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The Case For STV
Jamie DeithJanuary 31, 2007
Table of ContentsAbout This Document.........................................................................................................................................................3Table of STV Myths............................................................................................................................................................3Table of Tough Questions for MMP...................................................................................................................................3STV Basics..........................................................................................................................................................................4
The STV Ballot..............................................................................................................................................................4A Sample Election.........................................................................................................................................................5Ballot Transfers............................................................................................................................................................10
Sharing Cookies......................................................................................................................................................11Follow the Ballots....................................................................................................................................................12
Whole Transfers..................................................................................................................................................12Surplus Transfers................................................................................................................................................13A Ballot That Does It All...................................................................................................................................14
All Ballots Created Equal........................................................................................................................................15Most Ballots Help To Elect Somebody...................................................................................................................15
A Collection of MMP Systems.........................................................................................................................................16Dividing The House.....................................................................................................................................................16
Riding Members vs List Members..........................................................................................................................18What Sort Of List?.......................................................................................................................................................19
Closed List...............................................................................................................................................................19Open List.................................................................................................................................................................20Best Losers..............................................................................................................................................................21
PRRegion Size............................................................................................................................................................22PRThreshold................................................................................................................................................................23
STV And MMP Square Off..............................................................................................................................................24Safe Seats Zombies and Vampires.............................................................................................................................24Proportionality.............................................................................................................................................................26Complexity...................................................................................................................................................................27Independent Candidacies.............................................................................................................................................28Local Representation....................................................................................................................................................29
About the Author...............................................................................................................................................................31
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About This Document
There are two objectives to this document. The first is to provide some background on Single Transferable Vote and Mixed Member Proportional systems (STV and MMP). The first two sections are devoted to this. The second objective is to show, in some depth, why the author feels that STV is superior to any MMP system.
If you're already an expert in electoral systems, feel free to skip to the last section, where most of the comparisons between STV and MMP are to be found. It starts at roughly ¾ of the way through this document.
If there's a specific issue that you're interested in, you might find a reference to it amongst the Tables of Myths and Tough Questions below.
Please see About the Author at the last page should you wish to contact me for any clarifications.
Thanks for reading... enjoy!
Table of STV MythsSTV Ballots will be hopelessly long..................................................................................................................................6The STV quota is too high for smaller parties to be elected............................................................................................10A transferred ballot counts for more than everyone else's ballot......................................................................................17STV elections are less proportional than MMP elections................................................................................................28STV is far too complex.....................................................................................................................................................29STV gives poor local representation.................................................................................................................................31
Table of Tough Questions for MMPWhat lengths will you go to in order to insure proportionality?......................................................................................17Who is a list member accountable to?..............................................................................................................................17Will list members have local responsibilities? .................................................................................................................17Do riding reps perform all riding duties, even though there are now fewer of them?.....................................................17Should a Party Vote member be allowed change parties or vote against the leader?.......................................................17Can you eliminate safe seats?...........................................................................................................................................24Will independents have a realistic chance of winning seats?...........................................................................................26
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STV Basics
The STV Ballot
Let's start with a hypothetical ballot for Triangula that includes 8 candidates. You'll notice that I've written the ballot in 2 ways. The ballot on the left should look fairly normal to you, while the one on the right shows uses colourful faces instead of party names. There's a reason for all this that I'll come to later.
Same ballot Different format
Now, you might be tempted at this point to ask a few probing questions about this ballot, and because I'm writing this document, I have the answers:
Q: Why 'Greenish' instead of just 'Green'?A: Just to avoid confusion between these pretend parties and the reallife
Green Party.
Q: About the faces I can see that colours match the party names for most of them, but why is Sam grey and Iris multicoloured?
A: All of the small party candidates will be grey, even though they might belong to different parties. In reallife, parties like the Libertarians, Christian Heritage, Marijuana and Marxists would all fall into this grey category, even though they have radically different platforms. Iris is multicoloured because she's an independent, so she can pick and choose policies from anyone.
Q: Why does the Orange Party get to be listed first? Isn't that an unfair advantage?A: Not if you randomize the ballots so that each party gets a turn at the top. Different voters will see different
orderings of the same candidates.
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The Funnyface STV BallotFor Triangula
InstructionsSee the real ballot for instructions
Rank
Otis
Sam
Rita
1Rhoda
1Iris
Bob
Betty
1Gwen
1
1
1
4
3
2
4
The 'Real' STV Ballot For Triangula
InstructionsRank the candidates in order of preference: 1, 2, 3, etc.You may rank as many candidates as you wish3 candidates will be elected for this riding
Party Candidate RankOrange Party Otis
Splinter Party Sam
Red PartyRita 2Rhoda 3
Independent Iris 1
Blue PartyBobBetty
Greenish Party Gwen 4
Q: Who decides which Red Party candidate is listed first?A: That should be randomized too. If you let the party decide, then they could use that to try to favour one candidate
over the other. Most people think that decision is better left to the voters. Certainly, some voters will just want to vote Red without caring so much who the candidates are, and they can do so by just putting 1, 2 in the Red boxes in the order that they appear. Many others will care about the candidates as individuals, and these people will end up deciding which Red candidate is more likely to be elected.
Q: If there are 3 seats available, how come the bigger parties aren't running a full slate of 3 candidates?A: Well they could, but in order to win all the seats under STV, a party would need to be tremendously popular,
somewhere around 75% of the vote. In larger ridings they would need an even bigger consensus. Running extra candidates that have no hope of winning is a waste of campaign resources. A reasonable strategy for a party is to estimate the number of seats they'll win, and add one.1
Q: Why exactly should parties run one extra candidate?A: Having an extra candidate for voters to choose from guards against a few surprises, such as:
– The party has a surge of popularity and actually stands a chance of winning the extra seat;– A candidate does something to make himself unelectable, such as doctoring audio tapes, having frowned
upon relations with other people's spouses, or stealing jewellery;– A candidate is inconsiderate and dies during the campaign;– A candidate turns out to be a vampire. More on vampires later.
Related to these last few thoughts is our first myth about STV:
Myth: STV Ballots will be hopelessly long.This is based on the faulty assumption that big parties will run one candidate per available seat. With 3 major parties, a 7seat riding would supposedly yield 3x7=21 total candidates, plus several more for the smaller parties and independents. However, if parties use the more rational “expect to win + 1” approach when deciding how many candidates to field, then in our 7seater we might expect 9 candidates from major parties2, plus a number of smalls and independents; perhaps 1520 candidates total. When sorted by party, most voters should have no trouble sorting through a ballot of this size.
