Juho Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 10:22 PM
The Scottish situation sounds to me like a multi-party system
(that has emerged under different rules) has gotten trapped
in a two-party EM, and this kind of mixture is not a pretty
match (looks actually quite terrible).
No, not at all. For UK (Westminster) parliament elections the whole of the UK
has used only FPTP (simple plurality) in
single-member districts for many decades, in most case for more than 100 years.
We all also used the same voting system
for local government elections (the only other public elections we had until
comparatively recently). In the elections
after the 1939-45 war, the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) got
around 90% of the total vote (96.8% in 1951).
The third party was the Liberals (now Liberal Democrats) who, in elections
after 1945, got around 9% of the vote, but
only 1% of the seats. Despite Duverger's law, support for the Liberal
Democrats has grown and in 2005 they had 25% of
the vote and 9.6% of the seats. Eight smaller parties also have seats in the
UK Parliament. So there has been a
three-party system across the whole of the UK for some time.
In Scotland the SNP (Scottish National Party - campaigning for independence)
became a significant force in 1970, gaining
11% of the vote, again despite Duverger's law. In the October 1974 election
the SNP peaked at 30.5% of the vote, and
they now get around 20% of the vote (but far fewer seats). So In Scotland we
have had a four-party system for the past
30 years, all based on single-member districts and the simple plurality (FPTP)
voting system.
I guess the other three parties were fed up with
conservatives taking too many seats (more than PR would
allow?) and decided to join forces.
No, the Conservatives were UNDER-represented in Scotland. In the 1992 election
they got 26% of the votes but only 15%
of the seats. But the Conservatives had formed the UK Government (the only
government we then had) since 1979, a period
of 18 years when the 1997 election was called. The Conservative Government was
increasingly disliked (!!) in Scotland.
The others obviously got
their revenge and now took more seats than PR would allow :-).
No, this was NOT a move by the other parties. The Scotland Tory-free
campaign was a grass-roots campaign among
electors. There were some websites exchanging information among electors, but
the parties all stayed very quiet on the
subject.
I tend to think that if voters are clever enough to make the
1997 tactic work, they would also be able to use full PR
right if they would be given the chance.
Yes indeed! The Scottish Parliament is elected by MMP and our electors have
(mostly) shown great ability to manipulate
that voting system (so far).
A good voting system
is anyway such where one can vote based on one's sincere
preferences. And I do believe better EMs exist than the poor
multi/two-party combination of 1997.
STV-PR is probably the best way of allowing voters to express their sincere
preferences.
On STV:
STV gives at least the option of giving first position to a
local candidate and second to some non-local alternative.
I don't understand this comment. With STV-PR as I know it, ALL the candidates
are local, ie all within one
locality-based multi-member district. If any party is so stupid as to include
some carpet-baggers in its team of
candidates, the voters will deal with them very severely. When you have
community-based multi-member districts for
STV-PR, the term local takes on a new meaning, especially in rural areas
where there are likely to be several
significant clusters of population. Then you want to make sure your team of
candidates do not all live and work in the
same part of the district. This applies even in densely populated cities.
This scenario has however the problem that typically voters
tend to vote well known candidates, and they often come e.g.
from the capital, not from the local community. I guess this
is one reason why EMs often force people to vote only the
local candidates.
STV-PR encourages the electors to learn more about more candidates, but they
can vote however they want, eg by party, by
locality, by women before men, by ethnic community, by some pressing local
issue, by any combination of these, etc. I
may not think much of the criteria you used to select your preferences, but
they are your criteria and in a democracy,
your criteria are as valid as mine or anyone else's.
I know that by promoting STV-PR I shall help to secure the election of some
candidates whose political views I oppose,
and I know that I shall be helping to empower some voters who, in my view, make
very poor choices based on very poor
criteria. But that's democracy and I do believe in democracy.
STV style has the problem that voters need to have lots of
information about the candidates. Or maybe they'll just vote
the most famous ones. My ideal
