Before I start, I would like to state that I freely admit
that there is no such thing as a perfect electoral
system.
Arrow's Impossibility Theorem tells us that. Electoral systems are in
some respects like map projections, it is already known that a perfect solution
is impossible, however that doesn’t mean we can’t improve upon it.
All electoral systems have some level of unfairness, scope
for throwing out an arbitrary or incorrect outcome or opportunity for tactical voting. Improved
systems just cause them to become much less likely to occur and make tactical
voting much harder.
As for national elections, it’s also important to find the
balance between local representation and nationwide proportionality.
If electoral systems are compared to map projections then I think that if the Dutch system of rigid PR is Mollwiede and FPtP is Mercator then STV is the Winkel Tripel.
The AV referendum and
preferential voting.
In 2011 in the UK, we had the opportunity to change the
electoral system.
Contrary to what many Tory MPs now erroneously claim, It was not a form of proportional representation that was on
offer, it was a system designed to be more representative at a constituency
level.
The Conservatives, in
their infinite wisdom, were against this reform, although that is no
surprise, they are so far against any kind of electoral reform they let Labour
take office in 1974 partially to protect the current system even though it had
led to Labour taking the plurality of seats despite them having gained more
votes.
In 2010 however, the Tories really should have been in
favour of AV, it could have given any future Tory government elected with under
50% of the vote a bit more legitimacy, without using PR.
Most people who favour FPtP say they do so because it leads
to ‘strong single party governments’ and they’re right it often does or
it’s more likely to. Unfortunately, this is often a strong single party
government elected by as little as 35.2% of the population, as Labour got in
2005.
I would argue that if strong single party governments are
important to you then the best system for that is not FPtP but instant run-off
voting, also known in the UK
under the vague title of The Alternative Vote (AV).
The reason for this is that it’s still likely to lead to a
single party winning a majority of the seats in many or most elections, it
would do this while allowing people to vote for who they really want without
fear of letting someone else win, but most importantly of all the national two-party-preferred
result would somewhat deal with the
minority rules problem of FPtP without going to PR
For example, if after the 2015 election AV had been used, The
Conservatives had won and the result showed that after all preferences had been
allocated people preferred the Conservatives to Labour at a rate of 51-45% (the
other 4% making no preference for either) then there might have been fewer
people protesting in the street at how the election result was fundamentally
wrong and unfair.
While AV is not to be considered as any form of proportional
representation it was thought at the time the lack of a need to vote tactically
may have led to a slightly more proportional result nationwide, although this
is just incidental and it would also have led to a small yet significant drop
in the overall percentage of wasted votes. If Australia is anything to go by it
may have led to a handful of independent MPs being elected at each election.
When it came to the 2015 UK General Election, the projection was that the
Conservatives majority would have been double what it was had AV been the system
used.
David Cameron promised the EU referendum on the run-up to the 2015 election because he saw the rise of UKIP as a threat, he sealed his fate by not backing AV.
Proportional
Representation
Most countries in Europe
and many countries throughout the world use a form of electoral system designed
to give some level of proportional representation, however, the systems used
and the level of which they’re proportional varies greatly.
General elections normally decide two things; who will be
the local representative in parliament and who people want to be running the
country.
Some proportional representation systems do away with local
representation altogether and everybody is just voting for the government,
however, most systems of PR are trying to maintain a certain degree of balance
between local representation and proportional representation, the method used
to maintain this and the effect it has on the level of proportionality and how
local the representation is, varies from system to system.
There are quite a number of proportional representation
systems used throughout the world, countries in Europe that have it use a
plethora or different systems many of which are either based on large electoral
regions or are a variation of the mixed-member proportional system.
MMP
In the mixed member system, a number of the seats are decided by first past the
post and the rest are divided up to try and give a more overall proportional result.
There are a number of problems with this system. The first is that it still
relies on the overly simplistic and outdated first past the post method for
constituencies, (you could use AV for these elections, but for some
reason no one does this) you have two kinds of MPs and often, to try and
reduce the likelihood of extremist or fringe candidates getting into parliament,
there tends to be some kind of arbitrary cap called an election threshold that a party needs to get in order to gain any
seats. This is often between 3-5%.
In Germany for example if a party gets 4.99% of the vote it gets no seats and
all of the votes for that party are simply discarded. However, gain 5% of the vote
and it’s at least 30 seats.
