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Another South African here, brought tears to my eyes. I don’t know what citizens can do because these MPs are completely deluded and derelict of their duty. I

Another South African here, brought tears to my eyes. I don’t know what citizens can do because these MPs are completely deluded and derelict of their duty. I would support directly electing MPs. Then political parities report directly to us!

simonh 6y ago
I frequently find myself defending our constituency based electoral system here in the UK from people who believe proportional representation is fairer. They're right in some ways, but I dread moving towards electing lists of candidates drawn up by central party committees.
- hef19898 6y ago
  Both systems have pro and cons. I am used to vote for pre-defined party lists and a direct mandate for a deligate. Then parties form a coalition, which then chosses a chancelor. Less potential to be messed by populism, the downside is, that the chancelor (head of the executive branch) almost always is the head of the majority party and is alos holding a deligate andate. This blurrs the lines between legislative and executive branch a tad too much if you ask me. The other extreme is kind of like the US. Pre elections along party lines to choose a candidate that is the directly elected by the electorate. Ver democratic, not blurred lines between government branches. Ignoring stuff like the elctoral collage, the Senate and Gerrymandering, this system is very prone to fall prey to populism. I guess as long as it works, both solutios are fine. I personnally like the French system a lot. Directly elected Presidents, seperate elections for parliament. I am not judging these systems by the governments it produces, so.
- toyg 6y ago
  Transferable Vote would help the UK system more than PR (which is theoretically more democratic, but in practice moves power further towards party hierarchies and massively promotes political fragmentation). Transferable Vote lets “least worst” candidates win, rather than the current “most-compact minority” which typically disenfranchises 2/3rd of the electorate.
- dagw 6y ago
  I dread moving towards electing lists of candidates drawn up by central party committees. They way it works in Norway and Sweden at least is that while you vote for a list of candidates drawn up by the party, you can also select your preferred candidates on that list and as such affect which candidates on the list get seats.
- henry_bone 6y ago
  In Australia we use proportional representation to elect the federal senate (upper house). It is used at state level too, in some states. I used to be of the opinion that it was fairer. I no longer think so. I agree with former PM Paul Keating, who referred to the Senate as "unrepresentative swill"[1]. When I first heard this view, I thought Keating was nuts. What could be better than PR for giving minorities a voice? All you need is portion of votes and you get a seat. Seemed pretty fair to me, and allowed members of minor parties to have a say in the passing of bills into acts. But that's the problem. Very often a few minor party seats hold the balance of power. The 2 major parties are deadlocked in disagreement over some legislation and whether it becomes law or not falls into the hands of a few senators represented by a minority. So oftentimes the "uprepresentative swill" get to pass law, or not. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1khlbqI9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1khlbqI9k
  - sampo 6y ago
    > The 2 major parties are deadlocked in disagreement In Finland we have 3 major parties, so some version of A+B, A+C, B+C is usually in power. (Except now, when it's 1 major and 4 minor.) https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/finland/ https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/finland/
  - mr_toad 6y ago
    > Very often a few minor party seats hold the balance of power. This is partly because the major parties are so partisan they refuse to agree on anything out of principle. Edit: and when I say principle, I mean shear bloody mindedness.
    - tomhoward 6y ago
      That's not really true. In Australia, plenty of bills get passed with bipartisan support; you just don't hear much about it as it's not newsworthy. But on issues that are pertinent to each party's ideological position and the expectations of their members/voters, they will take strongly opposed positions. This is important, so that voters have different options to choose from, and that each party must argue convincingly for their policies when campaigning. If the parties are in consensus on most things, you end up with something not so different to one-party rule, and possibly endemic corruption.
- cabalamat 6y ago
