h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

To ask a possibly stupid question, but in this day and age, I would say that the personalities ARE issues.

Bah, but they shouldn't be. We vote for a party, not a Prime Minister.

Is it personality, though, or is it factors like judgement, integrity, foresight, strength of purpose, leadership skills, stature?

There's a difference between saying "It's important to me that our next PM has the judgement to get us out of the current economic mess, the integrity to act consistently in relationship to the troops in Afghanistan, the foresight to manage the changing relationship with the US in a way that doesn't sell us short... etc" and "So and so is a complete who's so ing stupid he landed us in xyz, who has consistently lied about abc, and who couldn't see an on-coming train if it sprayed him across the track". As an example.

Ben

For the record, I think they are ALL a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall come the revolution, to quote the editors of the HHGG and their opinion of the folks who ran the Encyclopaedia Gallactica, back in the day.

How dare you say that about the leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party, who until recently was based where i used to live
...
The fact that we moved at almost the same time does not mean we are the same people

It's more removed than that - we vote for a constituency candidate.

IRV is the way to go, just as long as we don't go to proportional representation.

Though i would like the bias against the Tories to be removed.

IRV won't even begin to tackle the gross unfairness of a party gaining 22% of the vote, but only 9.6% of the seats, when another gets 35% of the vote, but 55% of the seats.

Just out of curiosity and as I'm from a country that has had it for a long time: why not proportional representation?

PR can lead to people getting a tiny amount of the original vote and then ending up in power, or different methods can break the link between a constituency and those in power.

Also PR quite frequently ends up with less powerful majorities, alot of my foreign friends were quite confused why so many english people were alarmed by the current prospect of a hung parliament, which is not a prefered method of government in the UK.

PR might work better if people could then pick which party their own would end up joining with to form a coalition.

I don't understand - surely if it's proportional, how can a party with a tiny proportion of the vote end up in power?

How?

Rephrase - tiny amount of the original vote, and even 2nd or 3rd stage, vote, but as candidates get knocked out, votes can swing over to candidates who were orginally 3rd or 4th.


I wish i had more time so i could have finished my uni project, i only ever got round to doing a couple of the entries, maybe this summer i'll do some more work.

I think you're describing IVR there, not PR.

IRV, sorry.

Assuming i'm right, which admitablly is fundamentally risky, I think IRV is where everyone but the top two candidates is knocked out immediatly, whereas in PR, only the worst performing candidate is removed.

A quick and dirty translation of Pros and Cons lists of the two major forms from a Danish Wikipedia article:

Constituencies

Pros
* Easy for the voters - normally two options to choose from
* Typically majority governments - more power/room to manouver for the winning party ("stronger governments")
* The smaller party normally has seats enough to be a "watchdog" and a realistic alternative (at the next election)
* Supports broad parties. In fragmented countries, parties have to reach out to all/most fractions
* Extremist parties have less chance of getting elected
* Elected politicians represent their constituency, giving voters an expectation that they will "work for them"

Cons

* Minority parties are more or less excluded from equal representation
* Fewer women typically run and are elected
* Can provoke reactions (from revolt to political indifference) from those who feel they're not represented
* Where you're elected may be more important than political values
* High number of "wasted votes" - up to 49% in a two-party system
* Region sizes may not be reflected in consituency sizes - so some areas may be over/underrepresented


Proportional representation

Pros

* The number of votes is - almost - directly converted to number of seats in parliament
* Low waste of votes
* Minority parties can get representation
* Parties will gain by running diverse candidates
* Parties will be interested in working in all areas
* Much larger probability of getting women elected
* Better probability of long-term planning/political work (as cooperation between parties are more frequently needed)
* Changing majorities (in the same setting) is possible, making the system more representative

Cons

* Coalition governments are not as efficient in making quick decisions when needed
* Smaller parties can easier exert pressure on the bigger ones
* Extremist parties can easier get representation
* Cooperation between parties is more a result of party interests than voter interests
* Larger parties can stay in government despite not being popular through changing partners
* Candidates have a less strong contact to the local area where they're elected
* Party influences may be stronger than voters'
* The list systems require voters to be aware of what politics a party stand for
* Vote counting is less simple/transparent


Of all those, and upon thinking about the list, the points that make me happy about the Danish proportional system are -

- women likelier to run and being elected
- less waste / less risk of political indifference (we typically have voting percentages for parliament around 85% of the population - compare to the US where, from memory, it's less than 50 - probably for more reasons than this, but still)

I'm pretty used to PR since we've used it in Norn Irn for as long as I've been a voter!

It's great: I've seen elections where I've started at the bottom of a list of 15 names and worked my way up from least favourite, alternating between the 2 extremist parties that I didn't want elected .

Analyse that, Nick Robinson!

What's IVR (or IRV or whatever it is)?

Instant run-off voting, a la yer Irish presidential election. Vote 1,2,3 etc. If no candidate gets a majority, the one with least votes is eliminated, and the votes are transferred to the second preference marked on the ballot. And so on, until there's one candidate with a majority.

The French presidential system is similar, ultimately - except instead of votes being numbered and transferred, they just eliminate one and have a second ballot. Better for theatrics, worse for convenience and cost of running the whole shebang.

Thanks for those pros and cons, Santragenius

I don't understand why fewer women would get elected, though.