mdgv2
Ye Olde King of OT
Posts: 927
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Post by mdgv2 on Jul 8, 2024 4:13:01 GMT -5
Well, that’s where Healthy Politics come into it. To maintain a coalition, there has to be Give And Take.
Continuing with the same hypothetical, the Greens would of course be a “junior partner”. But, with their 6% being enough to help push stuff through with 51-52%, they are still in a position to make demands, albeit they’d have to prioritise what they want. And that could mean insistent a given Bill on say, Housing, includes new homes being built with solar panels to help address the energy crisis and so on.
It’s worth keeping in mind that in terms of UK Politics, Labour, Lib Dem’s and Greens have quite a lot in common. Certainly more than they do with Tories or Reform. So when it came to coalition, there’s a lot of common ground to work from.
And with “wasted votes” being less common in PR? Who knows what the overall makeup might be.
Finally, remember nobody is claiming PR or AV to be perfect, it’s just they’re better than the obviously unfit for purpose FPTP where ultimately a minority of voters can deliver a staggering “we….we can basically do what we want!” Parliamentary Majoirty.
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Post by Peregrine on Jul 8, 2024 4:36:57 GMT -5
Continuing with the same hypothetical, the Greens would of course be a “junior partner”. But, with their 6% being enough to help push stuff through with 51-52%, they are still in a position to make demands, albeit they’d have to prioritise what they want. And that could mean insistent a given Bill on say, Housing, includes new homes being built with solar panels to help address the energy crisis and so on. It’s worth keeping in mind that in terms of UK Politics, Labour, Lib Dem’s and Greens have quite a lot in common. Certainly more than they do with Tories or Reform. So when it came to coalition, there’s a lot of common ground to work from. But this is exactly what I mean about lacking leverage! Let's say the greens demand the solar element and labour says "nope". What can the greens do about it? Refuse to support a bill they mostly agree with and get none of what they want? Defect to an opposition that hates them? The only winning move is to meekly comply and vote for the bill even without the element they wanted. A secondary party only has significant leverage in the very specific outcome where any two of the three of labour/lib dem/green can reach 51% without the third, giving each party a threat to abandon their current coalition partner and form a new coalition out of the left-leaning element.
And that's only considering relatively significant parties, the ones that even when they don't win under FPTP still put pressure on the winning party. Minor parties, especially the ones that are supposedly the reason for rejecting my theoretical 10-seat parliament, are unlikely to gain any meaningful influence. So what if a fringe party gets 1-2 seats, the ruling coalition can almost certainly ignore them and they have those seats in name only.
The solution is ranked choice voting with conventional districts (and specific bans on gerrymandering). No more tactical voting, just rank your acceptable parties and the winner is the party with the largest consensus behind it.
Also, is there really any difference between winning 51% of the seats and 80% of the seats? The majority-by-minority case looks particularly extreme in pure numbers but I don't think it has much practical impact.
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Post by herzlos on Jul 8, 2024 4:39:07 GMT -5
I'd love to see what the vote share would look like if tactical and wasted votes weren't a factor.
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Post by herzlos on Jul 8, 2024 4:44:11 GMT -5
Continuing with the same hypothetical, the Greens would of course be a “junior partner”. But, with their 6% being enough to help push stuff through with 51-52%, they are still in a position to make demands, albeit they’d have to prioritise what they want. And that could mean insistent a given Bill on say, Housing, includes new homes being built with solar panels to help address the energy crisis and so on. It’s worth keeping in mind that in terms of UK Politics, Labour, Lib Dem’s and Greens have quite a lot in common. Certainly more than they do with Tories or Reform. So when it came to coalition, there’s a lot of common ground to work from. But this is exactly what I mean about lacking leverage! Let's say the greens demand the solar element and labour says "nope". What can the greens do about it? Refuse to support a bill they mostly agree with and get none of what they want? Defect to an opposition that hates them? The only winning move is to meekly comply and vote for the bill even without the element they wanted. A secondary party only has significant leverage in the very specific outcome where any two of the three of labour/lib dem/green can reach 51% without the third, giving each party a threat to abandon their current coalition partner and form a new coalition out of the left-leaning element.
