Proportional Representation Wholly Flawed?

fatboypee

**** Please feel free to merge / delete etc if discussed elsewhere *****

Reflecting on the mess, it occurred to me, I'd been a proponent of Proportional Representation, without the theory of it's benefits really ever being tested.

Now in these turbulent times I am coming around to the theory that PR is pure BS as, in our case I wonder, do the footsoldiers of the party (i.e. the local reps) REALLY stand for what their party does at the top (and thus in their name) ?

It seems they cannot.

This election is about what the parties can do NATIONALLY to fix the ****e.

Yet, we must, if we vote nationally, in some cases, vote out (sometimes) the very representatives that look after our interests locally? If we don't, we risk voting in a party that is simply inept, or worse, the outgoing administration...

Of course, conversely, one may argue the representatives should switch to independent and campaign... but thats a choice for them and their allegiance and does not neccessarily detract from their commitment to their constituencies ?

I'm bemused by this.

Or do you think I'm being naieve / thick ?

3DataModem

In a little democracy like ours one could argue that representative majority is the best way to get things done; i.e. more than half of the elected representatives get together and say "we all agree to keep things moving by voting the same way".

I tend to agree.

One result of this i that 'parties' form that agree before election time to make this deal if they get elected.

Pros: Stuff gets done without endless debate
Cons: Party members have to compromise their wishes and sometimes their principles to join a 'party'

Still so far not a bad system.

HOWEVER then what happens is that some pats of the electorate choose representatives based what they do locally and not what they support nationally. So they elect single-issue independants, Healy-Rae's, etc who promise nothing except to horse-trade their "loyalty" to the above agreement for some immediate local payoff.

So the electorate is essentially "misusing" the party system.





PS sorry just realised this is not really on topic. Apologies OP / mods.

jacool

Imagine 100 single seat constituencies.
Some party polls 35% in each one, someone else 30%, and so on in lower amounts. The 35% end up with 100% of the seats.
Even if I exaggerate, one could imagine boundaries being re-drawn for the bigger interests to squeeze out all smaller opposition and maximise the return on whatever percentage they have, as they all seem to know where every vote lies.
We mightn't have the ML and JHR people, but we might end up with just 3 parties, as in the UK, as anyone with anything under 15% would have no chance of ever getting elected, and would cease to exist.

Godge

fatboypee wrote: »

**** Please feel free to merge / delete etc if discussed elsewhere *****

Reflecting on the mess, it occurred to me, I'd been a proponent of Proportional Representation, without the theory of it's benefits really ever being tested.

Now in these turbulent times I am coming around to the theory that PR is pure BS as, in our case I wonder, do the footsoldiers of the party (i.e. the local reps) REALLY stand for what their party does at the top (and thus in their name) ?

It seems they cannot.

This election is about what the parties can do NATIONALLY to fix the ****e.

Yet, we must, if we vote nationally, in some cases, vote out (sometimes) the very representatives that look after our interests locally? If we don't, we risk voting in a party that is simply inept, or worse, the outgoing administration...

Of course, conversely, one may argue the representatives should switch to independent and campaign... but thats a choice for them and their allegiance and does not neccessarily detract from their commitment to their constituencies ?

I'm bemused by this.

Or do you think I'm being naieve / thick ?

The idea behind proportional representation is that no one political party could get a majority with a low percentage of the vote - unlike the UK where a majority can be got with 30something per cent.

PR in national elections is not about electing someone to look after local interests. Unfortunately, too many Irish people are stupid enough to do that which is why we had so many clueless FF gombeens elected. This got worse in recent years with the Lowrys, Crowleys, Mildred Foxs, McGraths and the ultimate example the Healy-Raes. The younger Healy-Rae is known as Dolly not because he is a clone of a father because he thinks like a sheep.


PR is fine, it is the people who vote for the gombeens who are the problem but the people are always right (sigh). At least over the years it has allowed me to vote and see other quality candidates elected.

fatboypee

I take your points. I also understand the mechanics and reasoning behind PR.

My point however remains:- Do local politicians have any influence upon what becomes national policy anymore (past electing their leader). I am inclined to believe that local politics remains local and national politics is so far removed as to extremely stretch, if not sever the link between the two. And would go further to intimate that candidates are massively playing the "vote local" card this time to ensure they keep their jobs!!! Yes, thats prety much it, keep their jobs.

Whereas I would love to see such polarity that made sense locally and nationally I simply do not beleive the two are in any way connected and my sense of duty to vote nationally to remove the current encumbents will undoubtedly damage the standard of representation locally.

