Our favourite topic: Voting Systems!!!!

[jimbob]

When the parties already parachute favored sons and daughters into safe seats, party list patronage is alive and well in FPTP.

Exactly this. We already have lists of party placemen and women effectively nominated to parliament. We already have right-wing extremists not only represented in parliament but in control of the actual government. How could PR possibly make this worse?

Which is why I prefer the system that gives the electorate the strongest chance of voting someone out.

[jimbob]

When the parties already parachute favored sons and daughters into safe seats, party list patronage is alive and well in FPTP.

Exactly this. We already have lists of party placemen and women effectively nominated to parliament. We already have right-wing extremists not only represented in parliament but in control of the actual government. How could PR possibly make this worse?

By putting groups like Britain First in a position where they've got MPs.

And by completely breaking any link between a constituency and its MP. PR would mean some areas - or more specifically some types of areas - just don't have MPs live there.

To me, the best approach would be a transferable vote for the commons, for the reasons Jimbob outlined, and then a House of Lords doing roughly what it does now, but elected directly using either PR or large multi-member regional constituencies (basically PR but less risk of London taking over absolutely everything) and with terms rather longer than those of the Commons and overlapping, so that the second chamber moves more slowly and acts as a moderating influence on the Commons.

I would actually prefer the upper house to be chosen like jury service, but with the no penalty for refusal and a salary that would make it worthwhile for most of the population to incur a 5 year career break.

Say 20% turnover each year and a 5 year period of service. That way the upper house would not have the legitimacy of the lower house, but would also get a wider cross section of the population.

[Bird on a Fire]

Does having one or two MPs actually matter much, especially if balanced out by the "I love immigrants" party?

Again, if we look at where does/doesn't have PR (grey is no):

Screenshot_20220929-124254_copy_230x205.png (29.16 KiB) Viewed 841 times

its pretty clear that PR seems to lower the risk of an extremist faction taking over the government and undermining the rule of law.

Eta no idea what's going wrong with bbcode here

[purplehaze]

In theory I want PR, but then I remember that UKIP got 12.6% of the vote in 2015.

Northern Ireland is interesting because it still uses FPTP when it comes to a GE. Otherwise a form of PR is used STV - Single Transferable Vote for both local and assembly elections. The DUP and SF both lost in the 2019 election, though interestingly Nigel Dodds DUP lost his seat to John Finucane SF - probably because the SDLP didn't field a candidate. Links to assembly and local last two.

https://www.eoni.org.uk/Vote/Voting-sys ... rn-Ireland

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-50774801

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/202 ... nd/results

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cj736 ... tions-2019

A form of PR is already used throughout the rest of the UK, in England it's the London Assembly.

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/whe ... in-the-uk/

[snoozeofreason]

In theory I want PR, but then I remember that UKIP got 12.6% of the vote in 2015.

That is one reason why I am in favour of AV. It gives the least-unpopular candidate in each constituency as opposed to the one with the largest plurality.
...

AV is not, in general, going to work that way. There will be a lot of constituencies, for example, where the Lib Dem candidate would get relatively few first preference votes, but pick up the majority of second preference votes. In that sense, (s)he would be the least unpopular. But (s)he would still be unlikely to get elected under AV because (s)he would be eliminated before the second preference votes expressed by Labour or Conservative voters got counted.

[nekomatic]

By putting groups like Britain First in a position where they've got MPs.

And by completely breaking any link between a constituency and its MP. PR would mean some areas - or more specifically some types of areas - just don't have MPs live there.

I agree that the link between an MP and their constituency is desirable, so I’d probably favour something like a multi-member constituency system.

Re Britain First, a minimum threshold for achieving seats would probably keep them out, but if it doesn’t then bluntly that’s democracy and we need to face them down in open debate rather than suppress them. Arguably the reason their Swedish equivalents are about to be part of government is that the Swedish establishment has spent much too long tiptoeing around them rather than having it out.