But then with FPTP the greens with the same vote share have essentially no say.
At least if you have a coalition / collaboration you'd need enough agreement between parties to get to the 51% of the vote. It doesn't necessarily even need to be the same collaboration each time.
As I understand it, single party majorities are rare in Europe.
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Post by Peregrine on Jul 8, 2024 4:46:16 GMT -5
Also, why haven't the various left- and right-wing parties each consolidated into a single entity? FPTP overwhelmingly favors a two-party system and if, say, the labour/lib dem/green element all consolidated into a single left-wing party they would win virtually every election in a landslide if the conservative parties remained separate. It seems to me like the main reason we're having this conversation is a weird refusal to use the most effective strategy by the entire UK political spectrum.
But then with FPTP the greens with the same vote share have essentially no say. They have a minor say in FPTP because their existence tells the dominant party that voters want X/Y/Z policies and that creates pressure for the dominant party to adopt them. You see that often in US politics, if there's serious conversation about a third party its positions get absorbed into one of the major parties. I don't think that's meaningfully less influence than the alternative where they're a minimal-leverage partner in a coalition, the UK equivalent of Bernie Sanders. |
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Post by Haighus on Jul 8, 2024 4:47:56 GMT -5
So, to sum up, you feel that a view that gets 1% of the vote is not worth having a seat at the national level? Yet 1% of the electorate is a population larger than Wyoming, who get two senators. Setting aside the fact that the US senate doesn't work like the US house of representatives or UK parliament you're mixing ideology and geography. Wyoming is less than 1% of the population but ideologically Wyoming is largely in line with the rest of the US. Its two senators will of course favor Wyoming's needs on issues like policies for use of government-owned grazing lands or where to put a new military base (and its associated economic benefits) but if those senators ran for office in Montana, Idaho, etc, they would be reasonable candidates and have a good chance of winning. Whether or not you or I agree with those senators they are functioning politicians capable of handling the basic responsibilities of their office. Wyoming is not, and probably will not ever be, represented by some weird fringe party that advocates for Wyoming merging with Hawaii to become a single state ruled by the secret alien overlords inside the hollow earth.
When you start insisting on representation for beliefs which have very low popularity you start to include the dysfunctional fringe groups and extremists that are rejected for good reasons. You get the Nazi party and similar extremist groups that are rejected by civilization because of their abhorrent beliefs. You get groups like the libertarians who are rejected because they lack a coherent or plausible plan for governing and would do nothing with their power besides wasting time and annoying the productive elements of the legislature. And if you drop too low you give blatant meme candidates like Count Binface because all it takes is half a percent of the voters thinking it would be funny to put them in parliament. A 10% threshold establishes a line where a party has to be credible and gain serious support for its ideas before it gets a place in government. But it's a low bar where any party that should be in power will have no problem crossing it.
A handful like AOC, but that's mostly because the US as a whole is a right-wing country. Genuine left-wing ideology (as opposed to "gay black women can be billionaires too") is not at all popular here. But do you think the situation would be meaningfully improved if the socialist party had 5-10 seats in congress? I sure don't think it would. They'd have a different letter beside their name in the headlines but they'd still form a voting coalition with the democrats and their sole influence would be internal party negotiations on what legislation to support, exactly as it is now. As an example look at Bernie Sanders. Technically he has that "I" next to his name instead of "D" but for all relevant purposes he's a democrat and he hasn't been any more successful at advancing left-wing policies than he would have been as an official member of the party.
It doesn't eliminate tactical voting at all. You still have to vote for one of the major parties that is likely to get a place in the coalition that will reach the 51% mark, voting for a minor party is still throwing away your vote. Technically they may have a seat in the legislature but they won't be part of the ruling coalition and can be ignored without consequence. Your best use of your vote is still to pressure one of the major parties to favor your positions (whether through primary voting or lobbying) and then vote for the major party closest to your beliefs in the general election.
If you want to minimize tactical voting what you actually want is a conventional district system with ranked choice voting. In that system you're free to vote your conscience with your top vote and then if/when that party loses it proceeds down your preference order until your vote reaches a party that can win.
