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Is this guy an anti-proportional representation activist? Because his post sure reads like it. The goal of the system is to have the proportions in the Bundesta

Is this guy an anti-proportional representation activist? Because his post sure reads like it. The goal of the system is to have the proportions in the Bundestag match the proportion of the vote. There may be some math involved in getting the right mix from the right areas, but the goal is quite simple and easy to understand, as is the result. I think proportional representation would improve many of the democratic systems in the Western world.

claudius 13y ago
The problem is trying to mix a proportional system with a representative one where each district elects one member of parliament, which then has to fit in with the results from the proportional system. In theory, this would allow for all districts to elect members of party A directly (first vote in Germany) and vote for party B in the second vote. You would then be faced with the impossible problem of fitting the 299 members of party A into a parliament that is – by the outcome of the proportional vote – supposed to be 100% party B. In my opinion, the best way to combine direct election of members of parliament with a somewhat proportional representation is preferential voting, attempted in the UK as ‘Alternative Vote’.
- mxfh 13y ago
  Also this used to enable a significant negative vote weight effect. Where voting for your preferred party with your second vote could actually make them lose seats if your party had more overhang mandates through direct first votes than through the proportional second vote. This was ruled unconstitutional by the Bundesverfassungsgericht in 2008 and the law was eventually changed. The current voting law in effect in 2013 reduced the effect but it's still there. So to balance those overhang seats, balancing seats are introduced which might increase the number of total seats beyond the originally intended number by quite a significant amount. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_vote_weight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_vote_weight
kps 13y ago
PR gives disproportionate influence to fringe parties. Some people like this (especially when it's currently their fringe that is kingmaker) and some don't. People discussing election systems need to understand Arrow's theorem and then understand what they're trading off with particular systems.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  It would be more accurate to say that PR gives more appropriate influence to third parties. It's true to say that political power/influence is not generally proportional to parliamentary party size, but is not specific to PR. For example, First-Past-The-Post typically gives disproportionate influence to the first and second parties (i.e. 100% of the power), which greatly reduces voter ability to express their preferences as politicians are forced to coalesce on one side or another of an arbitrary line. PR typically benefits parties who are able to negotiate and find common ground with their opponents. An extremist party will (still?) be left out in the cold. Finally: Arrow's Theorem isn't relevant to PR; it discusses transferable/ranked voting systems.
- devx 13y ago
  I take that over money influencing the main parties and then using that money to influence most of the population, as it happens in US. This just means the little parties can pop up out of nowhere, and win. That's actually good.
- rmc 13y ago
  Conversely FPTP gives disproportionate influence to large parties, meaning many groups get disenfranchiesed.
- jvm 13y ago
  The German system requires a 5% threshold to be seated; IMO that represents a sizeable chunk of people's viewpoints. And either way, the winning coalition must represent a majority of Germans. That promotes centrism not extremism.
  - mjn 13y ago
pudo 13y ago
I'm not against proportional representation, in fact I know very few people in Germany that are against that system. What I'm criticising is the selection of a politically expedient mechanism, when others - which wouldn't as likely lead to an increase in the overall size of the parliament - are available. cf. http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/118/1711821.pdf http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/118/1711821.pdf
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  Sometimes these rules emerge out of a "political" process (who would have guessed). A particularly smart individual might be able to draw up some extremely smart and simple scheme. The problem is choosing the smart individual.
cturner 13y ago
PR makes party tickets central to the electoral system. This plays to the interests of people who are employed around the political scene to carve out a place for themselves while staying loyal to their sponsor. For this reason alone, it's bad for democracracy even in the academic sense of the word. But in addition to this - * It creates a higher proportion of safe seats, which encourages party people to play to their base. * PR makes it easier for groups to get elected who are pursuing sectional interests. In short - PR makes politics more divisive compared to something like the Westminster system (single-member electorates). That's bad for democratic systems in a practical sense as well: it contributes to political instability and media circus. It also promotes deceiptful or just weird practice through the dynamics around preferencing. The recent Australian election came up with some bizarre outcomes in the senate due to the quirks of PR. Tradeoffs to try and correct for this lead to more problems, such as in Germany where CDU voters feel they need to vote for the FDP in some regions to try and get them over minimum quota to avoid a worse option getting through. There's been elections where tickets try to game the elimination order by flowing votes through parties from the other side of the divide, but then get the math predictions wrong: in the senate vote for Victoria in the 2004 Australian federal election - voters for the mainstream left party accidentally elected a Christian values party to a balance of power role in the upper house ahead of the Greens because the party men botched an attempt to stay ahead of the greens in elimination. There are lots of quick clean wins that most western electoral systems could implement that don't have the drawbacks of PR: * Boundary-setting by independent electoral commissions. This is huge. For example - the US electoral system tends to have one of the major disadvantages of PR (too many safe seats) with none of the advantages, due to party control over electoral commissions. * Optional preferential voting allows people to vote for an independent whilst still affecting the likely outcome. Compulsory preferential voting forces people to make a decision even about the electoral order of people they dislike (which is definitely in the spirit of forced democracy of the Athenians) * Removing party names from the ballot paper while introducing random sorting of names across the ballot reduces the value of party brand and leaflets, whilst evening out the resulting increase donkey vote. * Restrictions to political advertising: ways that money can be spent, ways it can be raised, cutoffs before the election. * Mechanisms to reduce the benefit of incombancy over other groups.
- 13y ago

claudius 13y ago

The problem is trying to mix a proportional system with a representative one where each district elects one member of parliament, which then has to fit in with the results from the proportional system. In theory, this would allow for all districts to elect members of party A directly (first vote in Germany) and vote for party B in the second vote. You would then be faced with the impossible problem of fitting the 299 members of party A into a parliament that is – by the outcome of the proportional vote – supposed to be 100% party B. In my opinion, the best way to combine direct election of members of parliament with a somewhat proportional representation is preferential voting, attempted in the UK as ‘Alternative Vote’.

