Your argument excluding list or MMP systems for the US House of Representatives makes sense since many states are too small to allow for more than a handful of seats. But I am unpersuaded by your more general misgivings about list or MMP systems. My arguments would apply to the MMP systems in Germany or New Zealand, but here I limit myself to the list system as used in Sweden.
In Riksdag elections, 310 of the members are elected using party-list PR in each of Sweden's 29 electoral constituencies, each with 11 or more seats (except for Island of Gotland with 2). The remaining 39 seats in the Riksdag are distributed amongst the parties in order to constituencies where they were underrepresented in the overall outcome of the 310 in numbers to bring the party distribution in the Riksdag as close as possible to the distribution of the votes nationally.
To win seats in the Riksdag, a party must win at least four percent of the vote nationally, or twelve percent of the vote in one electoral constituency. You argue that this is unfair to those supporting parties unable to meet the requirements, unlike systems that allow the voters second choices to count. This argument really does not apply to Sweden since the polls are very accurate, so the voter knows when his or her part has fallen below 4%, and can choose accordingly.
There is also the matter of voting for the individual as opposed to the party. My sense is that Sweden has found the right balance. Voters can cast personal votes for individual candidates on the party lists. Any candidates who receive a number of personal votes equal to five percent or greater of the party's total number of votes in the constituency will automatically be bumped to the top of the list, regardless of their ranking on the party’s list. But most voters do not do this, which to me means that party supporters tend to have confidence in their party’s leaders, not a bad thing overall these days.
You mentioned that a 4-seat district has a 20% threshold, leading to wasted votes in a party list system. But in a party list system with no legal threshold, parties below this number can still be elected if voters are fragmented. For example, if six parties are all at around 16%, then the three parties with the most votes earn one seat each despite none of them hitting the threshold. Furthermore, STV allows up to 20% of the votes to be wasted, since this many votes can be cast for a loser that makes it to the final round, so the votes never transfer to a winner. Being above 20% guarantees a win in both systems, but being below is not necessarily a loss in either system.
National party list systems being used often waste more votes than necessary by choice, since they enforce a high legal threshold (such as a 5% threshold in Germany, where reaching 5% is good enough for about 40 seats but 4.9% gets you nothing) to prevent too many political parties and fractionalization. I would not enforce a threshold in the US, since small magnitude districts will have the same effect at reducing party count, and if anything we need more party fractionalization instead of less. No legal threshold means fewer wasted votes (though it certainly doesn't bring them to 0).
All this to say, votes will still be wasted under party lists, and probably more than STV, but I think the issue was slightly overstated.
Wasted votes in list systems arise from the use of fixed thresholds or the existing of implied thresholds. The Spare vote (second choice of party vote ott.nz, 'dual voting' dualvoting.com) allows every voter to vote for any party, and if that party does not pass threshold, vote for a party much more likely to qualify.
If you talk of 'proportional representation' you need to know what is proportional to what. List systems including MMP seats are proportional to votes for qualifying parties, and with the spare vote all votes can qualify.
If the PR objective is seats in proprtion to votes, you need a clear expression of party preference in every . RCV does not provide that unless you go by first preferences, in which case why bother with the others. You may like ranked ballots but they do not help a system be more party proportional.
Both USA and Canada suffer from a huge range of state/prov sizes, varying from <1% of the population to more than 10% of the population. If each state/prov must have separate representation, those smaller ones have only one seat from one party. There is no obvious solution to this problem.
List members are much less isolated from local areas than you might think. In NZ list members must be geographically distributed (for party credibility) and most list members involve themselves in local and national issues.
Hi Edward, thanks for your thoughts. The 'dual vote' as you call it sounds like a great idea for any kind of list system (BTW, the website dualvoting.com did not work for me). Any thoughts about why nations that use a list system don't incorporate what would seem like a very reasonable and common sense idea?
Thank you for your kind words. dualvoting.com was a German site. My ott.nz seems OK. I hope you read my latest post at ott.nz/posts (positive words from an official NZ report). I have been advancing this idea since 2012 when I submitted it to a NZ electoral review. The idea has been around much longer in Germany. It is only in the last few years that I heard about the idea in Germany. But getting any traction has been very difficult. I find that many associate it with preferential voting, an idea which seems very divisive, mathematically faulty, and hugely complex. Spare vote/second choice is powerful because it is simple and intuitive.
In life second choices are often used when we want everyone to get something acceptable. More preferences than that are very rarely used.
Any ideas how I might advance the idea would be appreciated.
Edward, ways to advance the idea: 1) write opeds and letters to the editor of your favorite media, 2) try to find a legislator who agrees and is willing to intro legislation, 3) try to find an org who will advocate for it -- the Green Party? My good friend Rod Donald, Green MP, would have been interested, but alas he died way too early. Is there another Green MP who you could approach? Those are a few ideas to consider.
