Do you guys support Proportional Representation in the UK?

Personally I'm one of the few Americans who supports at least a partially-proportional system for the U.S.

I see that PR is at least an issue in the UK but is it ever going to pass? It seems that PR would ensure progressive politics in the UK, given that even in the 80s, the 2 parties of the left were getting more than 50% of the vote together. But it doesn't seem like Labour would ever support it, given that it would basically make it extremely unlikely they would ever govern without being part of a coalition.

What do you guys think?

And not just partially. Proportional representation allows for a far better real representation of the will of the people than our current system. We are, after all, the oldest major existent democracy. New ideas such as this were unforseen at the time of our inception. So while we came up with a great system foor the 18th Century, it makes little sense for it to remain unchanged in the face of improvements.

... I don't want a pure PR system like a party list system.

What I'd like are districts with between 3 and 7 members (2 in the smallest states) elected through the single-transerable vote, or at least the cumulative vote, which is a semi-proportional system.

Or I'd support the system that's been proposed in the UK, which is a largely-proportional system called "Alternate Vote Plus," in which about 75-80% of the parliament is elected in single-member districts through IRV and in which 20-25% of the seats are regionally-distributed at-large seats elected in a mixed-member system. The math has shown that the results wouldn't be ideally proportional, but they'd be much more proportional than the current system. And I think it would work pretty well in the U.S. if for instance we increased the size of the House and had each state set aside 25% of their seats for at-large seats elected through a mixed-member system.

Better than first-past-the-post, proportional representation and it's also better than the additional member system in my opinion.

It's the most honest system. There is only one draw back and that is that the result is almost always a coalition government, but it is the best system around.

The idea of constituencies or states is from the old days - more than a century ago - when it was too difficult to count everything and the communication was limited, but nowadays there's no reason for the UK and the US (and probably many more) to have such an old system.

The downside is that you will get coalition governments and the total number of parties which can be effective will be more than 2 or 3. So the big parties (Labour, Conservatives, Democratics and Republicans) don't wnat it because it means surrendering power.

which means that no members of the public get to pass judgement on individual politicians. At least now, if a party puts up a complete bastard in a constituency, there's a chance of those voters being able to reject him. This is how Ahmed Chalabi got into the Iraqi Parliament, for instance.

Perhaps a system that had consituency candidates, and then drew the 'topup' MPs from the ones that lost in constituencies, but got the largest votes for their parties - so any real jerks couldn't be snuck in by the party.

They now have 62 seats with 22% of the vote. Under p.r. it should give them 142 seats in the parliament thus forcing a coalition between either Con/LibDem or Lab/LibDem.

I do agree about voting the real bastards off. So you can keep the constituencies to select the people who can get in. In this case the top 142 percentage wise per constituency.

The Greek system. You have two votes: One FOR somebody and one AGAINST somebody.

That's the oldest form of democracy. You vote somebody in and you kick the bastard out!

Usual misconseption, but not true. We got full PR (in the limits of local districts), and vote for individual, see my post below.

But only one positive vote, no second negative vote, even though many often wish they had one.

I thought that 'full proportional voting' would mean one district for the whole country, so that you get the most accurate division of seats for the total vote. But in a open list system, that would mean listing every single candidate in the country on the ballot for everyone - which would be over 2000 names (and parties) in Britain.

Areal representativity is usually considered quite important, so only very little countries have, if they have, only one district. Finlad, like I said, has a full PR with a hidden local barrier (as high as 10% in the smallest districts, which I don't like because it penalizes Greens, but redistricting is difficult because of the big parties...). Greece at some point at history had full PR with local districs, but also extra seets to level of the effects of local barriers to make national vote fully proportional. But in Greece they change the system about every four years... :P

I believe. It results in representation for every tiny extremist group which then manages to get disproportional power by being one of the last few votes to make up a coalition. You have to choose between absolute democracy (athenians voted on every issue - result chaos) and a workable system.

I like to know who my representative is and where I can phone and email her.

When the list system was introduced for Euro-elections, the Blairites here manipulated it to get rid of our existing "Old Labour" sitting MEP.