That’s why in Germany the FDP had no representation
in the national parliament between 2013 and 2017, only 4 parties did, because
15% of the party-list votes were wasted the CDU were almost able to gain a
majority with only 41.5% of the vote, whilst in 1983 they were unable to gain a
majority with 48.8% of the vote.
What has happened in Germany to allow the CDU to almost gain
a majority, is that because so many votes are wasted on candidates who do not
make the threshold it’s inadvertently made easier for a single party to gain an
overall majority with significantly below 50% of the vote.
Having said that, I don’t think gaining 50% of the vote should
be an absolute requirement of a single party holding a majority of seats in a
parliament, I think it’s more troubling under this and other non-ranking systems
than it is under a preferential voting system, the reasons for which I will
explain further on.
One Nation Party-List
One solution for PR would be to have no local constituencies
and no threshold, this would be a system equivocal to the strictly proportional
system used in The Netherlands.
The Netherlands
has possibly the most proportional system used anywhere in the world in terms
of seat distribution. This might be the best form of running elections if
elections were not at all about having local representation and were purely
about proportionality between parties. Despite the proportionality, The Netherlands doesn’t rank as
highly as Ireland on the democracy index.
The entire country is treated as one constituency and elections
take place using an open party list, there is no capping so with 150 MPs, just
getting 1/150th of the vote is enough to gain an MP.
While this is extremely proportional and very few votes are
wasted, there is no form of local representation in parliament, and it’s a
closed party list, so people do not have a say on candidates, only parties. This
form of strict proportionality seems to lead to a parliament that is deeply fragmented.
Often even after the result is in, it can still remain
highly unclear who will form the next government, even a combination of the two
largest parties often won’t have enough seats for a majority and negotiations
must be held between several parties.
In 2010 the largest party got just 20.5% of the vote, it took
almost 5 months to form a government, which lasted just 2 years also there were
no independent members.
In the next election, the largest party did better with
26.6% of the vote and it only took almost 50 days to form a government. No
government has lasted a full term since 2002.
Another example is from 1977 the
PvdA won the election with 33.8% of
the vote which is considered a “landslide”
by Dutch election standards; however, it took over 200 days to eventually form
a government that did not include the PvdA.
Personally, I think this kind of pure PR seems to lead to the sort of situations
that opponents of PR in general tend to allude to.
Regional Party-list
Many countries have PR that works by splitting the country
in to regions some with a national top-up to ensure nationwide proportionality
such as Denmark, often these will have caps.
However, although these caps are
normally only in place to get nationwide top-up seats, so it is less of a
barrier for independent or regional party-based candidates at getting some
level of representation.
Still, under this system, the regions are very large
so “local” MPs may cover entire
regions and all votes for candidates who don’t make the threshold are still
ignored.
STV
Under the single transferable vote, the country would be
split in many multiple-member constituencies consisting of between 3 to 6
members. Some people would suggest more than that and/or no variations in the
number of members per seat, but I’m going to use this for my example.
Firstly, you might be wondering why the variation in the
number of seats and therefore the level of proportionality?
It’s important to remember that under STV, purely being
proportional at a nationwide level is not the aim, the single transferable vote
system is designed to; give a broad level of representation to a local area and
to minimise the number of wasted votes whilst still managing to be quite
proportional at a national level, primarily because of the lack of any need of
any nation-wide electoral threshold.
Under STV the ability to vary the number of seats is
actually quite important, it is so there is less of a need to have arbitrary
electoral boundaries for constituencies.
Under STV constituency boundaries would have less need to
have odd shapes with panhandles and isthmuses or to cross major cultural, man-made
or geological boundaries that set areas apart.
Boundaries can still change, yes, but wherever possible the
number of MPs would be set so that distinct areas are kept as one constituency.
For example; any conurbation large enough to warrant 3 MPs
or more could form one constituency, if the population rises in that city then
the number of MPs could rise to 4 or 5 then if it gets really big it could
increase to 2 constituencies of 3 MPs each and so on.
Under STV in a system known as the Droop quota, the number of votes needed to
be guaranteed a seat is calculated thusly.
The number of votes divided by the number of seats plus one,
plus one vote.
