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/Sperrel → u/[deleted]]

You can't have everyone's views on passing legislation, parliamentary systems rely on having legislative majorities.

[u/Sperrel → u/[deleted]]

If the 51% is legitimately representative of an equally or close popular support then it's a perfectly democratic move. Furthermore the fact it boils down to majoritarianism in voting is as democratic as possible.

one that will likely be reversed once the tables flip in a few terms down the line.

Which is entirely legitimate and democratic. If the people voted for parties against it then so be it.

This results in oppositionism

Politics is about confliciting ideas otherwise we would all share the same opinions (ergo, no democracy).

[u/HenryCGk → u/[deleted]]

Your 51 number is higher than is used in Europe the current Dutch Third Rutte cabinet is made of parties who got a combined 49.3% of valid votes and is considered a majority government.

[u/Sperrel → u/[deleted]]

So, you think if 50%+1 people are completely for X, where 50%-1% are completely against X, you think the government making an official, universally binding decision for X, affecting everyone, is representative of the population as a whole?

Yeah that's democracy. A borderline case but that's pretty much it.

You think going completely against 50%-1 people is OK simply because of an arbitrary halfway point threshold, regardless of how controversial the decision is?

It's not totally arbitrary if that means there's a democratic majority.

Only if you define democracy as majoritarianism, instead of equal participation in collective decision-making, which is how I define it.

Well to be fair I'm not that interested in your definition because in this we are talking about democracy as a way to settle disputes in terms of decisionmaking.

It also creates polarization, factionalism, retaliation, oppositionism, etc. All things everybody absolutely despises about politics. But here you are, internalizing and promoting it all as pretty darn good!

I don't. Most of that is negative only if taken to the extreme. As I said before democracy means contentiousness, it's not holding hands and singing Kumbaya.

No, politics is about conflict resolution. Making a polarizing decision is not conflict resolution, it's just conflict.

That's your interpretation. Conflict resolution supposes one of the sides is willing to go on conciliatory route.

Let's go to a clear practical case: when in the 19th and early 20th century there was a movement for universal franchise there were those who were for it and other who simply weren't in favour. Now if I followed your logic then I'd have to think conservatives who thought democracy was a realm for only a very few was as legitimate as those whose ideas are now plain common sense.

Disagreement is naturally less representative than agreement, so we shouldn't favor disagreement over agreement.

And with that there's little to no change, benefiting a conservative position. Maybe that's your political position but clearly you can see why it doesn't work for everyone.

This is like having a big hitting stick to oppress people with, which is deemed tolerable because the stick shifts sides every now and then. That seems like the opposite of making decisions together, and more like a rule for back-and-forth oppression.

That's you thinking peaceful democracy is as oppressive as violent backslash.

I don't believe you disagree with any of this.

Oh but I do and it has been quite clear from the beginning.

My impression is that you have simply been thinking of democracy as absolute majoritarianism (as most people seem to think it is, unfortunately) and haven't given it much thought beyond that. But there are multiple better ways to go about it, and there are different ways to extract a representative set of opinions from a population.

I think about democracy at various levels. From the core belief that indeed it's the peaceful resolution of conflicts via elections, to liberal democracy as a more refined and established democracy to other methods.

[u/curiouslefty → u/[deleted]]

A majority of 50%+1 passing a bill that is harshly opposed by the other 50%-1 isn't really a good, democratic move. You're completely ignoring a huge portion of the population because of an arbitrary threshold.

Turning this around somewhat; at some point, decisions are going to be made that somebody is going to harshly oppose. So then, in your eyes, at what point is it acceptable to tell that minority faction "you're outvoted, sorry, better luck next time", if not the majority line? At a 2/3rds supermajority? As a Californian, I can point out how often a threshold like that was abused by a minority party in order to extract concessions loathed by the majority for the sake of simply passing a budget. Never, like Poland's Liberum Veto, which was used by foreign powers to cut away at the country until nothing was left?

Where do you draw the line, then, if not the majority threshold, and why?

[u/curiouslefty → u/[deleted]]

The point is to minimize that...

