I see many instances where people confuse what I call the five levels of elections.
This can lead to confusion and mis-communication.
Case in point -- when Trudeau said he would end FPTP and said he favoured ranked voets. Some thought he meant STV (where ranked voftes are used in multi-member districts ); but now we see he had always intended to change to Instant-Runoff Voting (a singlewiner system that uses ranked votes.). Unfortunately IRV is not proprotional represngtaiton so is not worth changing to anyway. But based at least partly on that mis-understanding, the Liberal took majority government in 2016. Partly because Liberla never took majority of votes so was not actually due majority government anyway.
1 a voter's vote or votes
can be either X voting or ranked voting (such as STV's contingency preferential voting (AKA ranked votes)
can also be casting single or multiple votes
voter may be voting in separate ways in one election -
such as under NZ, X voting for candidate in district election; x voting for party in party vote.
some Aus. STV used aove theline voting where oer meerley marked preference for party slate. some or al lof these also allowed ranked voting for hte party slates (a first preference party and backup party preferences)
2 vote transfers (not applicable where only X voting done)
in most systems one vote (or one ballot, if you prefer) may be transferred while another never is.
3 district seat allocation
system used in the district to allocate seats may be:
-plurality to elect single or multipe winners
-majoritarian after vote transfers (IRV)
(some exotic systems elect multiple winners using majoritarian method by using successive mini-contests)
-proportional
two main forms of proportional election systems:
-party-based, where seats are allocated to parties, usually using party lists to fill seats.
(sometimes voter can vote for a specific candidate within the party list)
or
-intuitively by having each winner elected with same number of votes (as evenly as possible) (as under STV).
if parties are used, intuitive method ensures each party gets about due share of seats in district if each winner belongs to a party and each winner is elected with same number of votes. vote transfers (as requested by voter if necessary) may mean a vote is eventually placed on a candidate not of the party originally most strongly preferred by voter.
STV where voter may mark preference for a party slate (above the line voting) may verge on being a party list PR system.
STV where voters do not mark many back-up preferences may verge on being SNTV.
Open list PR may verge on being SNTV (or sometimes STV with above-the-line voting).
MMP produces similar results to what would be expected under list PR unless a party takes disproportionally many district seats.
SNTV, STV, closed list PR, open list PR, STV with above-the-line voting -- all are more proportional and less accident prone than FPTP or Block Voting.
STV (with only voting for candidate), closed list PR, open list PR, STV with above-the-line voting waste fewer votes than FPTP or Block voting. This helps prevent accidental election results.
Proportionality of district results (based on comparisons of parties' share of votes to parties' share of seats ) deepens with higher District Magnitude.
The quota, the amount of votes that determines winners of district contests in most cases, is lower with higher DM (more on this below)
DM of 25 is the largest DM used in STV in world history in a government election. It was used in the election of a Citizens Assembly in Iceland 2010.
STV-25 means any group with 4 percent of the vote in the district is eligible for a seat.
a group is a voting block who marks an effective number of preferences for candidates of that group.
A party with less than 15 percent of the votes in a district may get no seats there, if DM is less than 6. But a party with five percent of the vote overall is likely to have a district where the party receives ten or 15 percent of the vote in a district.
4 top-up in region or overall
NZ top-up done overall
Scottish Assembly regional top up
top-up in those two places based on party vote
NZ and Scotland top-up is compensatory to overcome how seats won in districts are disproportional to the party vote.
That there will be disproportionality is expected as FPTP wastes many perhaps 60 or more percent of votes cast in the district and also because many voters vote differently in district election compared to party vote.
Denmark's top-up is compensatory to how seats won in district are disproportional to the aggregated district vote.
voter casts just one vote - the district vote. this vote is used for both district and top-up.
the amount of top-up seats required to produce PR is also less in Denmark than NZ, because Denmark uses PR at the district level. (list PR to be specific).