A Sample Election
Let's walk through the Triangula election. As you probably know by now, the STV ballots are counted in rounds, and each round sees at least one candidate elected or eliminated. To make it easier to follow, I'm going to use the funnyfaces that you saw earlier. Here are three things you should know before we start:
– There were 4000 ballots cast– There are 3 vacancies to be filled– A candidate will be declared elected after accumulating 1001 ballots. This is the quota of 4000÷(3+1) + 1.
1 As a reallife example, Ireland's 2002 general election saw the 3 largest parties fielding an average of 0.83 extra candidates per riding, An 'extra' candidate in this case is anyone who ran but didn't win a seat. Please see http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/amisc/elec0201.pdf, page 56, for the raw data.
2 This assumes that in our 7seat riding we expect that 1 of the seats will go either to a smaller party (such as the Greens) or to an independent. That leaves 6 seats that the three big parties together expect to win, plus they'll each add one more, giving 9 before considering the small parties and independents.
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Election In Triangula
Round 1: Triangula will elect 3 representatives out of these 8 candidates. The first round tally for each candidate is the number of first preference, or #1, rankings she receives. There is no runaway favourite here, so nobody makes the quota of 1001 on the first round. Sam from the Sliver Party has the fewest ballots, so he earns the dubious distinction of being the first eliminated. You'll notice that Sam's expression reflects his situation.
Round 2: The counting proceeds by distributing all of Sam's ballots. As it turns out, Triangula's Sliver voters love the underdogs, so Sam's ballots wind up being transferred to Otis, Gwen, and Iris. Still noone has crossed the quota line, so Rita gets the heaveho because she's the new lastplace candidate.
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Round 3: At last we can declare a candidate elected! Most of Rita's voters were loyal Red Party supporters, and marked Rhoda down as their #2 choice. However, there were a number who seemed to like Rita the individual, as opposed to simply being Red voters, and they marked Gwen the Greenish as #2. With the extra boost in support from the transfers from Rita, Rhoda makes it over the quota and will represent Triangula in Queen's Park.
Round 4: Rhoda only needs to keep the minimum quota of 1001 ballots to secure election, so her small surplus of 49 votes will be transferred. Her surplus gets split between Gwen and Iris the Independent, both of whom have accumulated enough transfers to edge out Betty and keep their hopes alive.
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ROUND 44000 votes, 3 candidates to be elected.
No new winners Betty is eliminated
800 + 10 = 810Bob
500Betty Betty is eliminated
ELECTEDRhoda
Bob, Gwen &Iris share
Rita Rhoda's surplus
550 + 25 = 575Otis
450 + 25 + 100 + 25 = 600Gwen
Sam
400 + 100 + 14 = 514Iris
1001 (Quota = 4000 ÷ 4 + 1)
Round 5: Blues are a pretty loyal bunch, and with 80% of Betty's supporters ranking him #2, Bob has no trouble making the quota. The race is on for the final seat, and the Greenishes seem to hold the edge in transfers.
Round 6: Iris put up a good fight, but it was not to be for our intrepid Independent. She will have to settle for drowning her sorrows with multicoloured shooters. Gwen on the other hand continues to pick up a disproportionate share of transfers. Apparently the Greenishes have broadbased appeal, even if it's not expressed as most voters' first choice.
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ROUND 64000 votes, 3 candidates to be elected.
No new winners Iris is eliminated
ELECTEDBob
Bob's surplusis split among
Betty the rest, butnot enough goto Iris to keep
ELECTED her hopesRhoda alive.
Rita
550 + 25 + 50 = 625Otis
450 + 25 + 100 + 25 + 100 + 100 = 800Gwen
Sam
400 + 100 + 14 + 59 = 573 Iris is last; she's outIris
1001 (Quota = 4000 ÷ 4 + 1)
ROUND 54000 votes, 3 candidates to be elected.
Bob is elected
800 + 10 + 400 = 1210Bob
Betty's votes transferBetty mostly to Bob but also
some to Gwen
ELECTEDRhoda
Rita
550 + 25 = 575Otis
450 + 25 + 100 + 25 + 100 = 700Gwen
Sam
400 + 100 + 14 = 514Iris
1001 (Quota = 4000 ÷ 4 + 1)
Round 7: The Greenish Party will take the final Triangula seat, as Gwen joins Bob and Rhoda in the winners' circle.
Here's a brief summary of how each candidate managed to win:– Rhoda belonged to the popular Red Party, and won her seat by virtue of
transfers from Rita, the losing Red candidate.– Bob captured the Blue transfers from Betty in a similar fashion.– Gwen the Greenish actually started 5th in the first round, but her
popularity as a 2nd choice gave her the victory over Otis, who simply couldn't rally much support from nonOrange voters.
This brings us to our second myth:
Myth: The STV quota is too high for smaller parties to be elected.The most common reallife argument is that the Green Party, who typically capture less than 10% of the popular vote, are unlikely to make the 12.5% quota in a 7seater, let alone 25% in a 3seater. This ignores the effect of ballot transfers from other candidates, which can have a big impact on the outcome. Any smaller party that is popular enough to draw a big share of 2nd and 3rd preferences stands a chance of taking a seat.3
3 In 2002, Ireland witnessed one candidate winning in a 3seater with 12.3% popular vote (1st preference votes), another winning in a 4seater with 7.6%, and another fortunate soul taking a 5seater seat after starting with only 5.5% of the vote at the first round. See http://www.electionsireland.org/results/general/30thdail/candidates.cfm and click on '29th Dail Results'. In the same election, 4 parties with less than 5% popular support managed to win seats. See http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/amisc/elec0201.pdf, page 56 for details.
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Ballot Transfers
Ballot transfers are probably the leastunderstood aspect of STV, so it's worth some effort to review them.
Borrowing from the Triangula election in the previous section, let's rewrite the election results in a more compact form. We'll use this format to discuss how transfers work. Note that the transfers always happen at the start of each round, and the result comes at the end of the round:
When a candidate is eliminated (just as Sam was in Round 1), the transfer process is fairly straightforward – you look at every ballot for the losing candidate and transfer it to whichever candidate is ranked next on the list. In Sam's case, there were 150 ballots that ranked him #1. Of those, Iris was #2 on 100 ballots, while Gwen and Otis held the #2 spot on 25 ballots each. Their ballot counts went up by those amounts at the start of Round 2.
It becomes trickier when it comes to handling a surplus, such as we saw with Rhoda and Bob (Rounds 4 and 6). In real life, different places use different methods, all of which will usually give the same final outcome, but some methods are more 'rigorous' than others. Here are the 2 main approaches4:
Random transfers: Pick your surplus ballots at random from the winning candidate's stack. In Bob's case at Round 6 we could shuffle all 1210 ballots and draw the 209 surplus from the top of the pile. Some argue that this isn't fair to the other 1001 voters, whose ballots won't be transferred.
