Alternative voting systems
O J
modern voting system. Instead we have a system where the government
and opposion are expected to get 10 and 7 seats respectively. Of
course, there is no guarantee that this will happen, and prior to 1984
people did not block vote to the extent that the do now.
What do people think of other systems, for instance would a party list
system be better.
O.J.
Ken
"O J" <ojb...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:1182369503.9...@u2g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
It is a far better system in Gib than elsewhere. Take the UK for instance.
The nation is split into constituencies. You get to vote for the member of
parliament who you wish to represent you. If you wish to vote along party
lines, you are obliged to vote for that party's representative within your
constituency, even if you don't like him. If you vote for the bloke you
like, you might be voting for the party you don't want. Eventually, suppose
you vote for the bloke who gets in, you have voted for one out of over 600
MPs. How much do you think your vote matters in all of this? How much does
you vote matter if the bloke you voted for does NOT get in?
Consider then that in the event of there being 3 parties throughout the
land, it is possible for ONE party to get ALL the seats if marginally more
than 1/3 of voters vote for that party. That IS an extreme case. But look at
the last election. Blair had a large majority in the house - more than half
the total seats and certainly much more than any other party (i.e. the
opposition was fragmented among several parties) when he had secured but 42%
of all the votes cast, in an election where only 25% of the electorate
bothered to show up.
Why the apathy? Read the first paragraph - the individual's vote is too
remotely connected with the make-up of parliament, people feel
disenfranchised, they don't bother to turn up and pay more attention to
what's going on in the Big Brother House and what haircut Beckham is wearing
today.
Contrast with Gib where you get to choose THE WHOLE government. Because
there are fewer electors, each person's vote is proporionately far more
valuable than any voter's view in the UK, or Germany, or France. OK, the
Govt you vote in is not anywhere as powerfuil on a world stage as a Gib
Govt - but so what? Do you think it matters one bit to the bloke behind the
counter at a newsagents in Newcastle whether or not the UK has a permanent
seat in the UN Security Council? Do you think it is of any relevance to a
butcher in Plymouth that Tony Blair was well received (or otherwise) the
last time he met with the Russian Premier?
If a woman working at the M&S Branch in Peterborough has a grievance with an
issue of education, she goes to the school concerned at at the very most
will speak to a member of the City Council who will be unable to do much as
he's following orders from the Govt which to her is inaccessible. OTOH a
person working at M&S in Gib who is unahppy with their child's education can
within a day (if necessary) be speaking directly to the minister who has the
power to actually do something about it.
That the system in Gib might be improved- perhaps. That it's a better system
than most places many times its size - certainly.
Ken
Jim Watt
I think people fail to realise that the idea of elections is to
give a government a mandate to effectivly run things.
The Gibraltar system does that well.
Although the systems in larger places give minority parties a
place in the parliament, ours is too small for that.
I'd also dispute that there was no block voting before 1984
because there was.
--
Jim Watt
http://www.gibnet.com
JimmyGibby
"Ken" <k...@k1at.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:f5c81...@news5.newsguy.com...
>
> "O J" <ojb...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
> news:1182369503.9...@u2g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
>>I was dissapointed that the new constitution did not include a more
>> modern voting system. Instead we have a system where the government
>> and opposion are expected to get 10 and 7 seats respectively. Of
>> course, there is no guarantee that this will happen, and prior to 1984
>> people did not block vote to the extent that the do now.
>>
>> What do people think of other systems, for instance would a party list
>> system be better.
>
> It is a far better system in Gib than elsewhere. Take the UK for instance.
>
PR (whatever that really means) is far worse than first past the post, far
far worse.
There a few countries where PR has caused many problems.
Remember it's all about 'the will of the people' not about simple
statistics.
Ken
"JimmyGibby" <s...@you.jimmy> wrote in message
news:NvSdnbFpULLjOufb...@pipex.net...
1st past the post is worse than PR (proportional representation). In the
event of there being only two parties, it makes little difference. As sson
as you introduce a third credible party the distortions are huge. You get
extreme politics - govts with large majorities being returned on a minority
vote. Govts point to their large majorities and call it a mandate (to do
whatever they want). How is it a mandate if the govt was elected by a
quarter of the electorate? Sure, PR leads to parties with no overall
majorities. Some would argue that it leads to weak government. Good I say -
govts on the whole are too intrusive, and putting ministers in a position of
weakness is not altogether a bad thing therefore. You then need to have
consensus government rather than serial dictatorship, which is what the UK
has been suffering from for decades now.
Ken
Jim Watt
wrote:
For once I agree with Mr Willis, posting under his pseudonym
PR is a disaster. The present system returns a government which
can do those things a government has to without fear of being
thrown out before the end of the term.