  Why not have both? I.e. directly elected MPs and PR. One way to do this would be to have 90% of the MPs elected in 3-6 member STV constituencies, with every candidate belonging to a party list. Then total the number of 1st preferences each party list got, and allocate the remaining 10% of the seats to the parties to maximalise proportionality (e.g. by d'Hondt). The top-up candidates elected fro each party will by losing candidates from that party who got the highest vote share. That way, each party will get a number of MPs proportional to its total support, and the individual MPs elected will be the ones the voters most like. Choosing MPs by party lists means the MPs have to be loyal to the party, not the voters.
- iso1631 6y ago
  That would be an awful system, although we have a constituency list anyway. Labour could put up a dead dog in Bootle and would get elected. Conservatives could put the same up in Christchurch and win. To implement PR, First, you make the constituencies larger - about 5 times the size now. For example instead of having 4 constituencies on the Wirral you have 1, or 1 in Cornwall instead of the 6 now. Those constitutencies elect more than 1 MP (4 in the Wirral, 6 in Cornwall) Then you number them in preference order. This results in the people electing individuals (so preferring a locally popular candidate over a parachuted candidate), but also ensures that if 54% of Cornwall constituency want Tory, 23% want Labour, 19% want Lib Dem, 4% want others, you'd end up with something like 3 Tories 2 Labour 1 Lib Dem Which is far more representative of the wishes of the people of Cornwall than currently, where 6/6 MPs are Tory on 54% of the vote.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  The problem in the UK (and other places probably) is lack of representation. IDK what happened to the political establishment, but there are too few politicians supporting what the people believe. people in support of the current establishment like to smugly pronounce it proof that what the people believe is therefore "wrong" if no educated politicians support it (to the tune of "Reality has a well known liberal bias"); but even if this was the case (I'm sceptical) - it kind of undermines the ability of the political system to support a representative democracy that is actually representative. that said, maybe there is better representation, and it is just suppressed. As Brexit gained quite a few politicians flipped. That said, why did it have to take so much effort for something supported by about half the population, and even now the best we have if Boris - not a true Brexit supporter, but a flagrant populist who support whatever will get him ahead.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  One of the easiest ways to show people that proportional representation is troublesome is to highlight how in past elections it would have given UKIP 83 MPS and even the BNP a dozen or two MPs in the past. In other words, whilst PR will help you get a representative of your favourite party in, it will also help get representatives of parties who you really don't want in.
onei 6y ago
After reading up about how SA elections work, I'm a bit confused. It sounds like when you vote you order a set of parties by preference and then PR is used to figure out who won a given area. Once you win that area, the party nominates a set of candidates to represent that area, but this set isn't known at voting time and the order the candidates are chosen is somewhat arbitrary. There's also a case where control of an area is shared, but I'm not entirely sure how that works in the context of PR. Is that roughly correct, or have I missed something? Initially, it sounded like it had corruption potential built in, but in reality it's not that dissimilar to UK elections. Candidates are selected by their party and we vote for whoever we're given. The difference is that we know who might be elected ahead of time and debates can focus on personal records as well as party agenda.
- nevi-me 6y ago
  > Is that roughly correct, or have I missed something? There's 2 systems. The one you mention is municipal (lowest level), and then there's a purely political-party based one. Municipal A ward can elect a political party member, or an independent candidate. The elected candidate who wins, gets a seat in council. > Once you win that area, the party nominates a set of candidates to represent that area, but this set isn't known at voting time and the order the candidates are chosen is somewhat arbitrary. Parties also send a candidate-list to the elections body, before the elections. 50% of the council seats are determined by apportioning within these lists. This is meant to be fairer on smaller parties who might otherwise not get enough votes to get a councillor in. The system is accepted (opinion), and doesn't seem arbitrary as there's rules that allow independent verification. Provincial and National These are purely party-list based (perhaps similar to UK then), instead of the 50% split above. Similarly, party lists are known before the elections, and are immutable throughout the 5 years (only get removed if you die or resign from your party, but can't be moved up or down). There's again some process to determine how many people on the list per party, go to Parliament and the provincial equivalents. So, to your last point; we also know whom we're getting before the elections. There was a Constitution (supreme) Court ruling last year that requires the next national elections to allow for independent candidates. The sentiment from those interested in our polls, is that the same hybrid municipal system might get chosen.
