Sunday, 18 December 2011

The big political parties endorse first past the post for no other reason than selfishness

First past the post is communism because it lets in socialist parties.
Posted by at

3 comments:

  1. Stephen Johnson19 December 2011 at 13:19

    FPTP encourages two party politics. There is self interest, but also much more to consider.

    Reducing politics to the choice between two parties, and alternating between Governments that have a great deal of power to implement their programme without taking into account other views is seen by some as a strength, and some as a weakness. To some it as unfair that a third or fourth party does not get votes in parliament proportional to the number of votes cast for their party, but others feel the benefit of strong government overrides any unfairness.

    FPTP usually produces single party government but it may do this by chance. It cannot be fair or democratic when, as the result of an election, a party can have sufficient votes in parliament to govern the country alone but it is not the party which got the most votes in the election.

    I recommend DPR Voting as a replacement for FPTP.
    http://www.dprvoting.org

    ReplyDelete
  2. Geolibertarian19 December 2011 at 22:25

    Thank you very much for the comment it is greatly appreciated...

    My position is the following: The problem with the first-past-the-post voting method is that it is a single-member (constituency) system and this accounts for its lack of proportionality. Multiple-member systems are generally proportional because voters have more latitude in casting their vote since more candidates have a realistic chance of success and there is accordingly less need for tactical voting. Direct party and representative voting (along with the relay system and dual parliamentary and executive voting) is a proportional system which retains the advantage (as claimed by some people) of single-member seats... the so-called constituency link. I am not so concerned myself about the claimed demerits of multiple-member seats and do not regard the constituency link to be very important.

    Dpr voting gives people two votes which enables them to select for their constituency MP someone from a different party than the party they chose for national government. (It enables them to choose for national government someone from a different party than the party of the person they have chosen to be their constituency MP.) In this respect it is superior to the relay system.

    The advantage the relay system has over dpr voting is that it is simpler as people only have to vote once. Perhaps a compromise could be reached in the dpr method whereby the national (party) vote is optional and if it is left blank the party of the chosen candidate will be assumed by default (to be cast) for the national vote.

    Dual parliamentary and executive voting differs from dpr voting in that it offers the electorate the chance to vote for more than one party at the national level. This is similar to - the perhaps more widely known - approval voting. Approval voting has the great advantage that people can select more than one candidate and so this makes it easy for voters to exclude offensive politicians. However this technique is only really valuable within a single-winner framework where tactical voting is typically required. In a proportional system (such as dpev at the party level) there is no additional benefit to having multiple votes as people have no need to vote tactically to begin with, so a single vote is sufficient at this level as exists with dpr voting.

    There is no particular advantage within dual parliamentary and executive voting over direct party and representative voting.

    Thanks again for the comment

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stephen Johnson19 December 2011 at 23:45

    With DPR Voting it might seem more complicated to have two votes, but in practice most people who go out to vote know which party they support. They may not know which local candidate they want to support. In DPR Voting if only one vote is cast, the vote is still valid and significant.

    Because you may still vote for the party you support even if your party does not field a candidate in your constituency, the DPRV ‘Party’ vote would give a more accurate reflection of the levels of support for each of the parties than adding up the FPTP votes for the various party candidates.

    A further point is that every ‘Party’ vote makes a difference to the election result. This is unique to DPRV and means that everyone has a reason to go out and vote.

    Another attraction of voting for both party and local candidate is that it encourages the election of better MPs who will be more responsive to their local constituents.

    Take the expenses scandal as an example. With one FPTP vote you have to rely on the local party putting up a competent honest hardworking candidate. If, in your judgement, they do not, you are faced with the dilemma of voting for the party you want to form the Government but at the same time voting for a dishonest candidate, or voting for an honest man to be the MP, but at the same time voting for a party you don’t want to form the Government. DPR Voting means you don’t have this dilemma.

    The idea of using approval voting to test various coalition options is interesting, but complex, and potentially difficult to interpret, particularly when you consider four or more parties, or voters who choose three party coalitions.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)