Myth 10: Proportional representation is really boring
Posted by pauldavies on October 18, 2006 | Comments (0)
Sorry, this one's not a myth. But the shipping forecast is possibly the dullest thing ever invented, yet few would argue that it is not important to those it affects. And elections affect everyone.
October 17, 2006 -->Myth 9: Proportional representation doesn't let you 'kick the bastards out'
Posted by pauldavies on October 17, 2006 | Comments (0)
It is a lingering idea that proportional representation entrenches the same politicians in power for ever and ever amen.
Politicians can only stay in office because the party has the power to and wants to keep them there, or because the voters do. In a closed-list system, or in safe seats generated by FPTP, the politicians have such power. Using STV gives that power to the voters, and then it is up to the voters to deal with any bastardly ways.
STV also ensures that to be elected, a candidate has to have a decent level of support from within their constituency. In the previous two general elections, George Galloway (he's the best example, there are others) has won his seat with under 20 per cent of two separate registered electorates. A system that elects an MP on such a paltry amount of votes is not one that appears best designed for kicking MPs out.
October 16, 2006 -->Myth 8: Proportional representation creates discord within political parties
Posted by pauldavies on October 16, 2006 | Comments (0)
There is a thin line between healthy competition and a basis for intra-party bickering, yet as far as the voters are concerned, competition to help them out and thus win their votes is almost certainly a good thing.
Furthermore, even where members of the same party are competing against each other, it still does them good to work together—the majority of votes are cast on party lines, and a party that appears disunited is not terribly attractive to voters. Depending on how the party depends to play it, all its candidates can still get elected together.
The most important point is that parties are coalitions, the people in them have different views on different topics. STV shows these views to the electorate and gives them the chance to show which they prefer.
October 13, 2006 -->Myth 7: Proportional representation means weak and unstable government and permanent toothless consensualism
Posted by pauldavies on October 13, 2006 | Comments (0)
British political culture is seemingly built on the idea of an elected semi-dictatorship. We want one side to win and have all the power, and then we want to get annoyed with them and get rid of them a couple of elections down the line.
Proportional representation is less likely, on the whole, to deliver whopping majorities to a single party. It thus apparently means either weak minority government, or coalitions, which many people argue lead to "smooth and pointless" policy, and nothing of note ever gets done. The media's attitude to government is a curious one. When it's got a big majority, it's arrogant and against the public will, and when it's a coalition, it's in chaos.
Major democratic governments from Australia to Ireland would probably be a tad insulted if you were to suggest that all their policies are useless and that their governments are unworkable fudges, but there you go.
All this is to forget, however, that single-party governments can exist under proportional representation – all that is required is for a party to command wide enough support among the electorate, as opposed to FPTP, where a level of support somewhere around 35 per cent of the electorate (40 per cent plus if you're the Tories) is good enough for 100 per cent of the power.
In Spain and Malta, for example, the normal pattern has been for single-party government despite PR. In Ireland, Fianna Fail fell just short of a majority in 2002 – largely because the electorate wanted to return it to power but did not trust it with an overall majority.
In many countries, even with highly proportional systems, stable coalitions are formed which alternate in government. In recent elections in Norway and Sweden centre-right and left alliances have exchanged power in clear-cut election results. There was no mushy consensual politics in the last few Italian elections, where rival coalitions presented highly distinct appeals.
PR is also no barrier to right-wing governments, as many seem to think. Aznar, Berlusconi, and National in New Zealand have all formed governments under PR systems.
Moreover, the most unstable governments are often those governments with a small, or no, overall majority that FPTP throws up – as in Britain in 1974-79 and 1992-97, and frequently in Canada. These governments will tend to be threatened as much by their own backbenchers as minority parties, and are forced into short-term calculations in the hope of hanging on or calling another election to win a majority.
October 12, 2006 -->Myth 6: Proportional representation helps extremist parties get into power
Posted by pauldavies on October 12, 2006 | Comments (0)
This is another myth that is based, primarily, on an extreme form of proportional representation, that grants seats in the legislature as exactly as possible in proportion to a party's share of the vote. Such systems are not sensible and no one thinks the UK should have one.
Most proportional representation systems have a 'threshold', a percentage of the vote that a party has to receive in order to be entitled to seats in Parliament. In Germany, for example, the threshold is set at 5 per cent.
More importantly than the question of thresholds, however, is the way different systems treat the more extreme parties.
FPTP remains the only system in use in the United Kingdom to have elected members of extremist parties. Where candidates are ranked, the most disliked candidate cannot win. Where candidates aren't ranked, there is no such safeguard.