gruturo 6y ago
But would it work? People all over the world have proved to be extremely gullible, a vast majority can be influenced and manipulated, and the worst people running for election are usually the ones who won't hesitate to do that. Brexit and Trump clearly prove people will vote against their best interests if properly influenced.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  > Brexit and Trump clearly prove.. Does "influenced" include not wanting to be ruled from Brussels? In fact, it was EU supporters getting the majority PR budgets and political support.
- gadders 6y ago
  Clearly they need a wise dictator like you that can tell them where their best interests lie. Obviously the proletariat is too unintelligent to manage that on their own.
  - gruturo 6y ago
    Me? oh no I'm just another moron. And I can be influenced as well, I'm just, due to my profession, more aware of how the influencing works, and I think we need awareness that the algos which helped fracture the US in 2 factions are deeply detrimental to society, and yet they keep getting used to boost a few companies' ad revenue. We accidentally built the paperclip maximizer AI, and it doesn't give a shit about collateral damage.
- refurb 6y ago
  This is such an arrogant take. Clearly you know what is in people’s best interests and you can’t possibly leave such an important decision to the people themselves.
  - gruturo 6y ago
    No I don't. I unfortunately don't have a solution to offer and certainly don't think I am qualified to rule a country, or any part of it. But we need to ensure the technologies which enable this kind of mass manipulation are not taken advantage of, because we've seen the result.
virgilp 6y ago
> I would support directly electing MPs. Then political parities report directly to us! Been there. Watch out for these traps: a. FPTP (first-past-the-post): this is a truly horrible system. In a FPTP system, the person currently occupying the position (regardless how corrupt) has a huge advantage, and it pushes everything towards a two-party system where there isn't a third option (then, all they need is to give you two equally bad options, and you're screwed for good). It's also easy to introduce "distraction candidates" to just chip away votes from competition. b. Even two-rounds or instant-runoff "winner takes district" system is not ideal; what happens here is that the small parties are strongly disadvantaged. You _need_ to have a very strong local voice, to win any one district. So for instance a general party that tries to talk to educated youth won't make any dent - they're spread across regions, and likely won't get past 10% anywhere Proportional systems have huge flaws but really are the lesser evil. Ideally you should have something like an open list (where you vote the party, but also the order of preference within said party). And/or primaries for parties/ to decide the list of candidates & the order in the list, for said candidates.
- tremon 6y ago
  Ideally you should have something like an open list (where you vote the party, but also the order of preference within said party) As an example how this is implemented in NL: in elections, all individual candidates are on the ballot, organized by party (yes, the papar ballot is massive -- one of the main criticisms of this system). The candidates are ordered by preference as determined by the party itself, and in general, if a party wins 8 seats during election, that means the top 8 candidates on the ballot take their seat. The lead candidate (also the face of the party campaign) is ranked #1, and people usually vote for #1 if they only care about voting for a party, not an individual. But people can vote for a non-#1 position (called a preferential vote), and if a specific candidate receives more votes than a pre-determined threshold, they're bumped on the candidate list. This allows voters to influence the resulting body composition not just by party, but by individual member. Some stats from the last national election are on the Dutch Wikipedia page (but not included in the english translation) [0]: - 150 seats in total - 46 candidates have met the preferential vote threshold in total - 3 candidates could not take seat because their party won 0 seats - 4 candidates took seat at the expense of a (initially higher-ranked) candidate from the same party - the remaining 39 candidates would have taken seat anyway because of their original party rank [0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samenstelling_Tweede_Kamer_2017-heden https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samenstelling_Tweede_Kamer_201...

