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PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SOCIETY OF |
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Tel +613 9589 1802 |
Tel +61429176725 |
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BEAUMARIS VIC 3193 |
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2010-08-07 |
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Proportional Representation and
its Importance Why do we want Representation?
Making decisions for large
groups is very difficult. Should all the taxpayers in the country
collectively decide how the money is to be spent? Could they collectively
decide? Should all members of the PR Society collectively decide that the
Secretary's most recent postal expenses be reimbursed? Would they want to? Or
would the members prefer to delegate this responsibility to their
representatives? Making decisions in small groups is
easier. Most people prefer to delegate some decisions. Why do we want Proportional Representation?
There are many ways
representatives can be chosen: members of rich and powerful families,
military leaders, etc. The underlying principle of democracy is that decisions that affect
the people should largely accord with the will of the people. One way to
improve the prospects of this is for representatives to be elected. The basis of representative
democracy is that the collective views of the representatives reflect the
collective views of the people. Proportional Representation is simply a more
precise statement of this ideal: the proportion of representatives that hold
a particular view should be roughly the same as the proportion of the people
that hold that view. Note that if there is only a single representative this
is impossible. Proportional
Representation must be based on a corporate body of representatives. How can we achieve it?
Many systems that look democratic on the surface do not
result in fair representation. See “Categories of
Electoral Systems”. Voting is not sufficient.
Saddam Hussein won an
overwhelming percentage of the votes in an election in Iraq. Was this a triumph of
democracy? Was Marking
X is not enough – a preferential vote is essential for voters
to be effective and in control.
If voters only indicate
their first preference – which is all they are allowed to do in a first-past-the-post system
– there is simply not enough information for a good selection of
representatives. Votes may be split
across several candidates with similar views, leading to all those candidates
losing while another candidate with opposing views wins with fewer votes in
total. Votes for candidates that are not successful must be wasted since there is no indication of
the voter's second and subsequent preferences. Systems that lead to votes
being wasted encourage insincere voting:
rather than waste a vote on the genuine first preference that may be unlikely
to be elected, the vote is cast for a lower preference that has a chance of
getting elected. Often this results in people voting for the "lesser of
two evils" and makes it very difficult for smaller parties to gain
ground. Systems based on marking multiple X's do
not solve the problem and sometimes make things even worse. Proportional Representation should
rely on the order of preferences being specified. There are two forms of Proportional
Representation corresponding to two ways in which ballots are marked. One
form is the "party list" form – which has
been successfully opposed by the Proportional Representation Society in the four instances where it was introduced in Australia –
where voters vote for a party and it is assumed
that their preferences are identical to the preferences of the party, but
voters have no facility or an inadequate facility to determine which
individual candidates will be elected, as the system retains that as the
choice of the party organization, and not the voter. The other, much better, form of PR is the
Single Transferable Vote (STV) or quota-preferential PR, which is the form of
PR advocated by the Proportional Representation Society of Australia,
allowing voters to indicate, and satisfactorily implement, their preferences
for individual candidates explicitly. That allows voters to fine tune a
party’s composition and also to allow their votes to be transferred to
other candidates outside their preferred party if their preferred candidates
receive too few votes to be elected, rather than having their vote wasted, as
occurs with party list systems. Furthermore, if a candidate receives more
than a quota of votes (a surplus), but not enough to elect another candidate
of that party, the vote is not wasted, but passes on to the next candidate
preferred by the voter. Unlike the party list form of PR, quota-preferential
PR conforms with the letter and spirit of the direct election provisions in the
Commonwealth and WA constitutions. Single-member electorates are not
sufficient.
If each electorate returns
a single member, and there is an even distribution of voters, a group with
the support of 50.5% of voters would win 100% of the seats and 49.5% of the
votes would be wasted. The collective views of the representatives clearly do
not reflect the views of the people. With a different distribution of voters
(or electoral boundaries) the group with 49.5% of the votes can win 99% of
the seats! For example, assume there are 100 electorates, each with 10,000
voters. One electorate has only voters from the 50.5% group, the other 99
electorates all have 5,001 "49.5%" voters and 4,999
"50.5%" voters. Deliberate adjusting of the size and shape of
electorates to achieve a desired outcome is called Gerrymandering. Unfair results can also occur quite by
chance, as happened in The Quota-Preferential system
The quota-preferential system
(also called Single Transferable Vote or STV) is a method of counting votes
designed to result in proportional representation.
In a
single-member system (which will not result in PR) a candidate would need
greater than 100/2 = 50% of the votes.
Enhancements
The Rotation of ballot
papers
Instead of all ballot
papers being the same, different ballot papers have the candidates' names and
affiliations listed in different orders. Each candidate
will appear near the top of some ballot papers and near the bottom of others.
This virtually eliminates the effect of the "donkey vote". Filling casual vacancies
Casual vacancies are
filled by re-counting the ballots that were used to
elect the vacating candidate. This preserves the wishes of the voters and
avoids costly by-elections and divisive undemocratic party appointments. Entrenchment
The major electoral
provisions of the ACT have been entrenched by
requiring a referendum or 2/3 majority in parliament. A government can no
longer tinker with the electoral system to further its own dubious motives. Advantages
There are a great number
of advantages of proportional representation. Here we list a few of them. There are no safe seats
With single member
electorates safe seats are common. Political parties generally put most of
their efforts into trying to please the minority of voters that are in
marginal seats. With multi-member electorates every seat is marginal and the
parties must take more interest in the views of all voters. Voters also tend
to take more interest in politics if their vote is more likely to actually
change something. Voters have more choice
Major parties endorse
several candidates for each multi-member electorate. Voters can choose
between parties and between different candidates from the same party. This
contrasts with single member electorates (and party list PR) where the
parties and the factions within parties have much more control over who is
elected. The elected body is far
more representative
This is obviously a good
thing for democracy, whether the elected body is the parliament of a large
country, or the executive of a small organization. * * * * * * *
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