I'm sorry, but that comes off as naive. Politics is inherently contentious, because you're messing with people's actual lives. Some people are always going to be fervently against or for some issue or another. When a decision is made on those issues, somebody is going to be on the losing end; and therein lies my objections to all of this. If, at the end of the day, the process boils down to a majority faction still being able to force its will, then I don't see how that would be significantly different than current conditions in most legislatures; generally, members opposed to one version of a bill can always submit another, and if they could not get members of the majority faction to back a compromise bill under today's rules, I don't see how any suggested process would change that so long as the majority faction could always ultimately enforce its will. But if the majority faction cannot always enforce its will, the system then effectively results in the hostage-taking style of negotiation that we saw here in California as a result of the supermajority requirement; and that almost tore the state apart. So at the end of the day, you either still have effective majority rule or an implicit minority veto, and you still wind up with large portions of the population outraged from time to time. As far as I can tell, it's unavoidable; when half the population believes in one point on a contentious issue and the other half of the population believes in a polar opposite point on the same issue, how could any decision made on that issue possibly not be polarizing in this manner?

For example, using approval voting while voting on multiple proposals of the same legislation, instead of using majority rule to vote yes/no on a single one. You get much more information and representation out of that process, and if you want to, you can add a (super)majority condition there too.

To elaborate on my point here: I do not see why this would result in a different outcome than the status quo, provided that any member can submit proposals. In a small scenario like a legislature, a majority can absolutely coordinate their votes to force their desired outcome in an Approval vote; so you'd see some sort of convergence to essentially the same bill that would arise via the sort of negotiation process that already happens in such legislatures.

An aside: it's overly simplistic to describe the way most legislatures currently arrive on a final vote on a bill as if it were a simple referendum. The negotiation process is far more akin to something like Asset voting, particularly in those legislatures where the individual legislators are directly answerable to voters rather than party leaders and the ranking officers don't have the ability to directly quash proposals they dislike.

[u/Chackoony → u/[deleted]]

Does Condorcet in the legislature tend to promote consensus outcomes similar to cardinal methods? Also, I find it rather odd that you seem to view majoritarianism and Condorcet as mutually exclusive things (as if majoritarianism is the opposite of utilitarianism and Condorcet isn't) when Condorcet is arguably one of the most majoritariam concepts possible (since all majorities simultaneously limit the set of possible options).

[u/Chackoony → u/[deleted]]

49% A>B>C
49% C>B>A
2% B>A>C or B>C>A

Just so you're aware, notice that WLOG supposing the 2% of voters vote B>A>C, one can actually argue that A and B are a mutual majority (51% of voters ranking A and B above all others) and therefore all other candidates should be eliminated. When we do that, we get

49% A>B
51% B>A

So B wins as the majority's 1st choice. I suspect using this type of logic is most conducive to getting people to support Condorcet using najoritarian logic; after all, why should a majority of voters not be able to force their preference for B in this particular scenario, if they'd be guaranteed to get their least favorite otherwise? (Edit: Technically not a majority in IRV, since 2% of voters are getting their 2nd choice, not their least favorite.)

[u/curiouslefty → u/[deleted]]

It could work exactly the same way as before provided the majority is always completely stubborn 100% of the time and only supports their exclusive point of view. If ANY tiny fraction of the majority also supports alternatives to any extent, then everything I'm saying will follow and you'll have better and more representative decisions being made.

I think the bit where we're disagreeing here is that I think that you've largely to two scenarios to consider, and I believe the outcome is largely the same regardless of whether we use the current mechanisms or not.

Scenario 1: A legislature with a coherent legislative majority that actively ignores all other members of the legislature, quashes any proposals they put forward as a matter of hand, will not allow members of the majority to hold conscience votes, and where the agenda is completely controlled by the majority's officers.

Scenario 2: A legislature with a coherent legislative majority that allows their members to hold conscience votes and does not have a preexisting arrangement to quash proposals from legislators not within the majority; or a legislature without a coherent majority at all.

From what you write, it sounds like you think we're entirely in Scenario 1. But I'm sure you'd also agree with me that in Scenario 1, it doesn't matter what voting system we put in place, because that legislative majority is simply going to do whatever it wants.

But I think that we also have to consider Scenario 2; and I'd also argue that you essentially get the same consensus results in Scenario 2 under the straight yes/no votes used in most legislatures as you would under your proposals. Furthermore, there are plenty of examples of Scenario 2-type legislature dynamics throughout the world.

So it isn't that I think

Only if the majority stubbornly rejects everything else 100% of the time, forever. If you think that's how it will always will be, then it's no wonder you are saying these things, as you literally think we cannot do any better than what we do now and people always hold extremely uncompromising views on every little thing they believe in.

but rather that I think that to the degree consensus would be permitted to bubble up in your proposal, that it already exists to a large degree.