Fractional transfers: Take every ballot in the winner's stack, and transfer a piece of it to whichever candidate is ranked next.
The second concept is a little harder to get used to, especially the idea of taking a single ballot and breaking it up into pieces. However, fractional transfers do give us slightly more accurate counts than just choosing ballots at random, and they don't suffer from the same criticism as random transfers in terms of equality of ballots.
4 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_Single_Transferable_Votes#Surplus_reallocation for a more thorough explanation of different transfer methods.
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Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6 Round 7Transfers No transfers
Sam is last Rita is last Rhoda makes the quota Betty is last Bob makes the quota Iris is last Gwen makes the quota
Result Sam Rita Rhoda Betty Bob Iris Gwen Otis
Transfer Summary – Triangula
All of Sam's ballots transferred 67% to Iris (100 ballots) 16.5% to Gwen (25 ballots) 16.5% to Otis (25 ballots)
All of Rita's ballots transferred 75% to Rhoda (300 ballots) 25% to Gwen (100 ballots)
5% of Rhoda's ballots transferred 2.5% to Gwen (25 ballots) 1.5% to Iris (14 ballots) 1% to Bob (10 ballots)
All of Betty's ballots transferred 80% to Bob (400 ballots) 20% to Gwen (100 ballots)
17% of Bob's ballots transferred 8% to Gwen (100 ballots) 4% to Otis (50 ballots) 5% to Iris (59 ballots)
All of Iris's ballots transferred 52% to Gwen (300 ballots) 48% to Otis (273 ballots)
Sharing Cookies
Here is an analogy that might help. Imagine that a ballot is actually a cookie. Yes, a cookie. One of those yummy double chocolate cookies with coated candies on top, like this one:
To make this analogy work, we have to pretend that candidates don't need to collect 1001 ballots, they need 1001 cookies. (Triangula's MPP's will be well fed.) We also need to let candidates take pieces of cookies and put them together to make whole cookies – two halves, for example, or one half and two quarters, etc.
Let's revisit Bob's surplus for a moment. At Round 5, Bob's cookie count was 1210. We need to leave him with his quota of 1001 (83% of his cookies), and transfer 209 cookies (the other 17%) to the other candidates. The box below shows how we do it:5
Q: Who are Violet, Vince, Victor and Vanna?A: They're the voters – each row represents one ballot, er, cookie.
Q: What determines which candidate will receive each of the surplus bits?
A: It's based on the preference rankings on the (cookie) ballots. Violet's ballot, for example, had Bob ranked #1 and Otis ranked #2.
Q: Doesn't it bother Bob that he's giving away some of his cookies?
A: It shouldn't Bob's already been declared elected.
Q: Why do we even bother with surplus transfers at all? Isn't it good enough just to drop the last place finisher at each round?
A: If not for surplus transfers, it would be a waste to vote for an apparently popular candidate that you feel certain will win. A voter might be tempted to give her #1 ranking to her 2nd favourite (but less popular) candidate instead. Surplus transfers make it safer for the voter to express true preferences honestly, because she knows that her favourite keeps only the portion of the ballot red to make the quota, and the rest will go to the next favourite.
5 This is the author's version of Weighted Inclusive Gregory, the transfer method proposed by the BC Citizens' Assembly.
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Bob's Surplus Cookie Recipe
Bob
Quota83% To Otis
Violet's BallotSurplus17%
To GwenVince's Ballot
To IrisVictor's Ballot
Repeatfor all1210ballots
To GwenVanna's Ballot
83%x1210 pieces 17%x1210 piecesTotal Cookies 1210 1210 1001 209
1. Start with all of Bob's cookies
2. Break each cookie into a quota piece and a surplus piece...
3. Let Bob keep his quota
4. Transfer the surplus pieces
VoteCookie
Follow the Ballots
Let's take some individual voters' ballots, and see the details of how they are processed. Of course, we'll be using funnyfaces and cookies:
Whole Transfers
We can see how Vito filled out his ballot to the left. I've put together a table below to help show what happens to his ballot through the various rounds of the counting. You'll notice that Vito's rankings have been copied into the table where the dotted lines and arrows are pointing. The bottom section of the table is there to remind you what happened to the candidates at the end of each round. Now, focus on the progress of the cookie as we go from left to right – it shows you which candidate is currently benefiting from Vito's rankings. When Vito's preferred candidates, Sam and Iris, are both eventually eliminated, his ballot ultimately helps to elect Gwen.
Q: Why does nothing happen in Rounds 36?A: Actually there are plenty of ballots being transferred between candidates in these rounds, but Vito's is not one of them. Once his ballot is transferred to Iris, it has to stay put until Iris is either elected or eliminated. Also notice that the ballot never makes it to his 4th choice, Otis, because Gwen 'needed' the ballot all the way to the final round.
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Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6 Round 7
No transfer No transfer No transfer No transfer
#1 Sam #1 Sam
#2 Iris #2 Iris #2 Iris #2 Iris #2 Iris #2 Iris #2 Iris
#3 Gwen #3 Gwen #3 Gwen #3 Gwen #3 Gwen #3 Gwen #3 Gwen
#4 Otis #4 Otis #4 Otis #4 Otis #4 Otis #4 Otis #4 Otis
Result Sam Rita Rhoda Betty Bob Iris Gwen Otis
Cookie starts with #1 – Sam
With Sam out, cookie transfers to #2 – Iris
Iris is out; cookie transfers to #3 Gwen
Copy rankings from ballot to table
Vito's Ballot Rank
Otis
Sam
Rita
1Rhoda
1Iris
Bob
Betty
1Gwen
1
1
1
3
2
4
Surplus Transfers
Here's a ballot that sees a partial transfer due to a surplus. As with the previous ballot, the rankings have been copied into a table for playbyplay analysis. Fast forward to Round 5, where you will recall Bob was declared elected with 1210 ballots. Also recall that we need to divide these up into the quota of 1001 (83% of the 1210) and the surplus of 209 (17%). This happens at the start of Round 6, where you see Gwen receiving the 17% surplus.
Q: Gwen is ranked 5th. Why does the surplus go to her instead of to the candidates ranked 2nd through 4th?A: By the time the transfer happens, those other candidates have been eliminated. In such cases you just keep going through the
rankings until you reach a candidate who is still in play – one who is neither eliminated nor declared elected.