And then I did not answer your question!! Why is it not already used? Possible reasons: 1. It makes it possible to express support for a tiny party while still having a say between the bigger ones. Makes voting for small parties much more attractive. Big powerful parties do not want that. 2. Surface similarity to the oft disliked preferential voting? 3. I think maybe it is too simple (Sometimes complex ideas get support because of surface appeal to people for whom complexity suggests sophistication and nuance).
Interesting, thanks for sharing this info. The German court ruled "Constitutional law does not require that the electoral system allow for a supplementary contingent vote (Eventualstimme) in case the primary vote was cast for a political party that failed to receive the minimum share of votes necessary to pass the five-percent election threshold." So that would seem to suggest that the Bundestag, if it chooses, could add a second "contingent" vote if it chooses, but the plaintiff's apparent claim that a voter is entitled to have this a right is unfounded, absent a legislative grant of this right. So that sends us back to my original question: why doesn't the Bundestag grant voters this ability? I think it was in the German election of 2013, the lack of a second vote for voters allowed enough small parties who did not meet the 5% threshold to "spoil" the election for the SPD, allowing Angela Merkel and the CDU to continue in power. These dynamics DO make a difference sometimes in German elections. But as you wrote above, people prefer the familiar. The US could easily allow voters a second "contingent" vote, it would seem to make sense for virtually every election level, local, state and federal. Yet we don't do it either. Thanks Edward, all very interesting.
you stated the goals of electoral reform, and then addressed each of the three main alternatives to FPTP with those in mind.
I don't see MMP as being possible without considerable un-necessary work. You have to get approval for votes to drift outside a district when used to allocate regional top-up seats, the regions used for top-up cannot be larger than a state, without constitutional change or considerable stretching of rules.
so if anything, you are likely talking about regionalized MMP like Scotland's not NZ's. with regions within each state. and region would have to have about ten or more to have any significant PR value for small parties, with five districts (twice the size presently) and five top-up. the effect of MMP in ten-seat regions may be just as limited as you say PR is. Most of the five top-up seats may be needed to be used only to set the two main parties in the right relationship in seat counts to each other due to the unbalanced proportionality district seat counts won under FPTP, and not be available to help the little parties.
(perhaps you analyzed the idea of regionalized MMP. if so, sorry, I must have missed it.)
while a DM-10 district and list PR or STV promises more effective proportionality,more Rep. for small parties, than that. IMO
you are correct in saying that Denmark is smaller country but that doesn't mean that its electoral districts use the small DM that you describe (7-11).
its elections use only twelve districts and it has 179 members (one member for each 20,000 votes)
(by the way, U.S. would have about 7500 Representatives at that ratio of votes per member)
so DM in each or most Danish districts is respectable despite small country.
there are only 5 districts that use DM-2. none use 1.
the rest range from 10 to 20.
In North Jutland (FM-15), a typical multi-member districts (MMD), in 2022 parties won a seat for each 10,000 to 20,000 votes it received. (about .56 percent of overall votes cast)
Denmark uses list PR but it uses a form of MMP, with multi-member districts where list PR is used. This allows the number of top-up seats to be low compared to NZ.
I am a fan of STV. I like its basic structure - that each voter casts just one vote in MMD. I think its flexible vote count/vote transfer system allows voters to vote for whom they truly want knowing there is back-up in the system (redundancy if you will).
list PR does as good a job of making high portion of effective votes and giving small parties represention as STV does at each DM level.
Denmark uses list PR in its few DM-2 districts and in 2022 each district elected members from two different parties. that is in Denmark's 3+-party system.
U.S. needs STV or list PR but doesn't need large DM -- even DM of 5 would allow small third parties to start to elect and have reconginiazable presence. if in any DM-5 district a small party has 16 percent of the votes (or even fewer under certain circumstances) the party will elect a REp. That is huge.
In your article, you actually downplay the suppression of wasted votes under the present U.S. system.
you say a party with 60 percent will win all the seats. thus leaving 40 percent wasted
but actually in some districts as much as 50 percent is wasted, or even most of the votes will elect no one.
Ohio 9th, 2024: 48 percent of voters elected the winner, 52 percent of votes elected no one.
you stated the goals of electoral reform, and then addressed each of the three main alternatives to FPTP with those in mind.
I don't see MMP as being possible without considerable un-necessary work. You have to get approval for votes to drift outside a district when used to allocate regional top-up seats, the regions used for top-up cannot be larger than a state, without constitutional change or considerable stretching of rules.
so if anything, you are likely talking about regionalized MMP like Scotland's not NZ's. with regions within each state. and region would have to have about ten or more to have any significant PR value for small parties, with five districts (twice the size presently) and five top-up. the effect of MMP in ten-seat regions may be just as limited as you say PR is. Most of the five top-up seats may be needed to be used only to set the two main parties in the right relationship in seat counts to each other due to the unbalanced proportionality district seat counts won under FPTP, and not be available to help the little parties.