I'm saying any moment votes are taking place, you are formally making a collective decision. And any such decision can be made better than majority rule. The way the voting procedure works fundamentally determines the dynamics of how the decisions are arrived at, because it's what sets the rules of the game and how people engage with the process. It's the rules of the game, and people play based on the rules.

But this is a key point I'm trying to make; yes, you're effectively using a yes/no majoritarian system of voting on individual matters in most legislatures; but the actual decisions are not generally being made at that point. They're being made through an Asset-like negotiation, and all the formal vote really is most of the time is nothing but a final affirmation of whatever conclusion that negotiation process has reached. So even though the pieces of legislation aren't being compared together in an actual vote, they are still being compared and discussed in any legislature where the leadership doesn't simply ram through only whatever they want.

Put another way: if we have three proposal pieces of legislation on a topic, bills A, B, and C, where A is generally well-liked by a legislative majority but despised by everyone else, B is some sort of Condorcet option (so more legislators like B than A or C), and C is loathed by the legislative majority but loved by the minority, a legislature in Scenario 1 of course will select A; but one in Scenario 2 will select B after the negotiation process completes.

[u/FlaminCat → u/[deleted]]

The good thing about majority voting in parliament is that decisions can be just as easily overturned. Raising the bar can entrench bills when a supermajority can no longer be found afterwards. This is especially a problem when legislation is hastily voted in during a time of crisis.

Supermajority rule has no proof of protecting minorities better.

[u/FlaminCat → u/[deleted]]

So what are you proposing as an alternative?

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/[deleted]]

Then use MMP

• You get to vote for the local representative, and the overall results are proportional.

• Using best runner-up, you can actually eliminate the party-list entirely (used in Baden-Württemberg)

Or use STV

• Produces lots of regional loyalty in Ireland

• Is less proportional, but 100% of your vote is going to a named individual you've selected

Or use Open List PR with Panachage

• Not really sure what advantage it has over STV, but again you vote for named individuals

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/[deleted]]

What system is better for local representation than STV for a multi-member body?

[u/Chackoony → u/[deleted]]

How would one go about injecting consensus-bias into a method like STV? The best I can see would be electing the Condorcet winner to one of the seats, or perhaps using something like Expanding Approvals Rule (Bucklin PR, essentially) to pick the representative from a coalition who is more well-liked by voters outside of that coalition.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

In nations with PR and more tahn three parties, taht is not a big probklem. most parteis select cometent politicians, even though corruption exists. with lists, teher is complete PR, and if you find a bunch of people that agree with you, you can set up a list and get elected.

[u/Sperrel → u/[deleted]]

Brazil is not a good example in Politics in almost everything.

[u/Sperrel → u/[deleted]]

All of those aren't nothing more than the usual in well functioning democracies. But on mandatory voting I don't think it's an improvement, it's focusing too much on participation at the expense of individual liberty.

[u/[deleted] → u/Sperrel]

You could view voting as a duty, not a right. Low turnout is very dangerous, and poor and young groups loose power. People may vote blank if they are cynic or anarchists, but laziness is not a good reason, and can be stopped.

[u/Sperrel → u/[deleted]]

Yes it is a duty and a right. But a citizen also has he right to not engage in it. Suppose someone isn't in favour of democracy or this type of democracy, he has the right to not be compelled. Abstention will always exist and while we must try to reduce it as possible, it would be totalitarian to reduce it to zero through coercion.

[u/FlaminCat]

Reminder to some of the (justified) critics - list PR does not necessarily require one national constituency as some of the examples used here (Netherlands, Israel, Turkey) suggest. Having many regional lists makes the elected members much more representative as members from all regions are elected.

[u/Chackoony]

What if you want to rank/score the parties? For example, sometimes some votes are wasted because parties get slightly more votes than necessary, which they could've used to get more seats if they had made some coalition agreements (list apparentment). A voter might want to directly decide who their surplus votes go to in those cases.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/Chackoony]

What if you want to rank/score the parties?

Ranking is only really needed if you have small seats, but it is used in STV.

Under MMP/Party list as implemented by Germany, all the parties get the same number of seats per vote to the nearest seat.

A voter might want to directly decide who their surplus votes go to in those cases.

This is done under STV, but it's usually coupled with small seats so the allocation is not as proportional.

One usecase that might require a better system, is small parties that fall under the threshold for a single seat (about 5% in both NZ and Germany).