In Westminster elections, extremist parties, because they are so unlikely to ever gain enough votes in one constituency to win a seat, are not dealt with, they are ignored. This is fine for the other political parties, but not so fine for the constituents who have to put up with an organised minority encouraging discord within a local community.
Ultimately, if a party can gain, say, 10 per cent of the vote, they should not be denied representation; often such representation will merely be the extra rope they need to hang themselves with, as with the rise and fall of the List Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, even with a pure PR system.
STV has a relatively high local threshold, of 20 per cent in a four-member seat, which tends to keep out the smaller fragments while allowing parties and Independents with a significant degree of local support to win representation. Further, moderate parties are more likely to attract transfers and therefore, if the voters are willing, can win representation despite a fairly low share of first preferences. The Alliance Party manages this in Northern Ireland. Extreme parties rarely attract transfers – people are either for them or strongly against them.
October 11, 2006 -->Myth 5: Proportional representation means that the small parties call the shots
Posted by pauldavies on October 11, 2006 | Comments (0)
One of the most common arguments against proportional representation of any kind is that, in a three-party system such as the UK's, where no one party has enough votes for a majority, the third party, in our case the Liberal Democrats, get to 'call the shots' and decide who to form a coalition government with.
This is a possibility. It's not, however, a probability. As mentioned above, parties seen to be sacrificing principles for power can meet with almighty electoral backlashes. Moreover, if the third party is really to 'call the shots', it must be able to threaten to jump ship and join the other big party, or its influence will be limited to that granted by its popular support.
Parties switching allegiance in such a manner happens rarely, but when it does, the voters are not quick to endorse it. Although the FDP pulled off this trick in 1982-83 in Germany, it is hard to see British voters turning out in much force for a Liberal Democrat party that tried to do the same thing.
The truth is that third parties acting as a coalition partner have limited control over policy decisions. They remain the subservient partner, just as their vote share would indicate. Study of the policies put forward in the partnership agreements that formed Labour-Lib Dem coalitions in Scotland in 1999 and 2003 shows that the influence of Labour manifesto policies was much stronger than that of the Lib Dems.
October 10, 2006 -->Myth 4: Proportional representation means policy is hidden in smoky backroom deals, not out in the open in a single party's manifesto
Posted by pauldavies on October 10, 2006 | Comments (1)
There is a lovely romantic notion that comes with FPTP, that a party publishes its manifesto, stands on that basis, and then works hard to implement it when the public have endorsed it. The contrary to this is that, with coalition government, manifestos are chopped around, mixed and matched, and the voters thus have no idea what they're voting on, as compromises will be reached behind closed doors, in the infamous post-election 'smoke-filled rooms'.
Leaving aside the fact that most voters do not read a single manifesto, let alone make a decision based on having read all of them, if manifestos were adhered to, we'd have had a referendum on the voting system by now, as included in Labour's 1997 pre-election promises. As you may have noticed, we haven't.
Manifestos are written less as a guideline to how a party will govern and more as exercises in offending as few people as possible and in not using any verbs. In the 2005 election, Labour's 'Forward not Back' manifesto took the party beyond parody, as they faced claims that they had lifted the slogan from a spoof election in The Simpsons.
If the need for a coalition looks likely, parties tend to make their intentions clear before the election and stand on that basis. It is often imprudent to do otherwise – voters can easily feel betrayed if the party they voted for is seen to team up with another party that they're not so keen on, and betrayal, or the appearance of betrayal, is the most electorally suicidal act a party can perpetrate: if voters feel that the party they voted for has abandoned its principles to get into power, that party will most likely be mauled at the next election. This happened to the New Zealand First party which was punished in the 1999 election after going into coalition with a party it had vigorously denounced during the previous campaign.
October 09, 2006 -->Myth 3: Proportional representation, especially in multi-member constituencies, severs the sacred link between representatives and their electorates
Posted by pauldavies on October 09, 2006 | Comments (0)
The biggest argument against STV is its use of multi-member constituencies. From some angles, such as the one the Arbuthnott Commission identified, about the possibility that some wards (such as the Highlands in Scotland) would become geographically unmanageable, it is a valid argument.
Other angles, such as the commonly voiced concern that multi-member constituencies harm the link between a representative and their electorate, are much harder to defend, especially as some STV-detractors complain that where STV is used in Ireland, representatives are forced to pay too much attention to constituency issues.
