Should we drop Proportional Representation

is_that_so · 06-07-2020 3:03pm

maestroamado wrote: »

Since the two main parties are now one party should we drop the PR system.
The old style of politics is over so it may be a good time to reform the whole thing. The PR system is for parties where loyal party members kinda fallow party guidelines. Is it needed in modern politics where people are informed?

Constitution says no and FF twice tried to get us to change it, in 1959 and I believe a decade later.

sid waddell · 06-07-2020 3:05pm

Chips Lovell wrote: »

I couldn't really classify the current Tory government as "extreme right". Unless you're operating on entirely definition (in which case, what you call the BNP?) If anything, it's less right wing that Thatcher, gaining some working class seats with the promise of revitalising those areas (a promise they'll find hard to keep because of Brexit and the difficulty of reconciling this with the more liberal, small government wing of the party).

Again, I think you're operating on a different definition of "extreme right" than most people would use. The first four are more neo-liberal than anything else, while Trump is so ideologically incoherent that it's difficult to put him in any box. He's probably best judged on the scale of competence to incompetence than any kind of left-right spectrum.

Interestingly enough, the one thing Johnson and Trump do have in common is that their victories were as much to do with the weakness of their opponents as they were with anything they promised/said themselves. Neither Clinton nor Corbyn resonated with the middle ground of floating/undecided voters, Clinton marginally so, Corbyn spectacularly so. It's way easier to win if your opponent fields a weak team.

Just because you get in the region of 40-50% of the vote does not mean you are not extreme. It just means there are enough people who think you are not extreme. But that doesn't necessarily correspond with reality.

Both the Tories and the Republicans have been running fairly consistently for decades on a platform of low taxes for the rich and low public spending, the Republicans basically want to smash the state, and there's a considerable body of opinion in the Tory party that does so too, and this opinion has been the dominant one for most of the last 45 years. I would consider that extreme and in the cold light of day, divorced from the personalities involved, I expect most people in their gut know it's extreme too. But the business of winning elections is unfortunately is much more about personalities and media framing and much less about policies.

Both the US and the UK are currently in objective chaos politically. That is because the Republicans and the Tories are extreme. Both ruling parties have gone full cuckoo.

Snickers Man · 06-07-2020 3:16pm

is_that_so wrote: »

Constitution says no and FF twice tried to get us to change it, in 1959 and I believe a decade later.

Yup. And "we the people" told them to get lost. Twice.

Incidentally, one of the people most in favour of changing the UK system to some sort of PR is none other than Mr Brexit himself, Nigel Farage. Just goes to show that a stopped clock is always right at least twice a day.

And isn't it refreshing to see him being so unwilling to accept the result of a referendum that went against him?

What a true democrat he is!!!

sid waddell · 06-07-2020 3:20pm

Eric Cartman wrote: »

I agree with the misogyny against may and thatcher, and its from the people who usually love calling everything misogynistic. Thatcher should be a feminist icon for the position she got to but it maligned by the left because she didn't fit into their box of the type of 'woman leader' they wanted.

Clinton however was deeply flawed, Biden is a terrible candidate but doesn't have a walk in closet full of skeletons and shady corporate associations that rightly followed Clinton like a bad smell. Her ignorance of the mid west hurt her much more than the 'women bad' voices which are present in every country and political race but its such a quiet voice it doesn't make the odds anymore. If the Dems had prepped a cleaner, much more palatable female candidate I don't think for one second donny would have won. Being a woman helped Clinton get more votes, but the rest of her just undid all that effort.

So you agree there was misogyny against Thatcher and May, but disagree that Clinton was the victim of misogyny and ludicrously assert that she benefitted from being a woman - in the face of Trump, the most misogynistic candidate to lead a major country in my lifetime, a man with a history of sexual predation, who tried to physically intimidate her on stage, led a mob in chanting for her to be locked up, and whose supporters claimed she ran a paedophile ring out of a pizzeria.

Right. Sorry, but that's just not credible at all, you are desperately searching to make up a false narrative which suits your political views.