The Skin

Moderate size local districts (we got 10-30 seats), which creates treshold for smallest parties and few more seats to bigger parties. This is AFAIK the most common system in Europe.

More importantly, we don't vote party list (like they do in Sweden for example), but candidate. After votes are counted, the candidates are put in order according to how many votes they got, and then lists are compered according to the d'Hondt system to decide who get the seats.

This system gives more choise to the electorate, but also many celebrity candidates, who sometimes get elected. But often those celebs elected turn out to be quite good politicians, so no biggie IMHO.

that each party gets, but each voter has named one person in that party, so the voters determine which of those party members are its representatives - is that right? Sounds quite good.

But not nationally, in the local districts. Each party usually puts out as many candidates as there are seats in the district, choosing them according to party rules. Also with certain amount of signatories, anyone can stand as candidate independent of parties.

but whether any of the 2 main parties will have the balls to introduce it is another matter. They would be the principal losers...

Especially the minor parties.

Political parties are a necessarily evil to my mind, they serve a purpose and are essential but that small remaining fact that we vote for specific individuals is one of the few remaining brakes on their power.

Co-allition politics is one of those ideas which sounds lovely in principle, but (forgive the pub) involves the dumping of all principles.

First, see my post on Finnish system, PR with voting individuals is no problem.

Second, political parties are not necessary evil. It's perfectly possible to have functioning democracy without.

Three, coalition politics come in many colours and shades, and it's much more transparent and dynamic with different parties forming a party than guessing what kind of coalition Labour (or Rethug or Dem) is formed of. Trying to create by voting a Labour coalition with stronger influence of social democrats than Blairites is very very difficult. Here Greens resigned from previous gov when parliament decided to build more nuclear power (vote didn't go party lines but by conscience). Very principled, but very stupid IMO.

I think that the European elections are proof enough of why PR is a bad idea. Looking at the election results it does strike me that if we had PR then the main party to benefit would be the BNP.

that the minor parties get severely under-represented, and even the results among the three main parties are illogical. The LibDems, for example, ended up with ~10% of the seats on ~22% of the vote, which is hardly fair. I do agree that a fixed party list would hand too much power to the central comittees of each of the parties, but this can be gotten around (flexible list, like the Finnish system described above, or even multiple flexible list where you can pick and choose from all parties to form your own preference order). Alternatively, you could have one chamber elected first-past-the-post and another by PR, a-la Jenkins. Indeed one of the problems PR has is the billion and one flavours of it available in the political geekshop...

I really don't want to know how many people would vote BNP in a PR system.

but not at the cost of losing local constituencies. List systems just gives the central party machine too much power and you end up with a Parliament full of Peter Mandelson look alike apparatchiks. I think the fact that local party members have a say about who stands in a given seat is important. It pleases me that Blair originally had to hang about in the car park of Sedgefield Labour club waiting to see if the area party were willing to take him on as a candidate. Full PR would also make it very difficult for Independents with strong local support to get into Parliament. Last night at least two MPs in that category were elected. I prefer the 'Champions League' scenario where the best runners up would also get into Parliament. This could be calculated on percentage of vote adjusted for total turnout within the given constituency (i.e a candidate coming second with 40% of the popular vote on a 75 % turnout would rank ahead of a candidate coming second with 45% of the vote on a 50% turnout). It would not be perfect but at least the spread of MPs would more accurately reflect the popular ballot. Personally, I think proportional representation only adresses some of the problems of the British Parliamentary system. One thing it would not change is the tendency of Prime Ministers with working majorities in the House of Commons ignoring the popular will for the next 4-5 years .At the moment the only real check on the power of the Prime Minister is the courts. Whilst the judiciary have stopped some of the excesses of Blairs last administration I am not entirely happy that the job of preventing abuse of power should lie in the hands of unelected appointees largely drawn from a tiny section of the British upper class. This problem would be better addressed by setting up an elected second chamber to replace the House of Lords. Each member would be elected for a period of say 10 years but their would be no common term of office as a fifth of the chamber would come up for re-election every 2 years. Those sitting in this chamber would have no right to introduce legislation but an absolute power of veto over all government bills except the annual Finance Acts. Members of this second chamber would be debarred for the rest of their life from holding any ministerial or other government office. This would be designed to stop this house from being used as a means for ambitious politicians advancing their careers. The aim would be to create an independently minded and democratic body that would be sensitive to changes in public mood and could curb the power of the executive.