Xclusiv Barber

While no system is foolproof, (and admittedly ireland has its fair share of fools) PR is the lesser of two evils in a country the size of ours. First past post would result in some back channel agreement between FF and FGto support each other in minority govt and carve the whole pie up among themselves wit a smattering of labour SF and ind forever in opposition. Local councillors should have far more powers at local level and one way to achieve this would be to halve the number of TDs. Consider for a moment this... The UK has 15times our electorate. Do we hav one fifteenth of their total MPs? No we hav one quarter! Belgium and holland wit similar electorate numbers to ourselves hav approximately half the size or our parliament. In fact given our apocalyptic economic situation, wouldn't THAT be a fine place to start?

fatboypee

Xclusiv Barber wrote: »

While no system is foolproof, (and admittedly ireland has its fair share of fools) PR is the lesser of two evils in a country the size of ours. First past post would result in some back channel agreement between FF and FGto support each other in minority govt and carve the whole pie up among themselves wit a smattering of labour SF and ind forever in opposition. Local councillors should have far more powers at local level and one way to achieve this would be to halve the number of TDs. Consider for a moment this... The UK has 15times our electorate. Do we hav one fifteenth of their total MPs? No we hav one quarter! Belgium and holland wit similar electorate numbers to ourselves hav approximately half the size or our parliament. In fact given our apocalyptic economic situation, wouldn't THAT be a fine place to start?

I fully agree, but you also make the point about carving up the pie. Realistically, beginning a new era of politics (as I believe this to be) by making such a point simply re-emphasises the deep, cynically minded, self ingratiating politically culture thats prevalent here (in every party it seems) and really does not lend itself to such fat-cats ever making a decision to do what you suggest should happen and to cede power to a local base ?

All going to hell in a damn hand basket......:o

Xclusiv Barber

we're on the same side is most respects, i would love an idealistic utopian voting system for the electorate. I'm just not sure FPP represents that on an isle as small as ours. Also you could end up with some clueless paddy party suck up gob****e (aren't they already?) in your constituency if your voting with the national result as the only concern. In FPP is where i see the 'FF FG only' power scenario hypothetically playing out. Actually, never mind a utopian voting system. Round the b@stards up in a field and lets all run at them from all angles with electric poles, set to stun only mind, mallets perhaps. ye choose. (clean head shots only). Then, literally, the first 166 past the post.... Could work. Definitely. We'd have some fast fit fu(k!ng politicians. And if only 83 make it, much the better. Ah we can but dream.

Sad Professor

STV is the problem, not PR. Keep STV for the local elections, but a list system should be used for general elections (Malta is the only other country that uses STV). List systems aren't perfect but they would put a far greater focus on policies. It would attract far higher quality candidates as well.

Until this happens (never?), the best thing to do is always vote for the party and the polices they represent. Forget about the individual candidates and whether you think they are a sound chap or whatever. Local issues are for local government to deal with, not elected parliamentarians.

amen

slightly off topic but

Even if I exaggerate, one could imagine boundaries being re-drawn for the bigger interests to squeeze out all smaller opposition and maximise the return on whatever percentage they have, as they all seem to know where every vote lies

is exactly what FF tried to do in the late 60's. Went to a referendum and didn't pass.

jimmycrackcorm

There's nothing wrong with PR as each voter gets his/her preferences reflected. The problem instead is that even if you vote for the governing party, you don't get PR on the policies you want.

Fratton Fred

I think PR is fine, the problem with Ireland is the stupid number of TDs being elected in each ward. We end up with too many also rans getting into positions of power (yes, I'm looking at the green party here).

RubyRoss

Very interesting point fatboypee.

I think the problem – playing the local against the national – is a problem for democracy not just PR.

The interests of the nation are not necessarily reflected in the interests of the people – or at least, not easily understood in the short-term.
Party policies are supposed to be strategic plans for the nation and politicians are supposed to convince you that their policies are good/necessary BUT the only strategy politicians are concerned with is getting votes and policy is drawn up as what plays well in the media.

PR – our banjaxed practice of it aside – seems much closer to the democratic ideal of representing the people than the UK or US systems, which basically assess fiefdom loyalty across the red or blue land.
The UK press went loopy after the election because not having a government apparently made them ‘nationally weak’; the fact that the people of the nation had just indicated no great love for any party didn’t bother them at all.

So, it may not work right here but PR is a better indicator of the national character than the first-past the post system. Imagine in the UK if people could vote Labour but also register an interest in other candidates through 3rd and 4th preference? Wouldn’t that be a good indication of what people value in politics or want in a national party?

Most people do want diversity - they are traditional in the first-preference but will keep independents or socialists in the arena with lower preference votes. It's not fair or legitimate to blame the people for the electoral system or canidates. Many people who voted for Ahern also voted to keep Gregory in the Dail - it's not gombeen stupidity, as people love to say, it's registering your opinion and interests. Those who fault the system must address democracy not the gombeens.

p15574

Whatever about PR or not, I think the Dail should be exclusively for national affairs. No 'parish pump' politics. No lucrative projects going to ministers' constituencies. No 'strokes'. Councillors should take care of local issues.