It's "them bad, us good". That's nonsense.

Interesting also that you say that the misogynism against Thatcher was because she "didn't fit into the left's box of the type of woman leader they wanted", yet then you make clear that Clinton wasn't the type of woman leader you wanted. ie. you do the exact thing you accuse "the left" of doing with Thatcher.

The main reason Thatcher wasn't wanted by the left in the first place was because she wanted to smash the state, smash workers and smash communities, and indeed went on to do so.

There was huge justified anger against her, but some of it spilled over into misogynism, such as some people hoping for her death and then celebrating it.

Macy0161 · 06-07-2020 3:27pm

sid waddell wrote: »

There was huge justified anger against her, but some of it spilled over into misogynism, such as some people hoping for her death and then celebrating it.

As someone who grew up in a north of England city, it was mainly to do with what she did to communities and therefore people, rather than anything to do with her being a woman.

pixelburp · 06-07-2020 3:37pm

I don't think there's a particularly left leaning bias of criticism towards Margaret Thatcher; she might have been a trailblazer for her gender, but her actions had huge ultimately negative ramifications for chunks of the UK. It's a fair point to say parts of England has never properly recovered.

sid waddell · 06-07-2020 3:37pm

Chips Lovell wrote: »

I think you're misunderstanding the dynamic. Success in media (or mass media at least) is more to do with chasing public opinion than forming it. Nobody watches Fox because there's no other alternative or because they want their opinions challenged. They do so because it tells them what they want to hear.

This is not so. James Buchanan and Charles Koch, who led the "libertarian", "smash government" cabal which took over the Republican party, knew and indeed openly admitted in discussions between themselves and their cabal that their ideas were hated by the public.

Their whole project of building think tanks and developing a cadre of talking heads and political allies who would fill the media to advance Koch/Buchanan talking points was to do with forming public opinion by manipulation and deception, using a form of language, framing and culture wars which hid their real aim - which was to destroy government oversight and run society for the benefit of the richest. The right-wing media bull**** machine in the US, which is utterly craven to corporate interests, was a natural by-product of the Koch/Buchanan project.

And the reality of their policies is hated. Trump could not have happened without widespread anger and hatred for the results of the Koch/Buchanan ideology. But Trump himself is a con artist who manipulated that anger away from where it should have been aimed, and onto ethnic and religious minorities, where blame very much did not lie. Trump is fully on board with that Koch/Buchanan ideology, he is their wet dream on steroids.

I'm reminded of the line by The Jam - "the public wants what the public gets".

sid waddell · 06-07-2020 3:42pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

As someone who grew up in a north of England city, it was mainly to do with what she did to communities and therefore people, rather than anything to do with her being a woman.

I agree with the bolded part, but the extreme nature of the vitriol against her was heightened because she was a woman, I believe.

Like, to me Boris Johnson is at least as much a wrecker as Thatcher is - and much more of a con artist - but doesn't suffer the same vitriol.

jacool · 06-07-2020 3:48pm

2019 election across the pond and above us.
Seats available 650
Lib Dem % of vote 11.5
Lib Dem no of seats 11

PR should stay

Eric Cartman · 06-07-2020 3:53pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

As someone who grew up in a north of England city, it was mainly to do with what she did to communities and therefore people, rather than anything to do with her being a woman.

I would agree, but that post above seems to fall into the bracket of "any attack on a woman = misogyny"

PommieBast · 06-07-2020 3:57pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

In 2019, the Tories got 43.6% of the vote. Trump only got 46% of the popular vote. It's more than 49.9% disenfranchised in those systems.

It gets worse. Blair got 34% in 2005, and in there have been three elections when the party with the most seats was not the party with the most votes.

I think a saner comparison would be STV and some form of list PR, perhaps using d'Hondt with a maximum constituency size of 8 TDs. At the moment the likes of AAA/PBP/SP/etc rely on the relative ease at which votes transfer between them, but with non-transferable votes they would as a group need to get their act together as an actual party in order to get any representation.

ancapailldorcha · 06-07-2020 4:04pm

Mod: Take the discussion of Thatcher to another thread please.

