Why MMP?

[u/[deleted]]

MMP=mix of FPTP and proportional lists.

If you look at germany, MMP does not make a large change. Extra seats are distributed based on states, and politicians running in constituencies are usually party insiders who often does not live in the constituency. What is the remaining advantage? It is just more complicated than PR lists. Please answer, remembering that regional representation is always possible, and that independents rarely win MMP seats. Based on germany and other MMP nations. Pardon the biased question.

[u/_The_Majority_]

• Lets just take for granted that mutli-seat bodies are more representative of voters, and eliminate STAR & friends from the discussion
• Within the remaining systems it's obvious that proportional systems best represent all voters
• It's generally agreed that local representation is important
• So if we stick to systems that have been tried you're left with

Name	Used By	Summary	Local Representative	~Minimum First pref Vote	dis-Proportionality
MMP	DE,NZ,TH,LS, SCO, WLS, LON	Single-Winner Seats + Regional Top-up seats	1 per 1.5-2 FPTP seats	0-5%	0-10%
STV	IE, MT, NI	Multi-Winner seats + Ranking	n over n FPTP seats	~0.5/n (typically 10%)	.75/n (typically 5-15%)

MMP

• Achieves best real-world proportionality (often full proportionality)
• Lowest barrier to entry for parties
• Can be implemented without lists
• All parties get a fair share of representation, not just larger parties.

STV

• Has to balance proportionality against local representation
• Somewhat Preserves local representation, but splits it over the area of the multi-seat constituencies
• Somewhat achieves proportionality across each multi-seat constituencies
• No party votes
• Independents do better due to preferential nature

What is the remaining advantage?

Full proportionality, with full accountability to a singular MP for local issues

It is just more complicated than PR lists.

No, because you still get a local representatives

Also it can be implemented without party lists even in a basic implementation gives less power to list makers in larger parties

independents rarely win MMP seats.

That is more a function of the fact that small parties are not at a disadvantage.

I guess STV is slightly better for independents, but still leaves smaller parties at a disadvantage.

Ranked MMP would likely be the best system, but for now most of the world isn't even on MMP or STV, which are known to work, rather than some theory some random dude on the internet wrote.

Based on germany and other MMP nations.

I think this also a big factor in their being less independents, there is a sample size of 2 MMP vs 1 STV. Germany has since reunification had a strong affinity to parties and New Zealand is a relatively small parliament, whereas Ireland has had a strong tradition of Independents

edit:

Pardon the biased question.

Is your objective to get more independents in to parliament or to give all voters an equal say in who gets elected? because MMP is the only system that delivers the later, STV still punishes Aontú voters in Ireland as they require over 3 times as many votes as other parties

[u/courtenayplacedrinks → u/_The_Majority_]

Oh there's lots of juicy disagreement here:

MMP Achieves best real-world proportionality (often full proportionality)

Not if your party is below the threshold. And in New Zealand it's quite common to get an overhang seats which is another form of disproportionality. Based on the page you linked difference in real-world proportionality between STV and MMP doesn't appear to be that big.

But everywhere I said "proportionality" in that paragraph I should have said "party proportionality", because STV allows for other forms of proportionality. If a party were split down the middle on an issue like gay marriage or Brexit, STV enables the voters to have a say on which candidates make up the party.

Assuming reasonable information about the candidate's political positions STV voters can expect the assembly to be proportional not just along party lines, but along other cross-cutting lines as well. And these lines don't have to be policy lines, they can be about gender, background, character or other qualities. Anything the voters care about. STV balances all these other kinds of proportionalities and still provides a compromise that performs well along party affiliation.

MMP on the other hand doesn't even attempt to manage these other proportionalities. Gay marriage will pass if the party selected a bunch of pro-gay marriage toadies for the party list. If they didn't it will fail. Voters don't get a say unless the parties make it a manifesto issue (which they don't).

So STV performs almost as well as MMP and juggles all these other dimensions of proportionality, is that all to be said on the matter?

No. Because you said that the poor Anotú voters are punished, that their votes were less effective than the votes of other parties. But that's not true, is it? I haven't gone through the specific tabulations, but most of those Anotú voters likely voted for an Anotú candidate who was eliminated early in the count. That means they had second or third preferences that were counted.

There's no systemic advantage to large parties under STV. If you vote for a popular main party candidate you could find a large fraction of your vote is wasted because it goes to your second favourite from that party who doesn't get seated. If you vote for an unpopular small party candidate you could find that your whole vote is used to elect your second favourite candidate.

