Electoral systems discussion

I know that PR is a fun system for the anoraks - and gives an interesting outcome.

But jaysus this election a bit daft - too many candidates in each area - People getting in as a TD with as few as 6000 votes in heavily populated areas like Dublin central - 2 days into a count , not 1 person elected in all of Cavan Monaghan.

No wonder Hutch nearly got in - has to be a better way than PRSTV.

Also, what's the rush?

It's not a result of STV though. You'd win that constituency on the smallest FPTP vote too. All electoral systems make constituencies on population grounds, except for the US Senate basically. And Dublin Central will probably always have the highest non-eligible voter count.

It could be absolutely tiny as the constituency is so electorally split too.

The dail doesn't meet until 18th December. A few days to count votes and see democracy in action and have politics and policies being discussed is no bad thing.

Are people getting paid ?

Longer a count goes on - the more it costs.

It isn’t correct that all electoral systems make constituencies on population grounds.

In the recent European Parliament elections, almost no member states apart from Ireland used constituencies at all.

Most member states used a single nationwide constituency and voted using a PR party list system (either an open or closed one). Seats were allocated based on a quota system. For any residual quotas, instead of repeated rounds of counting like we have, a formula was used to assign remaining seats. The main formula used by member states was d’Hondt (which is also used in NI elections). That system favours larger parties but there are also others which are kinder to smaller parties.

Had Ireland used such a system (and classifying independents plus minor parties as an “Others” party for the sake of simplicity), our results would have been:

Using: d’Hondt Saint-Laguë Hare-LR

Others 6 5 5

FG 3 3 3

FF 3 3 3

SF 2 2 2

Greens 0 1 1

The difference between the last two systems is the Greens take the 9th seat in the former and the 13th seat in the latter.

Our actual result, due to the bias introduced by having our crazy sized constituencies, was:

FG 4

FF 4

Others 3

SF 2

Labour 1

As can be seen, our system underrepresented voters who voted for “Others” and the Greens and over represented voters who voted for FG, FF and Labour.

Any claims that “We have the fairest system ever” are therefore bogus.

The point was that not all electoral systems use constituencies, hence they are not mandatory. Also, many countries that do use them use large regional ones which would mean a constituency would have dozens of seats and that means their system discriminates less against smaller parties than our smaller sized constituency system does (also it should be pointed out when we first used STV we had many larger constituencies than today with one 9-seater (Galway), three 8-seaters and five 7-seaters).

Your comment about List systems being a disaster is untrue since they are by far the most popular PR systems in use - and absolutely are reckoned to be far more representative than FPTP.

Equally, the comment about them “allowing a party to elect the unelectable” is (partially) untrue since it depends whether the system in use is an open or closed one. The former allows voters to express a preference for which candidates they want (ie their “1, 2, 3”), the latter does not (ie the party decides).

Indeed it should be pointed out that in our system, the smaller parties invariably put up a single candidate so there is no practical difference between voting for Joe the X party candidate (under STV) and the X party whose candidate is Joe (under a closed List system). In neither system, is it possible to cast a vote for the X party but not for Joe (or to cast a vote for Joe but not for the X party), hence if you regard Joe as “unelectable”, the only option is not to vote for both Joe and also the X party. And that isn’t a minor point here because the larger parties and their candidates invariably form the minority on the ballot paper.

That is pretty much a form of AMS or MMS depending on whether allocation of list seats takes account of any constituency wins by the party. Aside from the UK's Jenkins Report not aware of anywhere that uses/proposed AV rather than FPTP for the constituencies.

The constituencies here are too small (3-5 TDs), which, even within the otherwise brilliant STV system, create significant barriers for smaller parties to get TDs elected, thereby reducing proportionality. The current design appears to favour parties with 20%+ support. As a result, Ireland ranks towards the higher end of disproportionality within the EU.

Where I come from, we have 14 constituencies (one for each region), electing 200 MPs. The electoral system uses a semi-open party list with up to three preferential votes. Constituency mandates are allocated as follows: 5, 8, 10, 10, 11, 11, 12, 12, 13, 13, 22, 23, 24, and 26 seats. Since 2021, the Imperiali quota has been applied in the first count, followed by the Hagenbach-Bischoff (Droop) quota for the second count. Previously, the D'Hondt method was used for the first count, which favoured larger parties and resulted in greater disproportionality—similar to the current system in Ireland. Despite this, smaller parties often found it easier to gain parliamentary representation, particularly if they had a strong regional presence.

That said, I am not a fan of closed party list systems. Even semi-open systems allow parties to push through poor candidates in large constituencies, which is a valid criticism. This is why I prefer the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system—it empowers voters to block unpopular party-nominated candidates.

For Ireland to achieve a truly proportional and democratic system, it would need to significantly increase the number of seats per constituency to at least 8 to 10 while retaining PR-STV. A reasonable starting point could be reducing the number of constituencies to 26, aligning them with county boundaries.

Yes, I hate 3-seaters.

We need more 5, 6, 7 seat constituencies.

Too much compared to what? What's your alternative?

And please explain how it's poorly organised? How long should it take?

There's questions to be asked about why Kildare North and Cavan-Monaghan are so slow compared to other areas.

It shows how inaccurate counting by hand is.

The electoral register is an national embarrassment. Let's hope we get on top of things for the next election. People who emigrated out of the country 20 years ago are still getting polling cards sent to their mother's houses. A bit of a farce.

So one error on one recount for one count for one candidate in one constituency which was picked up by participants shows that the whole thing is inaccurate?

You're right about the register, but that's little to do with time or accuracy of counts. What's your alternative?