New European Elections Constituencies

petronius

So the constituency commission is considering redrawing the European Elections Constituencies to take into account the loss of a seat

Fine Gaels Thoughts
http://www.thejournal.ie/fine-gael-european-parliament-constituencies-1054521-Aug2013/

http://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-european-constituency-elections-2014-802269-Feb2013/

I think such large constituencies result in a disconnect between the MEP and the citizen - even now west clare and monaghan are in the same constituency .

Some options which are possible
Have an Ireland West 4 seats and ireland east(with dublin) 5 seats
A single constituency for the 26 counties - electing 11 MEP's - may result in a massive ballot paper.
You could have 11 single seat constituencies the Alternative Vote(AV) System (The same way we elect a president) - I actually like this idea since it may throw up some interesting cross county
Possible Single Seat Irish Constituencies
Dublin City
Dublin County
East (commuter belt dublin - Kildare, Meath, Louth)
SouthEast (Wexford-Wicklow)
SouthWest (Kerry Limerick)
MidWest (Tipperary-Clare)
Midlands South (Kilkenny,Carlow,Laois,Offaly)
Midlands North(Roscommon, Longford, Westmeath
North (Donegal Sligo Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan)
West (Galway Mayo)
South (Cork Waterford)

Victor

Submissions are due by this Friday.

http://www.constituency-commission.ie/ep/docs/press-notice-inviting-submissions-english.pdf

REVIEW OF EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT CONSTITUENCIES

A statutory committee was established on 25th July 2013 under section 5(1A) of the Electoral Act 1997 (inserted by the Electoral, Local Government and Planning and Development Act 2013) to make a report to the Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil in relation to the constituencies for the election of members of the European Parliament.

The committee is required to have regard to the following in making its report:
• The number of members of the European Parliament to be elected in the State as may be specified for the time being pursuant to the Treaties governing the European Communities – that number is now 11 following the decision of the European Council on 28 June 2013;
• there shall be reasonable equality of representation as between constituencies;
• each constituency shall return 3, 4 or 5 members;
• the breaching of county boundaries shall be avoided as far as practicable – this is deemed not to include a reference to the boundary of a city or any boundary between any two of the counties of Dún-Laoghaire Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin;
• each constituency shall be composed of contiguous areas;
• there shall be regard to geographic considerations including significant
physical features and the extent of and the density of population in each constituency; and
• subject to the above provisions the committee shall endeavour to maintain continuity in relation to the arrangement of constituencies.
The committee will also have regard in making its report to the results of the 2011 population Census.

The committee invites written submissions in relation to matters which should be considered in reporting on European Parliament constituencies. Submissions should be addressed to The Secretary, European Parliament constituencies committee, Room 1.65, Custom House, Dublin 1, or by email to europarlconstituencies@environ.ie.

The period for submissions closes at 5:00pm on Friday 30th August 2013. Submissions received by the committee will be published on www.constituency-commission.ie, and may be inspected by prior arrangement with the committee in the Custom House, Dublin 1 (telephone 01-8882339) during the hours of 10.00am to 4.30pm (Monday to Friday), until the conclusion of the work of the committee. The committee is required to present a report to the Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil within two months of its establishment.

Constituencies for the European Parliament are specified in the Third Schedule to the European Parliament Elections Act 1997 which can be viewed on the Irish Statute Book website. The most recent review of European Parliament constituencies was reported in the Constituency Commission Report 2012 which can be viewed at www.constituency-commission.ie.

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petronius wrote: »

Have an Ireland West 4 seats and ireland east(with dublin) 5 seats

What would you do for the other two seats?

Having the west as a 4 seat constituency means it will be geographically very large.

A single constituency for the 26 counties - electing 11 MEP's - may result in a massive ballot paper.
You could have 11 single seat constituencies the Alternative Vote(AV) System (The same way we elect a president) - I actually like this idea since it may throw up some interesting cross county

This isn't within the terms of reference. The only options are 3, 3, 5 or 3, 4, 4.

Realistically, the North & West should be a 3-seater to restrict it's area and South should be a 3 or 4 seater to restrict its area.

petronius wrote: »

Possible Single Seat Irish Constituencies
Dublin City
Dublin County
East (commuter belt dublin - Kildare, Meath, Louth)
SouthEast (Wexford-Wicklow)
SouthWest (Kerry Limerick)
MidWest (Tipperary-Clare)
Midlands South (Kilkenny,Carlow,Laois,Offaly)
Midlands North(Roscommon, Longford, Westmeath
North (Donegal Sligo Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan)
West (Galway Mayo)
South (Cork Waterford)

You do realise that the populations of those groups vary from 189,229 for "Midlands North(Roscommon, Longford, Westmeath" to 745,457 for Dublin County (ex-city).

petronius

I was just mooting the idea of having single seat PR constituencies for Ireland in the Euroelections the 11 i outlined wud keep county boundaries - but to get a median of population to seats maybe equating 15 dail seats to one euro seat
in that case dublin would have 3
Dublin South
Dublin City
Dublin North
East (counties round dublin)
Midlands
Galway Mayo
North
South West (kerry Limerick maybe including a bit of cork)
MidWest
South East (Wexford wicklow Waterford)
Cork


From my earlier suggestion Roscommon Longford Westmeath would be divided up to top up other constituencies and waterford moved to south east

I just think the idea of the connection with a politician that first past the post has and that the preferential system (AV) used in Australia results in maybe an interesting enhancement to the political process of the EU

I think people feel a disconnect from their MEPs due to co-options replacing those who aspired to be tds kelly, higgins.

AV though defeated in the UK referendum recently maybe worth a look.

