A matter of size

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1669946]

Comments

[andrewducker]

I don't think that I'd be comfortable with more than 20%, because I'm not comfortable with the idea that (say) one person's vote is worth 50% more than someone else's.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

That's a finger-in-the-air number; I'm sure I could be persuaded in either direction.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

My answer is 'all things being equal' - literally. I do make an exception for very, very sparsely populated regions though - given that you can fit the population of the whole Highlands into the equivalent of a few streets in London, or something (may be a slight exaggeration) I don't want people having to travel a hundred miles for their MP's constituency surgery, nor for MPs to spend all their time travelling round their constituency rather than in Parliament representing them.
But as far as is practicable, I want everyone's vote to carry the same weight.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

(Here via your link on Twitter, and about to friend you here too, since we clearly have a bunch of common friends and interests).

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of geographically-based constituencies at all, although I recognise that they're important to a lot of people, and I'd have difficulty coming up with an alternative system that I could be sure was fairer.

But if we're going to have them, I'd prefer to see no more than a 10% variation in size (for which I'm reading 'size of the population of registered voters'). For me, that represents a principle of equality tempered by some allowance for the messiness of real life.

[andrewducker]

Added you back. Remind me who you are on Twitter? (drop me an email at andrew@ducker.org.uk if you'd rather not say publicly.)

And I tend to agree. I could live with 20% for some situations, but 10% seems generally fairer to me.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

you're on twitter? I don't have you? how did I miss this momentous occasion when I have you on everything else possible!

[andrewducker]

Yup, been on Twitter for a while. It's mostly my links feed though.

[drplokta]

Perhaps we should allow constituencies that are, say, 70% of the average size, where geography requires it, but then give that MP only 0.7 of a vote in the Commons.

[andrewducker]

robhu suggested that yesterday. I think that you'd end up with all sorts of fiddliness, and it would change the way that different MPs related to each other.

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20040212-the_worst_of_all_apart_from_the_others_which_have_been_tried.html

and

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20050421-dont_fall_asleep_yet.html

are both informative in providing both a proprtional first past the post system, and a decent objection to both FPTP and PR systems and why geographical constituencies happen to work better than you'd expect.

[andrewducker]

I can see the advantages. I just can't see the population going for it.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Except, weirdly, the smaller constituencies apparently tend to be the urban ones rather than the geographically spaced ones. For which it's hard to see a strong justification.

Votes are already worth different amounts depending on where you are; in my safe seat, my general election vote is worthless.

[andrewducker]

Oh, I totally agree with that. Which is why I support a change in the voting system so that they aren't.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I wasn't actually that bothered by the 5% number as long as exceptions were being made where necessary. I don't know enough of the details to comment on what % is actually fair by my princples, or whether I would personally want to see more exceptions made.

[andrewducker]

It's what point you'd be happy for the percentage to stretch to, under exceptions, that I want to know. Would you be happy for exceptional cases to be worth 20% more, 50% more, 100% more?

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Well, in a system with a PR top-up list it wouldn't matter to me if a constituency was undersized by 100% or more, because I'd know that the total number of MPs in Parliament reflected the number of votes counted, so it wouldn't matter to me how many people there were in any given single member constituency - it ceases to be 'unfair' and becomes a question of practical and geographic considerations.

In a system without PR there can be no 'fair' representation of my interests, so I still don't much care; you're just shining a turd.

[andrewducker]

I agree with you about the first one (although PR systems vary on how much they correct back to the purely proportional answer - the Greens got 4% of the list vote, but only 2% of the MSPs. Better than they would otherwise have done though.)

I'd rather have the most polished turd possible though - I prefer AV to FPTP, and I'd rather have the best system I can get under that, if that's the best option that's open to me.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree on AV/FPTP, as you know. But I don't think AV alone is capable of returning a more proportional vote (except as a side-effect); just a less objectionable one. So constituency boundaries, to me, seem like a secondary concern while the single member constituency system prevails. I don't much care if some country bumpkin's vote counts for twice mine when my vote barely counted anyway. I also believe that for minority voices to be heard they do sometimes need to be overrepresented, so all-in-all I'm not that bothered by the variation.

[andrewducker]

Definitely agreed that AV isn't proportional, it just produces more transparency as to voter intention (and prevents a chunk of wasted votes). My main hope is that once people see that voter intention is even more out of whack with the election results than it had previously looked, then I'm hoping that will spur more developments. But we shall see :->

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

indeed we shall.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

My response of 30% variation is a bit out of a hat.

I think the current system is so gnarled and battered with varying voter registrations, turn-outs and safety / marginality of seats / number of times the MP actually votes / speaks / attends committee / becomes a minsiter.

If the what you want from and electoral system is some people in a room who broadly represent the communities they come from then I'm pretty relaxed about the amount of variation in the sizes of those communities.

As an aside I think STV would allow you to have differently sized constituencies that could be accurately mapped onto communities as self-defined. Edinburgh and suburbs with 6 MP's could be one constituency.

[andrewducker]

I tend to agree - it's all trying to make a particular design better, rather than change the design for one that actually suits what you're trying to do.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Rather than equalisation on the basis of number of voters, why not equalisation on the basis of number of people?