Top-up can be conducted to produce party proportionality or to produce gender equality, or Indigenous rep.
or other form of fairness not produced by districts (such as guarantee that a party with majority of votes will have majority of seats. (Malta)
Top-up seats are only given to parties that are over electoral threshold, if one is applied.
Parties below the threshold do not get top-up seats, and likely get no seats at all. all their votes are wasted.
Aggregated that waste might mean 20 percent of voters do not see anyone from their party elected.
Top-up usually uses X voting with no transfers.
5 Composition of chamber - aggregation of district elections and top-up if any
this is where proportionality is usually measured.
this is where power is given to one party, multi-party coalition or other voting block based on intra-party competition over the other.
Decisions in the chamber are majoritarian - questions are yes or no and there are only two ways to vote.
if majority of those voting in chamber are opposed, then law or budget does not pass.
However many votes member received to be elected, no matter what method was used to allocate district or top-up seats, majority of members in chamber rules.
where one part of the jurisdiction is disproportionally one way, and another is disproportionaljy another way, the two may balance out to make low GI overall, but still with great waste of votes.
great waste of votes makes system susceptible to large disproportionality if breaks go a bad way.
chamber is aggregation of district elections and top-up if any
But the chamber in a PR system will have these characteristics (except for unusual circumstances):
-a party that has majority of votes will hold majority of seats.
-no party with less than half the votes will have majority of seats.
-any party with substantial portion of valid votes will hold one or more seats. substantial being two, three or 5 percent or so.
But districts are not homogenous components of the overall voters. It is rare for a party with five percent of the vote overall not to get some representation even where district elections are only used, such as STV or list PR in MMDs, and often under a mixed member system (Denmark and New Zealand) a party that gets a seat in district elections is eligible for top-up seats.
In a district, a small party may take two or three times the percentage of its overall percentage of the vote.
This is because voters are usually geographically concentrated to some degree, especially in cities
-- working class neighbourhoods, skid row, knob hill, the waterfront, the suburbs all show different in voting patterns.
Knob hill in city is likely closer in sentiment to an affluent farm community than it is to the skid row in the same city
and skid row in a city is likely closer in sentiment to a rundown rust belt rural community than it is to knob hill in the same city.
A party with five percent of the vote overall is likely to have 10 to 15 percent of the votes in one district or perhaps a handful of districts and thus win one district seat or perhaps a handful of seats, due to its geographical concentration.
(Denmark 2022 -- in a specific district a small party sometimes took two to three times its overall percentage of votes. see Montopedia blog "Denmark 2022 list PR in districts and in overall top-up")
Multi-member districts with fair voting elect diverse range of reps. in more sure way than single-member micro-districts where member is elected by unfair method such as FPTP.
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Confusion or mis-communication reigns if you confuse the five levels.
some people (such as Trudeau) use term ranked votes (or "preferential voting") (#1 level terms) when they mean IRV (a level 3 topic).
ranked votes (#1 topic) is also used in both IRV and STV (level #3 topics).
a shift away from FPTP does not necessarily mean PR.
a shift to ranked votes does not necessarily mean PR.
(do not accept substitutions - accept only PR!
Anita in her 2016 blog defines PR well:)
IRV is majoritarian but that is at district level - IRV is jsut as likely as FPTP to produce false-majority government or even a minorty government.
generally the more districts, the more wasted votes, and the more disproportionality compared to overall system (overall used just in Netherlands , Israel and one or two other places).
But larger DM is case of diminishing returns (efficiency improvement slows).
usual quota under STV in three-seat district is 25 percent,
in ten-seat district it is ten percent
in 20-seat district it is about five percent
in 30-seat district it is about 3 percent.
in 100-seat district it about 1 percent.
STV quota has three effects on results of district elections
- any candidate with that quota is elected
- vote belonging to winning candiate in excess of that quota are transferred away, allowing portentially another of same type to take seat. that paty of voting block then getting their due share of seats.
