Essay talk:The case for proportional representation

Excellent essay. I agree with all of these points. On the issue of smaller parties making gains through prop-rep, it's worth noting that this would benefit progressive parties like the Greens as well as unpleasant ones like BNP. It would also provide scope for newer parties to emerge with some chance of success, & while there might be a few wingnut/moonbat ones, there would probably be some sensible ones too.

BTW, I think there's a typing error in the "Gross unfairness" section: you've written "That a party could form a near majority government with 64% of the voting public's support . . . reflects badly on any nation that considers itself free". I eventually figured out that you meant with 64% of the public's opposition, or something like that, referring to the 36% of the vote that went to the Conservatives. Ŵêâŝêîôîď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 00:52, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The major problem with PR as I see it is the loss of the true independent. I don't know what it is like in the UK, but here in Australia we usually have a couple of people that were elected purely on the grounds that they were well liked in their electorate and belong to no party. They are usually fairly ineffective though as they are one man against a majority. In the Senate however were there a majority is a rarity they can be highly effective as the can abstract concessions on a bill. I suppose a better system would be mixed-member proportional representation, make the seats larger and have 5 or 6 members per seat. - π 02:01, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

In Ireland this has worked quite effectively sometimes, as in many coalition Govs it's been the one true indie who can control the sway of power - wihtout their imprimateur, no legislation passes. Like most things, this is of course great in some cases, terrible in others, but "you get that" with democracy.^{— Unsigned, by: Doggedpersistence / talk / contribs}

The Australian Senate is a good example of the good points and bad points of PR. The small parties get in, which means good people and gibbering lunatics. Whoever is at the balance point can extract concessions well above their notional weight - David Gerard (talk) 07:56, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The main point is that no system is perfect, and we need to take any negative consequences of PR with it. However, I have outlined the main reason to switch to a proportional system and I believe it is far stronger than any potential negative factors - hence the only arguments that need addressed are those which defend FPTP. And thanks for the pointer Weaseloid, I have changed and clarified it, if anyone notices any other boobs, let me know. ^postate 08:36, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Nice

Nice work Armond! I agree. Here, in NZ, our Mixed Member Proportional voting system works very well and provides a lot of diverse and challenging opinions within thwe political sphere. Aceⁱ⁹ 08:38, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

It's key that there's evidence that such a system works as one of the really big conservative (i.e., pro status quo) arguments is that FPTP delivers a decisive majority and works. ^postate 08:57, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

There may be temporary problems with the current coalition in Germany where the minor partner has lost some support but overall who can say that Germany hasn't done pretty well? Another point about the FPTP system is that one of the Tory manifesto planks was to undo a lot of Labour legislation. Well I for one am sick of yo-yo politics where things are continuously being changed. Perhaps a more consensus-based system would prevent the need to be forever changing the previous administration's work, after all it is Joe Public who ends up paying for it. I believe my taxes could be put to better use rather than supporting the Department of Administrative Affairs.  Lily ^{Inspirate me.} 09:02, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it works really well here because NZ is quite small but has a very progressive parliament/societal stucture with little in the way of "Traditional Values". We can have a left leaning or right leaning government or coalition without people freaking out about socialism/fascism. And our main parties are so similar in values but only really differ in economics. All the smaller parties do is provide balance, special interest (which can be quite good) and, in some cases, honesty and more accountability. Aceⁱ⁹ 09:10, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the UK would freak out over a left/right shift too much, either. After all, all three parties are clamouring over the centre (only the Lib Dems could be considered socialist and left these days) and 52% of the country voted for the two traditionally progressive parties, and who knows how many more would if they weren't deterred or forced into "tactical voting" by current, archaic system. And as for the yo-yo politics, yes, it's pretty annoying. Each party just wants to undo the work done by the previous one. But that's politics, it yo-yos with the fickleness of the public by definition. The only way to fix that would be to either A) abolish the concept of parties or B) replace democracy with the scientific method. Both of which are, at least now, unrealistic options. ^postate 09:19, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

For the size of our country we have many parties and, if a party leader wins his/her distict seat they have a seat in parliament and can be called on for a coalition. At the moment we have an economically right leaning party supported by a far-right economic party and a leftist-social Maori miniority paty. A strange mix of bedfellows. Aceⁱ⁹ 09:27, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The German government is in trouble because they lost an election at the state level, robbing them of a majority in the federal council (representing state governments), whose consent is required for virtually all important decisions save those in the realm of foreign policy. So that problem is due to federalism, not PR (and Germany has had different majorities between the federal parliament and state's council most of the time, so it's nothing new). We've almost always had coalition governments, and while things might be getting more tricky in a five-party environment with sharply diminished support for the two major parties, these coalitions have turned out to be extremely stable. By the way, the electoral system is the same as in New Zealand since they switched to MMP. Röstigraben (talk) 09:31, 11 May 2010 (UTC)