First past the post?

Black Menorca

Is there any justification for the argument that Ireland should change its electoral system, away from PRSTV and to a UK style FPTP method?

I for one love our system. The drama of count night, the relevance on one's vote and the fairness of the distribution of votes being recognised by results.

FPTP has little going for it in my view. But does anyone disagree?

Crooked Jack

I genuinely cant imagine that anyone would advocate the introduction of an FPTP system. Theyre really unrepresentative and the reason they havent been changed in England is because they suit the larger parties and when they did get a referendum they blitzed the media with this "the loser actually wins" nonsense.
I would be shocked if anyone is in favour of FPTP and would be genuinely interested to hear their reasons.

Agent Smith

Black Menorca wrote: »

FPTP has little going for it in my view. But does anyone disagree?

The easiest argument to make against First Past the post is that in the recent UK election, the SNP got 1,454,436 Votes, and 56 seats in parliment,

The Liberal Democrats got 2,415,862 votes and got 8.

Crooked Jack

Agent Smith wrote: »

The easiest argument to make against First Past the post is that in the recent UK election, the SNP got 1,454,436 Votes, and 56 seats in parliment,

The Liberal Democrats got 2,415,862 votes and got 8.

Bingo. And I was delighted to see the SNP do so well but it was a deeply unfair result.
Similarly while i was personally glad to see UKIP get the boot they did get some 4million votes.
In Ireland, not in the most recent westminster election but in the previous one (2010) Sinn Fein actually got more votes than the DUP but ended up with 5 seats to the DUP's 8.

No Voter And Proud

FPTP is an awful idea.
I hope we steer well clear

expectationlost

How would the Dail look if we had the UK's election system?
by Gavan Reilly http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FJO3RaBwFEwJ:www.todayfm.com/How-would-the-Dail-look-if-we-had-the-UKs-election-system+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie

eire4

No thanks. PR is not perfect but it is much more balanced then FPTP.

Sand

PR is the better system. But we need single seat constituencies. PR with multi-seat constituencies is a decent idea, horribly implemented.

The interesting thing is PR was (IIRC) introduced by the British to undermine SF's electoral results as it was designed to empower unionist minority voting in council elections.

Peregrinus

Sand wrote: »

PR is the better system. But we need single seat constituencies. PR with multi-seat constituencies is a decent idea, horribly implemented.

The interesting thing is PR was (IIRC) introduced by the British to undermine SF's electoral results as it was designed to empower unionist minority voting in council elections.

Pretty much by definition, you can't have PR with single-seat constituencies. In a single-seat constituency, 100% of the representation goes to one party, and 0% to every other party contesting the election. No proportionality there.

The system you are advocating is called the Alternative Vote system. We have it here in Australia and, to be honest, from what I can see it preserves many of the defects of the British system. There are still numerous "safe seats" where, in practice, the MP is chosen by a party committee who have little need to have regard to the candidate's acceptability to the voters; barring a disaster, any gobsh!te they nominate will be elected. The voters have no option to prefer another candidate from the same party.

Nor does the AV system yield fair results at the macro level. The shower now in government - a coalition - have 60% of the seats in Parliament, but secured just 45% of the vote at the last election; 55% of the voters would prefer someone else. (And that's not an unusual outcome in an Australian election.) The Australian Greens, with 8.6% of the national vote, secured just 1 seat in Parliament. The Liberal National Party, with 8.9%, got 22 seats. A proportional electoral system would have given them both 13 seats.

OBaoghil.7

The problem with our PRSTV is that we have 25% independents elected. That takes it to the extreme opposite of the FPTP system. Athough FPTP is not a fair system (in my view) we do need strong leadership as a nation. 25% of the vote to independents seems to be a very parochial attitude but its just a thought?

Peregrinus

OBaoghil.7 wrote: »

The problem with our PRSTV is that we have 25% independents elected. That takes it to the extreme opposite of the FPTP system. Athough FPTP is not a fair system (in my view) we do need strong leadership as a nation. 25% of the vote to independents seems to be a very parochial attitude but its just a thought?

According to Wikipedia, at the last election independent candidates secured 12.1% of the vote, and won 14 seats, which is 8.4% of the seats. That's high, historically, but it's well short of 25% of either votes or seats. Even if you treat the Socialist and People Before Profit TDs as independents, that still brings you only to 13 seats, which is still only 10.8% of the seats (for 14.3% of the vote).

And even the relatively high figures that did result in that election can't really be blamed on PRSTV, since we had PRSTV in all previous elections since 1922. The relatively high vote for independents (and therefore the high number of seats) was caused not by the electoral system but by the virtual collapse of the Fianna Fail vote, which fell from 41.7% to 17.5%. That left 24.2% of the vote looking for a new home, and 6.9% of it went to independent candidates. I don't think you can blame PR for this.