(perhaps you analyzed the idea of regionalized MMP. if so, sorry, I must have missed it.)
while a DM-10 district and list PR or STV promises more effective proportionality,more Rep. for small parties, than that. IMO
you are correct in saying that Denmark is smaller country but that doesn't mean that its electoral districts use the small DM that you describe (7-11).
its elections use only twelve districts and it has 179 members (one member for each 20,000 votes)
(by the way, U.S. would have about 7500 Representatives at that ratio of votes per member)
so DM in each or most Danish districts is respectable despite small country.
there are only 5 districts that use DM-2. none use 1.
the rest range from 10 to 20.
In North Jutland (FM-15), a typical multi-member districts (MMD), in 2022 parties won a seat for each 10,000 to 20,000 votes it received. (about .56 percent of overall votes cast)
Denmark uses list PR but it uses a form of MMP, with multi-member districts where list PR is used. This allows the number of top-up seats to be low compared to NZ.
I am a fan of STV. I like its basic structure - that each voter casts just one vote in MMD. I think its flexible vote count/vote transfer system allows voters to vote for whom they truly want knowing there is back-up in the system (redundancy if you will).
list PR does as good a job of making high portion of effective votes and giving small parties represention as STV does at each DM level.
Denmark uses list PR in its few DM-2 districts and in 2022 each district elected members from two different parties. that is in Denmark's 3+-party system.
U.S. needs STV or list PR but doesn't need large DM -- even DM of 5 would allow small third parties to start to elect and have reconginiazable presence. if in any DM-5 district a small party has 16 percent of the votes (or even fewer under certain circumstances) the party will elect a REp. That is huge.
In your article, you actually downplay the suppression of wasted votes under the present U.S. system.
you say a party with 60 percent will win all the seats. thus leaving 40 percent wasted
but actually in some districts as much as 50 percent is wasted, or even most of the votes will elect no one.
Ohio 9th, 2024: 48 percent of voters elected the winner, 52 percent of votes elected no one.
Thanks Tom, very interesting comments. Where do you live, and what gives you your interest in how electoral systems operate from country to country? Just curious. It's great to have you participating with your knowledge and insights. All the best
I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I and others in Canada are working to get out government to reform our election system, and so I looking at what is happening in other countries expecially one so important to Canada - the U.S.
I have put much info online on my blogsite Montopedia wix.site.
[Warning to readers: we are going to get a bit wonky in this one.
[/quote]
…
…but I’m not going to. There needn’t be anything wonky about proportional-representation (PR). There’s nothing wonky about party-list PR allocated by Sainte-Lague, the unbiased allocation-rule.
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Party-list PR: Allocate seats to parties in proportion to votes.
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Sainte-Lague allocation:
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X% of the votes should get X% of the seats.
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So, multiply each party’s vote % by the desired house-size, to get that party’s “rightful-seats”.
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That usually won’t be a whole number, so round off to the nearest whole number of seats.
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Due to the vagaries of rounding, those seat-assignments sometimes won’t add up to the desired house-size. No problem !!
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Just multiply each party’s rightful-seats by some same number (the “multiplier”). (Multiplication by the same number preserves proportionality.) Then round to the nearest whole number as before.
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Find a multiplier that will adjust the total seats-allocation to the desired house-size.
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That multiplier can be found by trial-&-error. That’s a valid way. …or, alternatively, some systematic procedure can be used. When Sainte-Lague (as “Webster’s method”) & the other similar methods were proposed in the 18th & 19th centuries for House-Apportionment here, I didn’t read of any suggestion of a systematic-procedure. **It doesn’t make any difference how a satisfactory multiplier is found** All that matters is that the allocation-rule’s specification says to apply a multiplier that results in the desired house-size.
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That’s it. That’s the definition & allocation-rule for Sainte-Lague.
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One other thing: To deter & thwart splitting-strategy, the round-off point for parties whose
“quotas” (multiplied rightful-seats) is between 0 & 1 is changed from .5 to .7
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(Yes, the countries that use Sainte-Lague define it legally by a systematic-procedure. That’s completely unnecessary. Sainte-Lague need only be defined as above.)
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Sainte-Lague (SL) is the completely-unbiased seat-allocation.
Anyway, I’ve given, here, the very brief, obvious, natural non-wonky allocation-rule of Sainte-Lague (SL).
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So, how brief is the definition & allocation-rule of STV :-D
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Not brief, simple or easy at all. Wonky? Sure.
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I advocate Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) when a single-winner method is needed or desired. Its count-rule can be very briefly-said:
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Repeatedly eliminate the candidate who tops fewest rankings, till someone tops most of them.’
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…or till only one candidate remains.
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[end of brief RCV definition.]
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That states the RCV count rule in one brief sentence.
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I ask STV advocates how many sentences they need to state their STV count.
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:-D
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…or, should I say, how many pages, or tens of pages?
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STV’s rule is incomparably less brief to state than that of RCV or Sainte-Lague party-list PR.
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One criticism of all methods requiring rank-balloting is that rank-balloting is expensive to set up, & that the ranked methods are expensive to count. That criticism is untrue., The expense is completely negligible.
