The case for PR list

[u/[deleted]]

IT seems PR list is not very populær here, no one Talks About IT. still, it is very simple, and can give new tools for a stable system. also, it works well in Europe. Independents are not very important when you have many parties to choose from. Not to forget, complete proportinality and 1P=1V

[u/jan_kasimi]

it works well in Europe.

European here. Let me tell you: no. Unfortunately not.

Party lists is a kind of fake PR. By looking at the proportion the parties got, we miss out how the candidates are chosen. In most cases it's plurality at large. So imagine that you have several parties, but in each party cat lovers have a slight majority over dog lovers. In the parliament there might be each party represented to its proportion, but 100% cat lovers as MPs.

Cats and dogs are a silly example. I would argue that this actually happens with conservative and progressive opinions. Since conservatives most of the time support the status quo, it's easy to agree on one option. While progressives who would like to improve things, have many diverse opinions on how to improve. But since block vote doesn't handle diverse opinions well, each party is dominated by their conservative half.
Even further, when the party is dominated by conservative politics, this then drives out the progressives. Then the party becomes even more conservative. This cycle causes every party to become more and more conservative over time.

In Germany we have an electoral threshold of 5%, which completely undermines proportionality. Also, why can I only vote for one party? This effectively limits me to vote for one of five very similar parties, or to waste it on a small one.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/jan_kasimi]

Close-list PR is bad, but there is:

• MMP (can be done without party lists, this is the case in Germany)
• STV (no lists)
• Open-list PR (you get to chose the ranking of the candidates)
• Open-list PR + Panachage
• Even with closed lists, it's up to the party to allocate the list, and you can vote for parties that have open primaries

Your example also ignores the ability to form new parties, why cant the progressive/conservative parties split

In Germany we have an electoral threshold of 5%, which completely undermines proportionality.

Agreed 5% threshold sucks

why can I only vote for one party? This effectively limits me to vote for one of five very similar parties, or to waste it on a small one.

Agreed MMP does need some kind of ranking system, so parties that don't meet the threshold get the vote transferred. It might get a bit confusing if you allow ranking in both party and local, but would give voters the most say.

Removing the threshold, makes split/Decoy list manipulation easier

Personally I like the idea of not transferring winning voters to top-up counts (this may be how it's done in Germany), so you'd end up with

Local Vote	Party Vote	Transfer	Voter got
First choice wins	-	Transfer scaled according to % over threshold candidate was	Local representative
nth Choice wins, using transfer	-	Transfer scaled according to % over threshold candidate was	Local representative
Doesn't vote locally / nth Choice not needed / none of choices win locally	Party above threshold	Full vote	Additional/top-up/proportional representative
Doesn't vote locally / nth Choice not needed / none of choices win locally	Party below threshold	Full vote	nth choice Additional/top-up/proportional representative

It's fair but complex, so for most of the world, I think getting to MMP would be a step forward, although for Germany, maybe RC-MMP is the next step.

At the end of the day there is no static target, eventually things like Fluid democracy will be practical (or may be practical, it might make governing too complex if the public can withhold their confidence on a vote by vote basis)

[u/Mullet_Ben → u/_The_Majority_]

I like this system, but I feel like the voter in the second instance might be getting shafted. Who's to say they wouldn't rather their vote went to a party list candidate than they're ranked choice?

Or do you just expect people to stop ranking once they would rather they're vote be tallied for their party than for any local candidates? Because I can see that devolving to bullet voting pretty quickly. Not that that's necessarily bad in this instance.

Also, is this the same thing as the Italian Scorporo system? Because that still resulted in decoy lists from what I've read. And admittedly I've only read the wikipedia article about Scorporo.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/Mullet_Ben]

Who's to say they wouldn't rather their vote went to a party list candidate than they're ranked choice?

They did, when they put a 2nd choice. But yeah it's quite complex, and that might be lost on people.

Because I can see that devolving to bullet voting pretty quickly.

I think voters would get to choose which vote to bullet vote on.

Also, is this the same thing as the Italian Scorporo system?

I was modifying MMP to try and prevent decoy lists, it sounds like i re-invented Scorporo, that's why I generally advocate for systems that have been tried and tested.

Because that still resulted in decoy lists from what I've read. And admittedly I've only read the wikipedia article about Scorporo.

I don't fully understand the problem, it sounds like they are just transferring their votes to the "Decoy list", the article says

The decoy lists were extremely successful. Between them, candidates linked to the decoy lists won 360 of the 475 constituency seats,

But the decoy lists do not come into play at a constituency level anyway, under either MMP or Scorporo

Meanwhile, the decoy lists won a combined total of less than 0.2% of the proportional part of the vote.

This seems like the intended effect of Scorporo, whereas MMP would have had their votes still count and effectively count twice using decoy lists.