Annoyed by politics

[andrewducker]

I keep seeing articles talking about alliances between the Lib Dems and Conservatives, either for the next election, or for the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election that's happening a week today. In the latter case, many of the Conservatives basically seem to be saying "We don't have a chance of winning, so you Tory voters should vote LibDem instead, so that Labour don't win."

Not only do I disagree over there being alliances over elections (because it denies people a free choice), but I object to the fact that the current system encourages them. If we had AV then Conservative voters could vote the way they want to (Conservative) and then vote Lib-Dem as a second choice _if that's what they want_. Similarly, Lib-Dem voters could vote Lib-Dem first, and then either Conservative or Labour depending on which they preferred as a second-choice, etc., etc.

That way the parties could concentrate on standing for themselves, and not what other parties are doing, and electoral bargaining could at least wait until _after_ the votes were in.

As it is, the election results won't actually tell us what the honest choices of the electorate are. People will be voting tactically, to keep out the people they oppose, based on guesswork over who has the most chance of winning. It's a horribly broken system.

(Not that I think that AV is the bees knees, but it's decidedly better than FPTP. I think my ideal system would probably be AV with an AMS top-up, but that's a completely different debate.)

Comments

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Absolutely agree - except why would you want AV with an AMS top-up? AMS gives party leaders control over who gets in, rather than voters, meaning that any party with more than a trivially small amount of votes gets automatic safe seats for leadership loyalists.
STV still seems to me the perfect balance between preferentiality and proportionality...

[andrewducker]

How does it cope with a party with 10% of the votes spread evenly across the country?

All of the discussions I've seen have posited multi-member constituencies with 5 or so members in them. If we're going to have 20 members in a group then I'd go with STV, but otherwise you're margnalising people more than I'm comfortable with.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Looking at the results in Ireland, last election 25 out of 166 members got in with under 11% of the first-preference vote (an arbitrary figure I chose for your '10% of the votes'). Many of those were, it's true, second- or third-place candidates for large parties, but it still suggests that a party which genuinely had across-the-board 10% support would get, if anything, a disproportionately *high* result (assuming it did reasonably on transfers from other parties).

(I couldn't find any statistics on this, so went through the Eire 2007 results by hand - if anyone has any better data, I'd like to know).

[andrewducker]

But what you've got there is a party getting (for instance) 60% of the vote, and thus multiple of their representatives getting through.

As most of the people I know vote by party, not representative, I can't see it working nearly as well cross-party, as they'd vote for all of the reps for a party before they voted for a different one.

If I remember rightly, the last poll I ran showed that most people didn't even know who their prospective candidate was, they weer just going to vote for whoever was next to "Raving Loony" on the ballot.

[andrewducker]

nwhyte has convinced me further down...

[nwhyte]

Just on a point of information: in the last Northern Ireland Assembly election (18 six-member constituencies elected by STV), the quota was theoretically 14.29% in each constituency but in practice any candidate with more than 8.9% (and most candidates with more than 8.4%) got in. So in fact a party with a fairly even 10% spread is unlikely to be badly penalised. Even a party with a fairly even 5% spread is likely to have enough strong candidates to get people elected (as has happened repeatedly in Northern Ireland).

[drplokta]

My ideal system is Single Transferable Vote, with a requirement that for party affiliations to be listed against candidate names on the ballot, the party must put up at least one more candidate than there are seats available, so that voters can choose between different candidates for the same party.

So, for example, if a constituency will elect three MPs (multi-member constituencies are required for STV), parties must put up at least four candidates. This will mean that for individual MPs there is no such thing as a safe seat, so they will have to work harder for their constituents.

[andrewducker]

See above comment to Andrew Hickey for my objection to STV in that regard. Other than that I like STV a lot.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I don't like that requirement. For smaller parties, like the Greens, that could fatally weaken them. It would also lead to a lot of 'independent' candidates who were actually from extremist groups (be they BNP or SWP) without that information being on the ballot paper. The Greens, say, are only likely to get a maximum one MP in a four-member constituency, so whether they stood two candidates or five the choice would still be in effect.

