Proportional Representation

[mosdef]

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I think an additional argument is that often these parties have very narrow agendas that would not address many of the issues of governance. By having, for example, 3% of the legislature from the pro-life party would not be productive for many issues at hand. They would likely be elected (and more importantly, re-elected) by those mainly interested in abortion politics and would not be re-elected based on their good legislative abilities. Thus it would likely end up w/ several mp's who were much more interested in being gadflies than constructive members. If they were effective enough at drawing attention to their issues, they need not demonstrate any knowledge about any other topics, even if they have no hope of getting their agenda passed.

Of course some would prefer it this way.

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I think that "single issue" parties wouldn't make it too far. I suspect that they would be absorbed by more "complete" parties. For example, a single issue anti-abortion party wouldn't get many votes if a more conventional or widely supported party (namely the Conservatives) came out with an anti-abortion item in their platform.

Having said that, if 3% of all the voters care only about one specific issue and they manage to get enough votes to have a representative, that's "better" representation than if those voters have no parties that support their stance on the issue. It may suck when we disagree with their single issue, but it's hardly a fair democracy if we decide that everyone who doesn't fit into a small number of distinct political categories can't be represented.

[Barcalounger]

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The result of having so many parties compteting within each electoral district is that many "strategic" votes were cast where voters picked not their preferred party, but rather tried to prevent their most hated party from winning by voting for their closest competitor.

Now, PR would eliminate this type of "reluctant stategic" vote because we could vote directly for our preferred party with the assurance of having our vote "count" towards seats in the House of Commons.


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I think Instant Runoff Voting solves many of the same problems, but without the hurdle of changing from geographic representation. It also has the same benefits such as increased power of 3rd parties and less negative campaigning by the candidates as they try to become palatable to a greater section of the voting public.

http://www.instantrunoff.com/

[mosdef]

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The result of having so many parties compteting within each electoral district is that many "strategic" votes were cast where voters picked not their preferred party, but rather tried to prevent their most hated party from winning by voting for their closest competitor.

Now, PR would eliminate this type of "reluctant stategic" vote because we could vote directly for our preferred party with the assurance of having our vote "count" towards seats in the House of Commons.


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I think Instant Runoff Voting solves many of the same problems, but without the hurdle of changing from geographic representation. It also has the same benefits such as increased power of 3rd parties and less negative campaigning by the candidates as they try to become palatable to a greater section of the voting public.

http://www.instantrunoff.com/

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Yes, I've seen this as well. However, you will notice that there is still a problem with parties getting, say, 5% of the popular vote but no actual voting power among the elected representatives. They just get knocked off in the early stages and defaulted to the "next best" option. I would prefer to see representation for all favored options in the House of Commons.

[Barcalounger]

Without the fear of a "wasted" vote helping your least favorite candidate win, I'd imagine these minority parties would get even more than 5% of the vote. Once you get near the double digits, then the biggest two can't ignore you, since the #2 preference of your voters will almost definitely decide the race. Therefore more of your party's platforms will be taken up by the major players to get votes, the platforms will get more airtime, and I could see IRV actually giving the minority party's positions as much or more voice in government this way than the 5% vote that PR would give them.

[sam h]

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I am a fan of PR, but here are three commonly cited potential downsides:

(1) Representatives chosen through PR are generally not tied to a specific territorial entity. Essentially, PR allows for the better representation of groups as defined by ideology but worse representation of groups as defined by a territorial bond. There is a tradition of thinking about representation geographically, and so this makes people uneasy although I personally believe it is somewhat archaic at this point and think that ideology is more important than territorial affiliation.

(2) PR can actually be implemented in numerous ways, but in most configurations it is the party leadership that ultimately decides who gets seats in the congress. The voters decide how many seats, but the leaders arrange a list to decide which people specifically go. This tends to make individual politicians more beholden to the party leadership and is, in my opinion, a very legitimate concern about PR.

(3) PR is often seen as lending itself toward more polarizing politics than single-member districting. The whole point is to allow for the representation of minority positions, which are often ideologically extreme. In the current political and social climate of Europe, for instance, this isn't such a big deal as these extreme parties attract minimal support and, at best, may have some sway as very small coalition partners. But in a different context, like Europe between WWI and WWII, we have seen extreme parties become quite powerful. In that time, it was common to have centrist parties weaken and power and politics often became contested between extreme right fascist parties and extreme left communist parties, which often led to the breakdown of democracy itself. Single-member districting, on the other hand, generally lends itself to contestation between two more-or-less centrist parties, as each party has incentives of some sort to target the median voter in the population and electorally relevant third parties are very difficult to form and sustain.

