|
| Proportional Representation Society of Australia Inc. | ||
| | |||
|
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. * * * * * * * | |||
