it is not clear that those who know about Instant-Runoff Voting (RCV) also know about PR,
or that those who know about PR also know about RCV.
the causality is just assumed.
too bad that respondents were not asked about their view on multi-member districts, the necessary condition for PR and the only difference bewtween RCV and STV (PRCV).
if change to ranked voting is good as step toward PR, then a change to multi-member districts would also be as good a step, and necessary eventually.
with multi-member districts there is potential for mixed, balanced representation of the electorate.
with RVC (being single-winner) there is no potential of mixed representation of the electorate in the district.
if a voter has just one vote (same as now) but uses it in a multi-member district, then it produces mixed representation with the benefits that that gives. (look at Vanuatu elections).
end of one-party sweep of cities or states, so end of artificial regional pollarization.
large proportion of voters can look at the elected members and see someone they resemble.
voter still votes directly for a candidate and has wider offering of candidates even within each major party than uncer FPTP or RCV.
ranked voting is not as important a reform as the change to multi-member districts.
with multi-member districts, we do not need to worry so much about non-partisan redistricting because there are fewer districts slicing and dicing the electorate.
so hopefully those tht are worried about partisna districting also are aware of advantages of the benefits of multi-member districts.
yes some states have only one Representative, but most have more than one. And a large proportion of the Congressmen are elected in states with more than one seat.
every state has two Senators and they can be elected at same time - they aren't currently elected at same time but they can be.
A two-Senator state-wide contest is not deep proportionality but it is better than FPTP or RCV.
RCV is majoritarian so guarantees that half of voters are reflected by winner,
but PR - list PR or STV (PRCV) - sees 80 to 90 percent of voters reflected by winners.
Or you can just lock in to one variant. You might for example have mentioned New Zealand or Scotland which combine a single local representative with additional members selected to ensure PR for either country (NZ) or region (Scotland).
I also do not see how you achieve multi member districts without some form of preferential voting. In some older versions all winners came from the same set of views.
MMP works fine for those who like it but others see their vote not used to elect the local member (in many districts local member elected with minority of votes) same as usual FPTP) and see their party vote used to elect just someone from the party list who as an individual may not be choice of the voter either.
and some (about 5 percent) who see neither their district vote nor their party vote used to elect anyone.
you do not need ranked voting to have multi-member districts.
to produce mixed group of reps in a district, you need each voter to have one vote.
That is the basic structure of STV - single voting in multi-member district.
the transfers merely polish the fairness achieved already in the first round of counting and in some cases they change nothing -- the people who are in winning positions in the first count are elected in the end.
in the past, when one party took all winners that was due to use of Block voting, where each voter had as many votes as the number of seat to be filled.
Single voting is critical -- whether it is Single Non-Transferable voting or STV.
Either ensures that no one party can take all the seats in a district and therefore a city and a state or region. unless the number of seats in a district is extremely low like 2 or 3, or one party has like 80 percent of the votes, which is seldom the case.
for look at how SNTV works, just look at recent Vanuatu elections. Every district has mixed rep. most-popular candidates are elected. ranked voting and transfers would even out the party proportionality but result is mush more balanced and fair than FPTP or Block Voting.
We appear to be talking of the same thing. ‘Preferential voting’ is the long standing Australian term for voting 1,2,3..number of candidates. It is used for both single and multi member elections. Looking at the two parliaments where government is elected using multimember electorates - Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania - it certainly creates a more balanced house (in areas that could otherwise weight heavily to one party) but it is far from tight PR.
I can see the point that for MMP the party lists are out of the voter’s control but only some actually care about that. It certainly produces a finally tuned PR outcome. As with any system there are strengths and weaknesses - and many different views about criteria to assess.
We can both perhaps agree that the FPTP system in much of the US, UK and Canada is distinctly outdated.
someone wrote me that i made a mistake in my comment --
i wrote quickly and left out a nuance or two
- single winner Instant-Runoff Voting (RCV) does NOT ensure that a majority of voters in the district elect the winner.
single winner Instant-Runoff Voting (RCV) has the goal of electing someone with majority support of those who do vote.
where three or more are running for one position, this is a bit of a hard thing to do in many cases, where no one takes a majority in first count.
where no one takes a majority in first count, votes are transferred, and in the end someone is elected with a majority of (more than half of) the votes cast or at least more than half of the votes still in play, as other votes are sidetracked due being exhausted.
so that kind of majority is guaranteed under IRV/RCV
Insistence on "PR or nothing" was one of the factors the doomed Trudeau's fairly feeble attempts at reform in Canada. Now that it really counts, tactical voting for the Libs looks set to wipe out the NDP.
Australia has RCV in most lower house elections and PR in upper house. This gives everyone local representation, and has historically allowed for the formation of majority governments, though we are now seeing a gradual breakdown of two-party system
In Australia we have, in the main, instant run off for our lower house state and federal elections In our Upper Houses we have Proportional Voting. Our two two territories have multiple member electors using a modified proportional representation voting system. At the state level members of the upper House are elected from one pool in which the state is the electorate. At the Federal Level, 6 senators are elected from each state at each election. This means there are 1-3 senators chosen from the non-major parties. It means neither major party controls the Senate.
In the lower house there are an increasing number of minor party candidates and independents elected as about 30% of all votes no longer go to the major parties.