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But a criticism remains: It takes a lot longer to set up rank-balloting for STV, & the software & administration for its implementation & counting…in comparison to the uniquely quick, easy immediate set-up & implementation of party-list PR.
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Party-list PR doesn’t require any new balloting or counting. The balloting is identical to what we do now, except that the voting is for a party instead of a candidate.
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The count is identical to what we do now: Just count the parties’ votes.
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Given the vote-count, anyone can do the seat allocation at their kitchen-table, with a hand-calculator, or pencil & paper.
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That incomparably-easier & quicker immediate setup & implementation of party-list PR, in comparison to STV, could matter decisively if one or more states ever needed to quickly set up a new electoral-system. ;
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A few supposed advantages of STV over party-list PR:
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Voting for candidates:
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With open-list, you can vote for candidates in party-list PR. You have the option of either just voting for your party, by marking the box over its list, or voting for a candidate in that party’s list, by marking the box next to that candidate’s name.
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Voting for that candidate counts as a vote for your party, but also a vote for that candidate, in the determination of which candidates get the seats won by your party. The candidates are seated in the order of their vote-counts. Any unfilled seats are then assigned to the remaining candidates in the list, in their listed-order.
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Additionally, there seems to be a party-phobia in the English-speaking countries. But elections are really about policies. Policies are the important results of elections. …& policies are exactly what party-platforms are about.
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Voting should be about policies, not about candidates, names, faces, personalities & hairdos./
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Yes, candidate-honesty is important. But party-honesty is too. …& the party that wrote the policies that you like can be trusted to list candidates who are honest & support those policies. …& open-list lets you choose among them.
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It’s ironic to hear the party-phobic sentiment from people who mostly are always wedded to voting for one party, the Democrat Party, to which they seem hopelessly-loyal.
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Wasted-Votes:
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The claim is that party-list has wasted votes, & STV doesn’t.
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Wrong for 2 reasons.
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a) District-size:
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Many, including STV-advocates, seem to assume that it’s necessary to elect from local districts, in order to allow local-representation. That’s completely false:
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In an at-large party-list election, any quota-size group, in any locality, have the power to elect someone in their locality. …if they want to. That’s the key phrases: **If they want to**.
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Maybe you want to, but you can’t, because others in your locality don’t want to. Well, that’s their business & their choice, isn’t it. Voters in at-large party-list **can** elect someone local, but they aren’t compelled to. Elections in separate local districts **compels** people to elect locally, even if that isn’t what they’d prefer. Compulsion isn’t then same as freedom. At-large party-list PR gives voters the freedom to vote & elects locally or otherwise. You may have heard that freedom is, in this country, regarded as rather important.
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With at-large elections, the vote % for getting a seat is so small that there aren’t any significant number of wasted-votes:
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With Sainte-Lague, the vote % required for a seat = 70/(house-size).
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California’s legislature has 120 seats. So, to get a seat in that legislature, unicameral, would require:
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70/120 of a % of the vote. That’s 7/12 of a percent. That’s about .58 of a %.
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So there aren’t going to be significant wasted-votes.
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b) Ranked party-list PR:
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The article mentioned that, & the proposal has been published by Woodall, & probably has been suggested long before that.
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Let the voters rank some parties. Their vote goes to their 1st choice. A Sainte-Lague allocation is done. If your party doesn’t get any seats, then it is eliminated, & your vote goes to your 2nd choice. The 2nd allocation is done. If your party still doesn’t get a seat, then your vote goes to your 3rd choice & a 3rd allocation is done.
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So a next allocation is done whenever there’s a party not seated, some of whose voters have indicated a next choice. It won’t take many allocations before there are no more unseated uneliminated parties.
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That repeated allocation with eliminations is essentially RCV for parties. It finishes quickly, compared to RCV or STV.
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Its rule is like that of RCV, & thereby is a **lot** more briefly stated than that of STV.
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Do you object that it’s new & not traditional European party-list PR?
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How very odd, if you also object that party-list is too European & not American enough :-)
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You can’t have it both ways.
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Ranked Party-list would be a uniquely American improvement in party-list PR. That would likely be seen as a good thing. People would know that they aren’t just imitating the Europeans.
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In fact, of course all of the allocation-rules that are used in PR worldwide, were first proposed & used for apportioning the House of Representatives here, so there’s really nothing un-American about the party-list allocation-rules.
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Oh, & one more thing: STV’s proportionality is extremely sloppy, chance-dependent & inaccurate.
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…& STV usually (always?) uses the Droop-quota, which is strongly-biased in favor of large groupings or parties. I’ve read that it’s as large-biased as d’Hondt, which, as I mentioned, under-represents the [1,2) interval by 33%. That’s really bad.
I should add that at-large party-list PR eliminates the time, trouble, expense & contention of districting. …thereby further facilitating quick immediate setup, implementation & use.
Hello Steven,
Your argument excluding list or MMP systems for the US House of Representatives makes sense since many states are too small to allow for more than a handful of seats. But I am unpersuaded by your more general misgivings about list or MMP systems. My arguments would apply to the MMP systems in Germany or New Zealand, but here I limit myself to the list system as used in Sweden.
