David Green's essay
The 2024 case for the Supervote
Here's some of my comments on the essay:
David, I like your message, lovely information on the Super-vote
I like the examples of Albion City, Britannica City and Albion North, Central and South
you could have also set out an election contest with five or six parties for even more mondernity.
you make this pointed statement:
"most of PR systems are pre-occupied with proportionality for political parties, usually at the expense of independents, voter choice and representation of local communities. These systems can best be described as “Party PR”."
yes, perhaps "list PR" should be renamed party PR as they are party based by definition.
although not fair to say party PR systems generally have no local represention.
only Israel, Netherlands and a couple others use at-large districting. so painting all party PR systems with Israel's failing is not quite fair.
and probably many would say that your pitying assessment of open list PR is also not fair.
some open list PR has no possibility of party discipline, party voting -
in Honduras, voters actually cannot vote for a party slate, only for individual candidates.
your assessment of Additional Member System
I agree.
interesting to note your description of regional members:
"another comprising the "top-up" additional members, party hacks whose first loyalty would be to the party who determined their place on the party list, and who, with no direct constituency responsibility, would be free to swan around the corridors of power, furthering their own political careers."
it is said that at-large members, say in city councils, have more overall concerns and such members do not engage in the "log rolling" that ward members do.
But in AMS,
the top-up members are neither at-large nor local but sone sort of in-between
and the way they are elected due to placement on party list takes away direct voter control, it seems.
Few analysts even consider how strange it is to elect local members and then have them vote on local matters in other districts where they have no accountability.
I have seen that only even mentioned in just one textbook (can't remember the title now)
if you can have a system where people run at-large but can be elected locally, you have combination that covers both. I am rushing ahead to the Super vote of course!, as used in many city elections.
and yes by page 11 we read
"Two components will transform the efficiency of our Victorian apparatus
– the return of Multi Member Constituencies coupled with the introduction of Preference Voting, together known as the Single Transferable Vote or STV"
Actually I would say:
two components- MMD and fair voting (each voter has one vote and that vote is transferable).
the single voting is as important as the transfers, IMO
let's keep the S in STV!
(oddly enough, some people say under STV each voter casts multiple votes (meaning preferences), missing the meaning of the S altogether.)
p. 11 it is good to say "re-introduce multi-member districts".
people somehow are history-blind, forgetting how MMDs were once quite common in U.K. -- and in Canada and in the U.S. as well!
even with flawed block voting, even just having two seats, as some of the UK MMDs used to have, there was potential for more fairness and for gender parity.
In her
autobiography "Fighting all the way", the late Barbara Castle attributed her successful
nomination as a female Labour candidate for Blackburn in 1945 to the fact that Blackburnwas at that time a multi-member borough returning 2 Members of Parliament, enabling [her candidacy and thus her election]...
This fairness is accentuated with fair voting (single voting) and larger DM than two -- as many as six or seven or ten used in Canada in the past, for example
Yes, and yes again,:
"The abolition of single member representation is key to reform of our voting system."
Note that if each member actually represented all their constitutents, you would not need elections at all as the elected member would represent you, no matter who you were and who they were.
But of course that cannot happen and hence we need elections, elections where most votes count, not FPTP.
BUT three-seat district though does not mean each party would put up three candidates unless expect to take 75 percent of the votes.
But even if they run more candidates than they even hope to win, no loss because of transferability of votes, if voters keep their back-up preferences along party lilnes.
likely each party will just run two, hopefully a man and a woman! in a three-seat district.
Good point -- "The numbers entered by the voter are not points to be counted up."
(so many STV explanation say count up the votes, not making it clear that each vote (ballot) is to be counted just once.)
the marked preferences are contingency votes or back-up preferences, instructing election officials how vote should move if necessary.
"Simply put using the Albion example, the STV count is best imagined as comprising a long trestle table with 6 piles of votes on it, one pile per candidate, sorted according to voters' first preferences."
better to say
"Simply put, using the Albion example, the STV count is best imagined as comprising a long trestle table where there are a pile of votes for each candidate, sorted according to voters' first preferences."
soon there will be one additional pile - exhausted votes!
"Since as many of the votes are utilised [used] as possible and each is accorded equal status, the combination of the two reforms described above ensures that the victors will reflect the community's corporate political will. In other words, if 2 out of 3 voters in a community elect to have representatives of a certain party or a certain ethnic background, their votes will cascade from one candidate's pile to another, according to declared preferences, until this corporate decision emerges as 2 out of 3 piles of votes cast for winning candidates of those voters' persuasion. STV treats all candidates as equals."