That STV incentivises representatives to serve local interests is not hard to fathom. In multi-member constituencies, there is a healthy competition between the members (and because all members are elected on the same basis, the competition is distinctly less acrimonious than that between constituency and list members in Additional Member Systems). Also, as voters have a choice at elections between candidates of the same party, developing a personal profile is an advantage when it comes to getting re-elected.
And for those that think that multi-member constituencies would rob us of our 'Portillo' moments, when a high-profile candidate loses their seat: how do you think some of the more famous politicians in the country would fare if they had to stand against other candidates from their own party, in an area where that party can only be confident of winning, say, two of the three seats on offer? By dramatically reducing the number of safe seats, such moments are arguably much more likely under STV.
The link between constituents and their MP is at its worst under closed lists (which no one is recommending for Westminster elections) and in the two-thirds to three-quarters of seats under FPTP that are so safe that the winner is as good as pre-determined. It is at its best under STV.
October 06, 2006 -->Myth 2: Proportional representation systems are too complicated
Posted by pauldavies on October 06, 2006 | Comments (0)
At first glance, arguing that systems such as STV should be rejected because not everyone understands concepts of voting beyond placing one X next to one candidate seems a bit mean towards the electorate.
However, as what evidence there is indicates that more ballots are spoiled in non-FPTP elections, especially where two different types of system are being used on the same day, the point does warrant some consideration.
Even in Ireland, where they've been using STV since the 1920s (to the delight of the voters, and the annoyance of the politicians), a greater percentage of voters fill in their ballots incorrectly than voters in Westminster elections do. Nonetheless, there is only so much that should be made of this point.
Firstly, the number of ballots spoiled by technical errors is still very small. Secondly, instructions on ballot papers are easy to follow. If you're told to place a '1' by your first-preference candidate, a '2' by your second and so on, it's not the fault of the electoral system if you get it wrong.
However many times complex-sounding things like the 'Droop quota' and the 'D'Hondt formula' are thrown out by detractors to suggest how only people with Maths degrees know what they're doing at the ballot box, it doesn't make any difference to the fact that if you can list five things in order of preference, you can understand your role in an STV election. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that if you don't understand the intricate workings of an internal combustion engine, you are incapable of making a car move.
All voters in STV elections need to know is that casting a vote for their preferred candidate and/or party broadly helps determine final representation in national decision-making. You can’t say that about FPTP.
Finally, in some ways, voting in an STV election is actually simpler than voting in a FPTP election. In an STV election, you rank your choices, safe in the knowledge that you won't be accidentally helping one of the candidates you really dislike. In a FPTP election, you cannot guarantee this, which is why so many people vote 'tactically', i.e. not for their favourite candidate, but for the one with the best chance of keeping out a candidate they dislike.
October 05, 2006 -->A mythical introduction
Posted by pauldavies on October 05, 2006 | Comments (1)
There are arguably more people that only know the Single Transferable Vote (STV), or more accurately proportional representation in general, as the butt of a series of political jokes than there are those who understand how the different systems work, or even what the term 'proportional representation' means.
Those at the top of the political tree have long treated proportional representation patronisingly, and it is an attitude that has spread rather successfully. Take, for example, the prime minister's response to being asked about the electoral system on 22nd June 2005, when he deemed the case for changing First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) a "pretty odd" topic to bring up in Prime Minister's Questions.
That the topic of voting reform is still so easily side-stepped is due in large part to the persistence of a number of myths about proportional representation, which, despite their intellectual emptiness, remain rather popular among everyone from everyday voters to high-profile members of the government.
A lot of these myths are based on examples from systems that no sane people are advocating for the various UK governments, and thus should be still-born. Unfortunately, they're not, and it seems that there will always be people that think that shouting 'look at Israel', 'look at Italy' or 'PR gave us Hitler' are valid arguments against electoral reform.
Thus over the next ten days, I shall be posting up a common calumny uttered against STV or proportional representation, and explaining why anyone using such an argument should be first mocked, and then educated.
Myth 1: Proportional representation means we'd end up with the same daft system as Israel/Italy/Weimar Germany.
This is simply not true. The foremost advocate of changing the voting system, the Electoral Reform Society, is unequivocal in its support of STV. Other people and other organisations support different systems, none of which resembles the scare-systems of the countries mentioned above. To cite Israel, Italy, or if you're really crazy, Weimar Germany, marks one down as desperate fool. Use Ireland if you must, only that works quite well.
But always remember that different systems work differently with different political cultures, so the whole idea of international comparison is, even in the case of Ireland, only an add-on, a point which has little strength or relevance when used on its own.
Democracy is too important to be left to paid, professional politicians.
Reform too important to be left to Gordon Brown and his new wobbly government.
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