tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post2394199167734282026..comments2024-03-27T18:54:46.951+00:00Comments on Syniadau :: The Blog: STV for the Senedd ... Parliament for Wales' submissionSyniadauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13876017048168055247noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post-45819132178029933092010-01-20T14:32:52.871+00:002010-01-20T14:32:52.871+00:00Ref one of the comments by James D -
It is possib...Ref one of the comments by James D -<br /><br />It is possible to allow voters to give equal preference to groups of candidates in STV. The John Muir Trust have been using this variant of Meek's method (in many people's view the conceptually simplest and best version of STV, its only drawback being that it does need counting by computer) for 10 years for their trustee elections. It's maybe a step too far for immediate implementation in major political elections, but allowing equal preferences does provide a natural way for voters to put (e.g.) all candidates of one party equal. This is much better than allowing the party to choose an order for its candidates, as happens in Australia, but is quite contrary to the spirit of STV, namely that the voter is free to choose between individuals.Denis Mollisonhttp://ma.hw.ac.uk/~denis/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post-7618383037642837862009-11-11T21:58:25.162+00:002009-11-11T21:58:25.162+00:00James, I guess you are among those others. Thanks ...James, I guess you are among those others. Thanks for the comments.<br /><br />1. I'm not quite sure what you mean by a "full slate". The generally accepted wisdom is that each party puts up as many as it thinks it will be likely to win, plus one just in case their wildest dreams come true. So in a very Labour dominated area (with say six seats) where they might expect 60% of the vote, they would only put up four candidates. If you expected to get 20% of the vote you would tend to put up two candidates. Of course there are no rules to stop a party putting up more, but it tends to be counter productive to "flood" the ballot paper.<br /><br />2. I understand your point here. I think a lot of it might be solved by the way the ballot paper is designed. I think candidates from each party should be grouped together, and ordered in the preference determined by the party. Each voter then has a "default" but is free to over-ride it and put their 1,2 and 3 (or 11, 12 and 13) in the order they choose. The order of parties (or independents) on the paper would be determined by lot. <br /><br />I also think it would be good to publish a facsimile of the actual ballot paper at least a week in advance of the election, to minimize the chance of confusion on the day itself.<br /><br />3. That's why I think Penddu's split into local authority areas is so good. People identify with these far more than they would with a more mathematically precise electoral boundary. It's also why I think constituencies should vary in size rather than all being the same size (as in NI).<br /><br />-<br /><br />I'd agree that Schulze-Condorcet is better than FPTP, but having only one winner per seat does not do very much to ensure proportionality. The other end of the scale is a national list, which produces very good proportionality, but at the expense of a relationship between an AM and their local area. STV is a compromise between them. I'd say it combines the best features of both.<br /><br />-<br /><br />4. I think STV works fine for by-elections (it happens in Scottish Local Authorities, for example) and in fact returning one member by STV is quite similar to Schulze-Condorcet. Of course it would affect the overall proportionality compared to the original election, but it's only going to happen a few times in any term. <br /><br />I think it goes without saying that the above is better than "the next on the list" (which is what Wales has at present for the regional element). STV doesn't have party lists, which is a one of its huge advantages. It would also be very unfair for all AMs from a constituency to have to stand again in the event of one of them dying/resigning. I'm sure some AMs would be tempted to deliberately resign on some pretext in order to try and unsettle another AM in the constituency.MHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09329059309196746446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post-30164775218770635632009-11-11T21:34:27.751+00:002009-11-11T21:34:27.751+00:00Pen, we're anoraks together on this. What you...Pen, we're anoraks together on this. What you say about allowing smaller groups a voice is one of the advantages of STV, it should bring more people into the political process.<br /><br />Perhaps the main reason for any confusion was that I was trying to move the debate away from those of us who are already convinced about STV, to try and address the concerns of others.MHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09329059309196746446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post-37097555766370803882009-11-11T20:30:50.766+00:002009-11-11T20:30:50.766+00:00Forgot to include something:
4) There's no go...Forgot to include something:<br /><br />4) There's no good way of holding a by-election under STV. You either end up with gradually decaying proportionality (with non-replacement or single-seat by-elections), party appointees, or the need to have all the other AMs in the constituency seek re-election whenever one of their number dies.James Dowdenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11058389162481491681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post-18480110341079999012009-11-11T20:20:35.853+00:002009-11-11T20:20:35.853+00:00There are various quirks that make STV undesirable...There are various quirks that make STV undesirable in my opinion:<br /><br />1) STV has in practice resulted in parties not putting up a full slate of candidates for fear of knocking themselves out. This problem gets worse as you increase the number of members per district.<br /><br />2) STV forces people to make non-existent preference judgments. Say that you had enough political knowledge to rank four Plaid Cymru candidates in order, and wished to make your next four preferences the four Liberal Democrat candidates, but had no way of distinguishing between them. Ranking them all as "5" would spoil your ballot at that point and fail to prefer them to the Labour, Conservative, Green, UKIP, BNP, and Monster Raving Loony candidates. Properly numbering them 5-8 would conceal the opinions of those who actually had a genuine one.<br /><br />3) People really don't like massive arbitrary electoral districts (this is why STV got rejected in British Columbia). And one where one of the two largest population centres is Aberystwyth is almost inevitably going to create some sort of awkwardness.<br /><br />I should far rather see a variant on the current system, with the constituency vote switched from FPTP to the Schulze-Condorcet method, which is a fairer ranking method that allows tied preferences. It is possible to use that method on a multi-member basis, but I don't really think that's generally desirable in most of Wales (with the possible exceptions of Cardiff, Swansea, and Newport). I believe that this would be the surest way of eliminating the "can't win here" problem.<br /><br />Perhaps we should also move from regional lists to a national list (to make it easier to approximate proportionality with fewer AMs), and populate it with best constituency losers (per party) rather than dubiously-selected nominees, but those are possibilities that are independent of other changes.James Dowdenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11058389162481491681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post-4986514668687011292009-11-11T10:58:24.910+00:002009-11-11T10:58:24.910+00:00MH - My apologies if I misunderstood your point. I...MH - My apologies if I misunderstood your point. I agree that BNP are less likely than other parties to pick up second preference votes.<br /><br />Incidentally, with 4 member districts you would be guaranteed a seat with 20% of the vote, but would have a reasonable expectation of a seat with say 16% of the vote and a reliance on picking up second preference votes from smaller eliminated parties.<br /><br />In a 6 member seat you would need 14.3% of the vote but could get a seat on say 12%.<br /><br />I would forsee that in a STV system there would be a proliferation of smaller fringe parties spinning off from the main parties, who would vote for their first choice fring party but return their second preference vote to the 'parent' party. <br /><br />So we could see say a Cymuned party and a Welsh Republican party both standing against Plaid in the initial vote, but then giving the second prefernce votes back to Plaid.<br /><br />Fascinating for anoraks like myself!!!Pendduhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10244123496175993094noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post-84872189451178954212009-11-10T23:36:23.702+00:002009-11-10T23:36:23.702+00:00I must admit to being a bit surprised by both thes...I must admit to being a bit surprised by both these comments. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I was trying to say that the BNP <b>must</b> be treated in <b>exactly</b> the same way as other parties ... and that STV would do this.<br /><br />I was trying to counter an argument that I have heard from many who are against proportional representation; namely that large multi-member constituencies make it possible for small parties such as the BNP to be elected, and that they are therefore a bad thing. <br /><br />STV has the advantage over other proportional voting systems because it allows voter to set out an order of preference. The ability to express a ranked preference means that a party which polarizes opinion to the extent that a majority would say "over my dead body" will be less likely to be elected.MHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09329059309196746446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post-45750393958475931122009-11-10T22:58:09.611+00:002009-11-10T22:58:09.611+00:00While I do not condone the BNP or similar racist p...While I do not condone the BNP or similar racist parties, you have to accept that if they can get sufficient votes they deserve to win seats Rememeber it is not that long ago that Plaid was in this position with a national vote share in single figures.<br /><br />On the subject of constituency (district??) size, as well as considering limiting the size for distance considerations - there is also the question of homogenity - larger seats would mix up rural and urban communities with little in common, whereas smaller districts should be able to be more reflective of local needs.Pendduhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10244123496175993094noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-985080357558043054.post-37165357834859112812009-11-10T19:35:37.433+00:002009-11-10T19:35:37.433+00:00It's certainly true that an extremist party wo...It's certainly true that an extremist party would find it more difficult to get a candidate elected under STV than under the present system (unless you had a very large number of candidates in a single constituency). <br /><br />Although I like STV & would want to see it adopted in Wales, the idea of accepting or rejecting a system because it's likely to exclude certain parties (however unpleasant) is, in my view, problematic.Cai Larsenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15349645242691098245noreply@blogger.com