Using this dual system a group of voters in an electorate can point to a member of the lower house as their representative and can hold them personally responsible. By having proportional representation in the Upper House it can ensure their is a more evenly distribution of voters preferences.
it is not clear that those who know about Instant-Runoff Voting (RCV) also know about PR,
or that those who know about PR also know about RCV.
the causality is just assumed.
too bad that respondents were not asked about their view on multi-member districts, the necessary condition for PR and the only difference bewtween RCV and STV (PRCV).
if change to ranked voting is good as step toward PR, then a change to multi-member districts would also be as good a step, and necessary eventually.
with multi-member districts there is potential for mixed, balanced representation of the electorate.
with RVC (being single-winner) there is no potential of mixed representation of the electorate in the district.
if a voter has just one vote (same as now) but uses it in a multi-member district, then it produces mixed representation with the benefits that that gives. (look at Vanuatu elections).
end of one-party sweep of cities or states, so end of artificial regional pollarization.
large proportion of voters can look at the elected members and see someone they resemble.
voter still votes directly for a candidate and has wider offering of candidates even within each major party than uncer FPTP or RCV.
ranked voting is not as important a reform as the change to multi-member districts.
with multi-member districts, we do not need to worry so much about non-partisan redistricting because there are fewer districts slicing and dicing the electorate.
so hopefully those tht are worried about partisna districting also are aware of advantages of the benefits of multi-member districts.
yes some states have only one Representative, but most have more than one. And a large proportion of the Congressmen are elected in states with more than one seat.
every state has two Senators and they can be elected at same time - they aren't currently elected at same time but they can be.
A two-Senator state-wide contest is not deep proportionality but it is better than FPTP or RCV.
RCV is majoritarian so guarantees that half of voters are reflected by winner,
but PR - list PR or STV (PRCV) - sees 80 to 90 percent of voters reflected by winners.
Or you can just lock in to one variant. You might for example have mentioned New Zealand or Scotland which combine a single local representative with additional members selected to ensure PR for either country (NZ) or region (Scotland).
I also do not see how you achieve multi member districts without some form of preferential voting. In some older versions all winners came from the same set of views.
MMP works fine for those who like it but others see their vote not used to elect the local member (in many districts local member elected with minority of votes) same as usual FPTP) and see their party vote used to elect just someone from the party list who as an individual may not be choice of the voter either.
and some (about 5 percent) who see neither their district vote nor their party vote used to elect anyone.
you do not need ranked voting to have multi-member districts.
to produce mixed group of reps in a district, you need each voter to have one vote.
That is the basic structure of STV - single voting in multi-member district.
the transfers merely polish the fairness achieved already in the first round of counting and in some cases they change nothing -- the people who are in winning positions in the first count are elected in the end.
in the past, when one party took all winners that was due to use of Block voting, where each voter had as many votes as the number of seat to be filled.
Single voting is critical -- whether it is Single Non-Transferable voting or STV.
Either ensures that no one party can take all the seats in a district and therefore a city and a state or region. unless the number of seats in a district is extremely low like 2 or 3, or one party has like 80 percent of the votes, which is seldom the case.
for look at how SNTV works, just look at recent Vanuatu elections. Every district has mixed rep. most-popular candidates are elected. ranked voting and transfers would even out the party proportionality but result is mush more balanced and fair than FPTP or Block Voting.
We appear to be talking of the same thing. ‘Preferential voting’ is the long standing Australian term for voting 1,2,3..number of candidates. It is used for both single and multi member elections. Looking at the two parliaments where government is elected using multimember electorates - Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania - it certainly creates a more balanced house (in areas that could otherwise weight heavily to one party) but it is far from tight PR.
I can see the point that for MMP the party lists are out of the voter’s control but only some actually care about that. It certainly produces a finally tuned PR outcome. As with any system there are strengths and weaknesses - and many different views about criteria to assess.
We can both perhaps agree that the FPTP system in much of the US, UK and Canada is distinctly outdated.
Yes, we agree that FPTP needs to go.
I guess my point was that it is not ranked voting that would make difference in future PR system.
fair voting means both multi-member districts (or some pooling like the party vote aspect of NZ's MMP) and each voter having one vote.
even if that vote was not ranked and transferable, the improvement would be immense compared to FPTP.
each district would elect mixed group of reps.
Most voters would see someone elected with whom they shared sentiment.
ranked votes would be just icing on the cake (and would be useful, don't get me wrong)
a look at Vanuatu elections shows how SNTV can be quite good.
someone wrote me that i made a mistake in my comment --
i wrote quickly and left out a nuance or two
- single winner Instant-Runoff Voting (RCV) does NOT ensure that a majority of voters in the district elect the winner.
single winner Instant-Runoff Voting (RCV) has the goal of electing someone with majority support of those who do vote.
where three or more are running for one position, this is a bit of a hard thing to do in many cases, where no one takes a majority in first count.
where no one takes a majority in first count, votes are transferred, and in the end someone is elected with a majority of (more than half of) the votes cast or at least more than half of the votes still in play, as other votes are sidetracked due being exhausted.
so that kind of majority is guaranteed under IRV/RCV
A great article!
A couple of bits of international context
Insistence on "PR or nothing" was one of the factors the doomed Trudeau's fairly feeble attempts at reform in Canada. Now that it really counts, tactical voting for the Libs looks set to wipe out the NDP.
Australia has RCV in most lower house elections and PR in upper house. This gives everyone local representation, and has historically allowed for the formation of majority governments, though we are now seeing a gradual breakdown of two-party system
Thanks John, interesting observations. All the best
In Australia we have, in the main, instant run off for our lower house state and federal elections In our Upper Houses we have Proportional Voting. Our two two territories have multiple member electors using a modified proportional representation voting system. At the state level members of the upper House are elected from one pool in which the state is the electorate. At the Federal Level, 6 senators are elected from each state at each election. This means there are 1-3 senators chosen from the non-major parties. It means neither major party controls the Senate.
In the lower house there are an increasing number of minor party candidates and independents elected as about 30% of all votes no longer go to the major parties.
Using this dual system a group of voters in an electorate can point to a member of the lower house as their representative and can hold them personally responsible. By having proportional representation in the Upper House it can ensure their is a more evenly distribution of voters preferences.