This could be made easier by just having one constituency - the entire country - and deeming the, say, top 100 to be elected.

Alternatively, I've had it suggested to me in the past that there should be 'virtual' constituencies allocated at birth, so, say, "Constituency A" would be formed from a random electorate across the entire country.

In either case, in this day and age of the internet, tv, radio and press, a national reach is possible for any politician.

The bottom line is: our country is broken, it needs to be fixed. Politicians should concentrate on that, not on potholes in Cavan, nor flooding in Dublin, attending a funeral in Kerry etc.

kincsem

Can someone explain to me how PR vote transfers work? If the quota is 20,000 and a candidate gets 40,000 first preferences what happens? I know (?) his excess of 20,000 gets transferred to other candidates in proportion based on his second preferences.

2nd preferences
A Another 18000
B Bland 10000
C Confused 4000
D Dimwit 2000
Blank / no 2nd preference 6000
Total 2nd Preferences 40000

Does A Another get 18000 / (40000 - 6000) X 20000 = 10,588 ?

fatboypee

p15574 wrote: »

Whatever about PR or not, I think the Dail should be exclusively for national affairs. No 'parish pump' politics. No lucrative projects going to ministers' constituencies. No 'strokes'. Councillors should take care of local issues.

This could be made easier by just having one constituency - the entire country - and deeming the, say, top 100 to be elected.

Alternatively, I've had it suggested to me in the past that there should be 'virtual' constituencies allocated at birth, so, say, "Constituency A" would be formed from a random electorate across the entire country.

In either case, in this day and age of the internet, tv, radio and press, a national reach is possible for any politician.

The bottom line is: our country is broken, it needs to be fixed. Politicians should concentrate on that, not on potholes in Cavan, nor flooding in Dublin, attending a funeral in Kerry etc.

Pretty Bang on to be honest. Yet, it is HOW we can change the ethos of the 'head up the neighbours' ass (who can do me a favour in return)' that pervades this culture and we cannot do this if the only reason they are there is simply because they fixed the potholes outside my house.

It does not work, it cannot work, and has the effect of bringing everything down to locale. Indeed, for me you need only look to some of the extremely odd strategic / planning decisions over the past years that have incidentally favoured the constituencies of serving cabinet members to see local politics at a national level (that is my opinion anyway).

Sad Professor

I wouldn't be in favour of single national constituency. How would that even work? How would candidates campaign? How would we vote? The internet is hardly ready for either. People in geographical areas have their own national concerns which shouldn't be ignored. It's not all local issues.

Imo our parish-pump politics is mostly a result of the fact that STV deals only in candidates and not parties. We wouldn't have this problem in a PR-list system. Of course, in a list system the candidates would just focus on internal party politics at the expense of their constituents, so we'd probably need a mixed system to offset this.

Godge

kincsem wrote: »

Can someone explain to me how PR vote transfers work? If the quota is 20,000 and a candidate gets 40,000 first preferences what happens? I know (?) his excess of 20,000 gets transferred to other candidates in proportion based on his second preferences.

2nd preferences
A Another 18000 9,000
B Bland 10000 5,000
C Confused 4000 2,000
D Dimwit 2000 1,000
Blank / no 2nd preference 6000 3,000
Total 2nd Preferences 40000
Second preferences to be distributed add up to 20,000
Does A Another get 18000 / (40000 - 6000) X 20000 = 10,588 ?

No. I have written in the number of second preferences they would get.

Essentially A gets (18000/40000) X 20,000 = 9,000

The blank/no second preferences are lost. Which is why the advice is to vote down the list as far as you want.

gbee

fatboypee wrote: »

Or do you think I'm being naieve / thick ?

No but I'm not sure what you are trying to say. A point that seems to come trough is, say I vote for John John because he will abolish service charges.

He gets elected and immediately votes in favour of the service charges as his FIRST duty.

Scratch heads all round for those who voted him in, he dismissed us by saying he;d have brought down the council or government if he had not gone along with the opposite from which he was elected to do.

If so, then I wholeheartedly agree with you and any candidate who gets elected and changes to the party policies against the mandate given to him by his constituents, should be impeachable and sacked without pension.

We can't of course and we get dismissed again by comments of not voting him in the next time ~ but that's not the point we want him/her OUT [because they voted with something instead of doing our wishes].

But of course, this is where I love to say my own rant, two great myths in Ireland, a Low Tax Economy and A Democracy.

gbee

Godge wrote: »

The blank/no second preferences are lost. Which is why the advice is to vote down the list as far as you want.

OR only vote once to help prevent the above.

Respublica

Proportional Representation Wholly Flawed?

No it isn't. And as others have pointed out this thread is a bit misnamed. What the original poster is criticising is PR-STV, which is only one form of proportional representation, and very rare internationally.

we must, if we vote nationally, in some cases, vote out the very representatives that look after our interests locally?