In Riksdag elections, 310 of the members are elected using party-list PR in each of Sweden's 29 electoral constituencies, each with 11 or more seats (except for Island of Gotland with 2). The remaining 39 seats in the Riksdag are distributed amongst the parties in order to constituencies where they were underrepresented in the overall outcome of the 310 in numbers to bring the party distribution in the Riksdag as close as possible to the distribution of the votes nationally.
To win seats in the Riksdag, a party must win at least four percent of the vote nationally, or twelve percent of the vote in one electoral constituency. You argue that this is unfair to those supporting parties unable to meet the requirements, unlike systems that allow the voters second choices to count. This argument really does not apply to Sweden since the polls are very accurate, so the voter knows when his or her part has fallen below 4%, and can choose accordingly.
There is also the matter of voting for the individual as opposed to the party. My sense is that Sweden has found the right balance. Voters can cast personal votes for individual candidates on the party lists. Any candidates who receive a number of personal votes equal to five percent or greater of the party's total number of votes in the constituency will automatically be bumped to the top of the list, regardless of their ranking on the party’s list. But most voters do not do this, which to me means that party supporters tend to have confidence in their party’s leaders, not a bad thing overall these days.
Best
Henry
Henry.milner@umontreal.ca
You mentioned that a 4-seat district has a 20% threshold, leading to wasted votes in a party list system. But in a party list system with no legal threshold, parties below this number can still be elected if voters are fragmented. For example, if six parties are all at around 16%, then the three parties with the most votes earn one seat each despite none of them hitting the threshold. Furthermore, STV allows up to 20% of the votes to be wasted, since this many votes can be cast for a loser that makes it to the final round, so the votes never transfer to a winner. Being above 20% guarantees a win in both systems, but being below is not necessarily a loss in either system.
National party list systems being used often waste more votes than necessary by choice, since they enforce a high legal threshold (such as a 5% threshold in Germany, where reaching 5% is good enough for about 40 seats but 4.9% gets you nothing) to prevent too many political parties and fractionalization. I would not enforce a threshold in the US, since small magnitude districts will have the same effect at reducing party count, and if anything we need more party fractionalization instead of less. No legal threshold means fewer wasted votes (though it certainly doesn't bring them to 0).
All this to say, votes will still be wasted under party lists, and probably more than STV, but I think the issue was slightly overstated.
Wasted votes in list systems arise from the use of fixed thresholds or the existing of implied thresholds. The Spare vote (second choice of party vote ott.nz, 'dual voting' dualvoting.com) allows every voter to vote for any party, and if that party does not pass threshold, vote for a party much more likely to qualify.
If you talk of 'proportional representation' you need to know what is proportional to what. List systems including MMP seats are proportional to votes for qualifying parties, and with the spare vote all votes can qualify.
If the PR objective is seats in proprtion to votes, you need a clear expression of party preference in every . RCV does not provide that unless you go by first preferences, in which case why bother with the others. You may like ranked ballots but they do not help a system be more party proportional.
Both USA and Canada suffer from a huge range of state/prov sizes, varying from <1% of the population to more than 10% of the population. If each state/prov must have separate representation, those smaller ones have only one seat from one party. There is no obvious solution to this problem.
List members are much less isolated from local areas than you might think. In NZ list members must be geographically distributed (for party credibility) and most list members involve themselves in local and national issues.
Hi Edward, thanks for your thoughts. The 'dual vote' as you call it sounds like a great idea for any kind of list system (BTW, the website dualvoting.com did not work for me). Any thoughts about why nations that use a list system don't incorporate what would seem like a very reasonable and common sense idea?
Hello Stephen
Thank you for your kind words. dualvoting.com was a German site. My ott.nz seems OK. I hope you read my latest post at ott.nz/posts (positive words from an official NZ report). I have been advancing this idea since 2012 when I submitted it to a NZ electoral review. The idea has been around much longer in Germany. It is only in the last few years that I heard about the idea in Germany. But getting any traction has been very difficult. I find that many associate it with preferential voting, an idea which seems very divisive, mathematically faulty, and hugely complex. Spare vote/second choice is powerful because it is simple and intuitive.
In life second choices are often used when we want everyone to get something acceptable. More preferences than that are very rarely used.
Any ideas how I might advance the idea would be appreciated.
Edward, ways to advance the idea: 1) write opeds and letters to the editor of your favorite media, 2) try to find a legislator who agrees and is willing to intro legislation, 3) try to find an org who will advocate for it -- the Green Party? My good friend Rod Donald, Green MP, would have been interested, but alas he died way too early. Is there another Green MP who you could approach? Those are a few ideas to consider.
And then I did not answer your question!! Why is it not already used? Possible reasons: 1. It makes it possible to express support for a tiny party while still having a say between the bigger ones. Makes voting for small parties much more attractive. Big powerful parties do not want that. 2. Surface similarity to the oft disliked preferential voting? 3. I think maybe it is too simple (Sometimes complex ideas get support because of surface appeal to people for whom complexity suggests sophistication and nuance).