Thereafter they are subject to the electorate, as Labour will be
in the future in the UK.
If Gibraltar wants a change from the GSD they can have one, but PR
would mean that parties with a handful of members could call the tune.
In terms of minority parties, the following is interesting
http://www.elmundo.es/especiales/2004/03/espana/14m/resultados/congreso/globales/
The lowest scoring party was
Grupo Político Honradez Absoluta Española
with around 50 votes, as compared to the countryside party in the
Gibraltar European election which scored 88 votes in a much smaller
affair.
They did not issue any propaganda, visit the electors, hold meetings
or otherwise campaign locally. Nor does Gibraltar have any
obvious 'countryside' issues.
Ken
"Jim Watt" <jim...@aol.no_way> wrote in message
news:lmjl73taq8di0cuf9...@4ax.com...
The current system in Gib works well. PR is not needed there, with small
numbers and a majority which is set by statute you cannot have the situation
which arises here when a party can completely dominate the house with
theoretically at least EVERY seat to itself. In the days of Thatcher, and in
Tony's first election that was functionally the case. However PR is needed
here. It would teach every party a serious lesson in consensus politics.
Ken
JimmyGibby
What Government was elected, under 1st past the post, with a majority by a
quarter of the electorate THAT VOTED?
ANY Government, under ANY election system will be voted in if turnout is
low.
I'll ask you a question Ken, what is PR?
I and the general electorate understand 1st past the post perfectly, but PR?
In my experience people who support PR, don't actually know what it is or
what system they support, they are very very vague about it. "Oh it's better
isn't it" without really thinking about what it is. They can only point to
what's bad about 1st past the post rather anything that's good about PR.
NO election system is perfect, but for the UK, 1st past the post is the
best.
JimmyGibby
"Jim Watt" <jim...@aol.no_way> wrote in message
news:lmjl73taq8di0cuf9...@4ax.com...
Ken
"JimmyGibby" <s...@you.jimmy> wrote in message
I agree you are not in a position to complain if you were not bothered to
get off your backside and registe your choice. However more fundamentally
than that, is why people are so switched off. It could be that they feel
their voice to be so small, so insignificant, that it really doesn't matter.
The sad thing is, many of them are probably correct.
>
> ANY Government, under ANY election system will be voted in if turnout is
> low.
I'd go further and say that under ANY system of voting, the Government is
ALWAYS gets in!
>
> I'll ask you a question Ken, what is PR?
A system by which the make up of parliament, drawn up along party lines,
sees each party having a degree of representation within the elected
chambers that matches the profile of votes cast by the electorate. A party
that attracted 20% of the vote would have 20% of the seats, and so on. Next
question please.
>
> I and the general electorate understand 1st past the post perfectly, but
> PR?
> In my experience people who support PR, don't actually know what it is or
> what system they support, they are very very vague about it. "Oh it's
> better isn't it" without really thinking about what it is. They can only
> point to what's bad about 1st past the post rather anything that's good
> about PR.
> NO election system is perfect, but for the UK, 1st past the post is the
> best.
I disagree, and I accept the other system has not been tried. However all
that 1st past the post has delivered since thee has been more than one
credible party to form an opposition has been to permit minority-vote
governments (accpeting that the other parties garnered fewer votes) to form
govts with overwhelming majorities, delivering a system of serial
dictatorships.
One problem is of course that ANY govt getting in by the present system,
knowing it would never have made it under a PR system, is unlikely to change
the very system that got them into power (turkeys and Christmas).
Another problem is that were the UK to move towards consensus politics by
having a party with no overall majority, there is no group of MPs who would
know how to behave accordingly. The UK has no history of such government.
Almost inevitably then, the first attempt at such a system may well end in a
bit of a mess - and would be pounced upon by the old guard as justification
to return to the 1st past post system.
K
JimmyGibby
PR falls down on, badly.
So there are apparently a large number of people in the UK, whilst never
taking part in terrorism, support the aims of Al-Queda.
Now there are about 650 MPs, therefore a party (The Al-Queda Party) only
needs 1/650 of the vote to get an MP (that's only 0.15% of the electorate!)
So perhaps the Al-Queda party say gets 2 or 3 MPs who could influence the
balance of power in Britain, is this the will of the people?
Just as likely the BNP would now be a credible force, perhaps 65 MPs in a
new parliament holding the balance of power, the will of people?
How many nutters from the Animal rights ALF terrorists would become well
paid MPs?
Yes it's the extremists, the people that society has no truck with, as they
really do not represent any decent people any contituency, now would have a
DISPROPORTIONATE representation in a parliament. But could never get an MP
in any part of the land under 1st past the post.