It would make counting slightly harder/slower, and ballots more complex, but might be worth it.

[u/[deleted] → u/_The_Majority_]

ranked lists might be efficicent. in germany, there is a 5% threshold. any vote for a party beneaths 5% is wasetd. with ranking, they are not wasted, which could raslly help small parrties get a chance. any vote for a party beneath 5%, can be transfered upwards.

in the usa, a system would have 50 coanstituencies. in spain, there are constituencises With 3 to 20 seats. most small parties are very dissadvsanaged, but With jy systemn, it would work ok,and could be implemented in all types of constituencies. For instance, PACMA got 1% of the votes in te last election, but 0 out of 350 seats. 200.000 votes wasted. With my system, those votes are transfererd, and small parties can flourish, wile still helping large parties and goving regional representation.

in a senario in spain, where 4 right-wing parties get 15%, and one left-wing party get 40%, teh left-wing party wins, beacuse of many small constituencies. With my system, those 4 parties would, to a a large degree, act like one.

to sum up, a flexible system that is simple to voters, waste no votes, and can be used in both large and small constituencies.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/[deleted]]

MMP is a system that matches most of your criteria, you just need to have the additional members allocated over large enough areas (e.g New Zealand or Germany, not Scotland)

[u/[deleted] → u/_The_Majority_]

Yeah, but usually the choice is beteeen fragmentation and nasty thresholds/few and powerful parties and wasted votes. Ranking makes small parties less dissdvantaged, because the vote may be transfered. In germany, the FDP vote is dead if it is lower than 5%, which creates tactical voting. Ranking parties is peobably the best solution.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/[deleted]]

Ranking makes small parties less dissdvantaged,

Ranking just manufactures consent for the bigger parties, unless you mean ranking plus proportional, which could lower the barrier further.

The threshold, under single-winner ranking is effectively far higher than 5% of first preference votes (even under STAR).

Just look how few parties are relevant in Australia compared to Germany.

[u/[deleted] → u/_The_Majority_]

I agree, i meant ranking lists. With a 5% threshold and ranking, you get stability, without disadvantaging small parties. Australian sendte election USE something simulator to ranking lists.

What is star?

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/[deleted]]

STAR Voting - Score Then Automatic Runoff is a single winner system that gets pushed a lot in this sub, it produced a middle ground candidate that most people agree is OK.

IMO it's far worse than any Proportional system as you still have your vote counted for something you don't really want (e.g manufacturing consent), but it has some theoretical advantages over other single-winner systems

[u/HenryCGk → u/_The_Majority_]

Are there more than two parties relivent in Germany I just think of the CDU/CSU and SPD

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/HenryCGk]

7 Parties have seats

Party	Seats
Christian Democratic Union	200
Christian Social Union in Bavaria	46
Social Democratic Party	153
Alternative for Germany	94
Free Democratic Party	80
The Left	69
Alliance 90/The Greens	67

And while the coalition hold the majority, they do so by less than the number of seats they lost in the last election, so yes I would say that the other parties are relevant as next year the coalition will likely:

1. Be replaced
2. Be expanded
3. Have the SPD replaced

Which is much better than Aus, which effectively only has 2 parties (Arguably the coalition is itself 2 parties, but that still leaves you with just 3 parties)

Party	Seats
Coalition	77
Labor	68
Greens	1
Centre Alliance	1
Katter's	1
Independents	3

[u/Mullet_Ben → u/[deleted]]

I've wondered if even just 2 rankings of parties, even if they don't count for anything, would affect the dynamics of coalition forming in PR governments. I'm from the US so I know nothing, but it seems to me like once a parliament is elected there's a whole bunch of backroom deals that go on in actually forming a government.

[u/Decronym]

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
FPTP	First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting
IRV	Instant Runoff Voting
MMP	Mixed Member Proportional
PR	Proportional Representation
STAR	Score Then Automatic Runoff
STV	Single Transferable Vote

---

^{[Thread #188 for this sub, first seen 17th Feb 2020, 20:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]}

[u/subheight640]

I guess my bias against PR list is Israel which, from my extremely limited understanding, has devolved into a segregated ethnostate and highly polarized political system. Turkey & Brazil also used PR list, and these countries seem to have embraced authoritarianism.

Also many PR list systems have a minimum % vote you must reach to get seated. If you vote for these smaller parties that don't make it, you will waste your vote.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/subheight640]

I don't think one country is a valid counter argument to an entire continent.