Here is where the German Constitutional court rejected the idea. In English but not easy to read. https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/EN/2017/09/cs20170919_2bvc004614en.html
Interesting, thanks for sharing this info. The German court ruled "Constitutional law does not require that the electoral system allow for a supplementary contingent vote (Eventualstimme) in case the primary vote was cast for a political party that failed to receive the minimum share of votes necessary to pass the five-percent election threshold." So that would seem to suggest that the Bundestag, if it chooses, could add a second "contingent" vote if it chooses, but the plaintiff's apparent claim that a voter is entitled to have this a right is unfounded, absent a legislative grant of this right. So that sends us back to my original question: why doesn't the Bundestag grant voters this ability? I think it was in the German election of 2013, the lack of a second vote for voters allowed enough small parties who did not meet the 5% threshold to "spoil" the election for the SPD, allowing Angela Merkel and the CDU to continue in power. These dynamics DO make a difference sometimes in German elections. But as you wrote above, people prefer the familiar. The US could easily allow voters a second "contingent" vote, it would seem to make sense for virtually every election level, local, state and federal. Yet we don't do it either. Thanks Edward, all very interesting.
Stephen, I liked the structure of the article.
you stated the goals of electoral reform, and then addressed each of the three main alternatives to FPTP with those in mind.
I don't see MMP as being possible without considerable un-necessary work. You have to get approval for votes to drift outside a district when used to allocate regional top-up seats, the regions used for top-up cannot be larger than a state, without constitutional change or considerable stretching of rules.
so if anything, you are likely talking about regionalized MMP like Scotland's not NZ's. with regions within each state. and region would have to have about ten or more to have any significant PR value for small parties, with five districts (twice the size presently) and five top-up. the effect of MMP in ten-seat regions may be just as limited as you say PR is. Most of the five top-up seats may be needed to be used only to set the two main parties in the right relationship in seat counts to each other due to the unbalanced proportionality district seat counts won under FPTP, and not be available to help the little parties.
(perhaps you analyzed the idea of regionalized MMP. if so, sorry, I must have missed it.)
while a DM-10 district and list PR or STV promises more effective proportionality,more Rep. for small parties, than that. IMO
you are correct in saying that Denmark is smaller country but that doesn't mean that its electoral districts use the small DM that you describe (7-11).
its elections use only twelve districts and it has 179 members (one member for each 20,000 votes)
(by the way, U.S. would have about 7500 Representatives at that ratio of votes per member)
so DM in each or most Danish districts is respectable despite small country.
there are only 5 districts that use DM-2. none use 1.
the rest range from 10 to 20.
In North Jutland (FM-15), a typical multi-member districts (MMD), in 2022 parties won a seat for each 10,000 to 20,000 votes it received. (about .56 percent of overall votes cast)
Denmark uses list PR but it uses a form of MMP, with multi-member districts where list PR is used. This allows the number of top-up seats to be low compared to NZ.
I am a fan of STV. I like its basic structure - that each voter casts just one vote in MMD. I think its flexible vote count/vote transfer system allows voters to vote for whom they truly want knowing there is back-up in the system (redundancy if you will).
list PR does as good a job of making high portion of effective votes and giving small parties represention as STV does at each DM level.
Denmark uses list PR in its few DM-2 districts and in 2022 each district elected members from two different parties. that is in Denmark's 3+-party system.
U.S. needs STV or list PR but doesn't need large DM -- even DM of 5 would allow small third parties to start to elect and have reconginiazable presence. if in any DM-5 district a small party has 16 percent of the votes (or even fewer under certain circumstances) the party will elect a REp. That is huge.
In your article, you actually downplay the suppression of wasted votes under the present U.S. system.
you say a party with 60 percent will win all the seats. thus leaving 40 percent wasted
but actually in some districts as much as 50 percent is wasted, or even most of the votes will elect no one.
Ohio 9th, 2024: 48 percent of voters elected the winner, 52 percent of votes elected no one.
Stephen, I liked the structure of the article.
you stated the goals of electoral reform, and then addressed each of the three main alternatives to FPTP with those in mind.
I don't see MMP as being possible without considerable un-necessary work. You have to get approval for votes to drift outside a district when used to allocate regional top-up seats, the regions used for top-up cannot be larger than a state, without constitutional change or considerable stretching of rules.
so if anything, you are likely talking about regionalized MMP like Scotland's not NZ's. with regions within each state. and region would have to have about ten or more to have any significant PR value for small parties, with five districts (twice the size presently) and five top-up. the effect of MMP in ten-seat regions may be just as limited as you say PR is. Most of the five top-up seats may be needed to be used only to set the two main parties in the right relationship in seat counts to each other due to the unbalanced proportionality district seat counts won under FPTP, and not be available to help the little parties.