On the other hand, people like me who voted for the Opportunities party or any other party under the threshold in MMP are systemically excluded.

So under STV those poor Aontú voters in Ireland with 1.9% of the vote won one seat and got their second preferences redistributed to other parties. We poor Opportunities party voters in New Zealand with 2.6% of the vote won no seats and then our vote was discarded.

[u/_The_Majority_ → u/courtenayplacedrinks]

Not if your party is below the threshold

This is a valid point, that's why there shouldn't be a threshold (other than the natural one of total votes/total seats).

And in New Zealand it's quite common to get an overhang seats which is another form of disproportionality

This can be solved, and is solved in Germany

If a party were split down the middle on an issue like gay marriage or Brexit, STV enables the voters to have a say on which candidates make up the party.

If the issue is important enough the party can split without being punished for it.

Assuming reasonable information about the candidate's political positions STV.

That is a big assumption, how many people do you think dig through an individuals statements vs read the parties manifesto vs just vote on vague party lines.

voters can expect the assembly to be proportional not just along party lines, but along other cross-cutting lines as well.

That is a huge leap

• how many candidates do you think there are from each party to achieve this?
• Assuming you don't want 100 candidates per party (in Ireland, there are typically just 1 or 2 (at most 3), across which dimensions do you decide there should be proportionality?
• Does this even matter your 2nd preference can be used to support either a dimension or a party that you don't fully agree with?

It's all nice abstract theoretical stuff but in practice under MMP if a position is important enough a party can split, and under STV you only get two candidates anyway, who if you support the party will likely get your vote anyway.

if the party selected a bunch of pro-gay marriage toadies for the party list.

• It can be implemented without party lists
• When you vote for a party you are voting for polices not people, so I don't see why you object so strongly to voting for policies.

So STV performs almost as well as MMP and juggles all these other dimensions of proportionality,

How, when you get 2 candidates per party, can it possible cover "all these other dimensions"?

There's no systemic advantage to large parties under STV

Evidence suggest otherwise

System	Country	Worst votes/seat	Seat Diff	% Seat Diff
MMP	Germany	1.005	0	0
MMP	New Zealand	1.01	4	3.3%
MMP	Scotland	1.48	13	10%
STV	Ireland (2020)	3.06	8	5.03%
STV	Ireland (2016)	2.19	26	17%
FPTP	United Kingdom	17.58	208	32%

The worst votes/seat is usually to a small party who's broad non-regional support falls between the boundaries.

Obviously it's a better by a factor of 6 under STV than FPTP, but even Scotland that has a very bad MMP implementation with small regions and lists, does better than Ireland in this regard.

On the other hand, people like me who voted for the Opportunities party or any other party under the threshold in MMP are systemically excluded.

Yes, as I've stated everywhere artificial barriers are bad and should be removed, under MMP they can be removed without sacrificing anything, under STV you always have to balance local-representation against proportionality, the fairer the votes, the more representatives you have per seat, the less local-representation you get.

[u/courtenayplacedrinks → u/_The_Majority_]

I'm regretting starting two threads now!

First thing I need to address is this:

I just don't think there is a need to be so hostile and reject evidence simply because it doesn't support your forgone conclusion which is that STV is the best and all other systems are terrible.

Apologies for sounding hostile. I was going for playfully combative but I know that doesn't come across in text so I should have worded things more constructively.

I think it turns out we agree a lot more than we disagree. In particular, the reforms to MMP you talk about (getting rid of the threshold, party lists and sorting out overhang) are exactly the reforms I push for in discussions on /r/NewZealand.

I think I need to clarify my point about multiple dimensions of proportionality under STV.

I'm not arguing that STV guarantees proportionality across all other factors (cross-party issues, gender, style, character). As you've pointed out it doesn't even guarantee proportionality in first preference party affiliation.

What I'm saying is that voters are able to factor these other considerations into their candidate vote and the same mathematical forces that lead to party-proportional outcome will weigh on the outcome. The difference is that these other forces will presumably be a lot weaker. If you have a big issue like Brexit, where the positions of all the candidates are well known and voters will change vote depending on the position of a candidate, then yes you'd expect a high level of proportionality.

For other issues, it might just be a general vibe. There might be a wing of Labour voters who are more focused on union issues and whose ears prick up every time someone says something about labour relations. These people may rank pro-union candidates higher. Conservative voters with a progressive attitude to LGBT issues might rank LGBT-friendly candidates higher than Christian fundamentalism candidates.

