[EM] PR >> Best Single-Winner Method > FPTP

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Toby Pereira wrote:
> Most of the discusssion on this group is about single-winner methods and 
> while it's important to get things right for elections with single 
> winners, I don't think I can be alone in thinking that with 
> parliamentary elections, the gap (in quality) between any half-decent 
> PR method and the "best possible" single-winner method would be greater 
> than the gap between the best possible single-winner method and FPTP. I 
> don't know so much about in America or other places (in terms of how 
> realistic it is), but I certainly think that in the UK, that is where we 
> should be concentrating. I don't think it's particularly realistic in 
> the UK anyway, but I think we're probably more likely to get some form 
> of PR than any of Approval/Range/Condorcet/Majority Judgement - and not 
> forgetting SODA.

I'll generally agree on this. Collective bodies, like parliaments, 
houses, senates, and so on, have the property that their individual 
members can check each other if picked properly. Thus, I'm inclined to 
think that such bodies will be much less prone to going corrupt than 
will single-winner positions (executives chosen by the people, etc). 
However, the body has to be picked in a representative manner, or the 
corruption can simply be arranged behind the scenes. See, for instance, 
the New York history prior to and under STV.

If switching to PR has the potential for greater improvement than 
switching to a good single-winner system (away from Plurality), that is 
good news for us -- because the most well known reform types for PR 
(party list, STV) actually work. PR countries are multiparty ones (with 
a few exceptions). The most well known single-winner reform, however, 
(IRV,) does not have that kind of track record. Australia has a PR house 
and a single-winner IRV house, and the Duvergerian effect of the latter 
seems stronger than the anti-Duvergerian effect of the former, since (to 
my knowledge) they have a two-and-a-half party system there.