(perhaps you analyzed the idea of regionalized MMP. if so, sorry, I must have missed it.)
while a DM-10 district and list PR or STV promises more effective proportionality,more Rep. for small parties, than that. IMO
you are correct in saying that Denmark is smaller country but that doesn't mean that its electoral districts use the small DM that you describe (7-11).
its elections use only twelve districts and it has 179 members (one member for each 20,000 votes)
(by the way, U.S. would have about 7500 Representatives at that ratio of votes per member)
so DM in each or most Danish districts is respectable despite small country.
there are only 5 districts that use DM-2. none use 1.
the rest range from 10 to 20.
In North Jutland (FM-15), a typical multi-member districts (MMD), in 2022 parties won a seat for each 10,000 to 20,000 votes it received. (about .56 percent of overall votes cast)
Denmark uses list PR but it uses a form of MMP, with multi-member districts where list PR is used. This allows the number of top-up seats to be low compared to NZ.
I am a fan of STV. I like its basic structure - that each voter casts just one vote in MMD. I think its flexible vote count/vote transfer system allows voters to vote for whom they truly want knowing there is back-up in the system (redundancy if you will).
list PR does as good a job of making high portion of effective votes and giving small parties represention as STV does at each DM level.
Denmark uses list PR in its few DM-2 districts and in 2022 each district elected members from two different parties. that is in Denmark's 3+-party system.
U.S. needs STV or list PR but doesn't need large DM -- even DM of 5 would allow small third parties to start to elect and have reconginiazable presence. if in any DM-5 district a small party has 16 percent of the votes (or even fewer under certain circumstances) the party will elect a REp. That is huge.
In your article, you actually downplay the suppression of wasted votes under the present U.S. system.
you say a party with 60 percent will win all the seats. thus leaving 40 percent wasted
but actually in some districts as much as 50 percent is wasted, or even most of the votes will elect no one.
Ohio 9th, 2024: 48 percent of voters elected the winner, 52 percent of votes elected no one.
Thanks Tom, very interesting comments. Where do you live, and what gives you your interest in how electoral systems operate from country to country? Just curious. It's great to have you participating with your knowledge and insights. All the best
Thanks for your kind response to my comment.
I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I and others in Canada are working to get out government to reform our election system, and so I looking at what is happening in other countries expecially one so important to Canada - the U.S.
I have put much info online on my blogsite Montopedia wix.site.
Tom
[quote]
[Warning to readers: we are going to get a bit wonky in this one.
[/quote]
…
…but I’m not going to. There needn’t be anything wonky about proportional-representation (PR). There’s nothing wonky about party-list PR allocated by Sainte-Lague, the unbiased allocation-rule.
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Party-list PR: Allocate seats to parties in proportion to votes.
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Sainte-Lague allocation:
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X% of the votes should get X% of the seats.
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So, multiply each party’s vote % by the desired house-size, to get that party’s “rightful-seats”.
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That usually won’t be a whole number, so round off to the nearest whole number of seats.
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Due to the vagaries of rounding, those seat-assignments sometimes won’t add up to the desired house-size. No problem !!
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Just multiply each party’s rightful-seats by some same number (the “multiplier”). (Multiplication by the same number preserves proportionality.) Then round to the nearest whole number as before.
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Find a multiplier that will adjust the total seats-allocation to the desired house-size.
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That multiplier can be found by trial-&-error. That’s a valid way. …or, alternatively, some systematic procedure can be used. When Sainte-Lague (as “Webster’s method”) & the other similar methods were proposed in the 18th & 19th centuries for House-Apportionment here, I didn’t read of any suggestion of a systematic-procedure. **It doesn’t make any difference how a satisfactory multiplier is found** All that matters is that the allocation-rule’s specification says to apply a multiplier that results in the desired house-size.
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That’s it. That’s the definition & allocation-rule for Sainte-Lague.
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One other thing: To deter & thwart splitting-strategy, the round-off point for parties whose
“quotas” (multiplied rightful-seats) is between 0 & 1 is changed from .5 to .7
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(Yes, the countries that use Sainte-Lague define it legally by a systematic-procedure. That’s completely unnecessary. Sainte-Lague need only be defined as above.)
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Sainte-Lague (SL) is the completely-unbiased seat-allocation.
Anyway, I’ve given, here, the very brief, obvious, natural non-wonky allocation-rule of Sainte-Lague (SL).
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So, how brief is the definition & allocation-rule of STV :-D
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Not brief, simple or easy at all. Wonky? Sure.
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I advocate Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) when a single-winner method is needed or desired. Its count-rule can be very briefly-said:
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Repeatedly eliminate the candidate who tops fewest rankings, till someone tops most of them.’
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…or till only one candidate remains.
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[end of brief RCV definition.]
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That states the RCV count rule in one brief sentence.
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I ask STV advocates how many sentences they need to state their STV count.
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:-D
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…or, should I say, how many pages, or tens of pages?
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STV’s rule is incomparably less brief to state than that of RCV or Sainte-Lague party-list PR.
