From: Steve.Withers@bbs.actrix.gen.nz
Subject: Re: 19 September referendum
Organization: Actrix Information Exchange
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 13:50:05 GMT

In article <BtxH4p.Lo4@comp.vuw.ac.nz> Michael.Norrish@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Michael Norrish) writes:
> I'm interested to hear what people think are the objections to STV as
> a proportional representation system.

It is vulnerable to gerrymandering. The Irish electoral boundaries take some
very strange twists in order to concentrate the votes of various parties in
certain areas.

MPs of the same party compete with each other as well as other parties for
election/re-election. This can create many unnecessary problems for trying to
gain a consensus - which is one of the benefits of PR over our present system.



 To my mind, it seems to have two
> advantages over MMP,
>  
> i) all MPs have some local affiliation, and
> ii) the party doesn't have the monopoly on power that is implied by
>     the fact that parties specify party lists.

The party lists are not very well understood, are they. The Royal Commission
recommended that any move to MMP should also require political parties to
democratically select the list candidates. This would be done either directly
by all party members (postal ballots?) or at a conference by elected
delegates. Labour objects to this because their current selection is not based
on one-man, one-vote.

People seem to lose sight of the fact the the parties chose all the candidates
under the present system - at least the winning ones. Sixty percent of MPs in
parliament NOW are in safe seats. They are as good as list MPs in my book.
 
Also....list MPs of a party trying to increase it's grassroots support will
*have* to be active in the community. If the are aloof, how will they ever
expect to gain people's votes? These points wee not made on the TV show,
because they add to the credibility of MMP. 

National is trying to paint a picture of aloof and arrogant list MPs swanning
about ignoring the public.......well.....they would do so at thier electoral
peril, because on election day *all votes count* and I wouldn't vote for a
party like that. WOULD YOU? National - used to the politics of 
Like-it-or-lump-it that the present system allows seems to assume that the
same would be true under MMP. This would be a fatal error.

 
In Germany, almost ALL MPs have offices in an area they chose to identify with
- usually where they received most votes. This is as it should be.

> 
> These might be considered two sides of the same coin I guess. 
> 
> I'm also curious as to what is supposed to happen if the proportion of
> votes a party gets would indicate that they should have _fewer_ seats
> than they have won in the seat-based half of the parliament. Does the
> party then have to drop people? I admit, the possibility seems a
> remote one, but I'm interested to hear an official answer.

If a party wins mre seats that it's share of the vote entitles it to have, the
size of the Parliamant is increased to make the result proportional. This is
usually a very minor adjustment, though in one anomalous situation in Germany
it did go up by 30ish seats (out of several hundred).


> 
> Finally, it seems a shame that in voting for our preferred system of
> change we have to vote in a first-past-the-post manner. The nasty
> spectre of having to vote for MMP because it needs our votes to do
> better than something stupid like PV, (is there any truth in the claim
> that people who don't want change are being told to vote for this as a
> next best option?), thus precluding STV, is not a pleasant one.

Steve



-- 
Steve Withers - Wellington, New Zealand | End the two-party duopoly. Vote 
Steve.Withers@bbs.actrix.gen.nz         | for the Mixed-Member Proportional 
withers_s@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz            | (MMP) voting system on Sept. 19th. 
**** Happy user of OS/2 v2!! ****       | Give yourself a vote that *counts*!