Ok, let's be clear on it then: which country do you think best demonstrates the PR system you want to see?
I'm aware senators are elected 2/state. It doesn't matter that Wyoming is currently in line with the US in general, the point is that a Wyoming resident has equivalent influence on the US government than a hypothetical 1% per PR seat. You are already in a system where that level of granulatity is represented, but only for one region. Sucks to be in Cali for the Sebate! So I think there are some key ppints to make here. Firstly, funding is completely fucked in the US, so a switch to PR alone is going to be much more limited in effect there. You don't really need to run a good campaign in the US, a mediocre-but-expensive campaign will generally beat a good-but-cheap campaign. That isn't true in sane areas of the world with significant campaign finance restrictions. So yes, big parties have a much bigger advantage there. Further to that, current representation isn't tied to media coverage or funding in the same way it is in the UK- for example, the Greens going from 1 to 4 seats in the UK parliament means they legally have to get 4 times the media coverage they used to and get more funding to boot. However, party discipline is lower in the US than the UK, so being an outlier in the party is less of an issue. In the UK, MPs can and will be deselected and lose access to party support if they do not toe the line on important votes. So being in a separate party that mostly aligns but not entirely does mean that there is freedom to vote against on some issues. This might not change the outcome, but it can encourage more voter support if it is an issue voters care about (Gaza would be a good example). Related to this, a hung legislature means that losing even a bit of support can mean votes fail, so small parties can absolutely have an influence if they are willing to exercise it. The DUP had just 10 MPs in 2017, but the Tories required that in their coalition to pass anything that the opposition didn't want. You basically saw this with the speaker of the house elections in the US. Ranked choice type or transferable vote systems are also an improvement over FPTP, but they also lead to a majoritarian system that aims to elect a party with dominance for each term. I prefer the collaborative nature of PR. Re. the US being right-wing. It is, but also it keeps getting forced further and further right because your choices are increasingly sane centre right neoliberals vs insane far right fascist adjacents. There is no pressure to go back left because the fascist adjacents can get a majority. A lot of this is also driven by finance issues and for the US campaign spending restrictions wre definitely the first thing that is needed, but the voting system is also a culprit. It is within living memory that the US had a strong union system, for example, or broke up the trusts in the generation before that. I haven't looked for it, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of left wing policies poll well if detached from the politicians espousing them. Easy E's posts in other threads lead me to suspect they do. Don't have any examples right now, I don't have strong feelings on the exact form of PR. The Low Countries are probably a good place to start though. |
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Post by Haighus on Jul 8, 2024 4:58:40 GMT -5
Also, why haven't the various left- and right-wing parties each consolidated into a single entity? FPTP overwhelmingly favors a two-party system and if, say, the labour/lib dem/green element all consolidated into a single left-wing party they would win virtually every election in a landslide if the conservative parties remained separate. It seems to me like the main reason we're having this conversation is a weird refusal to use the most effective strategy by the entire UK political spectrum. Because they don't align. The Lib Dems, for example, are not a left wing party historically. In 2010 they famously went into coalition with the Tories and have been more aligned to the right than the left for much of the hundred years since they collapsed as a major party |
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Post by herzlos on Jul 8, 2024 5:02:14 GMT -5
I could see it making sense to have 100 MPs - 1 for each percentage point of the vote. I'd certainly argue that anyone getting 1% should have some representation because 1% is still a big number of people (I can't find a number for the total votes cast so I can't put a figure on it). How you deal with rounding I'm not sure. Would a party with 0.9% of the vote be counted as 1% just like one with 1.1%?
I guess you could go to 200 MPs and give a seat for each 0.5% of the vote, or 400 MPs for 0.25%.
With the party whips, it feels more like if a party gets 200 seats it actually means that the leader gets 200 votes, and the fact that you need to employ 199 surplus people for it seems wasteful.
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Post by herzlos on Jul 8, 2024 5:04:57 GMT -5
Also, why haven't the various left- and right-wing parties each consolidated into a single entity? FPTP overwhelmingly favors a two-party system and if, say, the labour/lib dem/green element all consolidated into a single left-wing party they would win virtually every election in a landslide if the conservative parties remained separate. It seems to me like the main reason we're having this conversation is a weird refusal to use the most effective strategy by the entire UK political spectrum. They have co-operated before, either with a coalition or agreement not to compete at elections, but they don't align well enough on everything to merge.