For example; if a 5 seat constituency had 180 voters the number
of votes needed to be guaranteed a seat would be 31 that is 180/(5+1)+1 That’s
16.77% of the vote plus 1 vote. This would only rise to 37 (20%+1) votes in a 4
seat constituency and 46 (25%+1) votes in a 3 seater.
The biggest problem with FPtP is that in areas where one
party does not do well they can be pretty much ignored by that party, as they
have little to no chance of winning seats there regardless of how well they do
nationwide.
For example; as it is now, the people of Liverpool or the South Wales Valleys can
pretty much be ignored by the Conservatives, they know they stand no chance of
winning any seats there.
In those areas, fewer Tory votes are fewer votes for the Tories where they won’t
win anyway so that cannot hurt them, and more Labour votes are more surplus
votes for Labour that cannot help them.
Under STV when a party like the Conservatives does well nationally,
they will stand a good chance of winning a seat in those kinds of areas, not many
but they would still have something to gain or lose none the less.
The same can
be said for Labour in large rural seats in the South East. Also in areas where a single party single party does consistently well, they will have something to lose, even if they still win most of the seats in bad years.
This will also mean that those parties will spend more time and effort trying
to win support and listening to voters needs come election time, this can
already be seen in local elections in Scotland, in the 2012 local election in
Scotland Labour councillor Paul Godzik was canvassing in a well-off area of
Edinburgh he admitted that it wasn’t a “traditional
Labour area” and how it was “not an
area that got a great deal of attention from the Labour party in past years,
STV has made us change our approach to campaigning… there’s no ‘no go areas’
for Labour right across this constituency”.
Under FPtP not only are you more likely to be ignored by
certain parties depending on where you live but the power of your vote varies
greatly depending on how marginal a seat you live in, this greatly affects the
amount of power your individual vote has. People who live in very marginal seats
can have an order of magnitude more power in their vote than people who live in
safe seats.
Wasted votes
Wasted votes are defined as all votes for losing candidates
as well as surplus votes for winning candidates.
Under FPtP at the 2015 UK general election, the proportion of wasted votes was
74.5%, under STV the proportion of wasted votes tends to be in the mid to high
teens.
I think the biggest plus to STV is that not only are people
much more equal in terms of voting power but also coupled with the enormous reduction
in wasted votes would greatly increase the incentive for people to vote, and
most people will have at least one MP that they voted for.
The beauty of the single transferable vote is not only are votes for candidates
who get eliminated transferred but also excess votes are transferable as well,
just to minimise the number of wasted votes.
If a winning candidate gets double the votes than they need
to get elected according to that seat’s election threshold then everybody who
voted for that candidate will get half of their vote back.
The proportion of the vote you get back is dependant on the percentage of
surplus votes your preferred candidate gets, fractional votes are transferred
before lower placed candidates are eliminated to minimise the spoiler effect
and votes can be transferred more than once.
This can be complicated but the people at the count know what they are doing
they have been doing it in Ireland
for decades, and in Scottish Local elections since 2007.
It may take a longer time, but that should be of little consequence considering
that this is an election to decide the representatives for the next few years,
I’d say the most important thing is that people get the fairest result
possible.
This also means, if you like a certain candidate, however, they are not from
the party you usually support, you can rank that candidate first, then rank 2, 3,4
etc for candidates from your preferred parties, STV gives you options like this.
STV is better than is
looks on paper.
Some may have noticed that 3 to 6 members per electoral
district doesn’t seem very big, however as previously stated there would be no
nationwide electoral threshold. Coupling this with the preferential nature of STV
seems to create a system that is more proportional than if there were small
electoral districts that simply dished out seats proportionally to that
district using the D'Hondt method.
As previously stated, most
countries with PR have national thresholds to try and lock-out fringe candidates
and extremists. However, these caps not only make it harder for extremists but
also much more sanguine smaller parties, arbitrary caps can't discern between
the two.
A similar effect can sometimes be seen under first past the post.
Looking at results in Ireland it would seem that the preferential
nature of the system does tend to be kinder to smaller parties than you
otherwise might expect.
Denmark which has a very proportional system has a threshold of just 2%, that is,
still significantly more than the 1.5% of the national vote the Irish Greens
got when they won their first seat in Dáil Éireann in 1989.
In the UK
in 2010 The Green party were able to win a seat in parliament for the first
time. Their vote share nationwide was just 0.9% however they only ran in 310
seats so they got roughly 1.8% of the votes on average in seats they ran in.
