Delicious LiveJournal Links for 6-28-2009

[andrewducker]

• Doctors want right to talk faith
  Ahem. NO!
  (tags: health religion christianity UK)
• What's so good about proportional representation?
  A researcher looks at what it does and doesn't produce, and finds it strangely convincing.
  (tags: elections pr voting statistics)

Comments

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

That does seem a downside to PR if the PM can force individuals with whom he/she disagrees to resign and simply replace them with someone else of their choosing.

[andrewducker]

If it's list-based then when someone resigns from party X then another member of party X is appointed. If it's the PM's party then they'll get to choose the replacement (if that's how their party does it). If it's the opposition party then they get to do it.

Of course, that's with list-based stuff. With STV you'd simply hold a by-election in that constituency.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

The new MP is taken from the highest one on the party's list who's not already in parliament, (assuming they still want the job, I guess). So not quite just anyone of the PM's choosing.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it still seems a worrying concentration of power to me.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

The main party in power is much more accountable under PR than under FPTP. For starters, you can't have a party in power with total control unless they receive more than 50% of the popular vote. That's not happened for a while here, or in the UK. Yet under FPTP coalitions are rarely needed unless it's a very close race between the two major parties.

Going by that UK chart, it seems the Labour Party received about 35% of the popular vote. Or looked at another way, 65% of the voting public did NOT want them in power. That's the concentration of power you should be worried about.