Chips Lovell · 06-07-2020 4:07pm

sid waddell wrote: »

Just because you get in the region of 40-50% of the vote does not mean you are not extreme.

I'd agree with that, but it doesn't make you extreme either. Extreme is BNP, AfD, Golden Dawn etc.

sid waddell wrote: »

Both the US and the UK are currently in objective chaos politically. That is because the Republicans and the Tories are extreme. Both ruling parties have gone full cuckoo.

Again, no disagreement there. But stupidity =/= extremism.

sid waddell wrote: »

Their whole project of building think tanks and developing a cadre of talking heads and political allies who would fill the media to advance Koch/Buchanan talking points was to do with forming public opinion by manipulation and deception, using a form of language, framing and culture wars which hid their real aim - which was to destroy government oversight and run society for the benefit of the richest. The right-wing media bull**** machine in the US, which is utterly craven to corporate interests, was a natural by-product of the Koch/Buchanan project.

This would only have some validity if these kinds of media outlets enjoyed a monopoly. But they don't. As I said, there are plenty of decent news outlets out there. You can't infantlise voters with the suggestion that they're being brainwashed or led around by the nose. They're adults and one of the consequences of being an adult is that if you make a stupid decision (such as voting for Brexit or Trump) then it's on you and you alone.

Deise Vu · 06-07-2020 4:09pm

Harry Palmr wrote: »

They are not the same party, if either has any chance to form a government without the other they will. This is just an arrangement for now. They probably should merge but that's another topic.

As for voting, what I'd like to see is the end of multi-seat constituencies. They are massive waste of political energy as a TD's greatest potential enemy is a fellow TD of the same party in the same constituency. To avoid conflict parties "manage" areas so A gets one end of a county/area and B gets the other this in turns creates local fiefdoms and resentments between different parts of a county.

I agree 100%. Also, four seat constituencies are effectively a draw when it comes to pro and anti-govt split. You need high 60% + of the vote to win 3 seats but high 30's will virtually guarantee your party 2 seats so the parties generally ignore 4 seat constituencies and concentrate on 3 and 5 seats where a small swing can gain a significant advantage.

PR is infinitely better than FPTP - just look at the mess the UK is in, but I don't see why we can't have single seat PR constituencies.

pixelburp · 06-07-2020 4:13pm

Deise Vu wrote: »

I agree 100%. Also, four seat constituencies are effectively a draw when it comes to pro and anti-govt split. You need high 60% + of the vote to win 3 seats but high 30's will virtually guarantee your party 2 seats so the parties generally ignore 4 seat constituencies and concentrate on 3 and 5 seats where a small swing can gain a significant advantage.

PR is infinitely better than FPTP - just look at the mess the UK is in, but I don't see why we can't have single seat PR constituencies.

Wouldn't single seat constituencies in a PR system simply fall foul of the same functional end-result of FPTP? Even with PR there are still "safe candidates" dotted about - your Healy-Raes and the like - that romp home with the first preferences; seems like if one removed the safety net of staggered representation past the clear favourite, you effectively create the safe-seat in a PR system.

JeffKenna · 06-07-2020 4:16pm

jacool wrote: »

2019 election across the pond and above us.
Seats available 650
Lib Dem % of vote 11.5
Lib Dem no of seats 11

PR should stay

2015 general election...
Ukip 12.6% of vote 1 seat

ArmaniJeanss · 06-07-2020 4:18pm

ELM327 wrote: »

I'd be in favor of FPTP and smaller constituencies. Like in the UK. Removes all the loony parties.

Smaller single seat constituencies has some merit, but not under FPTP.
FPTP has the situation where someone can win with a ridiculously small percentage of the vote - nine centre-leaning candidates get just under 10% of the vote each, whilst the tenth candidate (an extremist, left or right, doesn't really matter) gets just over 10% and wins. Clearly nearly 90% of the constituency want a centreist candidate, yet are landed with an extreme winner.
That's indefensible democratically.

