Arguments Against PR

Arguments Against PR

Full Rep voters are sometimes dismayed to see some leaders of a failed governing majority win reelection and even cabinet positions. "Why can't we throw the bums out?" they ask.
-- Those voters obviously did not vote for the bums. Other voters did and they have the right to choose the bums to be their representatives.

Full Rep is promoted mainly by members of a few tiny fringe groups such as the Libertarian Party and the Greens. They hope PR will give them the balance of power between the two major parties, as indeed it often does in countries which use PR. Voters are better served by focusing on the realistic policy options articulated by the major candidates. --

PR When the legislature is divided among more than two parties the chances for gridlock increase.

Latin American countries have problem when a combination of a PR legislature with an independent president results in deep gridlock (see Gary Cox, p. 59 of "Reflecting Us All, The Case for Proportional Representation", Robert Richie and Steven Hill, ed., Beacon Press, Boston, 1999.) The president's veto power is key; absent that, this gridlock can not occur.

Part of the solution, according to Cox, is tightly linking the election of the president with election of the legislature, so the president's "coattails" help give her a legislative majority and make reps seek her favor in coming campaigns. Their elections should be simultaneous and should use equally eccentric voting rules -- so IRV is usually best.

(Another part of the solution is to limit the number of effective parties the president must negotiate with by limiting the number of reps elected from any district. Three-seat districts are best for this purpose. With a local threshold of 25%, they usually produce one or two reps from each of the two major parties and none from smaller parties.)

The threshold can be set too high; Turkey's is ten percent. In their 2002 election nearly 50% of voters supported parties that did not win any seats because they won less than 10% of the national vote. The Islamic-linked party that won more than 360 seats in the 550-seat legislature won only 34% of the vote.

Greater competition would sacrifice some of the "stability" The U.S. enjoys under the two-party monopoly.
-- But plurality rules let extremists from one party win an absolute majority and sharply change policies, as in Thatcher's England and Bush's America.

Single Transferable Vote

"One of the arguments I've heard against preference voting (STV and IRV) is that we already over-tax the voters by asking them to fill a plethora of public offices, the candidates for which they already know little or nothing about. On top of that, we're now proposing to ask the voters to rank several candidates for each office."
        Tony Solgard

Some of those who insist STV confuses voters argue more generally to limit the voters' choices and power. The two are closely linked; exercising power requires making choices.

Are Americans less able than the Australians or Irish? Most voters in cities that use IRV like it. Are other American voters less able?

If he wants, a voter may mark only his first choice, just the same as he does now. STV also lets a voter may rank the candidates in his order of preference, something the old voting system does not allow a voter to do.

Allies of politics as usual try to foist a wild and inaccurate analogy on STV by saying transfers "give some voters 2 bites at the electoral apple." This lie is easily exposed with a visible tally.

Looking at the final count of a Tabletop Tally, a facilitator can point to one of the last ballots transferred to the last winner, then to one of the first- choice ballots given to the first winner and ask, "Did this voter's ballot win more representation than that voter's ballot?" (Or, even more simply ask, "Did these voters win more representation than those voters?")

It is immediately obvious that both have won equal representation.

STV Versus Party-List PR

Personality Or Policy

by Hon. Ed Broadbent (Ottawa Centre) on the Citizens' Assembly process:

"I add in passing, as once an early fan of the B.C. process, I realized a little late, but near the end, that it was like designing a health care system without consulting doctors. I think it was a disaster, but I'm not going to elaborate on that. None of you seem to want to go that route, the B.C. route, if I can say it."

"[I]n practice, this system fails to address some important values and has negative effects on others. Even if it brings us an increase in proportionality, it comes at the cost of weakening the policy and personal cohesiveness of political parties. STV promotes an environment where the individual candidate is significantly more important than the party. In multi-member constituencies in this system, candidates compete not only with members of other parties, but also with those of their own party. Their campaigns are run more like those of individuals in our municipal elections. What has inevitably resulted, as in Ireland, is that when members of the same party battle against each other, national platforms are sacrificed for personal and local competitions, and there is little internal party cohesion. It becomes more, not less difficult to hold parties and their leaders accountable for elections platforms and promises. It weighs against party responsibility for developing nationally cohesive programs." "Furthermore, STV does not have a good record in reflecting diversity. The only two national governments that employ this system, Ireland and Malta, have bad records when it comes to women in their legislatures, near the bottom in comparison with European countries and even worse than what Canada has today. We need a system that would improve diversity in parliament, not set it back."

from "The Right-Side Lock"

"The Single Transferable Vote proposal for BC elections contains a quirk that could guarantee a permanent rural and right wing advantage in all future elections."

[This does not relate to STV for individual cities, schools, clubs or other organizations that have only one district. Single-winner districts create a similar bias against a working-class party, as show in many studies such as Seats and Votes, the Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems. by Rein Taagepera, and Mathew Soberg Shugart; 1989. RL]

original at http://www.republic-news.org/archive/106-repub/106_potvin_stv.htm

"Under STV, the rural ridings will have smaller numbers of seats, as few as two, and the urban ridings will have larger numbers of seats, as many as seven. As a result, the threshold for victory in rural ridings will be high-as much as 34%-but the threshold for victory in urban ridings will be low-as little as 13%. This means that for the traditionally challenging party in the rural areas-typically the left wing party-where today they get less than 30% of the vote, 34% will be required under STV. But for the traditionally challenging party in urban areas-typically the right wing party-where today they get close to 40% of the vote, only 13% will be required under STV."

"The left wing parties will remain as locked out of less-dense areas as they are now, since the right wing party will simply run two candidates in the sure knowledge both will get 34% at least after vote transfers. But right wing parties will break through in highly dense areas where they are locked out now-like in East Vancouver-because it's likely some can get at least 13% once transfers have occurred. If 13% was the threshold for victory in rural areas, it's likely left wing candidates could pick up a seat or two. But it isn't: the threshold there is three times higher as here."