I don't really want to emulate the voting systems in any of the red countries

[andrewducker]

Comments

[birguslatro]

I didn't realise AV was mostly only in Australia! It'd be interesting to see the changes over time, if there's been many.

[skington.livejournal.com]

Strange choice of colours. PR and Plurality are the most unlike systems; AV and Runoff are the most similar systems. You wouldn't know that from the colour palette, though.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

FPTP guarantees a government by the plurality (whichever candidate/party is most popular, even if he represents 10% of the vote). It's not a good system when you have more than two choices.

The only advantage of FPTP is that it's simple.

(Yes, I know about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Just because there won't be a system of voting that meets all criteria doesn't mean we can't maximize those criteria we find more important.)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

What's the source of the image?

[andrewducker]

Friend of a friend on FB. I've asked him where he got it, and whether he has a higher res version.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

May I copy the image?

[andrewducker]

Of course. He finally got back to me with the larger version, so you can start with that, if you like:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/400524/Map%20of%20electoral%20systems%20so%20you%20can%20read.gif

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Interesting. The thing that strikes me first is that almost all of the planet now lives in a democracy (with the only populous exception being China). A century ago that was vividly untrue. Wow.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Well, nominal democracy, at any rate. Democracy as some system-endorsed ideal. Note it's counting Egypt (admittedly in transition) and Iran (somewhat democratic under a theocratic lid).

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I think it's worth saying in FPTP's defense that it actually works pretty much fine in America - there are problems with the system but FPTP isn't really one of 'em.

[andrewducker]

I do wonder if they wouldn't have just two parties if it wasn't for FPTP. Every so often someone else tries to break in and fails, because you can't vote third party easily.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

But it's been shown that in the UK a third party can rise up given time even under FPTP - true, there might be significant minority parties if they were using PR, but why complicate things unnecessarily with a proportional system while the two party thing is in full swing and things basically are proportional?

[andrewducker]

I guess I'm just used to the US being even more tribal than the UK, and any attempt to break away from that is seen as futile over there, because if your local voting isn't the same as the state voting, which isn't the same as the presidential voting then you're betraying your party. So it's even harder for a third party to break into the voting than it is over here.

But I could well be wrong.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I think one of the *big* differences over there is the primary system. If you have primaries you've effectively got a run-off or preferential style election anyway (at least in those areas where there are open primaries - but in those that aren't you have party membership rates that dwarf those of British parties). That does, of course, lead to its own peculiarities (RINOs and DINOs as natural supporters of $partythatcan'twinhere vote en masse in the primaries) but it's still more democratic than the British system, and probably explains why the Libertarians, Greens or Reform party haven't done as much.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Things in the US aren't proportional, though. The two parties in the legislature don't necessarily reflect their proportions of the votes. Many of us would like to vote for other parties but know that we effectively can't. And we have all the problems of wasted minority votes in majority districts, and of gerrymandered districts designed to make votes not count. (Which would apply even if we used IRV; the problem is with districting there, not FPTP vs. IRV).

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Sure, I mean, IRV isn't proportional either - a switch to AV from FPTP in America would be beyond pointless.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Beyond pointless? No more pointless than in the UK or Australia, surely.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Given that the results turned in by an AV vote in the US vs an FPTP vote would be completely identical, I think it would be, yeah. The situation in the US is still way more pluralised than it is here - you're in no danger, for example, of delivering a hung parliament. The advantage to AV in the UK is that (in the absence of a genuinely fair system of PR) it would help to solve the 'left-wing split' problem and effectively take a big chunk out of the unfair advantage said split gives the Tories - we can say what we like about it being about 'fairness' or 'pleasing the most people' but ultimately that's exactly what the AV referendum was for (why Labour didn't notice this I have no idea).

Until there's a 'big third party' in the US I can't see any advantage to a move to something like AV - unless you feel that there's already a significant third party or number of independents that would suddenly appear under an altered system, but there just doesn't seem to be much more than anecdotal evidence for that, whereas in the UK the Lib Dems got well over 23% of the popular vote and only 9% of the seats. For all that there are a lot of disgruntled liberals (and perhaps even more disgruntled conservatives) in the US, this just doesn't seem to have much evidence of being reflected in completely wasted votes.*


*Technically, of course, the LD/Con coalition actually represents 59% of the population and is therefore pretty 'fair' in terms of the actual balance of power in parliament. But the majority of the 23% who voted Lib Dem don't really feel that way...

[andrewducker]

I suspect that in the USA you won't see it rising any higher without a system that allows it to rise higher without vote splitting. I have heard people complaining about a vote splitting effect in tight races - I remember it under the Gore/Bush race, when Perot ran for President, and particularly for the effect of Ralph Nader.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

What Andrew said. We don't have a systematic large third party like the LDs or NDP, but we do have Greens and Libertarians that might occasionally make a difference, and independent Presidential candidates like John Anderson or Ross Perot or Ralph Nader or George Wallace. So I don't think it's true that IRV would make no difference whatsoever. Low benefit/effort ratio compared to alternatives, yes.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

This American disagrees vehemently.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

What about the black countries?

[andrewducker]

They're on the key...

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I understood they were on the key, as non-democratic. I was just wondering if you considered them worse than the red places, or better because at least there wasn't the pretense of democracy - as in the UK as "elected dictatorship" idea.

[andrewducker]

Oh Good Lord No. I'd rather have bad democracy than no democracy.

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Guess they only considered the House of Representatives in Australia (which uses a form of AV), the Senate uses PR, so we should be shaded a mixture of blue/purple :)

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

But the PR system used is STV, which is also preferential like AV... I think the phrase is It's Not As Simple As That ;)

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I'd disagree. Yes, they both involve ranking the candidates (as do other systems), and even count the votes similarly, but the fact that AV/IRV picks a single winner from a district, while STV selects multiple winners in a proportional manner, is a huge difference. The important thing is that the Senate is PR, with multiple parties; the lower house is IRV, with two effective parties. Well worth noting, if the map creator were dealing with upper houses as well; likely they're just considering lower houses, though.