[drplokta]

I'd be happy with an alternative rule that a party can only have at most (n-1) candidates elected, where n is the number that they put up, so that the Greens can run only two if they're confident they can't have two winners.

[nwhyte]

Interesting thought, but from the campaign organisers' point of view, do you have any idea how difficult it can be to find even one candidate, let alone four people willing to be nominated when they all know in advance that at least three of them won't be elected?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

But this is in bigger constituencies, so instead of 3 candidates for 3 constituencies you have 4 candidates for one three-times-the-size constituency. Or do I misunderstand you?

[matgb]

If you chance it to one more than they got last time, minimum, then it would be viable and work.

But insisting all parties put up more candidates than there are total seats, despite the odds of any party getting even 50% of the votes being small, is going to substantially increase voter confusion, decrease the chances of minority candidates and create havoc.

Masses of studies (and nwhyte knows a lot more about this than I) indicate that parties that put forward too many candidates lose out as voters simply stop numbering in order of preference past a certain point.

That's why Australia introduced the 'above the line' party agreed distribution for STV Senate eletions.

Essentially, if the party is likely to win 1, and could possibly win 2 seats, then putting two candidates forward fulfills your criteria of 'no safe seats' and ensures they work.

One of the biggest critiques of STV I've read for Ireland is the parochialism it encourages, MPs have to keep working, constantly, because they know they can lose out. Lord Trimble thinks that's a bad thing (in fact, all his objections struck me as being bloody good reasons for, but different worldviews are interesting to encounter).

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

For single-winner elections only a Condorcet system makes sense.

[andrewducker]

Sadly, it fails the "an ordinary person can understand how it works" test, as I've seen repeatedly when people try to explain Condorcet.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

How would you go about testing this assertion? If you were doing a survey to test a particular explanation of STV vs a particular explanation of Condorcet, what questions would you ask the subjects after they'd seen the explanation?

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

... though of course, as I'm sure you're aware, it's far from free of issues, including how you rank your lower choices (potentially) affecting the chances of your first choice getting elected, and, famously, potential funny effects from adding irrelevant alternative candidates to the ballot.

And equally famously, though to my mind much less seriously in terms of shady tactical election deal-making, there's the question of what to do if you get circular preferences (i.e. when there's no single Condorcet winner - e.g. a majority prefer A to B, a majority prefer B to C, and a majority prefer C to A, all in the same election) - with SFAIK no widely-agreed answer as to how best to resolve those.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

As I'm sure you know, all voting systems have issues thanks to Arrow's Theorem; those that don't sacrifice Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives have much worse problems. AV has much, much more serious problems - under certain circumstances for example, a subset of voters moving a candidate from first to last on their ballots can cause that candidate to win where they would otherwise have lost!

I'm much more pushed about Condorcet in general than the particular variant used: MAM is my favourite but I wouldn't moan about BeatPath being used instead. I've never heard of a real Condorcet election that didn't have a Condorcet winner anyway.

[matgb]

Heh, all those comments, virtually all about voting systems and how to count, far fewer about the thrust of your actual post. We're such a bunch of geeks.

Note that All the talk of 'electoral alliances' and similar is coming from the Tories. And it's worth noting that the Conservative and Unionist Party of the United Kingdom is nothing if not an electoral alliance writ large, so they sort of expect this sort of thing, they just absorb smaller parties all the time.

Lib Dems are opposed, for most of the reasons you state, most importantly that AV precludes the need for one immediately.

Within the last 60 years, the Tories have absorbed the National Liberals, the Liberal Nationals, the Scottish Unionists (and I think an off shoot), and absorbed then de absorbed then attempted to absorb again then given up on the idea the Ulster Unionists. Electoral pacts are second nature to them, and a factor of FPTP.

Labour is, after all, in permanent electoral pact with the Cooperative Party (unfortunately, I'd join them if they disaffiliated). Thee and me want preferential voting to give voters the real say.

