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PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA |
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Tel +61429176725 |
18 Anita Street |
BEAUMARIS VIC 3193 |
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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 that is for
representatives to be elected. The basis
of representative democracy is that the collective
and varied views of the elected representatives
reflect the collective and varied views of the
people that elect them. Proportional
Representation (PR) is simply a more accurate
statement of that ideal: the percentage of
representatives that hold a particular view should
correspond closely to the percentage of the people
that hold that view. Note that if there is only a
single representative that 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”. The video by
John Cleese viewable here
gives a very watchable account of why we should
achieve PR. Voting is not sufficient.
The late, ruthless Iraqi
dictator, Saddam Hussein, won an overwhelming
percentage of the votes in an election.
Was this a triumph of democracy? Was Italy’s 1923
Acerbo Law
much better? As well as voting we need an
environment free of harassment, a reasonable range
of candidates with access to the media, and
universal adult suffrage. In the 1995 Queensland
State election the Australian Labor Party won government
though it received significantly fewer votes than
the Coalition. As well as voting, we need
a good electoral system. 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 Queensland in 1995. Where a single position
is to be filled, however, preferential voting
ensures that the decision on who fills it is made
by an absolute majority of those voting rather
than by the largest block
of votes for a single candidate as in a plurality
(first-past-the-post) system, which
may be well below 50%. The system of exclusion of
the lowest ranking candidate at successive stages
of the count that is involved eventually results
in only two candidates remaining in the count, one
of whom must have more votes than the other,
unless there is a tie. A tie is usually resolved
by lot. 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 Australian Capital
Territory has adopted three enhancements that
complement the quota-preferential vote counting
system. The first two have been used successfully
for many years in Tasmania, where the system is
known as Hare-Clark.
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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