[monkey]

To me, the best approach would be a transferable vote for the commons, for the reasons Jimbob outlined, and then a House of Lords doing roughly what it does now, but elected directly using either PR or large multi-member regional constituencies (basically PR but less risk of London taking over absolutely everything) and with terms rather longer than those of the Commons and overlapping, so that the second chamber moves more slowly and acts as a moderating influence on the Commons.

I would have the multiple member constituencies for the commons, with 3-5 MPs in each, elected by STV. It's how it's done in Ireland. It's a good balance between getting something approaching proportional and having someone to complain at that because they represent you. It also puts a high threshold on getting a seat, which would help put a lid on cranks and extremists. I like the idea of complaining to multiple people when I'm angry about something too.

Not sure what I'd do with the Lords, I've not thought about it all that much, I'm mostly waiting for someone else to say "this is my plan" and me go "that'll work". But at the very least it needs shrinking and being more democratic. I've thought about doing away with it completely and having committees chosen on a sectorial basis to review the legislation, with the power to make amendments to be voted on by the commons. So people who work in universities elect a committee to oversee legislation relating to Universities, for example. But I'm not sure how you'd make it work in practice. There'd definitely be problems with deciding who is in which sector.

[dyqik]

When the parties already parachute favored sons and daughters into safe seats, party list patronage is alive and well in FPTP.

Exactly this. We already have lists of party placemen and women effectively nominated to parliament. We already have right-wing extremists not only represented in parliament but in control of the actual government. How could PR possibly make this worse?

By putting groups like Britain First in a position where they've got MPs.

And by completely breaking any link between a constituency and its MP. PR would mean some areas - or more specifically some types of areas - just don't have MPs live there

Neither of these are necessarily true of PR in all its forms. As stated above, you can have thresholds for PR, and you can have multi-member regional constituencies.

[dyqik]

In theory I want PR, but then I remember that UKIP got 12.6% of the vote in 2015.

That is one reason why I am in favour of AV. It gives the least-unpopular candidate in each constituency as opposed to the one with the largest plurality.
...

AV is not, in general, going to work that way. There will be a lot of constituencies, for example, where the Lib Dem candidate would get relatively few first preference votes, but pick up the majority of second preference votes. In that sense, (s)he would be the least unpopular. But (s)he would still be unlikely to get elected under AV because (s)he would be eliminated before the second preference votes expressed by Labour or Conservative voters got counted.

Which is as it should work. You get the most popular candidate that is acceptable to the majority.

[Bird on a Fire]

Exactly this. We already have lists of party placemen and women effectively nominated to parliament. We already have right-wing extremists not only represented in parliament but in control of the actual government. How could PR possibly make this worse?

By putting groups like Britain First in a position where they've got MPs.

And by completely breaking any link between a constituency and its MP. PR would mean some areas - or more specifically some types of areas - just don't have MPs live there

Neither of these are necessarily true of PR in all its forms. As stated above, you can have thresholds for PR, and you can have multi-member regional constituencies.

The Labour delegates' motion in the link I posted above specifically says:

The motion based on one submitted by about 140 local parties, says the form of PR used should retain constituency links.

I've got local representatives in Portugal under "closed list proportional representation D'Hondt method":

Members are elected by popular vote for legislative terms of four years from the country's twenty-two constituencies. There are eighteen in mainland Portugal corresponding to each district, one each for the autonomous regions of Azores (Portuguese: Açores) and Madeira, and two for Portuguese people living abroad (one covering Europe and one covering the rest of the world).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_ ... (Portugal)

Not hard to make a rule that each MP has to do X number of surgeries in their constituency either.

But the relevant point to the thread is: members want it, the unions will probably back it, but Starmer doesn't like the idea so it looks like it won't happen. The tension of the party membership being more progressive than most of its parliamentarians seems to be continuing.

[TopBadger]

FPTP doesn't guarantee any link between an MP and their constituency anyway. My "Local" MP actually lives over 30 miles outside their constituency, and has never lived here. As others have said, plenty of favoured folk have been parachuted in from miles away for a safe seat.