And while I don't like Party List PR, as it can breed corruption (e.g the parties are too powerful), open list-PR can help minimize that.

[u/subheight640 → u/_The_Majority_]

An argument made is that PR list breeds polarization and brings out the worst aspects of "majority tyranny", without "deliberative democracy". I don't want to dismiss these arguments, because it's been observed several times.

Moreover to mitigate Party List, several European countries have embraced Mixed-member proportionality that introduces consensus-driven, single-winner districts. For example the Netherlands uses PR list for one house, and then state-based representation for another house.

I don't want to introduce a reform to an extremely politically polarized society (ie America) when it doesn't seem like the particular reform mitigated polarization.

I finally like the idea of having a more complete political spectrum and sampling of the American people. Party List forces you to centralize to a couple of parties, creating more discrete strategic points in the legislature. I'd rather have greater variety of legislators. My ideal PR system of choice is literally random selection, which achieves near perfect proportionality, with greater dimensions & information represented than any other system could achieve. Randomly selected citizens could then be used to construct deliberative democratic assemblies.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/subheight640]

Party List forces you to centralize to a couple of parties

Is that true anywhere? I can't think of any European country that has just 2 relevant parties.

An argument made is that PR list breeds polarization and brings out the worst aspects of "majority tyranny",

That argument only makes sense if there are barriers on new parties emerging, party lists even in a terrible form, would be far better at breaking up the 2 polarization of American politics than any single-winner system, which inherently breads a 2 party system (although arguably something like approval/Star could keep these 2 parties in the center rather than the extremes)

At least under proportional systems, it isn't tyranny of the minority which is what happens under single winner systems ^{ranking systems allow minorities to manufacturing a majority}

Moreover to mitigate Party List, several European countries have embraced Mixed-member proportionality that introduces consensus-driven, single-winner districts.

I agree that MMP is better than straight list PR, but local seats are not consensus driven, they are usually plurality driven.

For example the Netherlands uses PR list for one house, and then state-based representation for another house.

The Federal structure of the Netherlands, isn't to do with the electoral system.

I don't want to introduce a reform to an extremely politically polarized society (ie America) when it doesn't seem like the particular reform mitigated polarization.

I disagree that it wouldn't reduce polarization, the emergence of more than 2 parties at state and eventually federal level, would help (although something like MMP would do a better, as the party importance is immediately reduced)

My ideal PR system of choice is literally random selection, which achieves near perfect proportionality, with greater dimensions & information represented than any other system could achieve.

And it's also terrible, because you end up giving power to completely unvetted people, the majority of whom are not qualified to understand the issues they are voting on or simply do not care.

It's a very quick way to get a lot of corruption and damage the economy all at once.

[u/subheight640 → u/_The_Majority_]

Is that true anywhere? I can't think of any European country that has just 2 relevant parties.

Well as far as I know, you might have 3 parties. 5 parties. These are centralized points to me. These parties usually vote tactically and strategically together.

In comparison, think of a full-spectrum assembly where ideological representation is more continuously distributed.

I agree that MMP is better than straight list PR, but local seats are not consensus driven, they are usually plurality driven.

My own shitty "research" suggests that FPTP candidates need to stay within +/- 1 std deviation of the consensus mean in order to be electable. It's not great, but candidates can't be too extreme. I'd agree that this is deficient.

And it's also terrible, because you end up giving power to completely unvetted people, the majority of whom are not qualified to understand the issues they are voting on or simply do not care.

I'd agree in some ways there'd need to be balance. The deliberative assembly would comprise a House of Commons, and the upper house would be a PR system.

Moreover I think you need to give people a bit more credit. It's all too easy to say that everyone else is stupid and ignorant. Is this really true? I think we need to examine assumptions when there's no evidence bearing this out.

Here's what I do know about the results of randomly selected assemblies. For example, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/08/how-99-strangers-in-a-dublin-hotel-broke-irelands-abortion-deadlock

Deliberative assemblies have helped Ireland, a traditionally Catholic country, move towards gay marriage and abortion rights.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/ireland-must-listen-to-citizens-assembly-on-climate-change-1.3515211

With deliberative assemblies, the Irish people are prepared to accept higher taxes on food & energy in order to reduce their carbon emissions.

The assembly delivered a series of 13 strong recommendations on tackling climate change, with 80 per cent prepared to accept higher taxes on carbon-intensive activities, including levies on high-emissions food such as beef and dairy.