simonh 6y ago

I frequently find myself defending our constituency based electoral system here in the UK from people who believe proportional representation is fairer. They're right in some ways, but I dread moving towards electing lists of candidates drawn up by central party committees.

hef19898 6y ago
Both systems have pro and cons. I am used to vote for pre-defined party lists and a direct mandate for a deligate. Then parties form a coalition, which then chosses a chancelor. Less potential to be messed by populism, the downside is, that the chancelor (head of the executive branch) almost always is the head of the majority party and is alos holding a deligate andate. This blurrs the lines between legislative and executive branch a tad too much if you ask me. The other extreme is kind of like the US. Pre elections along party lines to choose a candidate that is the directly elected by the electorate. Ver democratic, not blurred lines between government branches. Ignoring stuff like the elctoral collage, the Senate and Gerrymandering, this system is very prone to fall prey to populism. I guess as long as it works, both solutios are fine. I personnally like the French system a lot. Directly elected Presidents, seperate elections for parliament. I am not judging these systems by the governments it produces, so.
toyg 6y ago
Transferable Vote would help the UK system more than PR (which is theoretically more democratic, but in practice moves power further towards party hierarchies and massively promotes political fragmentation). Transferable Vote lets “least worst” candidates win, rather than the current “most-compact minority” which typically disenfranchises 2/3rd of the electorate.
dagw 6y ago
I dread moving towards electing lists of candidates drawn up by central party committees. They way it works in Norway and Sweden at least is that while you vote for a list of candidates drawn up by the party, you can also select your preferred candidates on that list and as such affect which candidates on the list get seats.
henry_bone 6y ago
In Australia we use proportional representation to elect the federal senate (upper house). It is used at state level too, in some states. I used to be of the opinion that it was fairer. I no longer think so. I agree with former PM Paul Keating, who referred to the Senate as "unrepresentative swill"[1]. When I first heard this view, I thought Keating was nuts. What could be better than PR for giving minorities a voice? All you need is portion of votes and you get a seat. Seemed pretty fair to me, and allowed members of minor parties to have a say in the passing of bills into acts. But that's the problem. Very often a few minor party seats hold the balance of power. The 2 major parties are deadlocked in disagreement over some legislation and whether it becomes law or not falls into the hands of a few senators represented by a minority. So oftentimes the "uprepresentative swill" get to pass law, or not. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1khlbqI9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1khlbqI9k
- sampo 6y ago
  > The 2 major parties are deadlocked in disagreement In Finland we have 3 major parties, so some version of A+B, A+C, B+C is usually in power. (Except now, when it's 1 major and 4 minor.) https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/finland/ https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/finland/
- mr_toad 6y ago
  > Very often a few minor party seats hold the balance of power. This is partly because the major parties are so partisan they refuse to agree on anything out of principle. Edit: and when I say principle, I mean shear bloody mindedness.
  - tomhoward 6y ago
    That's not really true. In Australia, plenty of bills get passed with bipartisan support; you just don't hear much about it as it's not newsworthy. But on issues that are pertinent to each party's ideological position and the expectations of their members/voters, they will take strongly opposed positions. This is important, so that voters have different options to choose from, and that each party must argue convincingly for their policies when campaigning. If the parties are in consensus on most things, you end up with something not so different to one-party rule, and possibly endemic corruption.
cabalamat 6y ago
Why not have both? I.e. directly elected MPs and PR. One way to do this would be to have 90% of the MPs elected in 3-6 member STV constituencies, with every candidate belonging to a party list. Then total the number of 1st preferences each party list got, and allocate the remaining 10% of the seats to the parties to maximalise proportionality (e.g. by d'Hondt). The top-up candidates elected fro each party will by losing candidates from that party who got the highest vote share. That way, each party will get a number of MPs proportional to its total support, and the individual MPs elected will be the ones the voters most like. Choosing MPs by party lists means the MPs have to be loyal to the party, not the voters.
iso1631 6y ago
That would be an awful system, although we have a constituency list anyway. Labour could put up a dead dog in Bootle and would get elected. Conservatives could put the same up in Christchurch and win. To implement PR, First, you make the constituencies larger - about 5 times the size now. For example instead of having 4 constituencies on the Wirral you have 1, or 1 in Cornwall instead of the 6 now. Those constitutencies elect more than 1 MP (4 in the Wirral, 6 in Cornwall) Then you number them in preference order. This results in the people electing individuals (so preferring a locally popular candidate over a parachuted candidate), but also ensures that if 54% of Cornwall constituency want Tory, 23% want Labour, 19% want Lib Dem, 4% want others, you'd end up with something like 3 Tories 2 Labour 1 Lib Dem Which is far more representative of the wishes of the people of Cornwall than currently, where 6/6 MPs are Tory on 54% of the vote.
Chris2048 6y ago
The problem in the UK (and other places probably) is lack of representation. IDK what happened to the political establishment, but there are too few politicians supporting what the people believe. people in support of the current establishment like to smugly pronounce it proof that what the people believe is therefore "wrong" if no educated politicians support it (to the tune of "Reality has a well known liberal bias"); but even if this was the case (I'm sceptical) - it kind of undermines the ability of the political system to support a representative democracy that is actually representative. that said, maybe there is better representation, and it is just suppressed. As Brexit gained quite a few politicians flipped. That said, why did it have to take so much effort for something supported by about half the population, and even now the best we have if Boris - not a true Brexit supporter, but a flagrant populist who support whatever will get him ahead.
thinkingemote 6y ago
One of the easiest ways to show people that proportional representation is troublesome is to highlight how in past elections it would have given UKIP 83 MPS and even the BNP a dozen or two MPs in the past. In other words, whilst PR will help you get a representative of your favourite party in, it will also help get representatives of parties who you really don't want in.

onei 6y ago

After reading up about how SA elections work, I'm a bit confused. It sounds like when you vote you order a set of parties by preference and then PR is used to figure out who won a given area. Once you win that area, the party nominates a set of candidates to represent that area, but this set isn't known at voting time and the order the candidates are chosen is somewhat arbitrary. There's also a case where control of an area is shared, but I'm not entirely sure how that works in the context of PR. Is that roughly correct, or have I missed something? Initially, it sounded like it had corruption potential built in, but in reality it's not that dissimilar to UK elections. Candidates are selected by their party and we vote for whoever we're given. The difference is that we know who might be elected ahead of time and debates can focus on personal records as well as party agenda.