View

petronius wrote: »

I just think the idea of the connection with a politician that first past the post has and that the preferential system (AV) used in Australia results in maybe an interesting enhancement to the political process of the EU

The electoral system used in European elections must under EU law be a PR system (of which there are several forms).

AV is a semi-PR system, not a PR system, so we can't use it.

petronius wrote: »

I think people feel a disconnect from their MEPs due to co-options replacing those who aspired to be tds kelly, higgins.

The electorate give their mandate to the replacements for a candidate when casting a ballot in the European elections. It shouldn't be a surprise to them if one of the replacement candidates they voted for, gets to step in for the main candidate. It doesn't particularly matter in EP terms since both candidate and replacement candidate will almost certainly vote the same way in the EP as votes are largely on an ideological/party political basis.

petronius

It depends on your opinion if AV is proportional or not.

The German speaking area of Belgium is a single MEP constituency and is elected on the AV system as a result.

The north of ireland constituency had STV-PR for its votes, and co-options when a MEP quits etc. however it also can have by-election as a single constituency which is AV.
Malta also uses STV-PR but can have by-elections on AV
In the Republic of Irlenad if there was a by-election (and some party hack didnt want some MEP gravy train dosh) there would be a single seat election using AV

View

Just to clarify, my previous post was slightly in error. The actual requirement is stated as:

Article 1
1. In each Member State, members of the European Parliament shall be elected on the basis of proportional representation, using the list system or the single transferable vote.

Hence our choice is between a list system or STV.

The question of filling vacant seats is left to each member state.

In our case the Oireactas had made a decision to use multiple constituencies, STV and the current system of filling vacant seats (a horrible hybrid which is neither pure list or pure STV).

Is that right? Depends on your view. In an EP context, it is unlikely to be critical as votes are rarely that tight and, domestically, usually the two larger parties are almost certain to win with Labour having a small chance and everyone else an "Also Ran".

petronius

AV does use a Single Transferable Vote - but have a single seat constituency so it complies with EU Law.
I think the party list system is highly undemocratic - and allows for party genericisation and bullying of non mainstream members of a party - I think the co-options are also a major negative in association with the electorate - like Prendergast, or Costello

Maybe to preserve proportionality Ireland Should be one single constituency as the way the 6 counties in the North are.

In that way we probably would have
3 FG (could well get a 4th with transfers)
2 FF (again candidate selection is crucial)
1 LAB
2 SF (With 2 strong candidates)
1 Soc/PBP/SWP/Ind Soc (there must be a quota for the hard left, and with disillusioned Labour and with transfers from SF and Lab)
1 Ind (surely there is either a rural independent, farmers candidate who would be transfer attractive)

With one seat up for grabs ( i would see Declan Ganley getting elected in a one ireland constituency if he would run)

EU elections always throw up a funny result - Joe Higgins, Dana, TJ Maher, Pat Cox, Blaney, Sinnott, Harkin - you even recall at one point we had 2 green MEP's and only one Labour

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petronius wrote: »

AV does use a Single Transferable Vote - but have a single seat constituency so it complies with EU Law.

It clearly doesn't and no amount of pretending it does will alter that. As it is, the Oireachtas has no intention of adopting it.

petronius wrote: »

I think the party list system is highly undemocratic

That's a truly bizarre claim given that most democracies use party list systems (in so far as I know probably a majority).

petronius wrote: »

- and allows for party genericisation and bullying of non mainstream members of a party -

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. In both the STV and the party list systems (be they open or closed), party members decide who gets to represent their party on the ballot paper, so there is no difference there.

In fact where our parties put up single candidates - as for instance all parties bar one did in the Dublin constituency in the last EP election - we actually have less choice than voters in party list elections. We can elect a maximum of one pre-specified individual, they can elect as many as the party puts up for election. In that scenario, STV has been reduced to a de facto closed list system as there is no difference in voting for Pat, the sole candidate for X party and X party, whose sole candidate is Pat.

petronius wrote: »

Maybe to preserve proportionality Ireland Should be one single constituency as the way the 6 counties in the North are.

NI is a UK constituency. You are not saying we should be one also, I hope?

petronius wrote: »

In that way we probably would have
3 FG (could well get a 4th with transfers)
2 FF (again candidate selection is crucial)
1 LAB
2 SF (With 2 strong candidates)
1 Soc/PBP/SWP/Ind Soc (there must be a quota for the hard left, and with disillusioned Labour and with transfers from SF and Lab)
1 Ind (surely there is either a rural independent, farmers candidate who would be transfer attractive)

With one seat up for grabs ( i would see Declan Ganley getting elected in a one ireland constituency if he would run)

A potential result like that would probably be a convincing argument to most members of the Oireachtas to keep our current multi-seat system.

It is also makes a convincing argument for our use of a party list system which highlights the EP parties since voters are effectively being misled if they can't see which EP parties the candidates would vote with once elected and, hence, can't make a decision to favour one EP party and its policies over another.

And, yes, that is important since - just as in the Oireachtas - the EP parties vote on party lines (albeit less rigidly than parties in the Oireachtas do) and it is that which decides what the EP approves or rejects.

petronius

The problem with the Party List system in my view is that - you are voting for an entity which itself decides the precedence of names on a list - and not the individual, it removes power from the voter, and into the hands of the party machinery.

Party members can be punished by the leadership by removing them from the list or lowering their ranking on it. It causes internal party problems in many cases where the national party imposes its favoured candidates on say regional lists and the local candidates in constituencies e.g. scotish assembly elections Labour Party.

A single seat STV-PR constituency (with a quota of 50%+1 vote) is AV.