Whereas under ARV or PR, a series of eliminations would eventually see one of the centre candidates over the line with 50% via transfers.

Quin_Dub · 06-07-2020 4:19pm

Deise Vu wrote: »

I agree 100%. Also, four seat constituencies are effectively a draw when it comes to pro and anti-govt split. You need high 60% + of the vote to win 3 seats but high 30's will virtually guarantee your party 2 seats so the parties generally ignore 4 seat constituencies and concentrate on 3 and 5 seats where a small swing can gain a significant advantage.

PR is infinitely better than FPTP - just look at the mess the UK is in, but I don't see why we can't have single seat PR constituencies.

What would single seat constituencies bring though?

Surely that would just mean that some constituencies would simply get abandoned by certain parties because of a particular local strength, effectively giving you the "safe seat" problem of FPTP?

Not necessarily against the concept , but I'm not getting what the benefits to the system are?

sid waddell · 06-07-2020 4:35pm

Chips Lovell wrote: »

I'd agree with that, but it doesn't make you extreme either. Extreme is BNP, AfD, Golden Dawn etc.

Again, no disagreement there. But stupidity =/= extremism.

This would only have some validity if these kinds of media outlets enjoyed a monopoly. But they don't. As I said, there are plenty of decent news outlets out there. You can't infantlise voters with the suggestion that they're being brainwashed or led around by the nose. They're adults and one of the consequences of being an adult is that if you make a stupid decision (such as voting for Brexit or Trump) then it's on you and you alone.

But this totally denies that the media has an effect. It has an enormous effect. We are in an age of slash and burn in the media. Corporate media ownership is a massive issue, corporate media has a big vested interest in pushing hard right-wing economic policies. I mean why would Rupert Murdoch want Trump and the Tories to win?

Is economic extremism extremism? I think it is. Thatcher may not have played to extremes as regards racism, nor did Reagan, but they were extremists in economic terms, which opened the way for the racist extremism of Trump and the dog whistle racism and hostile environment the Tories now actively engage in.

What we have currently in both the UK and US is both stupidity and extremism. You're entering a semantic debate about what extremism is. Perhaps extremism itself is a spectrum. Obviously the BNP and say, Richard Spencer are extremists, but because Donald Trump does not support another holocaust against the Jews and Richard Spencer probably does, does that mean Trump is not an extremist? Hardly. Was Ian Paisley an extremist? Of course he was, but there were people even more extreme than him, they killed Catholics for fun.

The politics of Trump and the Tories since 2015 has by any reasonable definition been extremist, certainly in comparison with what went before. It has been revolutionary, and not in any sort of good way. If in 2010 or 11 or 12 we had said that within a short time a US president would be behaving in the manner Trump is, and that the UK government would have held a referendum to leave the EU which passed, and would be actively pursuing a no deal, slash and burn Brexit, we would most definitely have called that extreme.

And it has been enabled by the voting systems. If the UK and US were not two party systems, the UK would never have left the EU, and Trump would likely have never happened.

Cameron played to the extremists in his party by offering the Brexit referendum to keep them onside in 2015. Then after Brexit won, the extremists gradually cannibalised the party and drove out the one nation, reasonably moderate Tories.

If the UK had our system, it's unlikely Steve Baker and Mark Francois would have ever been in the same party as Philip Hammond and David Gauke and Rory Stewart.

Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Blair would never have been in the same party.

The political landscape would have been much more similar to Ireland and other western European countries. The Tories would be a smaller party with 20-25% of the vote, and much more moderate, probably similar to Fine Gael. Labour would be around the same in terms of size. The Lib Dems would have a lot more MPs. The three parties might be neck and neck like we have now in Ireland. You'd likely have had people like Paddy Ashdown or Charles Kennedy being PM. The natural government would have probably been a Labour/Lib Dem, possibly Green coalition. Caroline Lucas would probably have been Minister for the Environment at some stage and the Greens would have at least 15-20 MPs, possibly much more.

The effect a voting system has on politics is enormous.

