[EM] What's wrong with the party list system?

[James Gilmour]

Kathy Dopp  > Sent: Monday, July 04, 2011 10:40 PM
> James,  As someone on this list already pointed out, such a 
> system as you suggest does *nothing* to ensure 
> proportionality *within* the party list because the list of 
> candidates could all have been chosen by either the leaders 
> or the majority of the political party prior to the election 
> and thus represent the same group within the party. 
> Therefore, I said that a party primary allowing all party 
> members to vote in a PR way would be needed *before* the 
> election in order to ensure proportionality. Unless, you are 
> suggesting a rule about how parties can operate requiring 
> that anyone can get on any party's ballot who wants to, or 
> has some number of signatures, without having permission of 
> the political party, I suppose.  Not sure what effects that 
> might have.  Thus, the suggestion for a party primary to 
> ensure proportionality among voting party members in the 
> primary, at least.

Kathy, your comments illustrate the fundamental problems with all party list voting systems: 1. you must have registered political
parties;  2. each party must produce a list of candidates ordered in some way;  3. voters are restricted (to a greater or lesser
degree) in how they can respond to the choices of representative offered to them.  All of these impose unnecessary limitations on
the PR of the voters that could be obtained by a less constrained voting system.  I would also say that these restrictions are
undesirable, but that view reflects my political culture.  I do, however, recognise that these restrictions are accepted by many in
continental Europe who happily use party-list PR voting systems without any clamour for change.

Your comments also confuse what are essentially private matters with public matters.  The candidates who can stand in the name of a
registered political party must be decided by that party.  Some parties may decide that by centralised control; other may do it by
very democratic (PR) elections ("primaries") of all party members.  All parties are coalitions, some broad, some narrow.  It is in a
party's interest to ensure that its list of candidates will appeal to the widest range of its potential supporters among the
electorate.  Thus all significant factions within a party are likely to be represented on its list.  If some faction within a party
finds it candidates consistently excluded, that faction will almost certainly go off and form a new party.  If some faction within a
party finds its candidates on the list, but always at the bottom (and so with little chance of election), that faction may well
split off and form a separate party, when its candidates will automatically be at the top of its list.  That does happen, especially
with closed-list party-list systems.  It is open for any group that can meet the requirements to be a registered political party to
present a list.  In some jurisdictions, that can include individuals standing as "independent candidate".  But these are all
"private" matters (within-party), determined by the respective parties before the public election.

At the public election a voter can choose one party from among the various parties, and in open-list systems make one choice (or a
restricted choice) from among the candidates of that one party. The counting rules provide good proportionality among the parties
(subject to various arbitrary thresholds).  But with the commonly used open-list systems, the counting rules do not provide PR
within the parties.  Significant groups of voters who support a particular party can be seriously under-represented in terms of the
within-party balance, either through piling up massive votes for some particularly popular candidates or through spreading their
votes across too many candidates.  To overcome this defect, the votes must be transferable in some way.  And to ensure PR of the
voters, those transfers must be determined by the voters, not by some party-list rule in the legislation.

What you then end up with is a series of STV-PR elections within each party list (or with something comparable for those who don't
like STV).  The most complex open-list party-list systems go some way towards this.  But I have to say again, if you are going to go
to all that bother, why not  go the whole way and fully open up the voters' choice by removing all the restrictions of 'voting for a
party' and of 'voting within one party list'?

James