IRV Alliance wrote: >If you care to be honest about how real-life politics works, it is >not possible to have a dominant majority using IRV. >
How in this context do you define "dominant"? Are you referring simply to a single party or disciplined coalition with (a "comfortable") absolute majority of the single-member seats in a legislature/parliament? >Using PR, it hardly matters if the Sunnis get 10% or 30% of the >representation. Why vote? They are still almost powerless compared >to the competing majority. > The factor that you are oblivious to is that from the point of view of minority parties and factions, getting some seats in the legislature is vastly vastly better than getting none. MPs get well paid and get big and many perks and privileges and parties with some MPs have a big advantage over those with none. It isn't just about passing laws and being in the government. Also I reject your approach that "PR or not PR?" is purely a utilitarian pragmatic question. As far as I am concerned, minorities, broadly speaking, have a *right* to be proportionately represented. And that is partly about having their representatives/leaders get their fair share of the salaries, perks and privileges that the state gives to elected MPs. >Sensing strong PR support, maybe you could help me out by naming >any govt. agency anywhere worldwide that has voluntarily adopted PR >general elections lately. > I believe there is some movement for Italy (I think it was) to return to some form of PR. Within the last few years, STV-PR has been instituted for the Australian Capital Territory legislature and the upper house in the Australian state of Victoria. There has been strong movement to adopt STV-PR in the Canadian province of British Columbia. >Well, I have seen them differentiated many times. I thought that >legislatures are elected by district, but parliaments are elected by >PR and then they appoint a prime minister. > The original western parliament is the British House of Commons, which uses Plurality (aka FPP) in single-member districts. A legislature is just a body that passes laws. The big difference between a Parliamentary system and the US-style Presidential system is that in the US the Executive is separate from the Legislature. The head of state is the President who is directly elected and then just appoints to the Executive/Cabinet exactly who he/she likes and those appointees are only really answerable to the President. In the Parliamentary system, the government rests on the support of and is answerable to Parliament (the "Lower House" of Parliament in the case of a bicameral system). The head of the government is the Prime Minister who is a member of Parliament, and is not normally directly elected at large (I think an exception is Israel). The PM is normally in theory appointed by the Head of State, but in practice and in effect is elected by the MPs. The Head of State can be a constitutional monarch or can be a largely ceremonial President. The members of cabinet all have to be MPs and are normally appointed by the PM, (or the MPs of the governing party might elect the members of the Cabinet and the PM decides which "portfolios" they get) but the PM and his/her ministers are answerable to Parliament and have to periodically answer questions put by Opposition MPs. If the Parliament passes a "motion of no-confidence in the government", then the government must resign and normally the crisis is resolved by having a new general election but I suppose in theory the Head of State could appoint a new PM who "commands a majority on the floor of the House". So a parliament is a legislature, but a legislature isn't necessarily a parliament. > Regarding Ireland, It supposedly has the healthiest economy in >Europe and partisan violence has virtually ended since IRV was >adopted. (it would take years to overcome established competition) >However, if the parliament elects a PM, that is not straight IRV and >would make the district elections MORE partisan, probably more than >off-setting the IRV effect. > Ireland has a Parliamentary system with the Lower House (on which the government is based) elected by STV-PR (aka Hare-Clarke) from multi-member districts (which I think range from 3 to 7 members). IRV is used to elect their (mostly just ceremonial) President, and I'm not sure exactly how they elect their Upper House. There has been more than one attempt in Ireland to get rid of PR by referendum, but the voters voted to keep it. Some links that might help you get a clue: http://www.electionresources.org/ http://psephos.adam-carr.net/ http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~lee/prsa/links.html Chris Benham > > ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
