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Proportional Representation
Society of Australia Inc. |
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Why effective voting
requires proportional representation 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 epresentation must be based on a corporate body of representatives. How can we achieve it?
Voting is not
sufficient.
The late, ruthless Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, was declared to have 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 transferable 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 plurality system
(first-past-the-post) - there is simply not
enough information provided for a good selection
of representatives. The overall votes may be split
across several candidates with similar views,
leading to all those candidates losing while
another single 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
or subsequent preferences. Proportional representation should rely on the order of preferences being specified. There are two major 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 Proportional Representation Society of Australia Inc. in the four instances where it has so far been introduced in Australia – where voters vote for a party, and it is assumed that the voters' 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 keeps that as the choice of the party organization, and not the voter. The other, much better,
form of PR is the single
transferable vote (PR-STV) or
quota-preferential form, which is the form of PR
advocated by Proportional Representation Society
of Australia Inc, allowing voters to indicate, and
to 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 all party list systems. In
contrast, with PR-STV, 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 is transferred
to the next available candidate preferred by the
voter. Unlike the party list form of PR, PR-STV
conforms with the
letter and spirit of the direct election
provisions in the Commonwealth and Western
Australian Constitutions. Single-member
electorates are not sufficient.
Where a single position
is to be filled, however, a transferable vote
sytem 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 single
transferable vote form of PR (PR-STV)
In a
single-member system (which will not
result in PR), a candidate would need
greater than 100/2 = 50% of the votes.
Enhancements of proportional representationThe Australian Capital
Territory has adopted three enhancements that
complement its PR-STV 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 in equal
quantities. 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 it avoids costly and disruptive
by-elections and divisive undemocratic party
appointments. Entrenchment
The major electoral
provisions of the ACT have been entrenched
by requiring a referendum or a 2/3 majority vote
in the Legislative Assembly. A government can no
longer tinker unilaterally with the electoral
system to further its own dubious motives. Advantages of
proportional representation
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 electoral districts,
every district is marginal, and the parties must
take more interest in the views of all voters in
the district. Voters also tend to take more
interest in politics if their vote is more likely
to have an effect, and actually contribute to
keeping the status quo, or changing
something, according to the voters' views. Voters have more choice
Major parties endorse
several candidates for each multi-member
electorate. Voters can choose between parties, and
also between different candidates from within the
same party. That contrasts with single-member
electorates (and party list PR) where the parties
and the factions within parties have much more
control over whom is elected, and the voters have
correspondingly less. The elected body is far
more representative
This is a good thing for
democracy, whether the elected body is the
parliament of a large country, or the executive of
a small organization. Unless proportional
representation applies, there is a mismatch
between the level of voters' support for a
particular school of thought and the
representation it receives. * * * * * * * |
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