Why I'm in favour of Proportional Representation

[andrewducker]

According to the BBC, the current polls show Lib Dems on 33%, Conservatives on 32%, Labour on 26%.
Which would give a seat allocation of Conservatives: 246, Labour 241, Lib Dems: 134.
Or, in a more easily digestible table format:

Party	Percentage	Seats
Lib Dems	33%	134
Conservatives	32%	246
Labour	26%	241

It should be pretty fucking obvious that this is an electoral system that is fucked in the head.

Comments

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I think it would be as bad as, or worse, than them.

So someone standing up and saying that all gays should locked up and receive treatment until they stop their deviancy, or that all blacks are genetically inferior or that to be a faithful member of your religion requires you to detonate bombs in city centres is not as bad as saying that people who say those things shouldn't be allowed to run for parliament?

I'm afraid I don't agree.

[andrewducker]

Of course it does rely on people thinking that the government ought to be representative.

I can see arguments that it shouldn't be entirely representative - that the wacky 1% on the fringe ought to be ignored. But a system where the party with the highest percentage of the vote gets the lowest number of seats? If people can't see that that's utterly wrong, then they aren't democratic at all.

[andrewducker]

Denying people their representation is denying them their speech. They have as much of a right to representation as you do. The second you start saying "We don't have to let people who think bad thoughts have a representative" then you open a door that I really don't want opened. Because sometimes I'm on the wacky frigne. And for a vast percentage of history my ideals were on the extreme of the wacky fringe. Votes for women? Never happen!

[simont]

"We do not live in a democracy, Bernard. We live in a British democracy. There's all the difference in the world." :-)

[andrewducker]

We'll have to agree to disagree. Although I'm differentiating between hate speech and direct advocacy of violence (which I do agree should be illegal).

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

just because you're trained in Logic doesn't mean you're good at it :-)

But there does seem to be a correlation between "class" and going to public schools (or is that a media myth?) and public schools are known for getting better educational results than non-public schools (or is that another myth?)

I have no easy way of determining the average set of educational qualifications of hereditary peers who actively participated in the House of Lords, nor of the appointed Lords ... I'd imagine that the legal Lords all had law degrees, and most of the political Lords had either suitable university backgrounds or on the job training(!) (not all obviously).

I guess the "myth" is how many of the hereditary Lords have Eton/Harrow/St.Pauls/whatever then Oxbridge educations ... and that's where I've made a total assumption and am willing to admit I don't know.

Again it would be interesting to see how many Lords voted (on average) before the recent changes, and what the proportions were between hereditary nobility and political/legal/religious appointees

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I'm not denying anyone representation.

My MP represents me. He doesn't agree with my views, and he votes in opposition to what I want, but he still represents me. It's not an ideal system.

I never said people should not be represented. But there's a difference between people and ideas.

And when enough people thought votes for women were a good idea, it happened.

I've just been told that in Germany it's a 7% minimum to get your views represented in parliament, to stop the large numbers of smaller parties clogging up the business of passing law and governing. So if 7% of people voted for the "bring sharia law to the UK" party, then they could have 35 seats in the House (or whatever the number, I think it's currently out of 650 but there are proposals to reduce it ... so 45 representatives for 7%)

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

Re: for the slow american in the room

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Wait, the British Nationalist Party is not only very much like our GOP, they actually use some of the same media consultants as our GOP.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

But there does seem to be a correlation between "class" and going to public schools (or is that a media myth?) and public schools are known for getting better educational results than non-public schools (or is that another myth?)

Yes, those correlations are broadly correct, but it gets terribly complex, and depends on what you mean by 'class' (many anciently-aristocratic families are more or less broke) and what you mean by 'results' (many public schools famously do very badly on 'value added' measures of results). My understanding - admittedly somewhat anecdotal and stereotypical - is that your actual nobs tend to be different to your aspirant upper-middle-class types, in that they're a lot more relaxed about whether you actually get any qualifications or any of that new-fangled book larned.

My (educated but unfounded) guess is that a very large percentage of hereditary peers will have gone to a public school, but on average won't have done terribly well (particularly given that they went to a Good School). The percentage who have a degree (never mind one from Oxbridge) might be a little higher than the population background (since pretty much all with the ability will have gone through) but will be substantially lower than, say, the membership of the House of Commons.

The Law Lords were a bit different - all a bit old hat now (it's Supreme Court these days), and it was a bit confusing (i.e. I never properly understood it) but basically being a Law Lord was a special sort of life peerage which you got by first being a Very Senior Judge. And to do that you needed to first be a Judge, which required earlier being a barrister. Obviously, family connections would help you come to the attention of the Lord Chancellor and speed promotion, but if you were a complete shower at any level you wouldn't make it.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

That was only because of the St. Mary's scandal.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

So it's really hard to make any good guesses about the qualifications of the Lords who showed up at the House of Lords, debated and voted. But I have a strong suspicion that you'd find them better educated (whether with a piece of paper to show for it or not) than the general populace. Far too many of the current House of Commons are career politicians, funded by corporate interests and at the mercy of the "bread and circuses" mob for me to be sure they will pass "good" law ... so having a second chamber that has a different spread of backgrounds and isn't directly answerable to the populace through an election, gives a chance for law to be made better ... and if the House of Commons doesn't agree, then they have the power to overrule the House of Lords and pass the law anyway.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

A follow on question ...

... across the UK, let's say 5% of people vote for BNP. But that they don't get a majority in any constituency.

