From: gdb15@cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
Subject: Comparison of voting systems (was: Rule Britannia)
Reply-To: gdb15@cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 13:07:06 GMT

livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:

>In article <1992Nov12.114753.8084@infodev.cam.ac.uk>, gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk writes:
>> In article <1dslaaINN3k@fido.asd.sgi.com> livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
>> >
>> >As I said before, I don't think that I have to show that in
>> >each and every case, PR has led to disaster.  I merely observe
>> >that for every Germany, where some form of PR seems to work
>> >fairly well, there is some other country where it does not seem
>> >to work well at all.
>> 
>> But this is precisely my point.  By talking about "PR" as though it
>> were a single homogeneous entity, you obscure the issue.
>
>That may be your point, but unfortunately you are not the
>only person who supports *some* form of PR.   As far as I
>know, there is some support for almost every variety of PR,
>and I'm not going to turn myself into an expert in PR in
>order to deal with them one by one.

Well in that case we're not going to be able to have a very
substantial discussion.  I think there's a bit of the "Fog
in Channel, Continent cut off" mentality here.  What many of
the British don't seem to appreciate is that ours is just
one voting system amongst many.  To divide up the world's
voting systems into "what we do" and "what everyone else
does" seems a very parochial standpoint.

>It could be constructive if stability were the only issue.
>However, there are other aspects of PR that I find
>problematic - I raised my objections to coalition
>government already - and they appear to me to be features
>common to PR in general, rather than breaking neatly across
>a German/non-German divide.

Well, we can talk about the merits of coalition government versus
majority government (or minority government for that matter) if you
like.  But what you can't do is demand of an electoral system
that it never produces a coalition government (unless it's *so*
rigged that it always gives one party a majority, and I don't
think anyone would contemplate a system like that).  The British
system is quite capable of producing coalitions, and indeed it
does do in many local authorities.  It's just a particular quirk
of British demography that means that it rarely produces coalitions
at Westminster, and you can't legislate for demography.

>This may not be your intention, but I sometimes wonder if
>the German version of PR gets boosted in order to appeal to
>our natural tendency to assume that whatever the Germans do
>must work fairly well.   But this has been a bad week for
>Germany.  The President and Chancellor physically
>attacked.   What looks very much like a political trial
>starting.   The admission that the German Army played host
>to Neo-Nazi Groups carrying out "military-sport"
>exercises.   The admission that several German soldiers
>have been indicted for participating in neo-Nazi
>anti-refugee riots.

It'd be hard to blame PR for any of this (though I expect someone will
try to!).  I'm not supporting the Germans in particular, I'm just
pointing out that they have an electoral system which both reflects
voters' preferences reasonably fairly and tends to produce stable
governments.  But I have other misgivings about the system, and I'm
not sure if I'd want to see it adopted here.


mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:

>>From: gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
>>What would be constructive would be to look at the political stability
>>of countries with a German-style system as a group, and compare the
>>data with similar data for countries that use a simple majority
>>system, or a two-round system, or the Alternative Vote, or STV, or
>>pure PR, or whatever.  I don't know of any such study but I'm sure
>>someone must have done one.
>
>In practice the German system is simply pure proportionality
>with a 5% cut-off. The idea that it is a hybrid is nonsense,
>since the constituency vote doesn't count for anything. The
>number of seat each party gets depends entirely on its list
>vote, so any constituency candidate elected or unelected is
>balanced by a list candidate unelected or elected.
>
>Matthew Huntbach

Fair point.  I think it's the 5% cut-off that gives the
German system its distinctive character, rather than the
constituency vote (which as you say makes no difference
to the final result).


--
Guy Barry, University of Cambridge | Phone: +44 (0)223 334757 
Computer Laboratory                | Fax: +44 (0)223 334678
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From: tgg@otter.hpl.hp.com (Tom Gardner)
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1992 10:53:02 GMT
Subject: Re: Bristol (was Re: Phrase)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.