Comments on: MMP manipulated in Lesotho?

By: Jarrett

Jarrett — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:30:45 +0000

Actually JD’s solution may not be that bad. One thing you could do, is to adopt an approval voting method where people could vote for as many parties/candidates as they wish. This way, a voter could cast a vote for their preferred party, in addition to an independant or small party candidate that they also like.

By: Jarrett

Jarrett — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:14:52 +0000

A drastic solution that could be implemented would be to say that any one who wins a constituancy, who does not belong to a party that has crossed the electoral threshold, would have very restricted voting rights where they can not vote on the budget or on legislation except private bills that only effect people within there ridings. Bills that have to do with public policy such as legalizing gay marriage would be restricted to those members who belong to parties that have crossed the threshold. Although independant and small parties could still represent the people within there riding by raising questions during question period, introduce bills and belong to committies, they would not be able to do the things that could push a vote one way or the other which is essentially what a party would want to implement its agenda. By doing this, it would eliminate the incentive of adopting this tactic.

By: JD

JD — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:52:26 +0000

MSS: It is indeed a bit or a bitter pill, which is why I called it a controversial solution. Interestingly enough however, the last NZ elections suggest to me that it might not be a big issue, or at least that most NZ voters wouldn’t see this as a problem. About 7% still voted Green for their constituencies, and there was a higher constituency vote than list vote for ACT. NZFirst had a much lower constituency vote to list vote ratio, which is probably due to the small number of constituency candidates they fielded. Lastly, the National vote was the same percentage for both votes. (source:http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/n/newzealand/newzealand2011.txt)

By: Tom Round

Tom Round — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:24:23 +0000

What about keeping two votes but allocating list seats in proportion to each party’s total of both – ie, its local votes for district candidates plus its Zweitstimmen for the list itself?

By: MSS

MSS — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:04:44 +0000

JD, the very first election in West Germany had one-vote MMP.

Of course, banning split-ticket voting means many of the advantages of MMP are thereby lost. For example, voters who favor a smaller party are unable to indicate a preference among the major contenders for their district representative.

I would say that allowing only one vote for both local candidate and party list is a cure worse than the disease, given that there are other ways to address the problem of “decoy lists”, as others have noted.

(Thanks, JD, for bringing this old discussion back to life!)

By: DC

DC — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:35:39 +0000

Germany I think has a provision, (maybe at Lander and local level?) for associations of electors to put forward non-partisan lists. I suppose this isnt exactly an independent by Anglo-Saxon definition, but it is specifically non-party.

Another example I can think of were the closed list election for the Northern Ireland Forum in the late 1990s. The districts were coterminous with the Westminister constituencies, and I guess one had to have complete lists, because there were a handful of “Independent John Smith” lists, presumably close friends and family obliged their ambitious/principled relative to fill out the vacant places.

By: JD

JD — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 07:11:37 +0000

Maybe a controversial solution, but definitely an effecive way to end ‘decoy lists’ being used, would be an MMP system with the constituency vote used to calculate the overall proportional result. This way vote-splitting would also be impossible, there only being one vote.

By: Lewis Baston

Lewis Baston — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:40:16 +0000

In answer to Matthew at 15, in the UK MMP systems an individual can stand in the regional list part of the election as essentially a list of one – I am not sure whether they can group together without becoming defined as a party, but I doubt it in that context. However, in some local authorities in the UK ‘Independents’ form collective Groups, and sometimes there are more than one such on the same authority, or one Independent Group and some maverick double-Independents!

In Scotland in 2003 an Independent candidate, Margo MacDonald, won a list seat. If such a seat falls vacant, it remains vacant because there is nobody further down the list. In the Welsh case if Independents win a regional seat it would be one at most, so there is no problem with that unless the elected candidate dies or resigns. The question of what degree of co-ordination between Independents is permissible without being a party is one that might exercise our Electoral Commission in due course.

By: Suaprazzodi

Suaprazzodi — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 06:21:12 +0000

That is what I mean is to pool all the independent candidates as a party on a Assorted Party List. The electoral commission decides by lot which independent will be first on the list and so on.

By: MSS

MSS — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:46:34 +0000

What is an “independent”? I am confused by the way both Suaprazzodi and Lewis are using the term. As I understand the term, an independent is some candidate with no party affiliation, by definition. That means no affiliation across independents, as well as no affiliation of individual independents with candidates of other registered parties. So, how can you have a list of independents? As soon as you have a list, then you have a set of candidates sharing a common electoral-allocation fate. In other words, a party.