This criticism could actually apply to any voting system based on carving the country up into arbitrary territorial divisions. Voters in the UK and U.S. also face this dilemma when they vote in their single seat constituencies.

The solution to this particular problem would be to abolish territorial constituencies. So we could have one single national constituency, like in the Netherlands and Israel, elected by list PR.

Alternatively we could keep PR-STV but have voters assigned to constituencies randomly. This has recently been proposed by Dermot Desmond in the Irish Times and I think it has much to recommend it.

But moving to a disproportional system with single seat constituencies would be a terrible idea. PR is the only democratic system because it's the only system in which the government has a mandate from a majority (50%+) of voters.

Respublica

p15574 wrote:

I think the Dail should be exclusively for national affairs ...This could be made easier by just having one constituency - the entire country - and deeming the, say, top 100 to be elected.

If I understand your proposal correctly this would be an extreme version of a system called the single non-transferable vote (or SNTV).

It's an interesting idea but the problem with SNTV is you need very strong vote management or the results aren't proportional. I think with a 100-seat constituency effective vote management would be all but impossible.

I think a better alternative to achieve the same objective would be an open-list system.

Max Powers

Can someone explain; 4 seat constituency, say i vote for
1. John
2. Peter,
3. Mary and
4. Paul

If Mary is eliminated, does that mean my vote for Paul is meaningless or wont be counted at all?

Amhran Nua

Sad Professor wrote: »

STV is the problem, not PR. Keep STV for the local elections, but a list system should be used for general elections (Malta is the only other country that uses STV). List systems aren't perfect but they would put a far greater focus on policies. It would attract far higher quality candidates as well.

Nail on the head. There are many flavours of PR, we have the one that other countries only use for their local elections, where the enlightened self interest of the STV system actually serves a useful purpose. If we switch to a party list system I can well see a lot of the parish pump shenanigans drying up.

dabh

Max Powers wrote: »

Can someone explain; 4 seat constituency, say i vote for
1. John
2. Peter,
3. Mary and
4. Paul

If Mary is eliminated, does that mean my vote for Paul is meaningless or wont be counted at all?

Why did you stop at selecting 4 candidates? Why not 5 or 6, or indeed 9 or 11?

Say John does not reach the quota on the first round but is elected on a subsequent round. Your vote will end up assigned to John, will help to elect him, and will not transfer to any other candidate.

Suppose John is elected on the first count with a surplus. They should examine the votes for John, and divide them into sub-piles based on the next available (i.e., non-elected and non-eliminated) candidate in your order of preference. In your case that voter would be Paul, assuming he wasn't elected on the first count. If he had been elected on that count, then your next available preference might be Mary. A number of John's votes equal to John's surplus are distributed. And the proportion of the next available preferences in the re-distributed surplus votes should match that in John's first preference votes.

A further case occurs when John is eliminated at some stage. Your vote should then be assigned to your next available preference. If Peter has been elected, and Mary has been eliminated, but Paul is still in the race, then your vote should go to Paul. Similarly if Peter had been eliminated and Mary elected at that stage. If Peter, Mary and Paul had all been either elected or eliminated by the count where John is eliminated, your vote becomes non-transferable, and could not be used to elect any other candidate. But had you listed a 5th, 6th, 7th preference, your vote might have gone to one of them. Indeed your vote would go to your highest preference at that stage who had not been either elected or eliminated.

And if your vote is one of the ones that brings John over the quota at the 2nd or subsequent stage of the count (not having been assigned to him in the previous count), then there is the possibility that it might be distributed as part of John's surplus when elected.

Max Powers

cheers dabh, but i was looking for an explanation or answer to my question, you seem well versed, yes i may vote for 5,6,7 people but i want to know what happens in my original question, ta

davmcguinness

I believe we have a seperate election for Taoiseach by national sometning like what happens in USA. The winner choseing their cabnit experts in their feild this cabnit being formally passed by the Dail . The dail debates and pass legislation then passing on to the cabnit to implement. Seperation of local and national issues is somtimes not possible. The removal of the direct influnce of TD's on national policy to the benifit of their area must be removed, resulting on a greater focus on the greater national benifit. Hope fully it would remove the whip system allowing for greater freedom of individual TDs to express opnion, and also grater cross party co-opreation as issues arise where they agree.

Just a few ideas to debate

dabh

Max Powers wrote: »

cheers dabh, but i was looking for an explanation or answer to my question, you seem well versed, yes i may vote for 5,6,7 people but i want to know what happens in my original question, ta

Well I believe the answer to your question is as follows: your vote for Paul is 'meaningless' UNLESS Mary is eliminated or elected with a surplus. Whilst she is still in contention for a seat your vote for Paul will have no effect whatsoever.