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One criticism of all methods requiring rank-balloting is that rank-balloting is expensive to set up, & that the ranked methods are expensive to count. That criticism is untrue., The expense is completely negligible.
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But a criticism remains: It takes a lot longer to set up rank-balloting for STV, & the software & administration for its implementation & counting…in comparison to the uniquely quick, easy immediate set-up & implementation of party-list PR.
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Party-list PR doesn’t require any new balloting or counting. The balloting is identical to what we do now, except that the voting is for a party instead of a candidate.
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The count is identical to what we do now: Just count the parties’ votes.
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Given the vote-count, anyone can do the seat allocation at their kitchen-table, with a hand-calculator, or pencil & paper.
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That incomparably-easier & quicker immediate setup & implementation of party-list PR, in comparison to STV, could matter decisively if one or more states ever needed to quickly set up a new electoral-system. ;
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A few supposed advantages of STV over party-list PR:
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Voting for candidates:
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With open-list, you can vote for candidates in party-list PR. You have the option of either just voting for your party, by marking the box over its list, or voting for a candidate in that party’s list, by marking the box next to that candidate’s name.
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Voting for that candidate counts as a vote for your party, but also a vote for that candidate, in the determination of which candidates get the seats won by your party. The candidates are seated in the order of their vote-counts. Any unfilled seats are then assigned to the remaining candidates in the list, in their listed-order.
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Additionally, there seems to be a party-phobia in the English-speaking countries. But elections are really about policies. Policies are the important results of elections. …& policies are exactly what party-platforms are about.
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Voting should be about policies, not about candidates, names, faces, personalities & hairdos./
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Yes, candidate-honesty is important. But party-honesty is too. …& the party that wrote the policies that you like can be trusted to list candidates who are honest & support those policies. …& open-list lets you choose among them.
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It’s ironic to hear the party-phobic sentiment from people who mostly are always wedded to voting for one party, the Democrat Party, to which they seem hopelessly-loyal.
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Wasted-Votes:
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The claim is that party-list has wasted votes, & STV doesn’t.
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Wrong for 2 reasons.
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a) District-size:
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Many, including STV-advocates, seem to assume that it’s necessary to elect from local districts, in order to allow local-representation. That’s completely false:
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In an at-large party-list election, any quota-size group, in any locality, have the power to elect someone in their locality. …if they want to. That’s the key phrases: **If they want to**.
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Maybe you want to, but you can’t, because others in your locality don’t want to. Well, that’s their business & their choice, isn’t it. Voters in at-large party-list **can** elect someone local, but they aren’t compelled to. Elections in separate local districts **compels** people to elect locally, even if that isn’t what they’d prefer. Compulsion isn’t then same as freedom. At-large party-list PR gives voters the freedom to vote & elects locally or otherwise. You may have heard that freedom is, in this country, regarded as rather important.
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With at-large elections, the vote % for getting a seat is so small that there aren’t any significant number of wasted-votes:
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With Sainte-Lague, the vote % required for a seat = 70/(house-size).
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California’s legislature has 120 seats. So, to get a seat in that legislature, unicameral, would require:
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70/120 of a % of the vote. That’s 7/12 of a percent. That’s about .58 of a %.
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So there aren’t going to be significant wasted-votes.
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b) Ranked party-list PR:
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The article mentioned that, & the proposal has been published by Woodall, & probably has been suggested long before that.
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Let the voters rank some parties. Their vote goes to their 1st choice. A Sainte-Lague allocation is done. If your party doesn’t get any seats, then it is eliminated, & your vote goes to your 2nd choice. The 2nd allocation is done. If your party still doesn’t get a seat, then your vote goes to your 3rd choice & a 3rd allocation is done.
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So a next allocation is done whenever there’s a party not seated, some of whose voters have indicated a next choice. It won’t take many allocations before there are no more unseated uneliminated parties.
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That repeated allocation with eliminations is essentially RCV for parties. It finishes quickly, compared to RCV or STV.
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Its rule is like that of RCV, & thereby is a **lot** more briefly stated than that of STV.
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Do you object that it’s new & not traditional European party-list PR?
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How very odd, if you also object that party-list is too European & not American enough :-)
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You can’t have it both ways.
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Ranked Party-list would be a uniquely American improvement in party-list PR. That would likely be seen as a good thing. People would know that they aren’t just imitating the Europeans.
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In fact, of course all of the allocation-rules that are used in PR worldwide, were first proposed & used for apportioning the House of Representatives here, so there’s really nothing un-American about the party-list allocation-rules.
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Oh, & one more thing: STV’s proportionality is extremely sloppy, chance-dependent & inaccurate.
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…& STV usually (always?) uses the Droop-quota, which is strongly-biased in favor of large groupings or parties. I’ve read that it’s as large-biased as d’Hondt, which, as I mentioned, under-represents the [1,2) interval by 33%. That’s really bad.
I should add that at-large party-list PR eliminates the time, trouble, expense & contention of districting. …thereby further facilitating quick immediate setup, implementation & use.
…& no gerrymandering.