Why not go all the way for direct and participatory democracy:

Representative Parliament with no legislative powers, can only propose legislation to legislative body, which is statistically representative portion of the population, drawn by lot, and accepts or rejects or chooses between proposals by electronic voting from home (state provides equipment). Goverment and political parties optional, not necessary.

to be elected?

Also, you can't argue against PR because the BNP will get seats, if people vote for them they should be represented, just like the greens and other small parties.

... because candidates don't require party endorsement.

A couple of years ago I was living in Scotland, where they use a mixed member system for their parliamentary elections; voters had a FPTP vote for a local rep., and then voted for a party list. The local reps elected would then be topped up with extra members (who would represent their region at large) so the parties numbers in parliament reflected their performance in the party list section of the ballot. Anyway there was a woman in Edinburgh (can't recall her name, but if I remember rightly she was most famous for supporting legalised prostitution) who was chucked out of the SNP (I think), and decided to run as an independent- but she added her name to the Edinburgh regional list, rather than running as a candidate in a particular constituency. She won a seat in the parliament, and most of the pundits seemed to agree she couldn't have done so if she had run as a local rep under FPTP.

Having said that, I personally am not in favour of proportional representation for the US or the UK, although I am strongly in favour of refining the current one member-one constituency system by introducing IRV or Condorcet (sp?) voting.

One of whom was Martin Bell, the other's name escapes me but I do remember reading the guy's website and a leaflet for this candidate and being very impressed.

Both Bell and the other guy were standing in part to protest about PR funnily enough! Although independents can stand they have to fork out a deposit that is about 10 times higher then at normal elections and the huge size of Euro-constituencies means that unless they have someone of Roman Abramovitch's wealth as their financial backer they do not stand a cat in hell's chance of being able to campaign effectively.

In effect PR ensures that whilst smaller parties such as UKIP and the Greens can win seats independents cannot. It is a huge deterrent to independent candidates.

one house for first past the post (single member district/constituency), another for a national proportional vote. They would be of equal power.

Like some have said, a proportional system would allow third parties as a plus, but there is something to be said for a single small area getting a single MP, local issues and bad candidates, I seem to recall one constituency punching labor in the eye because they perceived a candidate being forced unto them they didnt like. (i only heard a small bit of it)

IIRC, the Australian House of Representatives is elected by IRV and the Senate by some form of proportional representation. I agree it's an appealing compromise, especially for the British as a replacement for the Lords.

Proportional Representation (PR] is generally a good thing, because it eliminates the wild swings in policy that you sometimes get with a 'First-Past-The Post' {FPTP} system. In Britain, where we have FPTP, you can get extreme right-wing governments such as those of the Conservatives under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, followed by left-of-centre governments. This leads to a lot of waste.

The left-wing governments raise taxes in order to start up programmes designed to benefit the public generally, and then along comes a right-wing government which clears the projects away. Then another left-of-centre government gets elected, and the projects get started once again... So buildings are built, knocked down and built again, staff are hired, fired and hired again. Any kind of PR system will help to avoid this.

Another general advantage of PR systems is that they allow you to vote for the party you like the best, without having to worry about whether other people are going to vote for it too.

But some PR systems are better than others.

The Electoral Reform Society exists to promote a Single Transferable Voting (STV) system, see
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk
This is the PR system that I like the most.

Basics of the system
The basis of the STV system is that voters put candidates in order of preference. They put '1' against the candidate they like most, '2' against the candidate they like second best, '3' against their third choice, and so on. Each constituency is multi-member; about four seats per constituency.

The idea behind the system is that if you vote for a candidate who is 'too' popular, i.e. gets more votes than they need to get elected, then part of your vote is transferred to the next candidate on your list.