YellowBucket · 06-07-2020 4:37pm

What we should do is reform the Dail to make it a far more active and deliberative assembly. We have a very sophisticated PR voting system and it’s bolted to what is basically a relic of the Westminster model of parliament.

We’re heading into a future where our politics is going to be more complicated and nuanced but the parliamentary machinery isn’t really up to it.

We should be looking at expanding the roles of cross party committees, making debate on the floor more active and turning it into a real Oireachtas and not just being fixated on government vs opposition. The whole assembly should be involved in idea generation and the legislative process.

There isn’t likely to be a single or even two party majority in the foreseeable future and we need to adapt to that by accepting that grand coalitions and a more consensus building approach is going to be needed.

We have many elements of it already but we need to go a lot further and really forget the shouting at each other across the benches two party system roots of the Dail structures.

Perhaps if we are doing a rebuild of the chamber at some stage in the future, even the physical layout of it might move to a proper circle or hemicycle rather than the current layout too.

Our political system increasingly looks like our Northern European neighbours, who also have a tradition of PR and less and less like Westminster, Paris or Washington DC

Deise Vu · 06-07-2020 4:58pm

pixelburp wrote: »

Wouldn't single seat constituencies in a PR system simply fall foul of the same functional end-result of FPTP? Even with PR there are still "safe candidates" dotted about - your Healy-Raes and the like - that romp home with the first preferences; seems like if one removed the safety net of staggered representation past the clear favourite, you effectively create the safe-seat in a PR system.

Absolutely not. The problem with FPTP is you only get one preference. So you have to guess what the result will be, decide if your preferred candidate has a chance and, if not, who would be you second or third choice who might have a chance. There is no chance that someone who gets even 40% of the vote will get elected if they are not acceptable second choices for voters. You have to get 50% + after transfers.

Take NI as an example. The Unionists are disciplined about pacts so usually there will only be one candidate in the field. Up against them, splitting the vote will be SF, SDLP, Alliance and maybe a Green or an independant or two. With PR you can vote Green, then, for example SF or SDLP as your realistic candidate.

blackwhite · 06-07-2020 5:02pm

Harry Palmr wrote: »

They are not the same party, if either has any chance to form a government without the other they will. This is just an arrangement for now. They probably should merge but that's another topic.

As for voting, what I'd like to see is the end of multi-seat constituencies. They are massive waste of political energy as a TD's greatest potential enemy is a fellow TD of the same party in the same constituency. To avoid conflict parties "manage" areas so A gets one end of a county/area and B gets the other this in turns creates local fiefdoms and resentments between different parts of a county.

Single-seat constituencies - whether with FPTP or with instant-runoff voting (like we have for the presidential election) would result in a Dail where the % of seats wouldn't be near proportionate to the % of the vote.
Smaller parties would be wiped out, and would have little or no chance of growing to challenge the large parties.

YellowBucket · 06-07-2020 6:17pm

blackwhite wrote: »

Single-seat constituencies - whether with FPTP or with instant-runoff voting (like we have for the presidential election) would result in a Dail where the % of seats wouldn't be near proportionate to the % of the vote.
Smaller parties would be wiped out, and would have little or no chance of growing to challenge the large parties.

Also look at the stability that run-off elections give France!

The French system basically has a first round election and if nobody gets >50% of the vote, it goes to a run-off between the two highest polling candidates for the seat.

You've a huge array of political opinion in France with parties and candidates from across the spectrum. So, you've huge activity in the first round.

Then it's whittled down to two candidates who are in 1st and 2nd place, who'll make it to the second round and you end up with say a centre right candidate like Macron (or Chirac or Sarkozy) up against a far right populist like Le Pen. The majority of the population may have voted for a range of parties from left groups to greens to other centrists, but would be deeply opposed to a far right candidate.

So you end up with a runoff between a centre right vaguely tolerable character (Macron) on 23.75% and a far right candidate with nothing like a majority, (Le Pen) on 21.53%. They end up going head to head in a 2nd round.

So, people vote for Macron because they dislike Le Pen, not because they support Macron. They've effectively voted for their least-worst option.

