[EM] The Global Fight For Electoral Justice: A Primer

Wed Jan 4 10:44:14 PST 2017

Toby

First a small but important correction to your second sentence.  In the graph of “voters not guaranteed representation” it is number of seats (vacancies) and not the number of candidates that is the determining factor.  Just a typo, I’m sure.

That graph showed the theoretical values, but the point of including the Glasgow City Council results was to show that STV-PR delivers better than those theoretical values, even in wards electing only 3 or 4 members.  For the 3-member districts, theoretical = 75%; mean actual = 85%.  For the 4-member districts, theoretical = 80%; mean actual = 90%.  That level of actual representation is very acceptable to me, though I would never recommend that STV-PR should be implemented with wards of only 3 or 4 in a densely populated city like Glasgow.

While you may not think there should be any artificial threshold to keep smaller parties out, my point was that in most of the implementations of PR that could deliver very high levels of overall proportionality, such artificial thresholds have been adopted for political reasons  -  that’s political reality.  In the version of regionalised MMP used to elect the Scottish Parliament there is no specified “percentage threshold”, but that threshold was cunningly concealed by setting the electoral regions and ratios at 17 = 10:7;  16 = 9:7;  and 15 = 8:7.

The relationship between the voting system and the number of parties gaining representation in the elected body (Parliament, Assembly, Council) is complex.  The use of STV-PR for parliamentary elections in Malta is instructive.  From 1921 to 1962 (11 elections) the numbers of parties nominating candidates varied from 4 to 8 and MPs were elected to the Parliament from 2, 3, 4, 5 or 7 of those parties.  But for the past 40 years of STV-PR (11 elections) only two parties have elected MPs to the Parliament although the elections were contested by 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 parties.  STV-PR can give diversity or none, depending on the choices made by the voters.  In contrast, MPs representing 12 different parties were elected to the UK Parliament in 2015 by FPTP from single-member districts.

I would have to disagree when you say that your specimen ballots for score voting and approval voting are much simpler than an STV ballot for the same level of proportionality.  These ballot designs would be considered much too complicated for use in public elections in the UK.  In contrast, for STV it is just numbering in order of preference (choice), as many or as few as you wish.  And I would add that I don’t think any form of Approval Voting or Score Voting would be acceptable for public elections here.

James

From: Toby Pereira [mailto:tdp201b at yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: 04 January 2017 14:00
To: jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk; 'Erik Moeller' <eloquence at gmail.com>
Cc: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Subject: Re: [EM] The Global Fight For Electoral Justice: A Primer

Thanks for the attachments and the information.

As for the level of proportionality, I don't think there should be any artificial threshold to keep out smaller parties myself - not that a system that I would want would necessarily get 1 in 325 anyway. Looking at your graph, it still goes from about 15% not being represented when there are 5 candidates to something like 6% when there are 15. That's quite a shift, and I think that level of proportionality is doable, just not with STV.

Also if we had PR for our national elections (rather than just certain elections in Scotland and Northern Ireland), I would hope that this would break the dominance of the big parties and would lead to more small parties and independent candidates. This is likely to mean that this finer level of proportionality would be required to keep a decent proportion of people represented. Currently in an English constituency, almost everyone will vote for one of Conservative, Labour, UKIP, Liberal Democrat or Green. But I would want a system that would allow smaller parties and independents to be able to flourish and get something approaching their proportional share. The point is that I would want a system to cater for how people would want to vote under a PR system rather than how they vote now.

I've attached files with ballots (one for score voting and one for approval voting) that could work in an MMP PR election with around 10 constituency MPs to be elected and 5 to 10 top-up MPs (depending on the ratio you want). This ballots are much simpler than an STV ballot for the same level of proportionality, and also don't rely on party lists, so you get more "bang for your buck".

