I frequently find myself defending our constituency based electoral system here in the UK from people who believe proportional representation is fairer. They're right in some ways, but I dread moving towards electing lists of candidates drawn up by central party committees.
Both systems have pro and cons. I am used to vote for pre-defined party lists and a direct mandate for a deligate. Then parties form a coalition, which then chosses a chancelor. Less potential to be messed by populism, the downside is, that the chancelor (head of the executive branch) almost always is the head of the majority party and is alos holding a deligate andate. This blurrs the lines between legislative and executive branch a tad too much if you ask me.
The other extreme is kind of like the US. Pre elections along party lines to choose a candidate that is the directly elected by the electorate. Ver democratic, not blurred lines between government branches. Ignoring stuff like the elctoral collage, the Senate and Gerrymandering, this system is very prone to fall prey to populism.
I guess as long as it works, both solutios are fine. I personnally like the French system a lot. Directly elected Presidents, seperate elections for parliament. I am not judging these systems by the governments it produces, so.
In Australia we use proportional representation to elect the federal senate (upper house). It is used at state level too, in some states.
I used to be of the opinion that it was fairer. I no longer think so. I agree with former PM Paul Keating, who referred to the Senate as "unrepresentative swill"[1]. When I first heard this view, I thought Keating was nuts. What could be better than PR for giving minorities a voice? All you need is portion of votes and you get a seat. Seemed pretty fair to me, and allowed members of minor parties to have a say in the passing of bills into acts.
But that's the problem. Very often a few minor party seats hold the balance of power. The 2 major parties are deadlocked in disagreement over some legislation and whether it becomes law or not falls into the hands of a few senators represented by a minority.
So oftentimes the "uprepresentative swill" get to pass law, or not.
That's not really true. In Australia, plenty of bills get passed with bipartisan support; you just don't hear much about it as it's not newsworthy.
But on issues that are pertinent to each party's ideological position and the expectations of their members/voters, they will take strongly opposed positions.
This is important, so that voters have different options to choose from, and that each party must argue convincingly for their policies when campaigning.
If the parties are in consensus on most things, you end up with something not so different to one-party rule, and possibly endemic corruption.
Exactly. The US system is entirely designed around this. Two legislative bodies and a head of the executive all have to agree. If they can’t, it doesn’t get passed.
Transferable Vote would help the UK system more than PR (which is theoretically more democratic, but in practice moves power further towards party hierarchies and massively promotes political fragmentation). Transferable Vote lets “least worst” candidates win, rather than the current “most-compact minority” which typically disenfranchises 2/3rd of the electorate.
Why not have both? I.e. directly elected MPs and PR.
One way to do this would be to have 90% of the MPs elected in 3-6 member STV constituencies, with every candidate belonging to a party list. Then total the number of 1st preferences each party list got, and allocate the remaining 10% of the seats to the parties to maximalise proportionality (e.g. by d'Hondt). The top-up candidates elected fro each party will by losing candidates from that party who got the highest vote share.
That way, each party will get a number of MPs proportional to its total support, and the individual MPs elected will be the ones the voters most like.
Choosing MPs by party lists means the MPs have to be loyal to the party, not the voters.
The problem in the UK (and other places probably) is lack of representation. IDK what happened to the political establishment, but there are too few politicians supporting what the people believe.
people in support of the current establishment like to smugly pronounce it proof that what the people believe is therefore "wrong" if no educated politicians support it (to the tune of "Reality has a well known liberal bias"); but even if this was the case (I'm sceptical) - it kind of undermines the ability of the political system to support a representative democracy that is actually representative.
that said, maybe there is better representation, and it is just suppressed. As Brexit gained quite a few politicians flipped. That said, why did it have to take so much effort for something supported by about half the population, and even now the best we have if Boris - not a true Brexit supporter, but a flagrant populist who support whatever will get him ahead.
I dread moving towards electing lists of candidates drawn up by central party committees.
They way it works in Norway and Sweden at least is that while you vote for a list of candidates drawn up by the party, you can also select your preferred candidates on that list and as such affect which candidates on the list get seats.
That would be an awful system, although we have a constituency list anyway.
Labour could put up a dead dog in Bootle and would get elected. Conservatives could put the same up in Christchurch and win.
To implement PR,
First, you make the constituencies larger - about 5 times the size now. For example instead of having 4 constituencies on the Wirral you have 1, or 1 in Cornwall instead of the 6 now. Those constitutencies elect more than 1 MP (4 in the Wirral, 6 in Cornwall)
Then you number them in preference order.
This results in the people electing individuals (so preferring a locally popular candidate over a parachuted candidate), but also ensures that if 54% of Cornwall constituency want Tory, 23% want Labour, 19% want Lib Dem, 4% want others, you'd end up with something like
3 Tories
2 Labour
1 Lib Dem
Which is far more representative of the wishes of the people of Cornwall than currently, where 6/6 MPs are Tory on 54% of the vote.
One of the easiest ways to show people that proportional representation is troublesome is to highlight how in past elections it would have given UKIP 83 MPS and even the BNP a dozen or two MPs in the past.
In other words, whilst PR will help you get a representative of your favourite party in, it will also help get representatives of parties who you really don't want in.