Israel has 'PR', it's not a haven of peace I think you'll agree, this is
largely because very right wing orthodox Jews hold the balance of power.
The Netherlands has a paedophile party, why not? They can get enough votes.
In Italy the Minister of Justice allegedly has links with the Mafia, how
could this be? Well his party holds the balance of power. Guess what?
They have PR.
But anyway in PR you never have 3rd party politics it's always one against
another, usually centre-right against centre-left, so what does it 'solve'
exactly?
And what about your MP, under PR you simply do not have one. Think about
the number of people that write to their MP, all gone under PR.
Cities would now have a really massive influence, London votes would be more
valid over the rights of Shetland Islanders than the Shetland Islanders
votes. It's all a numbers game with PR, not about what the local people
want. Local people represented by their local MP.
And of course we would be consigned to weak ineffective minority Government
forever.
Ken
"JimmyGibby" <s...@you.jimmy> wrote in message
The problems in places you cite, such as Israel, go well beyond the system
of govt. Any MP from an extremist party could merely be shunned by other
MPs. Yes you CAN have an MP and YES it can be the one that you voted for
(though of course you may have voted for the other bloke).
Suppose you keep the same number of MPs, at around 650. The first thng you
do is that you reduce the number of constituencies, perhaps to 400 or
thereabouts. Each constituency votes for an MP, and the person who gets in
(in a 1st past post system gets in) and represents his / her seat. The
remaining 250 vacancies in parliament are allocated in such a manner among
those standing for election so as to bring the whole of Parliament into a
profile which mirrors the profile of votes cast.
As 1st past post over-represents the more popular parties, you can expect
the balancing system to bring in members to Parliament from the less popular
ones to redress the balance. You still your MP representing your
constituency.
Which of those who stood for election but didn't make it on a 1st past post
system make it to parliament anyway is easily decided. If party X raised 10%
of the vote, it is entitled to 10% of the seats (65 out of the 650). If it
has already managed to get 40 seats, it needs another 25. Of its so-far
unsuccessful candidates, the 25 who obtained the largest number of votes get
in, and so on.
Of course there are difficulties and problems. I don't claim to have all the
answers, and your disagreeing with me doesn't make my views any less valid,
in the same way that if you agreed with me they wouldn't be any more valid.
My views are my views, that's all - as yours are yours.
What I find refreshing about this is that for the first time you have
engaged in conversation without recourse to petty insults and name calling,
even if we are rather off-topic, in as much as we are discussing the UK
electoral system in which Gib has no representation. This IS alt.gibraltar
after all!
K
JimmyGibby
please."
originally proposed! As I said those people who support PR are very vague
and don't what it is except "Oh it must be better".
1st past the post in the UK is the best electorate system.
Ken
"JimmyGibby" <s...@you.jimmy> wrote in message
You misquote me maliciously, as you have done to others in the past. I never
suggested that in a PR scenario ther would be anything OTHER than a profile
of seats occupied according to the prfile of votes obtained. How else can
this be manifest other than, forexample, a party which attracts 20% of the
votes getting 20% of the seats, and so on! Eventually, 100% ofthe seats are
occupied in the same profile as the votes were cast, totalling 100% of
votes.
You and I agree to differ. You prefer the first past the post system, I
prefer proportional representation. I will grant you one thing - 1st past
the post is easier to understand. Perhaps therein lies its appeal.
Ken
JimmyGibby
of power in permanent minority Government!!
Ken
"JimmyGibby" <s...@you.jimmy> wrote in message
They could only hold as much power as the electorate would let them have.
Perhaps some people vote for them by means of registering a protest vote,
knowing these folk will (under present terms) never hold a seat. Were they
to have the real possibility of a seat, fewer people would vote for them. PR
would also signal the end of tactical voting, as people could not play
tactically on the distortions to the parliamentary make-up guaranteed by the
present system. With PR EVERYONE'S vote counts towards the final profile,
which reflects the seats taken by each party. About time that ALL votes
counted.
Ken
Jim Watt
wrote:
>And you don't get the BNP, ALF and other extremists controlling the balance
>of power in permanent minority Government!!
Or worse, the situation with religious parties in Israel bringing
down Governments.
Ken
"Jim Watt" <jim...@aol.no_way> wrote in message
> On Sat, 23 Jun 2007 19:24:16 +0100, "JimmyGibby" <s...@you.jimmy>
> wrote:
>
>>And you don't get the BNP, ALF and other extremists controlling the
>>balance
>>of power in permanent minority Government!!
>
> Or worse, the situation with religious parties in Israel bringing
> down Governments.
Theocracies - pah!
K