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Vanna's Ballot Rank
Otis
Sam
Rita
1Rhoda
1Iris
Bob
Betty
Gwen
1
1
1
3
2
4
5
Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6 Round 7
No change No change No change No change No change
#1 Bob #1 Bob #1 Bob #1 Bob #1 Bob #1 Bob #1 Bob
#2 Betty #2 Betty #2 Betty #2 Betty #2 BettyQuota
stays with
#3 Rita #3 Rita #3 RitaBob, surplus
goes to
#4 Sam #4 SamGwen
#5 Gwen #5 Gwen #5 Gwen #5 Gwen #5 Gwen #5 Gwen #5 Gwen
Result Sam Rita Rhoda Betty Bob Iris Gwen Otis
Cookie starts with #1 – Bob
Transfer surplus to Gwen
A Ballot That Does It All
Brace yourself! Vijay's seemingly innocent ballot goes through the STV version of a blender. Vijay has ranked Rita #1, Rhoda #2, Bob #3 and Iris #4. To save space I've skipped the picture of the ballot.) Notice that this ballot undergoes a whole transfer plus two fractional transfers.
Q: How did you arrive at those partial transfer amounts – 95% for Rhoda, 5% for Bob, and then 4% for Bob and 1% for Iris?A: Remember that when Rhoda passed the quota of 1001, she had 1050, for a surplus of 49 ballots. She therefore keeps the quota of 1001/1050 which is
roughly 95%, and Bob takes the surplus of 5%. When Bob in turn makes his quota, we split up only that 5% portion of Vijay's ballot that was transferred to Bob earlier. So Bob keeps 5% x 1001/1210, or approximately 4%, while Iris gets a tiny splinter of a surplus amounting to about 1% of the whole ballot.
Q: What happened to Iris' transfer amount after she was eliminated?A: Because Vijay stopped at 4 rankings, there was nobody left to transfer that 1% splinter piece to. His ballot is exhausted, meaning it can't help any other
candidates. Vijay shouldn't feel too badly though – the first 99% helped to elect 2 of the 3 winning candidates!
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Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6 Round 7
No transfer No transfer No transfer
#1 Rita #1 Rita #1 Rita
#2 Rhoda #2 Rhoda #2 Rhoda #2 Rhoda #2 Rhoda #2 Rhoda #2 Rhoda
Quota toRhoda (95%)
Surplus toBob (5%)
#3 Bob #3 Bob #3 Bob #3 Bob #3 Bob #3 Bob #3 Bob
Quota toBob (4%)
Surplus toIris (1%)
#4 Iris #4 Iris #4 Iris #4 Iris #4 Iris #4 Iris #4 Iris
Result Sam Rita Rhoda Betty Bob Iris Gwen Otis
Cookie starts with #1 – Rita
Full transfer to Rhoda
Surplus transfer to Bob
No more rankings – ballot is exhausted
All Ballots Created Equal
STV's critics often try to argue that ballot transfers are unfair, a position that needs to be refuted.
Myth: A transferred ballot counts for more than everyone else's ballot.Another version is that 'some people get to vote twice'. This is simply not true. An STV ballot might be divided between a number of candidates, but the pieces will always add up to exactly one ballot.
Most Ballots Help To Elect Somebody
A pleasant aspect of STV is the high likelihood that any given ballot helps to elect somebody. For our sample election in Triangula, here's a rundown of ballots that directly contribute to at least one winning candidate:
Bob, Rhoda, or Gwen ranked #1 2000 ballots
Transferred from Sam to Gwen 25 ballots
Transferred from Rita to either Rhoda or Gwen 400 ballots
Transferred from Betty to either Bob or Gwen 500 ballots
Transferred from Iris to Gwen 270 ballots6
Total out of 4000 Ballots 3195 ballots (80%)
6 270 is an approximate number that makes a rough downward adjustment to the 300 transfers from Iris to Gwen. 59 of Iris' 573 ballots (about 10%) had already helped to elect Bob, so we need to make a correction to avoid counting those twice.
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A Collection of MMP Systems
One of the major problems with comparing any system to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) is that MMP is not one system, it's a family of systems, and a huge family at that. Quebec's proposed MMP system is very different from the one that the BC Citizens' Assembly considered, and those are both very different from the various German MMP systems. All that you can really say about MMP is that it implies some sort of proportionality mixed with some other system. In Ontario's case, it's pretty safe to assume that the 'other system' is what all Canadian provinces use now, Single Member Plurality (SMP, or FPTP if you like. Actually, I prefer the term FPTP, and since this is my document, I get to call the shots.)
To be fair, there are different flavours of STV in the world too, but the main features stay unchanged from one implementation to the next; all feature preferential ballots, quotas, and ballot transfers, including surplus transfers. You could probably take 2 jurisdictions using different variants of STV, swap them, and only rarely would you see different election results.7 The same is definitely not true of MMP.
If you're an Assembly member, I'm going to apologize right now to you for some of the assumptions that I'm going to make in this section. Please realize that I'm not trying to do your job for you here. However, trying to compare STV with MMP is a bit like trying to sort out whether Gala apples taste better than berries. (Personally I enjoy strawberries, but am not so enthusiastic about nightshade berries.) Comparisons are hopeless unless the MMP field is narrowed down a little, and that means I need to make educated guesses about where you are likely to go with MMP.
I've already made one assumption, and that was that FPTP would be the first of two systems being mixed. I'll also assume that one of the main reasons for adding the second system is to introduce proportionality to the legislature. Lack of proportionality is, after all, one of the more grievous aspects of FPTP.
Although there is a probably an infinite number of ways to build an MMP system, we can at least identify most of the main questions that you have to answer when building it.
Dividing The House
You'll need to decide how many of the seats will be allocated using FPTP ridings. For example, you could have half of your seats FPTP, and the other half drawn from party lists. The table below shows how this might happen in practice. To make the numbers easier, I've given the legislature 100 seats.Notice that the leading party in this example has most of the FPTP riding seats, while the other 3 parties dominate the list seats. Indeed, the Greenish party has
only list seats. You can expect this to be a typical result with pretty much all MMP systems you will consider. FPTP is notorious for excluding the smaller parties, and the topup side is the only place to compensate for this.
7 I have no evidence to back up this claim. It's just an assertion that I think is quite safe to make.
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Seat Rebalancing (50/50 FPTP/List PR)Popular Vote FPTP Seats List Topup Total
40% 35 5 40
30% 12 18 30
20% 3 17 20
10% 0 10 10
TOTALS 100% 50 50 100
A 50/50 split is of course not the only alternative. You can in theory start with just about any mix you want. You are always making a tradeoff though:
• More FPTP seats leave less flexibility when trying to restore proportionality. As an extreme example, imagine we had 95 FPTP seats and only 5 list seats. For most elections, it would simply not be possible to have the total seat allocations match the popular vote.
