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PROPORTIONAL
REPRESENTATION SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA |
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Tel
+613 9589 1802 |
Tel
+61429176725 |
18 Anita Street |
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 (PR) 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”. 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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