It's not exclusive to centre right parties either, look what happened with François Hollande.

The result of that is you've a government driven by someone who in reality only ever had 23.75% of the vote. His approval has often hovered around that level and you've mass public anger because they don't feel that they're being represented.

The majority of the French public aren't Macron supporters, and the vast majority absolutely reject the politics of Le Pen, but that's the choice they were given and they voted for the least worst option, which is an unplatable outcome for most.

Back when Chriac won the election, a lot of socialists and left leaning voters literally put on rubber dishwashing gloves when voting to theatrically display their protest and that these were 'borrowed votes' and only cast to avoid Jean Marie Le Pen.

The media image of it is that there's some huge support for Le Pen because is in round two, but that in reality is a ridiculous representation of the French public's view of politics.

That's why France has street protests and continuous strife.

An instantaneous paper run off system here for the executive would result in a similar lack of representation. It's is not proportional representation. It's just modified first past the post.

Is that where we'd want to go with run-off voting systems?! It seems hugely inferior as a system to what we have in terms of the level of representation it gives and the nuances it can express.

A paper / instantaneous run off would come down to people voting say I donno Green on their 1st preference and FF on their second, and only the FF vote would in reality matter. It would reduce your higher preferences to potentially being nothing but a symbolic protest vote for a candidate who'd never have a hope in hell of being elected.

It's less of an issue with the Irish presidency because the position really holds no power. But if you were to move to that type of voting system for Dail seats, you'd effectively remove the nuances entirely and end up with a lot of problems, particularly as people started to feel they were not being represented.

I find some commentators in Ireland seem to think the fact that there's regular street protests in France is a good thing and fail to understand that the reason there's that kind of level of anger is because people feel their voices aren't heard and they then express them 'dans la rue'.

Or, do you seriously want a Tory vs Labour or Republicans Vs Democrats dichotomy here? Both of those countries are a mess!

Ireland has far less of that because you can get an expression of your political point of view heard and there is a much more consensus-building approach to politics.

View · 06-07-2020 9:10pm

You can’t have PR in single seat constituencies - since multi-seats constituencies is a fundamental part of the definition of PR.

The correct term for “PR in a single seat constituency” is AV, which is a Semi-Proportional Representative, not a PR, voting system. It is the system used in our Presidential elections.

Capt'n Midnight · 06-07-2020 10:08pm

ELM327 wrote: »

I'd be in favor of FPTP and smaller constituencies. Like in the UK. Removes all the loony parties.

Yes it removes the loony parties.

By creating a two-party system where adversity makes strange bedfellows. It also means that one way to power is to infiltrate and take over one of the parties.

Capt'n Midnight · 06-07-2020 10:28pm

pixelburp wrote: »

(Am open to correction here but my understanding of PR is that it generally means the % of votes for Party X reflects in the number of seats it gets in government)

That's also done by balancing the number of seats in a constituency.

The last seat in a five seater can won with less first preferences than one in a three seater. The trick is doing the opposite of Gerrymandering* so the areas are representative of the likely vote.

We're due to get a proper electoral commission, any day now, yes sir indeedeee
https://merrionstreet.ie/en/News-Room/Releases/Government_Approves_the_General_Scheme_of_Electoral_Commission_Bill_2019.html

Gerrymandering is why FTTP means you need independent commissions doing the mapping.

https://sluggerotoole.com/2018/09/11/boundary-commission-the-detailed-projections/#more-118105

So I project last year’s vote onto the new boundaries to give the DUP 28 seats out of 85 (no change), SF 26 (-1), the SDLP 10 (-2), the UUP 9 (-1), Alliance 7 (-1) and the Greens holding 2, with the TUV, People Before Profit and the independent MLA Claire Sugden holding their single seats.

Snickers Man · 07-07-2020 12:42am

View wrote: »

You can’t have PR in single seat constituencies - since multi-seats constituencies is a fundamental part of the definition of PR.

The correct term for “PR in a single seat constituency” is AV, which is a Semi-Proportional Representative, not a PR, voting system. It is the system used in our Presidential elections.