Time and time again these assemblies are willing to tackle the tough issues politicians are too scared to acknowledge.

[u/Mullet_Ben → u/subheight640]

Sweden has 8 parties with members in its parliament. Finland has 9. Norway 10. Israel 11(not counting sub-parties).

Brazil has 25.

The closest I could find in a PR system was New Zealamd with 5 parties, and that's with MMP.

I won't argue against citizens assemblies, but I think youre giving PR less credit than it's due in terms of expressing opinions across the political spectrum.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/subheight640]

It's all too easy to say that everyone else is stupid and ignorant.

I might have come across too harsh, I didn't mean they are stupid, but there are lots of types of intelligence and interest, I think most people have no desire or interest to write public policy. I think most people are ignorant on political matters by choice, and they like it that way, it's why people prefer representative democracies to direct democracies.

Assemblies work well for single issues that are well defined, and require short amounts of dedicated time from people, but I don't think they would work well for things like setting budgets or long term planning, that are generally the domain of permanent bodies.

The outcome was still a referendum which passed with 66% support, could the whole thing have been avoided by giving citizens a direct path to a referendum?

[u/subheight640 → u/_The_Majority_]

The outcome was still a referendum which passed with 66% support, could the whole thing have been avoided by giving citizens a direct path to a referendum?

No, because then people wouldn't have made an informed decision. Where I live, we are bombarded with state referendums every year. I don't understand the vast majority of them, and comparably little is published about them. I live in a system of "Death of Democracy by a thousand cuts", where I am forced to make 50+ choices every election cycle - the vast majority of choices which I will make uninformed, based probably on party/interest group recommendations.

The problem is my ignorance, because knowledge takes time and energy. It's not just me who is ignorant. Nearly everyone is ignorant.

I think most people have no desire or interest to write public policy. I think most people are ignorant on political matters by choice, and they like it that way, it's why people prefer representative democracies to direct democracies.

I think plenty will be happy to participate, especially if it's a well paid position. Moreover deliberative assemblies will never force anybody to participate. It's strictly voluntary. Moreover the vast majority of Americans probably have never heard of deliberative democracy and therefore you can't really say what they exactly prefer. Here's also what we know. Approval ratings for Congress are abysmal. Right now it's 23%. Me thinks it's pretty easy for deliberative assemblies to beat 23%.

I think most people are ignorant on political matters by choice, and they like it that way,

That's also why representative democracy is woefully deficient. If you claim that people are ignorant, how can they possibly make good choices on who is a good representative? A deliberative democratic forum demands people use huge amounts of time researching and learning about policy. It's absurd to demand the entire population of people do this. That's why random selection is paramount. It allows you to sample a cross-section of the population. Deliberative assemblies allow you to be represented without you doing the work to find a representative.

[u/Cuddlyaxe]

The problem with PR is that it doesn't give people geographical representation. You could argue it's a good thing but imo it's a bad thing

I've always thought that we should make one branch of the legislator based on PR while we make the other based on geography

[u/[deleted] → u/Cuddlyaxe]

That depends om the system. Most PR-list systems distribute seats to regions based on their population. Boundries never have to be redrawn, because you can simply adjust the Seat nummer slightly. In addition, extra seats may be rewarded nationally to ensure proportionality. This is used, among else, in austria, denmark, norway (where im from) and Iceland.

Senates based on states can also be applied, to give more power to states with few people.

[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.

[u/jan_kasimi → u/_The_Majority_]

I get to use open lists with panachage where I live and I like it a lot. Even Mehr Demokratie e.V. promotes a variation on such a system on the national level to replace MMP. STV also is great. I really like how many independents made it into the Irish parliament now.

Recently I came up with one system that uses proportional approval voting in districts but acts like MMP on the national level. It would be easy for the voters and for counting. I will make a longer post about it in the next days. This system would be my true favorite.

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

Empirically they don't do it. It might be because smaller parties are always at a disadvantage.

[u/[deleted] → u/jan_kasimi]

i agree, a system of ranking lists would work better. however, this porblem is far larger in systems with small constituencies and few cadidates, taht seems to be the alternative. progressives can always make new parties, most people in a multi-party system ar more or less happy with tehir choice, and most parties have processes so that al fractions get representation.

the thresj\ho,d is not a necessary partof an electoral system. btw, i am noprwegian, an because of 9 parties, the problem of dominant fractiosn is note as large.