Toby

  _____  

From: James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk <mailto:jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> >
To: 'Toby Pereira' <tdp201b at yahoo.co.uk <mailto:tdp201b at yahoo.co.uk> >; 'Erik Moeller' <eloquence at gmail.com <mailto:eloquence at gmail.com> > 
Cc: election-methods at lists.electorama.com <mailto:election-methods at lists.electorama.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, 3 January 2017, 23:47
Subject: RE: [EM] The Global Fight For Electoral Justice: A Primer

What “level of proportionality” do you want?  Most PR systems (party list) that could deliver very high levels of proportionality (e.g. 1 in 325) have an artificial threshold to keep out the “smaller” parties.  At least with STV-PR that de facto threshold is defined by the trade-off decided between the proportionality of representation and the localness of representation.  The weight attached to these competing features differs markedly among political cultures.

In the UK the ballot papers for our STV-PR elections are neither very large nor unwieldy, but then we don’t have party groupings or insist that parties nominate certain minimum numbers of candidates to qualify for special positions on the ballot papers and certainly no “above the line” voting.

The law of diminishing returns applies to voter representation  -  see first graphic.  In our experience STV-PR delivers better representation than these theoretical returns  -  even from wards electing only 3 members or 4 members  -  see second attachment.

As to PR overall, few in the UK would have problems with the proportionality delivered in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections where all the electoral districts return 6 members  -  see third attachment.

James

From: Toby Pereira [mailto:tdp201b at yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: 03 January 2017 16:53
To: jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk <mailto:jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> ; 'Erik Moeller' <eloquence at gmail.com <mailto:eloquence at gmail.com> >
Cc: election-methods at lists.electorama.com <mailto:election-methods at lists.electorama.com> 
Subject: Re: [EM] The Global Fight For Electoral Justice: A Primer

The main problem with STV is that it limits the region size and therefore the level of proportionality you can achieve because ballot papers can get very large and unwieldy very quickly.

Another alternative is mixed member (MMP) but without lists. You would have individual constituencies as well as wider regions.

Something like what I described here - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/electionscience/aP7ybKMb1zs/giaYAh6wAwAJ - which would work with score or approval voting. I also did a video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjeBEBZjm9Y - but that's a bit long. I should probably do a short one.

Toby

  _____  

From: James Gilmour < <mailto:jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk>
To: 'Erik Moeller' < <mailto:eloquence at gmail.com> eloquence at gmail.com> 
Cc:  <mailto:election-methods at lists.electorama.com> election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Sent: Tuesday, 3 January 2017, 12:48
Subject: Re: [EM] The Global Fight For Electoral Justice: A Primer

And if you are going to have effective ranking WITHIN each party list, why not just use STV-PR?

Regards
James

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erik Moeller [mailto:eloquence at gmail.com <mailto:eloquence at gmail.com> ]
> Sent: 03 January 2017 04:59
> To: jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk <mailto:jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> 
> Cc: ElectionMethods <electionmethods at votefair.org <mailto:electionmethods at votefair.org> >; election-methods at lists.electorama.com <mailto:election-methods at lists.electorama.com> 
> Subject: Re: [EM] The Global Fight For Electoral Justice: A Primer
> 
> On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 7:52 AM, James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk <mailto:jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> > wrote:
> 
> > I have always understood that the British civil servants who
> > administered the British Occupied Zone after WWII had a large hand in
> > devising AMS, by combining the British FPTP system (with single-member
> > electoral districts) with the old Weimar system, in the
> > (mistaken) belief that this would introduce a significant element of
> > personal choice to what had been an impersonal closed-list party-list voting system.
> 
> It's not completely mistaken as the directly elected candidates sometimes do enjoy high local popularity that propels them to unusual
> levels of success beyond the support for their party. But I think the single-vote variant is interesting in this regard, because the
> combination of party/person and the use of popular support to derive party lists means that individuals benefit from campaigning
> locally (they're more likely to get a list seat if they score well).
> 
> Variants of this system that don't require full ranking but still increase intra-party competition are likely possible. For example, if voters
> could strike through the name of a person they absolutely don't want while still voting for the party, this would be a simple tool to
> further influence the list ranking.
> 
> > Originally electors had only one vote; the two-vote ballot paper was
> > introduced for the Federal Bundestag elections in 1953.
> >
> > The predominance of closed-list party-list voting systems in
> > continental Europe
> 
> Open lists are also widespread in continental Europe, as this map from Fairvote shows:
> http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/fairvote.geography-class/page.html#3/46.80/751.64
> 
> Cheers,
> Erik

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