• Choosing fewer FPTP seats means that the average FPTP riding has to be bigger. Larger ridings can be expected to magnify the distortions on the FPTP side even further.
Q: Hold on – why should bigger FPTP ridings make for worse proportionality?A: Imagine you only had one riding and one MPP for the whole province – that would give the least proportionate
result possible. At the other extreme, if you give every single citizen a seat at Queen's Park, it would be as proportionate as you could get (although somewhat crowded). As the ridings grow larger, you should anticipate a decrease in proportionality.
Most people seem to suggest a range of 50%75% FPTP as the compromise split for MMP. Even that is a pretty big range when you consider the implications for riding size. With 75% FPTP, the average riding needs to be 4/3 its current size, while 50% FPTP requires a full doubling of the average size. If you're tempted to go toward the higher end of that range, be warned – there will be elections for which you can't achieve proportionality simply through topups. Ontario, 1990 (remember Bob Rae?) provides a good example8:
In this election, the NDP won so many FPTP seats that it would take a negative topup to bring their total seats back to proportionality. There are a few solutions to this, but they all entail significant sacrifices:
Solution 1: Drop 5 of the NDP's FPTP winners (perhaps the ones who won by the lowest margin), and replace them with 5 extra list members, all from other parties. Personally I would not wish to be the spokesperson explaining this to the voters in the 5 unlucky ridings.
Solution 2: Reduce the number of list seats by 5, leaving a total of 20 list seats. Of those, the Liberals and Conservatives would probably lose two each and the smaller parties the other one. Such an adjustment would certainly seem unfair to all except the NDP. This approach also abandons the goal of perfect proportionality.
Solution 3: Increase the size of the legislature to restore proportionality. In this case, we would need 13 or so extra seats before the NDP's share of the seats would match their share of the vote. It's a little bit like making a gigantic salad because you need to use up the ranch dressing.
8 The real election had 130 FPTP seats, so to keep everything in terms of a 100seat legislature, I've scaled the FPTP seat counts down by a factor of 75/130. For example, the NDP took 74 out of 130 seats, and I've scaled this to 74 x 75 / 130 = 42.7, which rounds to 43 seats. The smaller parties are all captured by the grey characters. For reasons discussed earlier, the larger FPTP regions under MMP might well result in even greater distortions than depicted here. As my data source I used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_general_election%2C_1990.
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Can't Get There From Here – Ontario 1990 (75% FPTP, 25% List)
Popular Vote FPTP Seats List Topup Total
38% 43 5 38
32% 21 11 32
24% 11 13 24
6% 0 6 6
TOTALS 100% 75 25 100
Eek!
MMP Tough Question: What lengths will you go to in the pursuit of proportionality?
The Ontario 1990 example is by no means unique. Here are a few other Canadian elections that would have resulted in similar headaches9:
● British Columbia, 2001: 58% popular support wins 97% of the seats● New Brunswick, 1987: 60% popular support wins 100% of the seats● Prince Edward Island, 1935: 58% popular support wins 100% of the seats● Canada, 1984: 50% popular support wins 75% of the seats
These examples are even more extreme than Ontario 1990. The 'expanding house' solution for PEI 1935 would have seen the legislature grow by nearly 30%!
You are substantially safer if you choose 60% FPTP. Of the examples above, only the PEI result would have led to a minor 'proportionality crisis', although British Columbia and New Brunswick would have been very close.
Riding Members vs List Members
MMP gives two types of legislators – some with a riding and some without. This has some important implications that need to be considered:
Some Tough Questions For MMPWho is a list member accountable to?Will list members have local responsibilities? Do riding reps perform all riding duties, even though there are now fewer of them?Should a Party Vote member be allowed change parties or vote against the leader?
To be fair regarding the accountability question, you can 'regionalize' your topup members to bring them closer to a group of ridings (as we'll see later), but at some level there will always be a distinction between the two types. Complicating the analysis even further is the expectation that most of the leading party's members will be riding MPP's, while most of the opposition seats will be list seats. Small parties in particular are likely to have only list seats. It's hard to predict what impact the quirks of government vs. opposition, and riding vs. list would have on the way MPP's behave, but I think a safe guess is that MPP's will generally look to dump unpopular or higheffort responsibilities in favour of those that give more popularity with less effort.
9 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landslide_victory.
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What Sort Of List?
Party lists of some sort are pretty much unavoidable in MMP. We'll discuss 3 major types.
Closed List
A closed list is one that a party prepares ahead of time. Topup seats are filled by drawing from the top of the list, and moving down until the party's allocation has been finished. At election time, voters generally have no say concerning which candidates go on the list, nor do voters decide the ordering of the list. There are a few choices as to what a voter might see in terms of a ballot:
Here's a version that is just like an FPTP ballot from the voter's perspective. This ballot assumes that you intend to support both the individual candidate plus her party with the same vote. It's simple but there's not much flexibility for the voter.
This variation allows the voter some leeway to separate the candidates from their parties. The riding MPP is chosen based on the left half of the ballot, FPTP style, while the final proportions in the legislature are determined from the right half of the ballot. In this example, our voter likes Otis as a local candidate, but also wants to boost the overall seat count of one of the three smaller parties. (All small parties are grey, although different parties hold their arms differently.)
Closedlist systems have one terrible shortcoming: by deciding the order in which the topup candidates are chosen, the party leadership has control over which of its candidates are more likely to be elected. This sets up some rather nasty openings for abuse of the system. (What? Canadian politicians committing abuses?)
This pretend list for Red illustrates my point. Imagine that these candidates will fill the topup seats, starting from the top of the list. I've arranged for half of these candidates to explain the real reasons for their placement on the list. You'll notice that some are perfectly attractive candidates, while others would be uninspiring for most voters. In this case, the Red leadership has diabolically placed popular candidates near the top of the list (perhaps some window dressing for the electorate), and again near the bottom of the list, where they will be elected only if voters accept all the duds in the middle. In my view, this unsavoury element of closed lists should on its own be grounds for rejection.
19Red's Closed List
I'm a wellrespected candidate
I voted for the leader at the convention!
I'm the party's best fundraiser!
I'm the leader's unemployed nephew!
I ALWAYS toe the party line
You should see the photos I've got!