That so few MP's go against the whip also renders personal views pointless for the most part.

There is also the fact that MP's legislate... what laws apply on a per constituency basis?? None.

Full PR is fine by me - then every vote counts. That some minority will always vote for knobheads is regrettable but is a result of the inherent fairness that full PR brings.

[Aitch]

FPTP doesn't guarantee any link between an MP and their constituency anyway. My "Local" MP actually lives over 30 miles outside their constituency, and has never lived here. As others have said, plenty of favoured folk have been parachuted in from miles away for a safe seat.

My MP (initials KK) lived in our constituency. For one month before the election.

Full PR is fine by me - then every vote counts. That some minority will always vote for knobheads is regrettable but is a result of the inherent fairness that full PR brings.

Well, my 'analysis' of the 2019 GE, looks like this (there are a few rounding errors and so forth, but it's about right)

GE19.jpg (111.23 KiB) Viewed 716 times

Full PR would certainly give a more honest representation of what people voted for. Though we'd probably still have ended up with a far right coalition.

[snoozeofreason]

That is one reason why I am in favour of AV. It gives the least-unpopular candidate in each constituency as opposed to the one with the largest plurality.
...

AV is not, in general, going to work that way. There will be a lot of constituencies, for example, where the Lib Dem candidate would get relatively few first preference votes, but pick up the majority of second preference votes. In that sense, (s)he would be the least unpopular. But (s)he would still be unlikely to get elected under AV because (s)he would be eliminated before the second preference votes expressed by Labour or Conservative voters got counted.

Which is as it should work. You get the most popular candidate that is acceptable to the majority.

Voters in an AV election do not explicitly say whether or not a candidate is "acceptable". They just rank in order of preference. So whether your statement is true depends on how you decide whether someone is "acceptable" and/or "popular" based on those rankings.

You could, I suppose say that a candidate is "acceptable" to a voter if they are that voter's first or second preference, and then judge "popularity" by looking just at first preference votes. But this would mean that you could get quite "unpopular" candidates triumphing in AV votes, even if there is a more "popular" candidate who is also "acceptable" to a majority. There are of course, plenty of other ways in which "acceptable" and "popular" could be defined. But I am not sure that any of them make it true that the winner is the most popular candidate acceptable to the majority. Nor would they make jimbob's rather different suggestion of a "least unpopular" winner true.

In practice the winner of an AV election is usually the same person as would have won under FPTP. In the minority of cases where this is not true, there is often a vague sense in which you can say that the winning candidate is a "better" choice than the FPTP winner. But it is quite hard to nail down exactly what that sense is.

[Trinucleus]

For me the main thing with PR is that like about 400 constituencies, mine never changes sides, so it would be good to actually gave a vote that influences the outcome

[monkey]

FPTP doesn't guarantee any link between an MP and their constituency anyway. My "Local" MP actually lives over 30 miles outside their constituency, and has never lived here. As others have said, plenty of favoured folk have been parachuted in from miles away for a safe seat.

My MP (initials KK) lived in our constituency. For one month before the election.

Full PR is fine by me - then every vote counts. That some minority will always vote for knobheads is regrettable but is a result of the inherent fairness that full PR brings.

Well, my 'analysis' of the 2019 GE, looks like this (there are a few rounding errors and so forth, but it's about right)

GE19.jpg

Full PR would certainly give a more honest representation of what people voted for. Though we'd probably still have ended up with a far right coalition.

I'm not sure ana analysis like that is that useful. People would vote differently under different systems.There's no tactical voting under full PR, or more people would vote for minor parties because they would feel that there's some point in it, that sort of thing. That could change your seat counts by a fair bit, especially for the smaller parties (in a relative way), and if their seat counts are increasing, they'd have to come from the larger parties count.

Just had a thought about full PR that I'm going to add here, it would be really weird to be able to vote for Sinn Féin DUP while not living in Northern Ireland (or associated to a NI constituency if abroad).

