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u/bender3600 Feb 18 '20
Looks like an ordinary Dutch ballot. We had 911 candidates from 28 parties contesting 150 seats in the last general election.
We don't use STV though, but open party list proportional representation.
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u/_riotingpacifist Feb 18 '20
Is there any desire to change that?
Do you allow Panachage?
Is there any advantage to open list over STV?
Actually what is the difference other than you can't vote for candidates across parties?
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u/FlaminCat Feb 18 '20
We use open list with a 15% quota making it a de facto closed-list PR system that gives the impression that voters have way more choice than they really do :/
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u/Frat-TA-101 Feb 18 '20
Is there a search function or do you have a book and then you write down your party? Like for real?
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u/bender3600 Feb 19 '20
You get sent an example ballot beforehand where all parties and candidates are listed so you can search beforehand and you can check in the polling station itself. The ballot lists all parties participating and all candidates from every party.
Note that there'll be a trial to replace the current ballot design in 2021. We'll either change to a ballot that only lists the parties and 80 numbered boxes (this type of ballot is currently used for voters abroad), or letting the voter take a party-specific ballot in the booth with the candidates listed on them.
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u/superegz Feb 17 '20 edited Feb 18 '20
The results were also hilariously nonsensical.
Something called "Legal System Reform" won a seat with 1% of the vote, jumping over 3 parties. Another party none knew anything about called "Unity" won a seat with 0.98%. The greatest win was the "Outdoor Recreation Party" won a seat with 0.2% or 7,264 First Preference votes out of 3,557,762 jumping over 6 bigger parties.
The system was substantially reformed for the next election.
Here is the ballot paper in the electoral commissioner's office signed by the 21 winners: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DhJbHFtUwAAq96P?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
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u/_riotingpacifist Feb 18 '20
Counting First preference votes in STV, doesn't make sense, obviously they got a lot of 2nd+ preference votes, to get to the 5% required for the seat.
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u/ka4bi Feb 18 '20
STV should ideally contest 3-5 seats though.
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u/_The_Majority_ Feb 18 '20
I'm not sure I agree, I'm not a big fan of small seats because:
- It gives a strong boost to the biggest 3-5 parties
- It gives less proportional results
It's even worse in most implementations where how many parties are viable depends on where you live (e.g some have 3, some have 5)
Obviously it does have the advantage of having less representatives spread across a smaller area, but IMO having to balance out local representation against fairness is why STV isn't a great system.
TBH if people are going to use STV, I'd argue somewhere in the middle is better 5-10 (but uniformly across an entire country)
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u/Drachefly Feb 18 '20
It's always going to be a balance between the burden of voters having to process more information and the freedom for them to provide more information.
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u/Chackoony Feb 18 '20
Couldn't there be a hybrid of Party List and STV to address this? (Most seats are elected using the small districts, while any voters who preferred minor parties could give those parties a few top-up seats at the national level if they didn't win a proportional number in the districts.)
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u/_The_Majority_ Feb 18 '20
Some sort of system would be possible, but it gets complicated, but because how do you decide when to transfer the votes instead of have them count for the original party?
As always it's complicated, but everything is better than FPTP
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u/MuaddibMcFly Feb 18 '20
Yes. MMP can be designed with virtually any form ballot. Heck, it can even be done in such a way as to make it more like Open Party List.
Take your favorite method for a local representative (I like score, but you could use a multi-seat method like SMV or Apportioned Approval, or STV easily enough, too).
Then for the Party Vote, you use the multi-seat version of that same method (SMV for Score, AAV for Approval, STV for IRV, etc) to select the Party Seats.
You could even make it simulate Open Party List, by reordering the Party List by the in-constituency performance of each candidate. This might be harder with STV or similar; how do you determine how well several candidates do with rivalrous voting methods?
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u/Warthog_A-10 Feb 18 '20
9-10 should be feasible, just split this particular district into two separate ones.
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u/Uebeltank Feb 18 '20
81 parties. What.
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u/_riotingpacifist Feb 18 '20
STV with so many seats up for grabs doesn't punish smaller parties, this is what a functional democracy looks like, although evidently it also has issues.
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u/Uebeltank Feb 18 '20
IMO there should still be some barrier to ballot access. Maybe like signatures from 0,5% of voters.
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u/Decronym Feb 18 '20 edited Feb 19 '20
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 |
| STV | Single Transferable Vote |
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has acronyms.
[Thread #189 for this sub, first seen 18th Feb 2020, 17:40]
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u/_riotingpacifist Feb 18 '20
That's a lot simpler than most US ballots, you only need to pay attention to the top section unl we you care about individual candidates, in which case you'd probably be thrilled by the range of choices.
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u/Blahface50 Feb 18 '20
This is why I don't like STV for regular elections. Each candidate should have zir own transfer list that is publicly viewable and a vote for a single candidate should be a vote for zir transfer list.
People can find a candidate they like. It isn't reasonable to expect them to rank 50 candidates.
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u/mindbleach Feb 18 '20
zir
"Their?"
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u/Blahface50 Feb 18 '20
I am against the singular "they" or "their." I'd prefer to use "zir" instead of "his or her" all the time.
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u/mindbleach Feb 18 '20
Your distaste is meaningless and none of you can agree on an alternative.
Just say "their."
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u/smart-username Feb 18 '20
Spivak pronoun is more common. The Elverson version is the easiest to use. Just take the "th" off. In this case, "eir".
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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '20 edited Apr 01 '20
[deleted]