I'm extremely popular
ClosedList MMP BallotVersion A – Single X
InstructionsMark an X beside onecandidate
Candidate
Otis
Sam
Rhoda
Iris
Bob
Gwen
X
ClosedList MMP BallotVersion B – Double X
InstructionsMark an X beside one Mark an X beside onecandidate party
Candidate Party
Otis
Sam
Rhoda
Iris
Bob
Gwen
X
X
Open List
With an open list, a party prepares a list, and its supporters decide who will be elected from that list. This could be done by listing each party's list for the entire province, but this would make for ballots that truly are incredibly long. (For a 50/50 system you might be looking at 30 candidates from each of three major parties, plus 510 for every small hopeful.) A far more practical approach is to separate the province into regions, and then each party provides a list specific to each region. Here's a sample ballot:
Once again, the voter is casting one FPTP vote plus a Party vote. As before, the Party votes are used to decide the overall seat counts of each party. But now a new twist is added – once a party is selected for a topup seat, a new race begins to see which of that party's candidates garnered the most party votes.
Q: Why do most of the FPTP candidates also appear as Party Vote candidates?
A: This example assumes that candidates are allowed to run in either or both slates. It doesn't have to be this way though – you could disallow the 'shotgun' approach and force candidates to choose to run as one or the other.
Q: Why would this voter cast both ballots in Rhoda's favour?A: Clearly this is a big fan of Rhoda's, who wants to be sure that even if
Rhoda loses in the FPTP race, she'll have a decent chance of winning a topup seat.
Q: If Rhoda wins the FPTP seat, is this voter's Party Vote wasted?A: It depends on how you set up the system, but most would recommend
that the Party Vote still count for the Reds, without helping any particular Red candidate. The first available topup Red seat would thus go to the most popular Red who didn't win an FPTP seat.
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OpenList MMP Ballot
Riding Vote Party VoteMark an X beside one Mark an X beside onecandidate candidate
Candidate Party/CandidateRhoda
Otis Rita
Sam Sam
OtisRhoda Ozzie
Ophelia
Iris Sue
GwenBob Gus
Gwen Sonny
BettyBobBill
Ralph
X
X
Best Losers
This unflattering name refers to a system where the FPTP candidates who don't win are recycled to form the party list. (Best RunnersUp sounds more glamorous I suppose). The ballots could look like either of the closedlist ballots, depending on whether you want Party votes to be separate from FPTP votes. The idea here is that you use some method to decide which candidates are most deserving of topup seats, based on their FPTP performances. Here's an illustration of 3 different approaches you might use to pick 3 Orange topups out of 5 losing candidates:
Some notes on this table:● Each column is devoted to a different method for
ranking the five candidates. In each case, the top three win seats and are smiling about it. The other two go back unhappily to their blacksmithing jobs.
● The 'FPTP Popular Vote' method ranks the losers (sorry, losing candidates) based on the percentage of the vote each captured in his FPTP riding.
● The 'Number of Votes' method uses just the raw ballot count. Ridings of different sizes could make this ranking different from the popular vote method.
● 'Losing Margin' looks at how far the Orange candidate lagged behind the FPTP winner for the riding. This method is rather tough on Otis, whose opponent took 61% of the vote in the riding.
There are good arguments for and against each of these methods, but I suspect that fairness is in the eye of the beholder.
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Selection Method
Candidate
Otis 21% 9000 40%
Ophelia 19% 6000 23%
15% 7000 32%
14% 6500 20%
Olga 8% 2000 30%
FPTP Popular Vote
Number of Votes
Losing Margin
(1st) (1st) (5th)
(2nd) (4th) (2nd)
Opie(3rd) (2nd) (4th)
Olaf(4th) (3rd) (1st)
(5th) (5th) (3rd)
PRRegion Size
You can bring topup candidates 'closer to home' by breaking the province up into regions. In a 60% FPTP system for example, each region might have 6 FPTP ridings and 4 topup seats. The 4 topup, or 'atlarge' members then serve the region. Here are a few comments on this:
● Regions smaller than 10 total MPP's can cause regional proportionality problems, especially given the FPTP component. It becomes increasingly difficult to attain broad representation if there aren't enough topup seats.
● Regions larger than 10 total MPP's can be extremely large geographically. Even with a fairly moderate sizing of 10, pretty much all of Northern Ontario would be grouped into one region10.
● Dividing the topups regionally makes it more difficult to attain full proportionality, unless you allow some adjustments between regions. Here's an illustration adapted from the DemocraticSPACE MMP proposal11:
This table focuses just on the Red Party results of a hypothetical election. The 10 regions each have 6 FPTP seats with 4 topups. We hit a snag here because the Reds end up with 35 seats, a full 4 seats more than they ought to have for a purely proportional outcome.
Q: What are the Target and Above Target columns for?
A: The Target is the number of seats the Red party would have in the region for a perfectly proportionate result, including fractions of seats. Above Target is the number of Red seats actually won in excess of the Target (if any). The Above Target numbers become important in the adjustment steps.
Q: Why is this so confusing??A: Don't worry, you're not alone. The
mechanics of linked regions are pretty tricky. If you feel your head starting to
swim, maybe you should move on to the next section, and come back to this later. Or not.
10 Assuming you don't expand the size of the legislature.11 Please see submission number 1546.
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Regional results don't give provincewide proportionality
Seats
Target FPTP Topups Total
North 43% 4.3 6 0 6 1.7
27% 2.7 2 1 3 0.3
26% 2.6 1 2 3 0.4
7% 0.7 0 1 1 0.3
28% 2.8 1 2 3 0.2
38% 3.8 3 1 4 0.2
35% 3.5 3 1 4 0.5
29% 2.9 2 1 3 0.1
37% 3.7 4 0 4 0.3
37% 3.7 4 0 4 0.3
Provincewide totals 30.7% 31 26 9 35
This is the number of Reds These numbers differ This is the numberwe want for proportionality due to FPTP & rounding elected from the
Regions if we don't adjust
Popular Vote
Above Target
Region 6 FPTP + 4 topups
each
West1
West2
West3
East1
East2
South1
South2
South3
South4
This is the table after making a crossregional adjustment, bringing Red's total to the correct overall number in the legislature. Four list seats have been stripped from Red.
The adjustments can lead to somewhat strange outcomes. In this example, the West3 region loses its only Red MPP, in part because the North region elected too many!
These crossregional adjustments can also bring heightened importance to recounts in close races. It is very possible for the fate of a Toronto topup candidate to be decided by a recount in Thunder Bay!
PRThreshold
It seems that most people believe that proportionate systems (or at least the list systems) should have a support threshold that excludes seats from parties that are 'too small'. The 1990 Ontario election mentioned earlier, for example, would likely have elected members for the Family Coalition, Confederation of Regions, Green and Libertarian parties.12 Under FPTP, these parties didn't even come close to winning a seat, and to some this is a favourable feature of FPTP.