With a minority government (more likely with PR) then they'd need to reach agreement on individual proposals in order to pass anything, which means they can agree on the stuff they align on and disagree on the rest.
But then with FPTP if the leading party has a majority they can be completely ignored.
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Post by herzlos on Jul 8, 2024 5:07:03 GMT -5
Also, why haven't the various left- and right-wing parties each consolidated into a single entity? FPTP overwhelmingly favors a two-party system and if, say, the labour/lib dem/green element all consolidated into a single left-wing party they would win virtually every election in a landslide if the conservative parties remained separate. It seems to me like the main reason we're having this conversation is a weird refusal to use the most effective strategy by the entire UK political spectrum. Because they don't align. The Lib Dems, for example, are not a left wing party historically. In 2010 they famously went into coalition with the Tories and have been more aligned to the right than the left for much of the hundred years since they collapsed as a major party IIRC, they didn't manage to get much done despite their position in the coalition either. It seemed to ruin their reputation and hurt them for a while afterwards. |
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Post by Peregrine on Jul 8, 2024 5:27:28 GMT -5
I'm aware senators are elected 2/state. It doesn't matter that Wyoming is currently in line with the US in general, the point is that a Wyoming resident has equivalent influence on the US government than a hypothetical 1% per PR seat. You are already in a system where that level of granulatity is represented, but only for one region. Sucks to be in Cali for the Sebate! Again, it's not about granularity, it's about the fact that any ideology that can't get 10% of the vote is fringe nonsense that doesn't deserve a place in government. Wyoming isn't +2 seats for some Wyoming-specific ideology that nobody else agrees with, it's +2 seats for the mainstream republican party that is ~50% of the US population.
I suppose that's some context I was missing. I am strongly opposed to the idea of state compelled speech but if you have that kind of system I can see how earning seats in the legislature provides power beyond the actual votes. We did, but only because the minority element in question was a raving lunatic party that was would prefer suicide to compromise. But that's more like hijacking an airliner with a bomb than an example of functioning government, you wouldn't have the same result with a party that cares more about effectively accomplishing its goals than feeding the ego of a demented narcissist.
This is partly because of the voting system (and partly because people genuinely want fascism and fear anything left of Reagan) but the voting issue isn't FPTP. It's three things:
1) Gerrymandering. If house districts were drawn by natural boundaries (city limits, etc) with minimized perimeter to area ratios there would be a significant leftward shift. For example, in 2020 my former home state of NC went to Trump by a 49.9% to 48.6% vote. That's a 1.3% difference, for all practical purposes an equal 50/50 split. But because the state legislature has gerrymandered the districts so thoroughly the state sent 8 republicans and only 5 democrats to the US house. And that's a major improvement over 2016 where Trump won 49.8% to 46.2% but the state sent 10 republicans and 3 democrats. And this is not hypothetical, the state republican party has admitted to deliberately skewing the districts for partisan reasons and lost cases in court over it. So while it's impossible to say what exactly the result of fair districts would be it would very likely be at least a couple seats flipped from R to D. Repeat that across some of the other states with major gerrymandering problems (like Ohio, where the republicans lost in court and simply refused to comply) and that's a significant number of seats flipped.
2) The arbitrary cap on the size of the house. It used to increase with increasing population but in relatively recent history was capped at its current size. This makes the single-seat minimum have a proportionally larger impact than if the total size had been allowed to continue expanding to keep the ratio of representatives to population constant. Wyoming's single house seat has far greater influence at 435 seats total than, say, 800 seats. And that's a difference that IIRC is a net gain for republicans.