Roger_007

It is not the voting system that is the main problem with representative democracy. It is the degree to which the electorate appreciate the purpose of the different levels of democratic representation. When voting for legislators, (TDs), local issues should take a back seat. But that is not what happens. Many, if not most, voters seem to regard TDs as local councillors rather than legislators.
STV in multi-seat constituencies does result in a fair representation of voters preferences but no voting system will cure the fundamental political ignorance of how a parliamentary democracy is supposed to work.

OBaoghil.7

Peregrinus wrote: »

According to Wikipedia, at the last election independent candidates secured 12.1% of the vote, and won 14 seats, which is 8.4% of the seats. That's high, historically, but it's well short of 25% of either votes or seats. Even if you treat the Socialist and People Before Profit TDs as independents, that still brings you only to 13 seats, which is still only 10.8% of the seats (for 14.3% of the vote).

And even the relatively high figures that did result in that election can't really be blamed on PRSTV, since we had PRSTV in all previous elections since 1922. The relatively high vote for independents (and therefore the high number of seats) was caused not by the electoral system but by the virtual collapse of the Fianna Fail vote, which fell from 41.7% to 17.5%. That left 24.2% of the vote looking for a new home, and 6.9% of it went to independent candidates. I don't think you can blame PR for this.

OK, I didn't mean to specific but basically take away the main parties and its about that. The point is that any votes going to parochial or extreme issues does not help a Nation to progress.

OBaoghil.7

Roger_007 wrote: »

It is not the voting system that is the main problem with representative democracy. It is the degree to which the electorate appreciate the purpose of the different levels of democratic representation. When voting for legislators, (TDs), local issues should take a back seat. But that is not what happens. Many, if not most, voters seem to regard TDs as local councillors rather than legislators.
STV in multi-seat constituencies does result in a fair representation of voters preferences but no voting system will cure the fundamental political ignorance of how a parliamentary democracy is supposed to work.

My thoughts exactly!

Godge

Roger_007 wrote: »

It is not the voting system that is the main problem with representative democracy. It is the degree to which the electorate appreciate the purpose of the different levels of democratic representation. When voting for legislators, (TDs), local issues should take a back seat. But that is not what happens. Many, if not most, voters seem to regard TDs as local councillors rather than legislators.
STV in multi-seat constituencies does result in a fair representation of voters preferences but no voting system will cure the fundamental political ignorance of how a parliamentary democracy is supposed to work.

OBaoghil.7 wrote: »

OK, I didn't mean to specific but basically take away the main parties and its about that. The point is that any votes going to parochial or extreme issues does not help a Nation to progress.

The way to deal with this is to move to a combined PRSTV/List system with half the seats determined by a list system calculated on the basis of national votes for parties. Thus the Greens could get 5% of the national vote, have no TDs elected under PRSTV but at least would have 2.5% of the seats under the list system.

The advantage of this is that it would keep our PRSTV system that the people obviously are attached to but also ensure minority parties would get a share of the seats linked to their vote. One side-effect would be larger constituencies.

Peregrinus

OBaoghil.7 wrote: »

OK, I didn't mean to specific but basically take away the main parties and its about that. The point is that any votes going to parochial or extreme issues does not help a Nation to progress.

Except that one period's "extreme issue" is another period's mainstream. Reflect that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael both emerged out of extremist Sinn Fein, and the Labour Party was also considered extremist in it's day.

I'll grant you that voting in a national election on parochial issues is not a good thing, but I doubt that a move to FPTP will necessarily help there. We just have to look at the US for an example of a country that uses FPTP and yet has extremely parochial elections. It seems to me that the only effective way to combat parochialism is effective decentralisation/subsidiarity; citizens should find that the most effective way to get the roads fixed in (say) Roscommon is to deal with officials and authorities in Roscommon, which will only happen when decisions about the roads in Roscommon are made in Roscommon.

eire4

Peregrinus wrote: »

Except that one period's "extreme issue" is another period's mainstream. Reflect that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael both emerged out of extremist Sinn Fein, and the Labour Party was also considered extremist in it's day.

I'll grant you that voting in a national election on parochial issues is not a good thing, but I doubt that a move to FPTP will necessarily help there. We just have to look at the US for an example of a country that uses FPTP and yet has extremely parochial elections. It seems to me that the only effective way to combat parochialism is effective decentralisation/subsidiarity; citizens should find that the most effective way to get the roads fixed in (say) Roscommon is to deal with officials and authorities in Roscommon, which will only happen when decisions about the roads in Roscommon are made in Roscommon.

I very much agree with you about the need for decentralisation of power in Ireland. I think your spot on for the need in Ireland for real local government.

Capt'n Midnight

Agent Smith wrote: »

The easiest argument to make against First Past the post is that in the recent UK election, the SNP got 1,454,436 Votes, and 56 seats in parliment,

The Liberal Democrats got 2,415,862 votes and got 8.

It's much worse than that.
Greens got 1,157,613 votes and ONE seat


UKIP got ONE seat from 3,881,099 first preference votes.
Say anything you want about UKIP but that's a lot of disenfranchised voters.
12.6% represents 1 in 8.

In numbers it's almost TWICE the number of people who voted in our last referendum.
1,949,438