nevi-me 6y ago
> Is that roughly correct, or have I missed something? There's 2 systems. The one you mention is municipal (lowest level), and then there's a purely political-party based one. Municipal A ward can elect a political party member, or an independent candidate. The elected candidate who wins, gets a seat in council. > Once you win that area, the party nominates a set of candidates to represent that area, but this set isn't known at voting time and the order the candidates are chosen is somewhat arbitrary. Parties also send a candidate-list to the elections body, before the elections. 50% of the council seats are determined by apportioning within these lists. This is meant to be fairer on smaller parties who might otherwise not get enough votes to get a councillor in. The system is accepted (opinion), and doesn't seem arbitrary as there's rules that allow independent verification. Provincial and National These are purely party-list based (perhaps similar to UK then), instead of the 50% split above. Similarly, party lists are known before the elections, and are immutable throughout the 5 years (only get removed if you die or resign from your party, but can't be moved up or down). There's again some process to determine how many people on the list per party, go to Parliament and the provincial equivalents. So, to your last point; we also know whom we're getting before the elections. There was a Constitution (supreme) Court ruling last year that requires the next national elections to allow for independent candidates. The sentiment from those interested in our polls, is that the same hybrid municipal system might get chosen.

gruturo 6y ago

But would it work? People all over the world have proved to be extremely gullible, a vast majority can be influenced and manipulated, and the worst people running for election are usually the ones who won't hesitate to do that. Brexit and Trump clearly prove people will vote against their best interests if properly influenced.

Chris2048 6y ago
> Brexit and Trump clearly prove.. Does "influenced" include not wanting to be ruled from Brussels? In fact, it was EU supporters getting the majority PR budgets and political support.
gadders 6y ago
Clearly they need a wise dictator like you that can tell them where their best interests lie. Obviously the proletariat is too unintelligent to manage that on their own.
- gruturo 6y ago
  Me? oh no I'm just another moron. And I can be influenced as well, I'm just, due to my profession, more aware of how the influencing works, and I think we need awareness that the algos which helped fracture the US in 2 factions are deeply detrimental to society, and yet they keep getting used to boost a few companies' ad revenue. We accidentally built the paperclip maximizer AI, and it doesn't give a shit about collateral damage.
refurb 6y ago
This is such an arrogant take. Clearly you know what is in people’s best interests and you can’t possibly leave such an important decision to the people themselves.
- gruturo 6y ago
  No I don't. I unfortunately don't have a solution to offer and certainly don't think I am qualified to rule a country, or any part of it. But we need to ensure the technologies which enable this kind of mass manipulation are not taken advantage of, because we've seen the result.

virgilp 6y ago

> I would support directly electing MPs. Then political parities report directly to us! Been there. Watch out for these traps: a. FPTP (first-past-the-post): this is a truly horrible system. In a FPTP system, the person currently occupying the position (regardless how corrupt) has a huge advantage, and it pushes everything towards a two-party system where there isn't a third option (then, all they need is to give you two equally bad options, and you're screwed for good). It's also easy to introduce "distraction candidates" to just chip away votes from competition. b. Even two-rounds or instant-runoff "winner takes district" system is not ideal; what happens here is that the small parties are strongly disadvantaged. You _need_ to have a very strong local voice, to win any one district. So for instance a general party that tries to talk to educated youth won't make any dent - they're spread across regions, and likely won't get past 10% anywhere Proportional systems have huge flaws but really are the lesser evil. Ideally you should have something like an open list (where you vote the party, but also the order of preference within said party). And/or primaries for parties/ to decide the list of candidates & the order in the list, for said candidates.

tremon 6y ago
Ideally you should have something like an open list (where you vote the party, but also the order of preference within said party) As an example how this is implemented in NL: in elections, all individual candidates are on the ballot, organized by party (yes, the papar ballot is massive -- one of the main criticisms of this system). The candidates are ordered by preference as determined by the party itself, and in general, if a party wins 8 seats during election, that means the top 8 candidates on the ballot take their seat. The lead candidate (also the face of the party campaign) is ranked #1, and people usually vote for #1 if they only care about voting for a party, not an individual. But people can vote for a non-#1 position (called a preferential vote), and if a specific candidate receives more votes than a pre-determined threshold, they're bumped on the candidate list. This allows voters to influence the resulting body composition not just by party, but by individual member. Some stats from the last national election are on the Dutch Wikipedia page (but not included in the english translation) [0]: - 150 seats in total - 46 candidates have met the preferential vote threshold in total - 3 candidates could not take seat because their party won 0 seats - 4 candidates took seat at the expense of a (initially higher-ranked) candidate from the same party - the remaining 39 candidates would have taken seat anyway because of their original party rank [0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samenstelling_Tweede_Kamer_2017-heden https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samenstelling_Tweede_Kamer_201...