BUT there will not be much cascading, if two of the party's three candidates are to be elected.
perhaps two transfers of surplus votes and one transfer due to elimination.
unless you mean across party lines (an added complication)
p. 14
"Accordingly, parties require a far greater degree of support to achieve success under STV than would be required by some party list systems which are contrived to enable support for minority parties to accumulate at a regional or national level, so as to ensure representation for the smallest faction."
actually quota under Super vote (STV) is remarkably close to number needed to take seat under list PR.
votes/number of seats in chamber roughly equals Droop quota in MMD.
(just look at the math, or I can provide supporting calculations)
big diff is a small party with its slight support spread across the whole electorate has less chance under district-based Super-vote than under at-large list PR.
and yes votes can cross party lines:
"STV benefits the supporters of all parties, rather that the parties themselves, whose
candidates may be eliminated due to lack of adequate support, but whose supporters are able to have their votes recycled and counted for further preferences."
thus it makes sense, as you do, to say STV helps voters but not parties.
Nice list of benefits of Super vote
"Other benefits will accrue from the use of STV;
-multi-member seats offer parties the opportunity to offer a “broad church” of candidates to attract the widest level of support;
- the safe single member seats of First-past-the-post will be a distant memory as every vote cast will be crucial, so candidates will strain every sinew to win as many votes as possible for themselves and for those party colleagues who would benefit from their vote transfers.
The teamwork this engenders has the capacity to spawn co-operation between parties representing the same ward/constituency after the election, which in turn offers the prospect of a more consensual & constructive approach to local and national governance."
I laughed at this remark on the 1919 Sligo STV election
"quite an achievement back then in view of the complete lack of TV and radio and very rudimentary public information."
because we all know that watching TV makes us smarter!
good evidence of need for MMD:
"We want a voting system that benefits voters and, as previously observed, it surely stands to reason that a 21st century constituency containing educated people of different genders, ages and cultures with different attitudes, beliefs and aspirations will be far better represented by several people than by one person."
"Parliament has since 1997 approved the adoption of numerous voting systems which required the use of multi-member constituencies."
to wit:
1997 Northern Ireland STV DM-6
1999 Scotland regionalized MMP (regonalized AMS) with four top up in eight-or so seat region. (so not truly MMD. regions are perhaps not actual MMDs) )
1999 Wales regionalized MMP (regonalized AMS) with seven top-up in 8- 9- or 10-seat region. (so not truly MMD, regions are perhaps not actual MMDs)
2024 Wales new system list PR in DM-6 districts.
perhaps more that I don't know about...
on charge that STV will elect extremists, I see power in this statement:
" it would be much harder for an extreme party to gain an absolute majority of seats and outright power with a PR system requiring them to poll half the vote, than it would with First-past-the-post which could enable that party to obtain absolute power with just one third of the vote."
just look at Trump - even if U.S. not using actual FPTP.
equalizing single-member districts cannot make fairness:
"Supporters of First-past-the-post claim that "equalising" single member constituencies by re-drawing the boundaries to ensure that each MP represents the same number of voters will make the existing voting system fairer."
even if each district is exactly the same in pop. or in eligible voting pop., with turn-out percentage varying from district to district, and with some members elected with 70 percent or more of district vote and others elected with as few as 24 percent or so of district vote, there is no way that each member will be elected with same number of votes.
myth of fragility of PR-elected government
"Clearly what happened in the 2010 and 2017 General Elections has blown this argument out of the water. First-past-the-post has now given us two hung parliaments within the space of a decade in this century."
Canada has seen minority govenrment elected in last two elections
Liberals elected to majority government in 2015, in part on promise to reform election system, a broken promise.
True, that :
"There will never be arithmetical perfection when over 48 million voters elect 650 Members of Parliament from among thousands of candidates belonging to a host of political parties to represent local constituencies."
under perfect fairness, the seats are given out based on increments of about 74,000 votes,
in fact under FPTP sear are allocated based on wide variation from that mean,
I imagine some win with only 36,000 vots and others with more than 100,000 votes!
so there will be large left-over fractions, however you shake it.
But fairer results are much more likely --
-if there are say one-fifth or one-seventh as many districts.
-if each member is elected with about same number of votes.
both achieved under Super vote!
David, I like your message!
Hope we all get PR soon.
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