Different places using listPR apply different thresholds, but 2.5% and 5% are fairly common. Whichever threshold is chosen, it is important to remember that any threshold will have an impact on proportionality, and higher thresholds are of greatest benefit to the major parties.
In some ways it's ironic that many MMP systems go to great lengths to generate 'pure' proportionality, using crossregional adjustments and legislature resizing, and then apply an arbitrary cutoff which distorts the seat count all over again.
12 Without a formal threshold, a party's support level would need to be at least enough to round up to one seat. For a 100seat house, that would be just over 0.5%, and for a 200seat house it would be 0.25%.
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Red seats after adjusting
North 43% 4.3 6 0 6 1.7 Not allowed to take
27% 2.7 2 0.3 away FPTP seats.
26% 2.6 1 0.4
7% 0.7 0 0.3
28% 2.8 1 2 3 0.2 Remove topups
38% 3.8 3 1 4 0.2 from highest 'Above
35% 3.5 3 0.5 Target' regions.
29% 2.9 2 1 3 0.1
37% 3.7 4 0 4 0.3
37% 3.7 4 0 4 0.3
Provincewide totals 30.7% 31 26 5
Region 6 FPTP + 4 topups
each
West1 1X 0 2 3X
West2 2X 1 2 3X
West3 1X 0 0 1X
East1
East2
South1 1X 0 3 4X
South2
South3
South4
31 35XX
XX
X
X
XXX
X
XXX
X
X
STV And MMP Square Off
It's now time to get to the good stuff. We'll look at how STV and MMP stack up on several key issues.
Safe Seats Zombies and Vampires
Almost all of us despise the concept of a safe seat, in part because it can lead to contempt for the voter. It's not easy to see why if a party is confident of winning a seat regardless of the quality of the candidate, then the party leadership will be tempted to treat the seat as a favour to hand out, rather than as something that needs to be earned.
To make the point graphically, let's call a mediocre quality candidate a Zombie, and give him a modified look. We should be clear that a Zombie is not necessarily offensive as a candidate, he's just not very inspiring. Zombies can be trusted not to speak out against the party leadership. After all, the party giveth and the party taketh away. We'll also introduce the Vampire, who is
so evil that everybody knows he's a bad choice; hardly anybody would ever want a Vampire running around Queen's park. Parties generally don't choose Vampires on purpose; they just turn out that way sometime after being nominated as candidates.
Here are some problems that can arise on FPTP ballots. Imagine that we're talking about a riding that votes heavily Red:
Most experienced voters can identify with this scenario. The Reds have chosen to run Ron the Zombie in a predominately Red riding. He's not really well liked as a person, but the voters simply cannot bring themselves to switch party allegiance. Could it be that the reallife version of Zombies contribute to voter dissatisfaction?
Here's a problem that the Red leaders didn't anticipate – their candidate Ray has suddenly been revealed as a Vampire. Loyal Red voters in this riding are now truly stuck. They would love to vote for a Red candidate, but not for a hemoglobinstealer like Ray. In most of these situations we would expect Red to lose the FPTP seat.
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Zombie
Red's candidate turnsout to be a VampireFPTP VoteMark an X beside onecandidate
Candidate
Otis
Sam
Ray
Iris
Bob
Gwen
Vampire
Red Runs A ZombieFPTP VoteMark an X beside onecandidate
Candidate
Otis
Sam
Ron
Iris
Bob
Gwen
X
Let's consider what might happen when we place Zombies and Vampires onto MMP and STV ballots.
STV weeds out the Zombies efficiently. The Red voter simply gives a different Red candidate the better ranking. There's no crisis of conscience for the Red voter, and the district winds up with superior representation in parliament. In the best of all worlds, parties wouldn't even try to stuff a Zombie onto a ballot because they know it won't work!
It's easy to see that the same logic applies to Vampires. In this case, Red will still manage to keep a seat in this district, as Rhoda picks up the slack. The Red Party is probably relieved to be rid of Ray anyway Vampires make a mess of the caucus room.
MMP Tough Question: Can you eliminate safe seats?
The FPTP part of any MMP ballot will always leave an opening for a Zombie. Even worse, if he's allowed to run on the list side as well, he has a second chance of winning a seat. At least a Vampire will be handled reasonably well with an open list though. Red voters will settle for another party's FPTP
candidate, and the Vampire will also be shunned on the list side of the ballot.
Zombies and Vampires
could be lurking in this list!
A closed list is the worst of all. There's not much a Red voter can do about Zombies on the party's list. Even a Vampire might be elected this way! The only real alternative for the Red voter is to switch party allegiance entirely. (But I'll just bet the Blue list has lots of Zombies too...)
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Openlist MMP BallotFPTP Vote Party VoteCandidate Party/Candidate
RhodaOtis Ron
Ralph
Sam Sam
OtisRon Ozzie
Ophelia
Iris Sue
GwenBob Gus
Gwen Sonny
BettyBobBill
X
X ?
Closedlist MMP BallotFPTP Vote Party VoteCandidate Party
Otis
Sam
Ron
Iris
Bob
Gwen
X ?
X
X
STV Ballot Rank
Otis
Sam
Ron
1Rhoda
1Iris
Bob
Betty
1Gwen
1
1
44
1
2
3
STV Ballot Rank
Otis
Sam
Ray
1Rhoda
1Iris
Bob
Betty
1Gwen
1
1
44
1
2
3
Proportionality
Myth: STV elections are less proportional than MMP elections
STV is widely recognized as a PR system, but many purists argue that it isn't perfectly proportional. MMP is usually offered up as a superior alternative in this regard.
The first part of the argument has some merit – STV elections give results that tend toward proportionality, but because each member needs to secure a direct, local mandate, it will generally not be perfect. It's important to remember, however, that if an MMP system includes a support threshold, it will not be perfectly proportional either.
Let's use Ireland's 2002 election as a comparison.13 The breakdown below shows seat counts by party under STV and MMP, and shows what those counts would be if seats were perfectly proportional. The red shading shows you which system was least proportionate for each party, and by how much.
Q: What version of MMP are you using here?A: I applied a 5% threshold to determine which parties (or independents, in the bottom row) would be excluded. The
popular vote for each of the remaining parties was then scaled up to offset the total that didn't make the cutoff.
13 You need to start with an STV election for this – to compare using an Ontario election, for example, you would need to make guesses as to how voters would have filled out preferential ballots. Even with an STV election, you need to make a few minor assumptions in order to translate the result to MMP.
