Electoral Systems

[autisticdragonkin]

Many electoral systems exist and they all have different behaviors. I prefer a mixed member proportional system or a single transferable vote system and I think that single member plurality is the worst electoral system. What do other kiwis think?

 

[nad7155]

Human nature is human nature.

Fuck everyone.

That's what I think.

 

[JU 199]

The U.K has 'first past the post'. I think it's no longer fit for purpose and needs replacing with something more proportional.

 

[alex_theman]

The U.K has 'first past the post'. I think it's no longer fit for purpose and needs replacing with something more proportional.

STV?

 

[Hat]

The plurality system seems the most fair to me; you cast your votes and he who receives the most wins. I don't believe that receiving 5% of the vote should entitle your party to a seat in the government.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

The plurality system seems the most fair to me; you cast your votes and he who receives the most wins. I don't believe that receiving 5% of the vote should entitle your party to a seat in the government.

Why not? It can also be much more than 5% who have no effect. Often in excess of 50% of votes have no effect due to First Past the Post.

 

[Hat]

Often in excess of 50% of votes have no effect due to First Past the Post.

Even when the candidate who doesn't get receive over 50% of all the votes cast in that election, he has still had more people who have expressed a desire to put him in office.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

Even when the candidate who doesn't get receive over 50% of all the votes cast in that election, he has still had more people who have expressed a desire to put him in office.

That is not the case because there is a cumulative effect in the Canadian, British and French parliament and the American electoral college where some parties will have strong local support which will allow them to gain more seats than they otherwise could. This will allow for them to get a higher proportion of seats than their support would mandate and thus allow them to get a plurality in the parliament or electoral college despite having minority support. This translates into getting the presidency in American politics or forming government in Canadian British or French politics despite having a minority of votes

 

[Hat]

That is not the case because there is a cumulative effect in the Canadian, British and French parliament and the American electoral college where some parties will have strong local support which will allow them to gain more seats than they otherwise could. This will allow for them to get a higher proportion of seats than their support would mandate and thus allow them to get a plurality in the parliament or electoral college despite having minority support. This translates into getting the presidency in American politics or forming government in Canadian British or French politics despite having a minority of votes

I will be frank and admit that I don't really know how the ins and outs of the parliamentary system, being that I don't live in a nation that has one, but as for the American presidency, the position has been won by the candidate with fewer votes only four times out of fifty-seven, so this argument regarding the Electoral College doesn't really hold up.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

I will be frank and admit that I don't really know how the ins and outs of the parliamentary system, being that I don't live in a nation that has one, but as for the American presidency, the position has been won by the candidate with fewer votes only four times out of fifty-seven, so this argument regarding the Electoral College doesn't really hold up.

Although the two-party system gets a lot criticism for reducing diversity it actually seems to solve much of the problems caused by first past the post.
I made this thread thinking about Canadian politics which is currently in a campaign between four left wing parties and one right wing party which benefits from first past the post and has a plurality.

 

[Dudeofteenage]

Although the two-party system gets a lot criticism for reducing diversity it actually seems to solve much of the problems caused by first past the post.

FPP and two party systems go together. FPP tends to produce two party systems because it incentivises large parties and makes politicians think twice about trying to form niche parties. It's not impossible for an FPP system to be multi-party but often when it looks like it's developing in this direction it will "snap back", as the near-wipeout of the LDP demonstrated this year - before 2015 people often called the UK a "two and a half party system" but we can now see that it's two party again. Canada is going through something similar but in the long term it seems likely that either the Liberals or the NDP will come to dominate the left and marginalise the other.

One of the biggest flaws of the FPP system is that a party whose support is more evenly spread can win an election over a party whose support is heavily concentrated in certain areas, even if the first party gets less votes overall. Amazingly, this happened in New Zealand not once, but twice in the late 70s/early 80s. New Zealand was at the time a showcase for FPP since it had arguably the strictest two-party system in the western world, with two parties monopolising all but a single Parliamentary seat between 1935 and 1978. It was a major impetus towards moving away from FPP towards a German-style MMP system, and unsurprisingly, during the first post-FPP election, the two party system almost totally shattered and has never really recovered.

 

[Educated Stupid]

May I take the time to add some more examples to the list of FPTP in action, a very recent one in fact. The 2015 British Elections showcased exactly what is wrong with FPTP. UKIP, for example, received just under 4 million votes, and only one seat in Parliament. This was less seats than the Lib Dems, who got less than 2.5 million votes and eight seats, as well as the SNP which got 56 (!) seats with just 4.7% of the national vote (that would be about 1.5 million votes.) Another example would be the elections of 1951. The Labour party, despite earning over 1 million votes more than the Conservatives, received less seats than the Conservatives. Here's yet another example of the same phenomenon, except the margin for victory was smaller.