Caroline Lucas managed to win the seat of Brighton Pavilion with just 31.3% of
the vote, that is 17 times the vote the Green Party got on average in seats they
ran in.
It took years of hard work and campaigning for them to win
that seat and now they’ve done what was considered unlikely, and have a seat in
parliament.
Chances are while support for the Greens is much higher than average there, it
isn’t likely to be 17x more support than average in a single area, many people may
have voted for the Greens because they’re sympathetic enough to their cause to
feel that they deserve a voice in parliament.
On the other hand, the opposite effect can be seen in a different constituency.
In the same year, the BNP averaged roughly double the vote share of the Greens in
the seats they ran in, and still had just about no chance of winning anywhere.
In their most popular seat of Barking, there was a big increase
in turnout and there was a swing from the Conservatives to Labour, well against
the national trend as people actively voted against the BNP.
Case in point, the only reason the BNP were able to win seats in the 2009 European
elections is that there were so many wasted votes cast for parties that did not
gain the number of votes needed to win seats. They did not get even close to
would have been the Droop quota in either constituency. Worse, the Green Party, just by running,
inadvertently helped get the BNP elected.
Yes, you read that right.
This kind of voting behaviour goes some way to explain why, when STV is used
smaller but more reasonable parties are able to obtain seats quite easily while
more extreme parties will find it harder to gain any seats despite getting more
first preference votes or simply under-perform in seat count relative to their
vote share.
You may think this is unfair, but it’s important to remember
that the system isn’t rigged against any specific parties, it’s just that people
tend to vote that way.
It’s a lot fairer than having a cap that not only blocks
out extremists but also more reasonable parties.
Extremist parties do not tend to gain preferential votes from people who do not
rank them first, also people will tend to actively not rank parties they find abhorrent,
actively voting against them by filling the list in, while other smaller parties
tend to get transfers from people who ranked other candidates from mainstream
parties first.
Also coupled with smaller parties concentrating their efforts on winnable seats
means the number of smaller parties gaining entrance to parliament in Ireland
is quite high.
Some people might still have concerns that for example, the Electoral
Reform Society has only projected that the Greens would have won 3 seats in 2015
when they had 3.8% of the vote, this might sound pretty poor. It's no surprise then that the Green Party favour MMP over STV.
This is mainly down to their figures being based on how people
voted under the current system and projections on where preferences would go
based on polling data. Looking at Ireland, in 2002 the Irish Greens, also got
3.8% of the vote and they were able to win 6 seats out of a parliament of just
150, that would be the equivalent of winning 26 seats out of a parliament of
650, so I find it hard to believe that with a completely different system the Greens
would still have won only 3 seats.
It has not always been that friendly to the greens in
Ireland, however, they’ve never done as badly as UK Greens were projected to
have done with the same vote share.
I think the notion that the greens in England and Wales would only have gained
3 seats in 2015 with the sea change in the way campaigning and elections are
ran is quite ridiculous.
Of course under a list system with a 5% threshold, not only would they have no seats but all votes for them would be discarded and this can disincentives honest voting.
The National Result.
I previously stated, getting over 50% of the vote is not an absolute necessity
for a single party to gain an overall majority under STV. Under rigid PR systems
with no regions or thresholds, it would be very close to 50% needed to get a majority
but still possible.
Thanks to election thresholds and regions, under most
proportional systems, it’s possible with significantly lower than 50% of the
vote.
If a single party gets to the level of about the mid-40s up, you see the potential
for them to get an overall majority.
Under STV, once a single party gains over 43% of the vote, you start to get into
the territory where it might be possible for a single party to win an absolute
majority.
I would argue that this is less troubling under STV than it is under other
systems, the only way a party with slightly over 40% of the vote gains a
majority of the seats on a minority of the (first preference) vote is if they
are being ranked highly by a large number of the electorate who do not rank
them first.
However, if a single party got 43% of the vote under STV but you’re despised by
almost everyone who voted for anyone else then chances are you will not win an
overall majority in fact the party might slightly under-perform in seats
relative to the vote share.
Overall, I think STV is a compromise, it’s not the most proportional, it’s not
as local as having single member constituencies, however PR is trying to square
a circle, and overall, I think this would be the best way to do it.
