“Well isn’t this an exciting moment?”
I got ‘the fisheye’ when I said this earlier today to a bleary-eyed crowd of people who had been canvassing for different parties in Northern Ireland.
Some of them were into their thirtieth hour without sleep. There’s a time and a place for train-spottery musings about constitutional permutations.
Electoral reform looks like it’s on the cards though. Whatever the Lib-Dems say, I doubt that they will exit a moment where they can exert leverage without firstly securing a commitment to PR – probably of the STV variety.I’ve tried to stick to observations on this blog that I’ve not heard widely elsewhere, and my two points for today are…
- Everyone seems to be saying that the Lib-Dems will do a deal with the Tories. They are obliged to run this by their membership (remember the ‘Cyberlock‘?) and I’m not sure that they will stomach a deal with the Tories that readily. Also, the electorate seemed to be quite keen on a Lib-Lab deal
- On the other hand Labour has a minority of MPs with a visceral hatred of PR and they may struggle to honour any deal they offer the Lib-Dems
We’ll see. On the issue in question, I’m undecided whether PR is a good thing. OK – it may secure a more proportionate representation from the available political parties, but does it give us a government that more accurately represents the General Will? Political parties are, after all, largely coalitions of people who come together to game the voting system.
Can more people tick of more comparison points within the government that match their own views?
And more importantly, can the government be said to be hitting any kind of sweet spot in representing the material interests of the nation? Carrying out the wishes of the public – expressed and implicit – are surely what democracies claim to do?
So PR? Not sure. But voting reform? That’s a different matter. There are two obvious benefits, I think?
Firstly, I think that STV elections will be more frank and less groupthinky – less of a scrabble for the middle ground. In ordering our preferences there seem to me to be two advantages: The discourse will be more flexible and inclusive. If someone who has views outside of the hotly-contested centre ground is going to have their votes re-allocated, more of the parties will court their vote and seek to compromise with them.
That calculation in which I asked how far governments reflect the expressed wishes of the public would seem to work out OK under STV. More people will vote and politicians will be sent clearer messages and engage in more debate (which is good, right?). And remember – after the last few weeks – other forms of gauging opinion are not very reliable. Remember Cleggmania? Where did that go?
Secondly, politicians will know what they’re being told. Today, Nick Clegg – despite a fairly poor showing – will decide who will form the next government. He can’t reliably ask those who voted for him (remember, opinion-polling sucks!). Lots of his voters were Labour tactical voters, and some were Tories gaming the system to keep Labour out. Some were bona-fide Lib-Dems. And with all of that scepticism about polling, a new version of a poll like this one (!) would be interesting.
OK, we’re still left with the fundamental problem with elections in that they don’t allow us to weight preferences in the way that we do when we tell bookies what we think will happen. But you can’t have everything.
So I’m quite keen on STV. It only leaves me with one question on which I don’t know the answer: Will it foreground the representative and diminish the powers of political parties relative to MPs?
Anyone know the answer to this one?
In answer to your final question, would that necessarily be a terrible thing? A greater sense of personal engagement and responsibility might have prevented the expenses scandal for one thing. Aren’t people particularly sick of the slanging matches that party politics and power blocs seem to generate? A more fragmented system where ownership was more clearly associated with individuals rather than brands might help heal some of this pain.
I lived in Ireland for many years, where STV has been in use since – I believe – 1919. It seemed to me to work pretty well, producing good working coalitions and stable government. However, the truth is that the government is often at the beck and call of independent and single-issue candidates. This is not always a bad thing, though. In the area I lived in, one guy stood on the issue of having a swimming pool built in that area. Though he didn’t get elected, the candidate who did conceded the swimming pool. that might sound petty, but it connects local issues to the national debate, and as a result the elctorate are more engaged.
STV? I’m all for it!
Here is the ‘Bearn’ model for voting, very straightforward.
1. Determine the national percentages of the votes cast
2. For each party, create a list of constituencies in order of success
3. Allocate Independent candidates their seats (if any)
4. Award the remaining number of seats to each party based on the national percentage, beginning with the smallest party and rounding DOWN as you go to the nearest whole MP.
5. Again, beginning with the smallest party, award the actual seat from the top of their most successful list and then continue to work through the other parties in reverse order to allocate their first seat (which will either be their most successful result, or the next available seat on their list if it has been allocated already).
6. Repeat…
Please feel free to constact me if you have any questions.
So political bureaucracies share total power and there’s no real link between MP and constituency Angus?
No thanks.
Hi, Paul, not sure what you mean, although I probably forgot to say that voting would take place exactly as usual, with a single X for your choice of candidate in your own constituency. Easy to figure, not like other systems. A candidate could only be selected in the constituency in which s/he stood for election just as before. The local connection is maintained. The only difference is that the PR element would mean that SOME constituencies would inevitably find that the MP they ended up with was their second choice locally – or perhaps occasionally worse… This second-best effect is a feature of all PR systems, but it is minimised here in two ways: by the repeated rounds of handing out first choice constituencies wherever possible; and by at least ensuring that where a lower choice candidate is appointed, this has a decent chance of being in that party’s ‘best’ constituency. If someone has to have the fringe candidate, then let it be where they were least UNwanted. (There would be the option of setting a threshold to keep fringe parties out completely, but I personally don’t favour this.) My concern is that some form of PR is coming, and that it should be as simple as possible to operate, and as fair as possible in outcome. Cheers, Angus
Doesn’t look like a formula that will ever allow ‘mavericks’ in? It will involve more regionalised selection panels among the parties – you won’t get outlier constituency parties making idiosyncratic decisions, will you?
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