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1. Using the US government, you can make the House proportional and leave the Senate and everyone still has their Senators. I don't really see this as a bad thing even if we went entirely proportional though. I know a candidate of the party I support would pay much more attention to me than a random regional candidate from another party! Furthermore, proportional representation can still be implemented in a regional fashion, simply having 4-5 seats per region. My idea for proportional representation in the US is regions of no less than 4 and no more than 7 seats all within single states. This is partly because states could implement this on their own, although it means single seat states don't change.

2. This is only a problem if you choose to implement it that way. I favor solutions where you also get to vote for which party members you like best.

3. I've heard people say this before and it really surprised me since those who say it tend to claim to be big fans of "democracy". If you're more concerned with pushing your agenda through than giving the people what they want then sure, this is a problem for you, but if you want the government to actually represent the people, then this is a good thing. How much harder would it have been for our fun online poker legislation to have made it through a Congress of this nature? Also, the two parties in this country are only centrist using their own terminology, which is why they keep trying to push that "left/right" crap. They are both much, MUCH more statist than the average American, possibly even than those who actually vote for them.

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1. Definitely true. Many countries have mixed systems with some SMD and some PR. Some countries also have some aspects of regional PR like you describe.

2. Yes, there are various forms of "open list" PR that ameliorate this problem somewhat, although the parties still have a lot of control concerning how the lists are made up and who goes into what district. Probably more control overall still than parties do in SMD with a primary system, but the problem is definitely smaller.

3. I don't quite follow you here. Sure you can argue that a relatively polarized party system is more representative of the electorate (which I agree with). The point was just that some people argue that these polarized party systems are conducive to the breakdown of democratic regimes and there is some historical evidence to back that up (see interwar Europe). If you want to say that PR is more "democratic" to begin with, then I don't necessarily disagree, but we are just talking apples and oranges because that is invoking a different definition of democracy than the standard regime definition being used to illustrate the third point.

[sam h]

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I think an additional argument is that often these parties have very narrow agendas that would not address many of the issues of governance. By having, for example, 3% of the legislature from the pro-life party would not be productive for many issues at hand. They would likely be elected (and more importantly, re-elected) by those mainly interested in abortion politics and would not be re-elected based on their good legislative abilities. Thus it would likely end up w/ several mp's who were much more interested in being gadflies than constructive members. If they were effective enough at drawing attention to their issues, they need not demonstrate any knowledge about any other topics, even if they have no hope of getting their agenda passed.

Of course some would prefer it this way.

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That is a good point. There is a party in the Netherlands whose main platform is the legalization of pedophilia. That would probably fall into this category! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Bobbo539]

Proportional Representation leads to more diverse wider range of interests represented. However, most of these interests alienate most of the population, and tend to cancel each other out. For example, there is a good chance that an anti-abortion party (in all cases, including rape) would rise up and a party that allows abortion on demand (including partial birth abortion) to both gain small representation. The vast majority of the country falls bewtween these two extremes, and under a direct representation system (like the US), generally a middle ground is reached and legislated.

PR tends to expand the idealology away from the moderate middle and more to the extremes.

Its hard to say its better or worse, but I am happy with the US direct representation system.

[mosdef]

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Its hard to say its better or worse, but I am happy with the US direct representation system.

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This is a judgement call, of course, however I think the declining rate of voter participation in North America is a signal that neither of the two core parties represent the interests of a fairly large number of people.

I understand the points about the "small" special interest groups and how it can be counterproductive to have such groups cancel each other out with one vote each (for example). But what about parties with broader appeal, that can capture say 10% of the overall vote but still end up with NO voting power in the elected government? This doesn't make sense to me and I think you can make a case that such parties would get even more votes if people didn't perceive them to be "wasted". And by wasted, I include the case of a run-off type vote where these votes default to one of the main parties eventually. If I don't want to support EITHER of the main parties, the run-off doesn't help me.

[Propertarian]

PR is way better than the current system in the U.S. Do you see why? I'll let others elaborate.

Actually, i really am too busy to do it right now.

[mosdef]

Thanks to everybody who has contributed to this post. I really appreciate the feedback.

One of the more prominent objections to PR that has been brought up is that it enhances access to the political process for "special interest" or "extreme" parties. In particular, I think that there is a fear that you would end up with members of parliament (or whatever the legislative body would be) that were representatives of the Fascist Party or the Anti-Abortion Party or the We Hate Islam Party (for example).

I think that one mechanism already exists in North America and that could prohibit or limit the influence of such parties, and that is the existing "fundamental principle documents" such at the Constitutions and, in Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Parties that have platforms that would violate the basic rights protected by the fundamental documents would not be able to enact any of their values as law because the courts would uphold the Constitution and override any bill that these parties were able to garner support for.

I suppose that there would be a fear that the fundamental documents would be changed, but special interest parties would have a hard time gaining enough political power to do that. It seems that building a system of PR on top of a framework of basic human rights would keep the "bad" fringe parties politically impotent but would allow more substantial smaller parties to have the power that the popular vote suggests that they should.

Please attack this argument.