Those that favour FPTP are at least consistent, and favour pre-election pacts so the voters know what they're getting afterwards. FPTP's main "strength" is it encourages a forced choice between leading candidates. Apparently.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I havered back and forth about whether to include my own preferences, because I knew it would derail the conversation. Ah well.

And yeah, FPTP encourages electoral pacts inside parties, which leads to more tribalism. I'd rather that the big groups were formed ad-hoc around the centre, with changes in voting patterns shifting things a bit left or a bit right, rather than big jumps back and forth.

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

Amen. :-)

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I should preface my remarks by saying that I am a local organiser for the Yes campaign.

I like the Alternative Vote system. I would probably prefer the Single Transferable Vote or Alternative Vote with Additional Member top up (with open lists rather than closed) but what I’m being offered is AV or First Past the Post.

I both observe and feel the tribalism. I used to a very tribal member of the Labour Party and, after drifting towards the Liberal Democrats, I now feel much more tribally Labour than I have done in 5 years. That’s how I feel. It’s different from how I think, or I think it is.

One of the interesting things for me about working on the AV campaign is meeting lots of different people from different political persuasions. I think I am a more rounded citizen and politician because of it.

My current image of British politics is an arch. Two large, heavy buttresses pushing against each other with great power and energy in order to keep the status quo static. You pick one side or the other and heave away for the rest of your life and you don’t speak to, let alone trust, anyone not on your side. Whilst some changes have happened and the voting share of the Labour and Conservative Parties has fallen over the last 50 years I think that’s how many people in parties feel. They create structures and systems that suit the way they feel and it’s difficult to change the way people think and feel about how they do the business of politics.

Everything becomes very tightly structured around the Party. Your status within the Party is judged on your loyalty to the Party, not to the voters, even voters who actually voted for you personally.

As a thought experiment on tribalism, imagine if you were a very politically aware and active citizen sitting somewhere between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats and explicitly said to each candidate “I’ll campaign for you if you convince me that you are the best candidate and the one most aligned with my own views but my support next time round will be contingent on your voting and activism record. I will campaign for your opponent if you fail my interview ”. Imagine how that conversation would go.

So I like AV because it begins to do something about the tribalism of politics by increasing voter power.

I think it increases voter power by
• Creating more marginal seats
• Reduces the risks of vote splitting
• Increases personal accountability
• Allows implicit primaries or splinter candidates
• Reducing the number of wasted votes (ie votes not cast for the eventual winner or runner up)

I also think AV gives smaller parties more influence. They may not gain any more seats but their voters will have to be courted for 2nd and 3rd preferences.

AV also creates the potential for larger parties to split. I think the Conservative party are particularly susceptible to this, given the breadth of their views and the existence of UKIP. I think the model of the Liberal / Country / National alliance in Australia is one to look at.

Generally I see AV as lowering the barriers to entry for parties and the barriers to shifting your support as a voter. If a new party enters an election under First Past the Post in order to poll any significant vote is must firstly persuade me to vote for it and then persuade me that everyone else will vote for it too. That is a hard hill to climb.

Anything that creates more competition tends to move power from suppliers (parties) to consumers (voters).

What I would hope from AV is that
• Whips have reduced power as MP’s keep one eye on both voters and rogue challenges from their own constituency party
• More independent or independently minded MP’s
• More accurate polling for smaller parties leading to a better appreciation of voters’ desires
• More influence for smaller parties (arguably more in line with their national polling)

Those MP’s and party managers who are able to enter into a dialogue with other parties and non-aligned activists best will begin to prosper and the culture of our political parties and political debate will begin to change.

I think it will take several election cycles under the new system for voters, candidates and party managers to get used to the new system and we may get some strange occurrences for a while.

[andrewducker]

I agree about the shift in power. And I sincerely hope that it leads to a growth in small parties.

Oh, and I definitely agree that it will take a few elections to really bed in. But I'm fine with that, change takes time, and it's always worth pushing forwards.

[andrewducker]

Also, would you care to post this on your own journal for me to link to? Or shall I just link to it here?

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I've cross posted to my journal. Link away.