Taking PEI (with four seats) as an example
you can make a multi-member districts (or multi-member riding if you prefer) out of the whole province.
This would allow multiple candidate of the major parties to be offered to voters.
each voter would cast one vote (Cumulative voting or limited voting, in both of which voters cast multiple votes, could be used instead but those are less guaranteed to produce mixed representation than single voting.)
I predict a different result than another person did.
As your example shows, multiple candidates running for the major parties for the four open seats means that parties can take more than one seat.
But I see a higher degree of fairness to the larger parties than you do. (and sadly for them, less success for the Greens.)
PR means that the result is proportional -- not just the three leading parties each get one seat with the Liberals getting 2.
under STV, each party would take the number of seats its vote warrants (as much as the district seat count allows and bearing in mind that vote transfers can cross party lines)
the result would be more closer to the result of a "largest remainder" breakdown.
Under SNTV (MM district and single voting where votes are not transferred), larger parties might be penalized due to vote splitting. and that is why I suggested top-up if SNTV is used in district elections. (But top-up should be seen as only polish and district elections should be made as fair as possible by MM districts and single voting. Even SNTV is more fair than FPTP and gives wide choice to voters.)
vote another person's My pred. STV seats* my pred SNTV*
percentage seat prediction
Cons 32 1 2 or 1 2 or 1
Lib 46 2 2 or 3 2 or 3
Green 10 1
percentage of voters who 90 78 78
saw a candidate of their party elected
(under either STV or SNTV, 78 percent of the votes would have MP(s) in their district that represent their sentiments.
under FPTP, in 2021 in PEI, only 39,000 voters voted for Liberal candidates, 46,000 voted for others and got no representation.
Even without top-up, single voting in MM district means mixed representation which alone is much more fair than a one-party sweep
my predictions are based on:
STV
assuming party supporters mark back-up preferences along party lines until they run through their party candidates or all parties suffer same level of "leakage"
quota being 20 percent Liberals sure to win 2.
Cons likely to win at least 1 but not likely to win 2,
Greens with 10 percent is half of quota so not likely to win even one seat.
SNTV
assuming no party runs more than three candidates, vote splitting is less likely than if they ran four.
Say, Cons and Libs run three each, and Green runs just one.
say Con and Liberal vote each is split 2-1-1 parts to their three candidates. while the one Green gets all of the party's vote.
Lib A 23
Cons A 16
Lib B 12
Lib C 11
Green 10
Cons B 8
Cons C 8
Each of Lib or Cons or Green has about equal chance to take the fourth seat, with one of these three results -- the Libs would have a third seat, the Cons a second seat or the Greens one seat.
if the Greens ran two candidates, the likelihood of Green success goes down.
say with top-up (three district seats and one top-up)
likely district result Liberals 2 Cons 1
proportionally fourth seat would go to Conservatives (32 divided by 2 seats = 16, 43 divided by three = 14 or so)
the Greens if they did not win a district seat (election in the district is not likely) would not be likely to take a seat at all.
the Greens with 10 percent of the vote are not due a top-up seat.
25 percent of the vote or thereabouts is the requirement for the top-up seat.
Sorry but not all can be winners even under PR.
PEI is not a perfect case for my MMP/STV or MMP/SNTV:
it has small District magnitude only four seats e but gives an idea of the kind of MM districts and Single Voting that would produce the values I listed.
as well an odd number of seats would be used in a perfect world as it allows ease of showing slight majority.
But the PEI case shows:
Each voter in PEI would have choice of all candidates running in the province.
no winners in the district elections are denied seat to produce proportionality.
no way one party can take all the seats in the district.
voters have easy time - just mark one X or under STV mark a 1 (or possibly an X) then any number of back-up preferences if the voter wanted to.
Proportionality is created intrinsically by MM district or by election officials, not through any extra work for voter - except as you say - the job of choosing which candidate to prefer off of a ballot listing perhaps 18 different candidates
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