[dyqik]

AV is not, in general, going to work that way. There will be a lot of constituencies, for example, where the Lib Dem candidate would get relatively few first preference votes, but pick up the majority of second preference votes. In that sense, (s)he would be the least unpopular. But (s)he would still be unlikely to get elected under AV because (s)he would be eliminated before the second preference votes expressed by Labour or Conservative voters got counted.

Which is as it should work. You get the most popular candidate that is acceptable to the majority.

Voters in an AV election do not explicitly say whether or not a candidate is "acceptable". They just rank in order of preference. So whether your statement is true depends on how you decide whether someone is "acceptable" and/or "popular" based on those rankings.

It's true far more often than not, particularly as people don't have to fill in all the lower levels in STV.

[Sciolus]

For me the main thing with PR is that like about 400 constituencies, mine never changes sides, so it would be good to actually gave a vote that influences the outcome

If you've got several hundred constituencies with independent elections, the majority of them are going to be safe whatever system you use, because of the relationship between local demographics and party affiliation. The only way to make constituency elections contestable is to have much larger constituencies with a minimum of dozen representatives each so that locally less-popular parties get some representation.

[bolo]

Or select party candidates in primary elections, so that in districts where Party X always wins the general election, primary voters get some say in deciding that party's candidate.

[snoozeofreason]

Which is as it should work. You get the most popular candidate that is acceptable to the majority.

Voters in an AV election do not explicitly say whether or not a candidate is "acceptable". They just rank in order of preference. So whether your statement is true depends on how you decide whether someone is "acceptable" and/or "popular" based on those rankings.

It's true far more often than not, particularly as people don't have to fill in all the lower levels in STV.

I really don't see how you can say whether it's true or not unless you define what you mean by "popular" and "acceptable". It sounds from your comment as if you are taking a candidate to be "acceptable" to a voter if the voter has put that candidate somewhere in their list of preferences, but that's not how people vote in an AV election. And if you used that definition, every serious candidate would probably be "acceptable" to a majority of voters, and the most popular "acceptable" candidate would be the same as the most popular candidate (presumably the FPTP winner).

You'll have to excuse me if I am guessing wrongly at what you mean by "acceptable" and "popular", but unless you say how they get mapped on to preferences expressed in an AV vote, I can't do anything other than guess.

[lpm]

Christ, stop reinventing the wheel, let's just import wholesale some PR system and constitution from another country.

Pick a country that is more successful than the UK. There are 192 countries in the UN that meet this condition to chose from.

[TimW]

...the most popular candidate (presumably the FPTP winner).

Blimey. Why waste time nitpicking about what the word "word" means when it's obvious what the ideal voting system is.

[snoozeofreason]

...the most popular candidate (presumably the FPTP winner).

Blimey. Why waste time nitpicking about what the word "word" means when it's obvious what the ideal voting system is.

My comments related to AV, which I am guessing is not the one you consider to be the ideal voting system. It's not my ideal voting system either, and I was trying to explain why some comments made in its favour don't really make sense.

[snoozeofreason]

That said, it was a discussion of AV that doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Probably best split out, or just forgotten about.

[TimW]

My comments related to AV, which I am guessing is not the one you consider to be the ideal voting system. It's not my ideal voting system either, and I was trying to explain why some comments made in its favour don't really make sense.

What are you talking about now? There is no ideal voting system.

[snoozeofreason]

...the most popular candidate (presumably the FPTP winner).

Blimey. Why waste time nitpicking about what the word "word" means when it's obvious what the ideal voting system is.

My comments related to AV, which I am guessing is not the one you consider to be the ideal voting system. It's not my ideal voting system either, and I was trying to explain why some comments made in its favour don't really make sense.

What are you talking about now? There is no ideal voting system.

I've got to the point where I am prepared to agree to pretty much anything. So I agree with you that there is no ideal voting system, and I agree with you that it is obvious what that system is.