Do you:
a) introduce additional non-geographical BNP MPs to make up the numbers
b) force an area to have a BNP MP even though they voted for someone else
c) get rid of local representation in Parliament
d) something else?

It's a serious question that follows on from PR.

[andrewducker]

Darn good question.

Depends on which version of PR we go with. If it's the Scottish model (Additional Member Voting) then you top up from party lists (your option a). If it's the Single Transferrable Vote then you still have regions, and these have multiple MPs. But you'd still need a fair chunk of the vote in each region to be elected.

In the Additional Member system the Greens got 2 MSPs elected based on 5% of the vote - but obviously these have very little power.

Under STV they'd quite possibly have nobody.

I'm actually ok with very fringe parties having nobody - I view it as a drawback, but there's no perfect voting system, and there are advantages to having a tie to a local(ish) MP. If I had the choice of having my local MP being a Tory MP who lived next door, or a Lib-Dem MP who covered a larger area (along with two Labour MPs and a Conversative) then I'd choose the latter state of affairs.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Thanks, excellent answer.

With that final option of having multiple MPs covering the same area (which I think I approve of, as it means that I'm likely to have an MP of *my* party (whatever that is!) as one of my "localish" representatives. And I guess you could have different areas covered by different MPs, so that, say, for London, you'd have one BNP covering all of London, two Green MPs, one covering London East and one London West, 10 Conservative MPs covering groups of boroughs, and 25 Labour MPs covering smaller groups of boroughs ... based roughly on the percentage of votes for each ... ouch, that's getting complex, because you probably don't know which Labour MP you're voting for because the coverage area may change depending on how many votes they get ... and if you just spread them across all of London, then you a small bit of BNP, more Green, far more conservative and most labour coverage, and then who do you write to if you have a problem? Who is *your* MP? Who comes to open the schools and hand out prizes at sports day?

Aieee, my head go splodey! :-)

[andrewducker]

Well, if you wanted to do things that way you could just get everyone to vote for a party, and then, once they'd been elected, they could assign themselves to different areas in whatever way they saw fit.

Whereas with the STV method you just have bigger areas, with multiple MSPs to return. This has the advantage that you can choose the order in which you support your MPs. You can choose to support a Labour one who is anti war, then two Lib-Dems, then a Green MP and then the Labour one who is pro-war, and then two Conservatives, before the UKIP get anywhere near your vote :->

This means that voters get to shape the party they vote for - if everyone votes for the anti-war Labour MPs then we still have a Labour party, but now they aren't in favour of war! (Not that I see that as likely, but you see my point).

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

Quite. On a personal level, it drives me absolutely crazy (particularly the more tax I pay) that I seem to not be of interest to any political party & am sitting in a fairly safe seat so my vote has little value.

I'm perhaps being somewhat basic, but I had thought one of the ideas behind universal suffrage was that all adults should have an equal say in the election of the government of the day. Clearly the current system doesn't deliver that.

Playing devil's advocate I can see (when things like you tax bill & public services are at stake) why it's quite easy to get behind PR when you think the current lot are a shower; rather more difficult when you're quite happy thankyouverymuch. That said, at the moment one does get the impression that the percentage holding the former view exceeds that holding the latter...but I do wonder how many of them are politically engaged.

[andrewducker]

I was in favour of PR when Labour got in. Because it was fairer. I was really annoyed that they reneged on their commitment.

[matgb]

Dude; Congress is elected using pretty much the same system we use for the Commons. Just because you have 2-year terms and the insanity of a directly elected executive doesn't actually change the basic voting system.

Re: for the slow american in the room

[matgb]

Democrats are a broad church party. Dean openly, and OBama covertly, support the Lib Dems (Obama's main campaign speechwrite was a Lib Dem activist from north London). But The Clinton/New Democrat faction is equivalent to New Labour, and the Old Labour have links with old unionised Democrats.

The confusing bit is the sane members of the Tories also support the Democrats. But the Dems are the right wing of the Lib Dems and Labour, and the left wing of the Tories...

US Greens aren't always as batshit crazy as our Greens though.

Re: for the slow american in the room

[andrewducker]

Hey! I know some very sane Greens!

[matgb]

Important.

Do not use the BBC swing calulator

Just don't do it. It doesn't work, and hasn't worked since 1983. IT can't take into effect tactical squeeze, nor can it deal with leading party surge or the crystalisation effect.

Use http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/ and put in 5% for to LD tactical voting from both main parties, with none against.

That'd accurately reflect previous voting patterns and current polling behaviour.

I repeat. Do not use the BBC generator, nor anything else that uses unmodified UNS.

Yes, there might be a post on this needed, again, but I need to not swamp the journal with polling geekery. Even though it's kinda what I do best.

Re: for the slow american in the room

[matgb]

Did you read the link I posted on Twitter about their manifesto?

I know some sane Greens, but their policy platform is a) still full of Woo and b) going to destroy chunks of the economy, 50% increase in alcohol duty would finally kill off a lot more struggling pubs, for example.

Target of 45% of GDP taken in tax, partially to stop growth of all kinds, regardless of whether it's good or damaging growth? Call it sane if you like, but I don't.

[andrewducker]

That one also shows a massive distortion...

[oldbaldchris.livejournal.com]

I would comment Andy, but I suspect you can guess what I would say - so in the interests of not upsetting a bunch of whining liberal PR loving tree hugging commie weirdy beardy "multi culture is a good thing" crap spouting people, I`ll just leave it. :)