With respect, I think you're saying PR when you mean STV (Single Transferrable Vote) which is our variant of PR. The two terms are not synonymous.

There are many variants of PR. Some countries use a Party List system, ie you vote nationally for a party and they get the number of seats that correspond to the percentage of the vote they get. The seats are filled in the order their candidates are published, so the party leader should always get in,presuming they are number one on their party's list. That's Israel's method.

Some countries, Germany, combine this method with local constituencies. Half of the seats are filled from a party list but the other half are filled by votes from local constituencies. Or at least that's the way it used to be when I studied it about 30 years ago!

Our STV system has multi seat constituences and a quota has to be reached based on the formula 1 + (Total Valid Poll0/(No of seats in constituency +1)

So with a total valid poll of 60,000 in a four seat constituency, the quota would be 12,001.
The Alternative Vote system, as used in France, is effectively identical to the STV system except applied to a single seat constituency Quota =1+Total valid poll/2. Two being "seats to be filled +1"

View · 07-07-2020 1:11am

Snickers Man wrote: »

With respect, I think you're saying PR when you mean STV (Single Transferrable Vote) which is our variant of PR. The two terms are not synonymous.

There are many variants of PR. Some countries use a Party List system, ie you vote nationally for a party and they get the number of seats that correspond to the percentage of the vote they get. The seats are filled in the order their candidates are published, so the party leader should always get in,presuming they are number one on their party's list. That's Israel's method.

Some countries, Germany, combine this method with local constituencies. Half of the seats are filled from a party list but the other half are filled by votes from local constituencies. Or at least that's the way it used to be when I studied it about 30 years ago!

Our STV system has multi seat constituences and a quota has to be reached based on the formula 1 + (Total Valid Poll0/(No of seats in constituency +1)

So with a total valid poll of 60,000 in a four seat constituency, the quota would be 12,001.
The Alternative Vote system, as used in France, is effectively identical to the STV system except applied to a single seat constituency Quota =1+Total valid poll/2. Two being "seats to be filled +1"

No I mean PR. Multi-seat constituencies are a fundamental part of PR. Any supposed “PR” voting election which has just a single seat to be filled - eg our Presidential election - therefore is not a PR election, but as I said an AV one.

As for the systems you cite, the nationwide single constituency filled by a Party-list PR voting (eg Israel). That unquestionably is PR and in many ways a fairer version of PR that our multi-seat model, particularly in the case of 3 and 4 seater constituencies. (As an aside, the whole reason we don’t have 8 or 9 seater constituencies, as we did when it was first introduced, is that our two larger parties reduced the number of seats so they could squeeze out the smaller ones).

In the case of Germany’s system, it strictly isn’t a PR system but rather a mixed system combining FPTP and PR, together with a 5% vote threshold to enter the Bundestag. It does largely mimic a PR system and produces fairly fair results.

Lastly, AV is not a PR system and, while it is fairer than FPTP, it can squeeze out smaller parties and can concentrate seats disproportionately in the hands of “big two” parties if they exist, as it is very difficult for a non-“big two” party to win and the contest therefore effectively becomes a quasi-FPTP run-off between those two parties.

VinLieger · 07-07-2020 9:01am

ELM327 wrote: »

I'd be in favor of FPTP and smaller constituencies. Like in the UK. Removes all the loony parties.

Which has left the UK with only 1 government elected by a majority of voters since the 1930's and that was a coalition. Only 1 government has achieved a 50.1% majority vote for nearly 100 years.... how is that representative?

FPTP breeds the exact kind of chaos we have witnessed in the UK over the past 5-6 years, why would we inflict that on ourselves for an objectively far worse and less representative voting system?

L1011 · 07-07-2020 9:14am

JeffKenna wrote: »

2015 general election...
Ukip 12.6% of vote 1 seat

If they'd had PR, the Referendum Party would have got a few seats in 1992 and would have been laughed at as basically Mattie / H-R grade. And that'd be that. No UKIP, no Brexit, etc.

Should we drop Proportional Representation

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