-approx. about one quota are not used to elect anyone. (sometimes more, sometimes less)
the larger the DM, the fewer the districts dividing the electorate.
even DM of ten means only one-tenth the number of districts compared to before the change.
concerning level 1 ranked votes
not difficult to rank candidates (knowing only one of your marked preferences wil be used or the vote will be spread out as vote is transferred)
easy method is to give low numbers (strong positive preference) to individual candidates you like, or to candidates of party you know and like even if you don't know candidates (same as under FPTP many vote just based on party label)
give high numbers (strong negative feelings) to those you dislike or candidates of party you dislike
scatter middle numbers over candiars or candidates of parties you do not have strong feelings about.
your higher numbers will not be used unless your low and middle numbers have been used up.
Definitely when you mark all the candidates, your last choice will not be used. At worst, vote count would come down to choice of last two and your vote will not be trasferred from the candidate you mark as your second-last choice to the candidate marked with lowest preference. - the last seat will be filled as soon as the second-last candidate is eliminated or elected.
or just don't mark the preferences for parties you don't like if you dislike them equally. not marking them at all is same as marking them high numbers.
Due to multiple members elected in a district in STV, even if each voter marks only first preference, the general satisfaction nwold be higher than under FPTP or Block voting becasue variety of parties, likely with good range of left-right spectrum, would be elected in the district and therefore rep. in the chamber would be diverse. (level #5)
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Here's an earlier version of the five-level idea:
Looking at politics, we see five levels:
first you have the chamber
whoever hold majority of seats has power to pass laws, etc.
the members of the chamber are elected in the districts or as top-up
Districts, whether they have majority or just plurality of votes in the district or some magic number or other test of relative popularity in a kind of quota-based system (STV), they fill a seat in the chamber.
Top-up --At-large is such like MMP - quota-based system where certain number of votes across the board gives a party a seat and any seats due but not not won already are given as top-up or like that anyway
Votes -- voters' first or only preference indicztes where vote goes.
Transfers -- systems that use ranked ballots allow transfers, they may change who wins.
Two main types of voting
- preferential or X voting
X voting is binary - either you vote for someone who is popular enough to be elected (only the leading candidate is elected in single-winner district); any votes placed on others get no representation at all.
preferential voting in actual elections is on contingency basis, if your first choice cannot be elected, your vote may be used according to the second marked choice, and so on down the marked preferences, each taken one by one as much as the particular vote count allows anyway, until seats are filled.
I say might because it is possible for a fully marked vote not to be used at all - if the various preferences come up one by one and each time it is found that the candidate has already been elected or eliminated, your vote may never be used to help elect anyone.
If the marked candidate(s) have been elected, you will be well pleased by the result - your choice(s) have been elected, even if your vote itself was not needed to achieve that result.
But, whether you mark your least favourite candidate as your last choice or not, your marked preference cannot be used against your first choice. Your lower preferences will not be consulted unless your first preference has been elected (to help direct transfer of surplus votes) or unless your first preference candidate is unpopular enough to be eliminated.
Once a person is elected, he or she cannot lose their seat through later vote transfers no matter what they are.
And once a person is eliminated, he or she cannot receive more votes to be "reborn" no matter how the vote transfers go.
So you don't need to worry about your lower preferences being used against your first or other desired marked choices. Either the first-preference candidate has been eliminated or has been elected before any use is made of your lower preference.
so there are five levels to electoral politics:
the vote - either the single X or whichever marked preference applies after transfers - may go to help elect someone in the district or at-large (or not be used that way), and
that elected member goes to fill a seat in the chamber, as do members declared elected as top-up, if any, and
in the chamber - that seat may be on the governing side of the chamber or on the opposition side. with majority (governing side) having power.
Some votes are used to elect; some are not.
A vote cast may be used or may not be used to elect district member, even if ranked votes allow transfers.
In district elections or at-large city elections, plurality or quota is usually all needed to be elected. Perhaps a majority of votes cast are ignored, especially under FPTP.
A vote may be used or not to elect a top-up member if any.
in the chamber, the party (or parties) that controls a majority of seats holds power. A party with majority of seats sometimes does not have the support of a majority of voters.
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