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Perfectly Proportionate Parliament Actual STV Result Projected MMP Result
69 81 85
37 31 46
18 21 22
11 5 13
7 8 0
6 6 0
1 1 0
16 13 0
Complexity
Myth: STV is far too complex
The STVhaters out there usually point this argument at two components of STV – the voting procedure, and the counting process.
Voting is easy – 1, 2, 3, 4, stop wherever you like. The very thought of confused masses driven to despair around the polling stations is laughable.
Counting is certainly more involved than what we have now with pure FPTP, and many will never fully understand it. Many more won't even be interested. What we should be most concerned about is how STV compares with MMP in this regard.
MMP systems vary in terms of counting complexity, but in general the system needs to be more complex if you want to incorporate both open lists and provincewide proportionality.
Here are a few of the twists that we could expect with a LinkedRegions, OpenList MMP model:● Topup seats for a region cannot be filled until the FPTP counts are finished.● A party winning a disproportionate share of one region's FPTP seats can result in a different party being
awarded extra topup seats in altogether different regions.● The outcome of a single recount could have a domino effect on a series of seats provincewide.
The comforting thing about this entire discussion is that for most systems that you would consider, STV and MMP included, virtually every aspect of counting votes and translating the results into seats has already been worked out and put into practice somewhere on the planet. STV ballots, for example, have been successfully tallied for over 100 years in various jurisdictions, in most cases without using computers.
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MMP: Complexity Grows with Added Features
Less Complex More Complex
Drawbacks: Closed List (ACK!) LessPoor local representation Proportionality
Province Wide Closed List
Unlinked Regions
Linked Regions OpenList
Independent Candidacies
Many of our elections in Canada feature some independent candidacies, but very few of them actually result in independent seats. Indeed, most independents were never elected as such; they are usually former party caucus members who have either left their parties or been ejected by them. Precious few of those will survive the next election. Nonincumbent independent victories are truly rare.
Independents can play a healthy role in parliament:● They can lend a nonpartisan voice to parliamentary debate.● They can fill a popular void if all the parties disenfranchise a significant constituency.● They provide a viable alternative for a member who can no longer abide the policies of her party. (This is
only a decent alternative if the consequence isn't certain defeat at the next election.) The existence of this alternative should help to diminish the domination of caucus members by the party leadership.
MMP Tough Question: Will independents have a realistic chance of winning seats?
STV has a demonstrated record of allowing attractive independents to win seats. In 2002, Ireland elected 13 independents, nearly 8% of its national parliament!14
In contrast, I am aware of no existing MMP implementations that have generated a significant independent presence, nor of any MMP submissions that would improve the prospects of independents. As a practical matter, it is difficult to make allowances for them on lists, and their already dim hopes of winning an FPTP
seat are made worse because of the increased riding sizes.
14 See http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/amisc/elec0201.pdf. Not all places that use STV see significant independent representation – it seems to be a question of voter preference.
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Local Representation
Here is how a region of 10 ridings might be represented under FPTP. It's hard to miss that geographically this region is perfectly circular, and the ridings are pie slices. You may even have noticed that there's a riding named 'A' and another named 'B'. (Not very original, is it?)
As you know, under FPTP, every pie slice riding is represented by one and only one MPP. Everyone living in A has a Red rep, and everyone in B a Blue one, regardless of who they actually voted for. Some argue that this is clear and unambiguous local representation, while others might call this clear and unambiguous local alienation. I suppose it depends who you voted for...
Myth: STV gives poor local representation.
The same region under STV might be broken up into 3 districts, two 3seaters and one 4seater. (If you look carefully, Triangula is one of them.) Consider district C for a moment. Notice that there are just as many MPP's as there used to be (I guess that's fairly obvious when you think about it), but now they each represent a constituency within the district. This has a number of benefits if you are a voter in this district:
● With multiple reps, chances are that one has political views compatible with yours. This district features reps from Orange, Blue, and Red parties, as well as one independent.
● If you need an advocate in parliament, you have 4 local members to choose from. They might even compete to provide you good service.
● Chances are excellent that you helped elect one of these members, and as future candidates they will likely be well aware of this.
The MMP outcome might well look like this. With 60% FPTP and 40% topup, the pie slices are 67% larger than with straight FPTP. The 4 atlarge list members all have the outer circle as their territory. It really is a large territory, too – the full region that was the 10 original FPTP ridings. Here are some comments relating to the issue of local representation:
● As in the STV case, a voter has multiple MPPs – 5 in fact. However, only one of these is truly 'local', while the four others serve all six oversized FPTP ridings.
● Red is very strong in this region overall. Paradoxically, a Red voter in riding D (the only FPTP riding that isn't Red) has no sympathetic representation in parliament. Maybe he needs to learn to like Blue a little more...
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10 FPTP Ridings
B
A
Same Region STVC
Same Region MMPD
Q: When the map was just FPTP, 6 out of 10 ridings were Red 60%. The MMP map had 5 out of 6 ridings Red 83%. Isn't that a little unrealistic?
A: Not at all. Remember that FPTP tends to become less proportionate as the riding size grows larger. All 6 of the oversized ridings included part of a Red riding from the original map, so it's even possible for all of them to go Red.
Q: If STV and MMP are both proportional systems, why did they give different seat totals for the region?A: There are a number of factors at play here:
● Although STV and MMP can be expected to give proportionate results overall, both have limited regional proportionality.
● The FPTP component of MMP can result in a particularly disproportionate region. In this case, Red is overrepresented. Most MMP systems will try to compensate for this by underrepresenting Red in a different region.
● STV and MMP are completely different in terms of an independent's chances of winning. The independent seat from the STV version of this region would very likely go to one of the major parties in the MMP version.
● MMP usually imposes a threshold for smaller parties, and this will modify the 'proportionate' result. (This may not have been a factor here, but it would likely play some role in most elections.)
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About the Author
Jamie Deith spent his formative years growing up in Bracebridge, Ontario. Af ter graduating from Engineering at the University of Waterloo in 1991, he enjoyed a 12-year career at TD Bank as a computer programmer, f inancial markets trader, and global business manager. In 2003 he left the banking world, and moved with his family to Vancouver Island. These days his professional life is centred around a number of business ventures, including a clinic for treating sleep apnea, and a graphite mining operation. In his spare time he campaigns for human rights, plays what he likes to think of as squash, and crams electoral reform documents at the last minute.
Jamie has been fortunate enough to have lived in two nations that use the Westminster electoral system - Canada and the UK, one that uses MMP - Germany, and one that uses ST V – Ireland. Based on these experiences, he hopes that ST V will spread throughout the democratic nations of the world. Naturally, he was delighted when the BC Citizens Assembly decided to start right here in his new backyard, and sincerely hopes to see it chosen in his childhood backyard, too.
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