3) The complete lack of accountability for failures to govern. This isn't a structural problem, it's a voter problem. In a sane world a party failing to govern effectively would pay for it in subsequent elections, forcing the parties towards compromise. But the MAGA cult (and its predecessors before it) has decided that failure to govern is a virtue, that shutting down the government by refusing to pay the bills is an awesome way to score points against the enemy, or that it's acceptable to simply refuse to ever allow a supreme court justice to be appointed unless republicans get to do it. And so we're in the hijacking situation: the lunatic with the bomb can keep threatening to blow up the plane and everyone else has to keep appeasing him. And so the democrats have to spend all their political capital cleaning up the disasters left by each republican government, while the republican party is free to create new disasters and gleefully ignore the problems they're creating. But changing the voting system won't change any of that, there would still be an obstructionist cult that can drive towards fascism by any means necessary without any accountability.
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mdgv2
Ye Olde King of OT
Posts: 927
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Post by mdgv2 on Jul 8, 2024 5:35:37 GMT -5
Right, but gerrymandering is less effective in PR or AV. Because the point of gerrymandering is redrawing districts to fragment opposition votes and shore up your votes, so despite no change to who voted for who, you get the FPTP win more often. When every vote is taken into account, how do you gerrymander?
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Post by Peregrine on Jul 8, 2024 5:45:35 GMT -5
Right, but gerrymandering is less effective in PR or AV. Because the point of gerrymandering is redrawing districts to fragment opposition votes and shore up your votes, so despite no change to who voted for who, you get the FPTP win more often. When every vote is taken into account, how do you gerrymander? You don't, but there are far better solutions to gerrymandering than changing the whole voting system. It is not a difficult problem to solve, the only reason it hasn't been done is that the people who control the system benefit from rigging it in their own favor. And if you assume that refusal to let go of their power will block any changes to gerrymandering it's also going to block any hope of PR. |
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nfe
OT Cowboy
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Post by nfe on Jul 8, 2024 6:39:51 GMT -5
Continuing with the same hypothetical, the Greens would of course be a “junior partner”. But, with their 6% being enough to help push stuff through with 51-52%, they are still in a position to make demands, albeit they’d have to prioritise what they want. And that could mean insistent a given Bill on say, Housing, includes new homes being built with solar panels to help address the energy crisis and so on. It’s worth keeping in mind that in terms of UK Politics, Labour, Lib Dem’s and Greens have quite a lot in common. Certainly more than they do with Tories or Reform. So when it came to coalition, there’s a lot of common ground to work from. But this is exactly what I mean about lacking leverage! Let's say the greens demand the solar element and labour says "nope". What can the greens do about it? Withdraw from a coalition and bring down the government. This literally happened this year in Scotland. Also, why haven't the various left- and right-wing parties each consolidated into a single entity? They have. Labour are a coalition of hard left through to centre right with radically opposed views on a variety of issues working together because that's the only way to power. The SNP are a single issue party that brings together people on the right and left. The Tories run from the left of your Democrats to the right of your Republicans. [/div][/quote] Same here. See UKIP then Reform and the Conservatives for the most obvious recent example. How a particular issue develops into a 'serious conversation' is the problem. More diverse parties allow for more issues to become conversations. I'm aware senators are elected 2/state. It doesn't matter that Wyoming is currently in line with the US in general, the point is that a Wyoming resident has equivalent influence on the US government than a hypothetical 1% per PR seat. You are already in a system where that level of granulatity is represented, but only for one region. Sucks to be in Cali for the Sebate! Again, it's not about granularity, it's about the fact that any ideology that can't get 10% of the vote is fringe nonsense that doesn't deserve a place in government.
Serious question: do you know what the Overton Window is? |
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Post by semipotentwalrus on Jul 8, 2024 7:32:18 GMT -5
Firstly, whilst you could reduce the national legislature with a PR system, 5-10 MPs is obviously ludicrous. It doesn't have the granularity to reflect minority views within the electorate. With 10 MPs, a view has to get at least 10% of the vote to matter. This would drastically reduce the diversity of thought within the legislature. OTOH why should a party that can't even get 10% of the votes have any representation?
Why should people who don't own land have any representation? Why should women get to vote? Why are we letting racial minorities get a say? In fact, why shouldn't the British tax people without representation?
You're not making a very convincing argument that what you're describing is democracy. A system where you can win a majority and then just ignore everyone else with the support of less than 30% of the population is just blatantly worse than one where you need 51% of the population to do the same if the point of the system is to represent the will of the population.
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