All in all, FPTP sucks.

 

[Hat]

May I take the time to add some more examples to the list of FPTP in action, a very recent one in fact. The 2015 British Elections showcased exactly what is wrong with FPTP. UKIP, for example, received just under 4 million votes, and only one seat in Parliament. This was less seats than the Lib Dems, who got less than 2.5 million votes and eight seats, as well as the SNP which got 56 (!) seats with just 4.7% of the national vote (that would be about 1.5 million votes.) Another example would be the elections of 1951. The Labour party, despite earning over 1 million votes more than the Conservatives, received less seats than the Conservatives. Here's yet another example of the same phenomenon, except the margin for victory was smaller.

All in all, FPTP sucks.

Sounds to me more like the UK could use some redistricting—or whatever you call it when your country calls them "constituencies"—rather than a new electoral system.

 

[Strelok]

Sounds to me more like the UK could use some redistricting—or whatever you call it when your country calls them "constituencies"—rather than a new electoral system.

All that does is result in gerrymandering.

 

[Dudeofteenage]

Sounds to me more like the UK could use some redistricting—or whatever you call it when your country calls them "constituencies"—rather than a new electoral system.

The problem is innate to FPP - it can't be solved by redistricting. UKIP's problem is that their support was spread across the country in small packets, but no single one of these packets consisted of the biggest group in any given electorate. A redistricting that gave UKIP a majority in even a handful of electorates would create ridiculous snake-like electorates that make the Illinois 4th look positively rational - and it would have to be a constant process of adjustment, so a time lapse of the UK's constituency map would look like a dance party for epileptic tapeworms.

Parties with a low level of support spread widely across the country are a common phenomenon, and FPP bones them. Redistricting can't address that.

 

[AnOminous]

Parties with a low level of support spread widely across the country are a common phenomenon, and FPP bones them. Redistricting can't address that.

Proportional representation addresses that, but not necessarily in a way that would improve things. For instance, you can end up with two relatively moderate parties that, in order to get a parliamentary majority and form a government, are required to deal with the third party, which is Nazis (or something else completely crazy). The crazies can then pull down the government any time they feel like it.

This is somewhat exaggerated and doesn't always happen, but alternatives to FPP have their own issues and no simple electoral system fixes problems without introducing new ones.

Political parties themselves have always been the bane of republican government, but despite the best efforts of the best minds to address the issue (including the Framers of the Constitution), almost any electoral system inevitably devolves into partisan politics.

 

[Dudeofteenage]

Proportional representation addresses that, but not necessarily in a way that would improve things. For instance, you can end up with two relatively moderate parties that, in order to get a parliamentary majority and form a government, are required to deal with the third party, which is Nazis (or something else completely crazy).

Proportional representation improves representation. What you've described may be a problem, but it isn't a problem of representation. It's a problem of people voting for unpleasant parties. And there are plenty of examples where the party getting shut out isn't particularly offensive, or at least, isn't that much more offensive than the parties who profit from FPP.

I will say, though, in practice, the "government held hostage by extremists" scenario rarely happens. In the standard "1 big+1 small" coalitions that tend to characterise MMP systems, it's almost always the big party that has the preponderance of power. When the small party throws a tantrum and brings down the government, they are almost always electorally punished for it - but most of the time they won't do this, because they know what would happen.

I don't like UKIP any more than the broadsheets do, but the electoral system is not the correct way to address their rise.

 

[Educated Stupid]

Sounds to me more like the UK could use some redistricting—or whatever you call it when your country calls them "constituencies"—rather than a new electoral system.

Changing the constituencies will still result in the wasted vote effect. Even if the constituencies were redrawn to match the level of support for certain parties, it still would result in the votes of those who did not vote for the winning party being rendered useless and wasted. It would also result in all the constituencies being "safe" constituencies. Why bother with the extra effort of redrawing the constituencies just to match the votes, when you can just have an electoral system that does the same without needing to forcefully split the country into 625 small chunks of high support for a certain party?

It's not like you can just redraw the constituencies on election day, either. Votes are made in the constituencies on the day of voting, and the results of elections can only be predicted to a certain extent; nobody expected the Conservatives to win the 2015 UK election until the exit polls were taken, as all the other polls resulted in a stalemate. To redraw the constituencies on the day of voting would mean a breach of the democratic system.

 

[Ravenor]

Sounds to me more like the UK could use some redistricting—or whatever you call it when your country calls them "constituencies"—rather than a new electoral system.

The Conservatives try and do that all the time but they don't do it evenly.

I think the system in the UK is very flawed, it was fine for 20th century politics when we where sorting out just who can an can't vote but we are now no longer in that society and it needs addressing. I'd elaborate but this isn't the British Political thread.