PEI Electoral reform referendum 2019
MMP versus FPTP
MMP is combo of FPTP in single-member district and list PR for top-up seats in compensatory fashion.
Schedule 2 of the Electoral System Referendum Act described the proposed system:
list PR portion of election was to be Open List PR
this sample Open List PR ballot was presented to voters:
it shows four parties each with six candidates.
surely a party vote to fill 9 top-up members island-wide would have more parties than that, and likely more candidates on each party slate. (no penaty for vote splitting and each candidate that runs would appeal to slightly diff. segment of voters.)
wordage is odd
"please mark an X beside one candidate for island-wide member of legislature.
A vote for a candidate counts as a vote for the candidate's party.
This vote helps elect island-wide MLA's for top-up seats."
IMO, the last sentence should read "This vote may help elect an island-wide MLA to fill one of the top-up seats."
so this form of open list PR was where voter would mark preference for one candidate.
the vote would be counted as party vote and might help elect a candidate not preferred by voter, if voters' candidate choice was not popular among candidates on party slate.
The OLPR article quoted above says that that particular method of voting is used by six countries of the 40 that use OLPR.
"must vote for a candidate/can vote for only one candidate" applies to this form of voting, as far as I can tell.
This report indicates poor communication and some issues not fully explained to voters.
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The MMP system voted on in PEI in 2019 was unusual in that open list PR was envisioned for the party vote.
40 countries in world use OLPR. (I assume these are list PR countries, not MMP)
7 countries in the world use MMP, (according to Wiki PR)
I don't know homw many of them use OLPR in party vote portion of MMP.
The form of MMP proposed for PEI would have had 18 district seats and nine island-wide top-up seats filled in compensatory fashion to address disproportionality of the district winners.
OLPR was to be used to fill the top-up seats. The voter's marked preference on the Party Vote part of the ballot "would be used to determine each party's province-wide popular vote, and the number of votes each candidate on the party list receives will determine their ranking."(Election System Referendum Act, Schedule 2) The party share of popular vote would determine the party's share of total seats, and if the party did not win that many district seats, the party would receive top-up seats, if possible, with the party's top-up seats being allocated to the most-popular top-up candidates.
the sample MMP ballot shows 4 parties each with 6 candidates.
likely each party would run nine candidates, unless permitted by an arbitrary limit, even if they would only elect as many as four or five at the most.
A report on the referendum says the structure of seats meant that a party would have to win 14 of the 8 distrcit seats to get majority government (14 dist seats plus 4 top-up seats) so minority government was to be almost certainly guaranteed, unless a party gets more than 40 percent.
that seems proportional, in fact getting majority gov't with less than 49 percent seems most unfair.
In fact a party with 14 of the 18 dist seats has rep. equiv. to 52 percent of the seats so a party with 14 dist. seats would not get any top-up seats unless it gets more than 52 percent of the vote. (or specifically 52 percent of the effective party vote if some parties are barred from rep. due to threshold).
(NZ by comparison in 1996 had almost as many top-up seats as dist. seats 55 to 65. In 1996 six parties won dist. seats. Five of them (including the most-popular party) also got top-up. The sixth party, United NZ, won one dist. seat (with 2 percent of the electorate vote) but was not eligible for top-up as it received less than 1 percent of the party vote.)
PEI would not need to worry so much about disproportional dist. results if it used MMDs,
even three-seat distrcits would be more balanced than Winner take all single member FPP.
(Denmark's Folketing uses MMDs in its mixed-member system.
Denmark is divided into 10 MMDs electing 135 Members, with 40 top-up members.
2-percent party threshold. District DM ranges from 2 to 18.
2022 general election -- top-up seats went to 11 parties,
most top-up any party got (and needed) was five seats.
At least one seat was due to every party with at least 2 percent of the vote.
Every party that was eligible for seats at all got at least one district seat.)
This report points out how aspects of PEI's MMP were not fully explained and how that was an issue to many voters.
fairness of MMDs is shown by fact that where ranked votes and quota is used, quota in the MMD, no matter what DM, is not far off of basic votes/seats quotient, or is lower in many cases, often as low or lower than the electoral threshold used in some list PR systems.
90 members overall (approx. AB MLAs)
say an MMD of 9 seats
population in district is 1/10th of pop, votes cast in district is roughly 1/10th of votes cast overall.
overall quota in district is 1/10th of that so roughly 1 percent of overall votes cast.
35 members (approx. PEI MLAs, AB MPs)
say an MMD of 7 seats
1/5th of population, 1/5th of votes cast overall,
quota is 1/8th of that so about 2.6 percent of votes cast overall.
That perhapss explains how Ireland's STV is calculated as having low GI, even though its max. DM in district is only about 5 or so.
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