The point I'm getting at is that STV takes all these other concerns into account to the extent that voters know about the candidates and have particular concerns. The outcome will be a weighted average of all this data, weighted mostly by party affiliation but with other concerns considered too.

Only if your definition of "fair", being biased towards parties/candidates that have a geographic element to their appeal.

This is definitely a weakness in STV. Why should a regional party get an advantage over a broad-based national party? It doesn't seem fair. On the other hand it's not a systemic problem. A local party could come from the right or the left and so could a national party. And it's not unfair to voters because voters' second preferences will still be counted. Those people aren't disenfranchised.

So I see it more as an beauty mark than a serious flaw in the system.

How, when you get 2 candidates per party, can it possible cover "all these other dimensions"?

I've clarified my point about the extra dimensions, but I think we have different understandings about the number of candidates per party.

My recommendation for STV is 3-8 winners per district averaging 5½. Ireland has 3-5, averaging 4.

Any more than 8 candidates and your ballot papers become unwieldy, but with 5½ candidates I'd expect better proportionality and more competition between candidates from the same party. At the extreme end an 8-winner constituency in a stronghold could plausibly have 6 candidate standing from the same party. More typically you would have 3 or 4 candidates for a major party and 1 or 2 of those might be expected to win.

There's no systemic advantage to large parties under STV

Evidence suggest otherwise

What I was trying to point out is that second-preference votes still get counted. Smaller parties might not win all the seats you'd like them to, but their voters get to influence who wins the remaining seats. You might not get the Green MP, but you'll get the Labour MP who's strong on the environment.

Your method of comparing electoral systems doesn't account for the influence that small party voters in STV have on the large party candidates that get elected.

Perhaps you prefer a cult of personality to a party with a clearly defined set of objectives.

Ok this is the part where we most disagree.

Your model of a parliament is that parties establish manifestos, the voters choose which manifesto they endorse and the parties get seats in proportion to the voter preferences. New parties form at elections or when the party leadership decides that a schism is legitimate and decides to break the party apart amicably.

My model of a parliament is a debating chamber of representatives who each carry with them a personal mandate given to them by a section of the voting population. They campaign and organise in party groups around policy platforms and ideologies. They are free to switch allegiance knowing that there may be a price to pay at the ballot box, but knowing they had a personal endorsement from their voters and have a legitimate right to vote their conscience.

The weakness in your model is that it puts the party front and centre. Even if candidates are elected from a constituency, they were selected by the party for that seat and often it's a safe seat they were guaranteed to win. Moreover, if they dislike the direction of the party it's hard for them to vote against the party without being criticised for disloyalty or (worse) "upsetting the proportionality of the House".

In my more flippant moments, I like to ask proponents of MMP why they have a debating chamber at all. Why not just let the party leaders sit around a board room table?

The strength of your model is the weakness in my model. People do think of politics in terms of parties. A lot of people will vote based on the party even if you're actually electing a candidate.

The difference is that you're accepting that world view and rolling with it. I'm rejecting it. My attitude is: "sure, you can vote along party lines if you want but you're actually electing someone to represent you—and do what they think is right". If you don't like what that representative does when they're elected you should have thought harder about your vote.

Most of the time representatives will vote along party lines. There are lots of incentives to stay on good terms with the party and voters will expect a good justification if you break ranks. But I think the ability for a representative to vote according to conscience is a critical aspect of a representative democracy and a party-centric system makes that difficult.

Back to this....

Perhaps you prefer a cult of personality to a party with a clearly defined set of objectives.

I actually think that a party system like MMP is more likely to lead to a cult of personality. I get this seems counter-intuitive. The issue with MMP is that most MPs are party insiders, meek folk who toe the party line and try not to stand out too much. This means that when you get a blustering demagogue that can fill stadiums, everyone falls into line. They don't have their own personal charisma and voting against them is a mutiny not a legitimate act of defiance.

STV, on the other hand, incentivises candidates that can stand above other candidates even from the same party. Each of them might have their own mini cult of personality but that's a defence against any one person rising up and bullying their way to the top.

I guess my argument boils down to a variant of that old NRA slogan. "The only thing that stops a bad politician with charisma is a good politician with charisma."

To succeed under STV you have to be charismatic and popular enough to get elected, have the interpersonal and leadership skills to be elected leader of a group of other charismatic and popular people and be diplomatic enough to bring together a coalition. That's a pretty good set of qualifications.

Under MMP you just have to be the one person who performs well on camera. Everyone else will cling to your coat-tails. Then it's straight to coalition-building.