mxfh 13y ago
Also this used to enable a significant negative vote weight effect. Where voting for your preferred party with your second vote could actually make them lose seats if your party had more overhang mandates through direct first votes than through the proportional second vote. This was ruled unconstitutional by the Bundesverfassungsgericht in 2008 and the law was eventually changed. The current voting law in effect in 2013 reduced the effect but it's still there. So to balance those overhang seats, balancing seats are introduced which might increase the number of total seats beyond the originally intended number by quite a significant amount. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_vote_weight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_vote_weight

kps 13y ago

PR gives disproportionate influence to fringe parties. Some people like this (especially when it's currently their fringe that is kingmaker) and some don't. People discussing election systems need to understand Arrow's theorem and then understand what they're trading off with particular systems.

ronaldx 13y ago
It would be more accurate to say that PR gives more appropriate influence to third parties. It's true to say that political power/influence is not generally proportional to parliamentary party size, but is not specific to PR. For example, First-Past-The-Post typically gives disproportionate influence to the first and second parties (i.e. 100% of the power), which greatly reduces voter ability to express their preferences as politicians are forced to coalesce on one side or another of an arbitrary line. PR typically benefits parties who are able to negotiate and find common ground with their opponents. An extremist party will (still?) be left out in the cold. Finally: Arrow's Theorem isn't relevant to PR; it discusses transferable/ranked voting systems.
devx 13y ago
I take that over money influencing the main parties and then using that money to influence most of the population, as it happens in US. This just means the little parties can pop up out of nowhere, and win. That's actually good.
rmc 13y ago
Conversely FPTP gives disproportionate influence to large parties, meaning many groups get disenfranchiesed.
jvm 13y ago
The German system requires a 5% threshold to be seated; IMO that represents a sizeable chunk of people's viewpoints. And either way, the winning coalition must represent a majority of Germans. That promotes centrism not extremism.
- mjn 13y ago

pudo 13y ago

I'm not against proportional representation, in fact I know very few people in Germany that are against that system. What I'm criticising is the selection of a politically expedient mechanism, when others - which wouldn't as likely lead to an increase in the overall size of the parliament - are available. cf. http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/118/1711821.pdf http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/118/1711821.pdf

bayesianhorse 13y ago
Sometimes these rules emerge out of a "political" process (who would have guessed). A particularly smart individual might be able to draw up some extremely smart and simple scheme. The problem is choosing the smart individual.

cturner 13y ago

PR makes party tickets central to the electoral system. This plays to the interests of people who are employed around the political scene to carve out a place for themselves while staying loyal to their sponsor. For this reason alone, it's bad for democracracy even in the academic sense of the word. But in addition to this - * It creates a higher proportion of safe seats, which encourages party people to play to their base. * PR makes it easier for groups to get elected who are pursuing sectional interests. In short - PR makes politics more divisive compared to something like the Westminster system (single-member electorates). That's bad for democratic systems in a practical sense as well: it contributes to political instability and media circus. It also promotes deceiptful or just weird practice through the dynamics around preferencing. The recent Australian election came up with some bizarre outcomes in the senate due to the quirks of PR. Tradeoffs to try and correct for this lead to more problems, such as in Germany where CDU voters feel they need to vote for the FDP in some regions to try and get them over minimum quota to avoid a worse option getting through. There's been elections where tickets try to game the elimination order by flowing votes through parties from the other side of the divide, but then get the math predictions wrong: in the senate vote for Victoria in the 2004 Australian federal election - voters for the mainstream left party accidentally elected a Christian values party to a balance of power role in the upper house ahead of the Greens because the party men botched an attempt to stay ahead of the greens in elimination. There are lots of quick clean wins that most western electoral systems could implement that don't have the drawbacks of PR: * Boundary-setting by independent electoral commissions. This is huge. For example - the US electoral system tends to have one of the major disadvantages of PR (too many safe seats) with none of the advantages, due to party control over electoral commissions. * Optional preferential voting allows people to vote for an independent whilst still affecting the likely outcome. Compulsory preferential voting forces people to make a decision even about the electoral order of people they dislike (which is definitely in the spirit of forced democracy of the Athenians) * Removing party names from the ballot paper while introducing random sorting of names across the ballot reduces the value of party brand and leaflets, whilst evening out the resulting increase donkey vote. * Restrictions to political advertising: ways that money can be spent, ways it can be raised, cutoffs before the election. * Mechanisms to reduce the benefit of incombancy over other groups.

13y ago