On the other hand, if you vote for someone who is not popular enough with the other voters to get elected, then once again, your vote is transferred to your next preference.

The counting system itself can be a bit complicated, although computer technology makes it simpler and faster than it used to be.

Advantages
This system gives voters maximum control of the poliicians that they elect. If you stand as a candidate, you can't just expect to get in because your party is popular. You have to be popular with the voters yourself. This makes the system more responsive to voters' wishes than systems based on 'closed' party lists (i.e. list of candidates drawn up by political parties).

In fact, STV invites candidates to compete against each other, even if they all come from the same party!

Another advantage is that you elect several people for each constituency. So it's likely that at least one of your representatives will be near to your own situation and political viewpoint.

The system discourages 'splinter' parties (i.e. parties with only a small amount of popularity, spread out over a large area). This usually prevents fascist or other extreme parties getting their candidates elected. It also reduces the likelihood of a very small party holding the balance of power and thus wielding a disproportionate amount of influence, as sometimes happens in Israel.

STV is used in the Republic of Ireland, which is a wealhy country nowadays. The system is liked by the voters. It's not so popular with the politicians themselves, because it forces them to work hard and listen to the voters, which - as almost any part of the world - they are reluctant to do.

The main disadvantage of STV is that because there are several representatives for each constituency, the geographic size of constituencies can be large. Not so much of a problem with the Republic of Ireland, which is fairly small in area, but it could be seen as a problem with Britain or the USA. There is a way to mitigate this problem, by varying the number of people in constituencies, but the problem can't be avoided altogether.

The 'bootstrap' problem
But that's not the main reason why Britain and the US haven't adopted STV. The usual problem is that the existing representatives got elected under the present system, so they are reluctant to change it. They don't know whether they're going to be as lucky at election time if the system changes.

Also, many representatives may not like the idea of being forced to work hard and listen to the voters. Although some of the more principled politicians might prefer to do this, rather than just brown-tonguing the party leadership.

Party leaders and high-ups lose some of their power, because under FPTP, voters have to choose an 'official' candidate from one of the two largest parties in the constituency most of the time, or their votes will be wasted.

Hence, voters usually only vote for the official candidates from the big parties. This, in turn, forces candidates to look for endorsement from such a party. By threatening to withhold party endorsement, the party leadership is in a position to twist arms.

With STV, on the other hand, if the voter's first choice can't get elected, the vote is simply transferred to the voter's next choice.

Also, FPTP tends to produce two large parties most of the time, with voters sometimes forced to vote for a bad party in order to avoid one that's even worse! I.e. you might have to vote for a party that goes to war against Iraq, in order to avoid one that proposes a polite form of genocide against gypsies. This feature makes FPTP quite popular with those party leaders who may want to do things like going to war against Iraq!

Another feature of FPTP is that it often - though not always, as we've just seen - produces exaggerated majorities. A little bit of extra popularity, under the British system, can give you (say) a majority of 161. If you're party leader, that means that you're unlikely to lose a vote in Parliament. And that, in turn, allows you to join the USA in a war with Iraq, have suspects imprisoned on 'reasonable suspicion' without the inconvenience of presenting evidence at a trial ... or do almost anything else that takes your fancy.

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Tony Blair's Labour Party twice promised to consider introducing a more PR-like system for UK parliamentary elections, but went back on these promises. On a more positive note, the Labour Party has brought in PR systems for regional assemblies - although for some strange reason, they've always chosen a system that turns representatives into 'party poodles' and maximises party power, rather than bringing in STV.

Do you think that might have anything to do with the Labour Party leadership wanting to maximise its power, and not get challenged when it does something unpopular, or am I just being cynical?

Never mind, the introduction of new systems, albeit not the best systems that could have been chosen, has got rid of the idea that FPTP is the system that we've got to have, because ... uh ... it's the system that we've got!

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I hope you in the USA get some form of STV for Congress some day, it would definitely help to keep your representatives under control. I know that STV has sometimes been used for state governments.

Oh, and by the way, STV is very good at sharing out power equitably between ethnic groups, and avoiding racial domination. Which makes it unpopular with some.