It's worth noting that in the first election for Auckland Council 62.5% of votes cast didn't elect a single Councillor. Or to put it another way, 13 of the 20 Councillors who were elected each received less than 30% of the votes cast in their ward. In Albany Ward, both people elected got less than 10% of the vote each. Over 80% of votes in Albany Ward elected no one at all, thanks to First Past the Post.
Under MMP, every party vote cast for a party that reaches 5% of the vote, or for a party that wins a local seat, counts toward their fair proportion of seats in the House.
MMP is so much better for voters, no wonder (some) of the politicians don't like it.
Big Parties from Fairvote Canada on Vimeo.
Since when has an unelected, selected, party politician been anything other than a bureaucrat?
ReplyDeleteSo, when you place bureaucrats in government, it becomes a bureaucracy, not a democracy.
MMP fosters bureaucrats in a bureaucracy.
Elected politicians are representative of an electorate, and is democratic.
A bureaucracy is not a democracy.
You might get away with semi-democratic, as some MPs are elected, but don't kid yourself into believing that bureaucracies are democracies, because they are not.
Carpentero: The parties choose all their candidates under ANY voting system. I'm amazed anyone is confused on this point, but people somehow manage to be confused. What party do you have in mind? The Greens, for example, elect people to their list by votes of party members. Once the list is composed, the party members - nationally - then vote to rank the list. That is far more democratic than how either National or Labour do it under First Pasty the Post.
ReplyDeleteCandidate selection processes have nothing to do with voters casting ballots.....yet you appear to conflate election and candidate selection together into one in an almost comical way.
But even if we look at the National Party, the local branch chooses a candidate - or at least delegates do - and that local candidate is then put on the list. But the candidate was, in theory, democratically chosen.
Your opinions on MMP and candidates and elections appear to be completely unconnected to anything resembling a verifiable fact.
Sorry if I'm being hard you, but seriously....you appear to have no idea what you're talking about.
But you've come to the right place to find out how things really work.
I accept that MMP would be a good system with a little tweaking, however, I don't understand why the passionate supporters of MMP wouldn't be at least as enamoured of STV.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me that STV has all the advantages of MMP but gives the voter more control over who gets in rather than having it decided by party hacks behind closed doors.
STV would deal to the "Out on Saturday, in on Monday" problem.
@mistywindow: STV is the best of the alternate systems. It will definitely be my choice for the second question in case MMP doesn't make it. It is the only proportional alternative. But it comes with fish hooks. The proposal calls for districts electing anywhere from 3 members to 7 members. The result in a 3-member district won't be proportional. STV also has a problem with the potential for gerrymandering the district boundaries to include / exclude blocks of voters who may reliably vote one way or the other. MMP can't be gerrymandered because 10% of the vote nationally is 10% of the seats - end of story. STV also limits the power of your vote to just your district. MPs from any other STV district aren't accountable to you no matter how much you dislike them. At least the MMP, your party vote holds the entire party to account nationally. You can't do that under STV.
ReplyDeleteAs for local vs list candidates the parties chose them both anyway. The trick is to do it democratically. Some parties are better than others. The Greens are easily the most democratic in choosing candidates. All party members get to vote on the rank of the whole party list. You can't get much more democratic than that. By comparison, the National Party head office ranks the list and gets to put up 5 people on it that no one anywhere voted for. This is how Don Brash became an MP and National party leader after the 2002 elections.
So if you're seeing parties being undemocratic about selecting candidates, it isn't really fair to blame MMP. Don't vote for those parties.
I have no problems with list MPs. I'd like to see local MPs got rid of entirely. They are the real party hacks. The holder of a 'safe' seat for Labour or National is in Parliament for life. List MPs are much more vulnerable to shifts in the share of the vote and their rank on the list.
But more importantly, if you say candidates can't be on the list as well as running locally, I can guarantee you'll end up with parties not standing local candidates at all unless they REALLY think they can win the seat. Why would you waste a good candidate on a local seat if they have no chance of winning if that also meant they weren't allowed on the list?
I see it this way: My local vote is usually a complete waste of time, electing no one. My party vote is the one that matters and it elects a whole swag of list MPs. I might not like last every one of them, but I support the team as a whole. There are TWO ways to elect MPs and both are legitimate...and to be honest...the local vote is a complete waste of time. I probably won't even bother with it this time.
I like MMP because it is proportional, can't be gerrymandered, gives me a vote that always counts and that has effect across the entire country, not in just one small part of it.
STV is a great second choice. But I won't risk losing MMP in the hope that - maybe - I might get STV.