot of local tactical voting (i.e. voting for a candidate of a party did not sincerely
want to see elected) with the aim of getting the Conservatives out (or to prevent them from winning where they had been a close
second in the previous election).  That tactical voting was particularly successful in Scotland and Wales because the Tories did not
win a single seat in either country despite having 17% and 20% of the votes respectively.  That result was a great political victory
(to give the Conservatives a bloody nose), but it was a travesty in terms of democratic representation of the voters.


> 
> > US members might be interested to know that more than two-thirds of 
> > the 649 MPs elected in the 2010 UK general election are minority 
> > members - elected with less than half of the votes in their individual  
> > constituencies (electoral districts). See:
> http://www.jamesgilmour.f2s.com/UK-MPs-GE-2010-Minority-Members-12Jan11.pdf

> > 
> >> AV+ or STV/MMP would have been better, but alas.
> > 
> > STV-PR would certainly have been better than AV (= IRV) from every 
> > perspective. But AV+ would have been a disaster. Remember, AV+ was 
> > designed deliberately to distort the seats-to-votes so that one or  
> > other of the two largest parties would nearly always have an overall 
> > majority of seats for only a minority of the votes.
> 
> I thought AV+ was just MMP with AV rather than FPTP as the base. MMP 
> itself, as far as I know, keeps a number of direct election seats, then 
> counts the wasted preferences and compensates by using list seats so 
> that one's vote can count even if it doesn't elect the direct seat. If 
> so, it shouldn't be biased in favor of the two largest parties unless 
> the calculation itself is.

No, "AV+" is not simply MMP with AV in the single-member electoral districts instead of FPTP.  The clue is in the name  -  it is AV
with a (very) little bit added on rather than any real kind of proportional system.  It would give more proportional results than
FPTP, but it would still distort the overall votes so that one or other of the two main parties would have an overall majority of
the seats for a minority of the votes in most elections.

In Jenkins' AV+ there was no national tally of the votes.  Instead the top-up "correction" was to be applied separately within each
of the proposed 80 electoral regions.  Each electoral region would have between 3 and 10 single-member electoral districts  - mostly
5 to 9.  BUT there would be only ONE or TWO top-up seats in each electoral region.  So the proportionality "correction" would have
been only 1 in 8 in some cases, but mostly 2 in the regions with 7, 8 or 9 districts.  So the results would still have been horribly
distorted in relation to the votes  -  but that was what was wanted!!!

You must also remember that the MMP used to elect the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly is a regionalised version.  There
is no national tally of the list (party) votes.  Instead the list votes are tallied within electoral regions.  In Scotland there are
8 electoral regions, containing 8, 9 or 10 single-member electoral districts.  Each electoral region returns 7 regional members.  So
the MMP proportionality here is worked out for regions returning 15, 16 or 17 MSPs.  That's quite different from MMP in New Zealand
or federal elections in Germany.  Also, we have no "overhang" correction of any kind in Scotland, but we do have lots of
"overhang"!!

 
> > Full MMP  would have been better in terms of party proportionality, 
> > but that is all. MMP, with two very different kinds of elected member, 
> > brings a raft of new problems which would be high price to pay for 
> > party PR. We have MMP in the Scottish Parliament (we call it AMS),  
> > but we want to change to STV-PR.
> 
> MMP is somewhat a hack, yes, but it's better than no compensation at 
> all. From the party list angle, I think it's better than plain old party 
> list as well, since the voters have at least some ability to elect 
> within parties, not just between them.

Whether MMP would be "better" depends on your objective.  If all you want is to improve PR of registered political parties, then MMP
would be an improvement.  But if your objective is to re-empower the voters through STV-PR, then MMP would be a big move in the
wrong direction  -  primarily because of the problems with redrawing the single-member district boundaries and entrenching the power
of the party machines.  Even with open lists for choosing the regional members, MMP would be a poor comparison with STV-PR.

There are lots of problems with MMP that I won't detail here.  If you want to see some of  them, take a look at these submissions to
two recent Commission that reviewed the voting system for the Scottish Parliament:
   http://www.fairsharevoting.org/Fairshare%20Submission%20Arbuthnott%20Commission%2022%20Mar%2005.pdf
and
  http://www.commissiononscottishdevolution.org.uk/uploads/2008-12-02-fairshare.pdf

James




-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 10.0.1204 / Virus Database: 1435/3472 - Release Date: 02/27/11