Why the 'alternative vote' is a terrible idea for electing representatives
2 replies, posted
You see it every now and then here on Facepunch; a thread about UK/US politics, and about halfway down the page someone links to that certain CPGrey video which is then followed by a comment of praise as if the alternative vote will fix everything that is wrong with politics. But why do people advocate for this?
The alternative vote goes by several names, including the former as well as 'instant-runoff vote' and the 'preferential vote' (however, IRV is not the only preferential voting system). It is usually proposed as an alternative to single-winner plurality elections, typically referred to as 'first past the post'.
For those unaware of the difference between FPTP and IRV, I will quickly explain it without linking to that stupid CPGrey video. Each system is used for determining the election of a single candidate to a single position. Under FPTP, the winner is the candidate with the most votes, not necessarily a majority (50%+1) of the vote. Under IRV, the winner is whichever candidate attains a majority of the votes, whether they win a majority on first preferences alone, or otherwise the latter preferences of votes which originally went to candidates eliminated from the count. I will demonstrate each with examples below, to determine the favourite colour of a hundred voters:
FPTP
Blue (45 votes) - blue wins for having the most votes (even though 55% of voters preferred another option
Red (33 votes)
Yellow (22 votes)
IRV
Round one
Blue (first preference) (45 votes)
Red (first preference) (33 votes)
Yellow (first preference), Blue (second preference) (4 votes)
Yellow (first preference), Red (second preference) (18 votes)
(no candidate reached the required majority of 51 votes, so the poorest performing candidate, yellow, is eliminated and votes that originally went to Yellow are distributed according to preferences)
Round two
Blue (45 votes+4 originally from Yellow = 49 votes)
Red (33 votes+18 votes originally from Yellow = 51 votes) - red reaches a majority and is therefore the winner
But why do we advocate for the alternate vote system? It is stupid. Literally the only problem it solves above FPTP is it eliminates vote splitting (demonstrated above). But at what cost? For one, it can potentially disenchant the very people the system attempts to empower. For example, a FPTP election may only encourage a maximum of two candidates to contest the election, typical in the US, but IRV elections allow for many candidates on the ballot based on the theory that IRV will prevent vote splitting from occurring and affecting the outcome. But if voters are not educated about how the voting system works or are apathetic to it, supporters of minor candidates may only 'bullet vote' that candidate, possibly because they don't understand why they have to indicate preferences for the other candidates (or feel that they shouldn't be required to). Thus, those votes which would have otherwise affected the outcome of a two contestant FPTP election, end up wasted under an IRV election.
Two, vote splitting isn't even that relevant with emphasis on elections in the US. FPTP elections will feature a single candidate from each of two broad political parties. On one hand, you have a party that is so broad that even Bernie Sanders caucuses with them. On the other hand, you have a party with everything from moderates to the tea party. Each party thus represents a broad political spectrum, and voters can participate in primaries to determine which candidate that party will put on the ballot, so that vote splitting need not occur.
Three, and similar to point one, is the possibility of wasted ballots. Take elections for the House of Representatives in Australia. MPs are elected via IRV, and voters are required to indicate a preference for every single candidate on the ballot paper for their vote to count. If you accidentally issue the same preference twice, skip a preference, or skip a candidate, your vote will not be counted. What do you do if you are indifferent to two candidates? How do you resolve that? It is much easier for ballots to be wasted under IRV than FPTP, especially from people who do not understand how the voting system works but might regardless still be very passionate for a certain candidate.
Four, why do people say that it helps minor parties receive representation? It certainly doesn't. In fact, it probably makes it harder. Under FPTP, a candidate only needs the most votes, which may be something like 30% (depends on the vote itself). Under IRV, a candidate needs a majority of the vote (>50%). How does that make it easier for minor parties? If no candidate receives a majority on first preferences, the first candidates that are eliminated are minor party candidates. And guess where those votes will then be transferred to? There's a good chance they'll go to a major party candidate. If you want to see why IRV doesn't break from two party systems, just look at the Australian House of Representatives (note: although the Liberals and Nationals are in a coalition, this is because they don't contest seats against each other, in some states both parties have actually merged).
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Australian_House_of_Representatives%2C_44th_Parliament.svg/500px-Australian_House_of_Representatives%2C_44th_Parliament.svg.png[/img]
Government coalition:
Liberals - dark blue
Nationals - green
Liberal Nationals (aforementioned merger in some states) - light blue
Main opposition
Labor - red
And then there's a tiny crossbench or either former members of the coalition or Labor, or people who got lucky.
Why do people advocate for the alternative vote? It doesn't solve anything. How about electing representatives in a proportional manner? There are many methods; Droop LR, Hare LR, D'Hondt HA, Sainte-Lague HA, Imperiali HA and the STV family (which suffers the same complexity as the IRV and is an issue of electoral reform in Australia). Remember that poll of favourite colours I posted above? Well let's say that the election is for four seats, and each of the colours are a political party. We'll conduct a vote under Hare LR (it's the simplest method to demonstrate) to determine which parties get seats.
Votes = 100
Seats = 4
Hare quota = (100/4) = 25 votes
Blue: 45 votes, / 25 = 1.8 quotas
Red: 33 votes, / 25 = 1.32 quotas
Yellow: 22 votes, / 25 = 0.88 quotas
Blue and Red each surpassed a quota of the votes, hence each is granted an automatic seat. As there are two more seats to allocate (and the Hare method is a largest-remainder method), Yellow gets the first remainder seat as it is the closest to reaching a quota, and Blue gets the last remainder seat as it is the next closest to reaching another quota. The result:
Blue = 2 seats (45% of the vote, 50% of the seats)
Red = 1 seat (33% of the vote, 25% of the seats)
Yellow = 1 seat (22% of the vote, 25% of the seats)
Notice how in this system, that Yellow gets representation which they would not have received under the FPTP or IRV elections mentioned above? Although ordering of candidates on a party list is a problem (which isn't under STV, but is exactly why STV is a very complex family of systems to both vote and count votes), a party primary can be used to determine party list ordering, or a second ballot can be issued to votes to determine party-list ordering under a system such as SNTV. Instead of advocating for the alternative vote, we should be advocating for proportional representation systems. The actual constituencies can be something as simple as grouping five existing single-member constituencies into a single five-member constituency. Although it's a larger constituency and a greater distance between people and their representatives, more people are actually represented even without having a preferential vote, and this is the 21st century, not the 18th century. We have social media, people in the 18th century had horses if they were wealthy.
TL;DR the alternative vote sucks, let's debate for a proportional system instead.
I think an even bigger problem with the Westminster system is executive dominance. If the legislature and executive were separated it would lead to a weaker governing party in the Commons (or your equivalent in Australia) which would mean better scrutinisation and opposition to government policy.
However, first past the post in this country heavily favours the Labour Party, where most of their support is based in populous urban area. But the Conservatives seem to enjoy a lot of support in the Lords due to its traditionalism. I tend to agree that proportional electoral systems are a much better means of representing the various views and interests within a country's political system and so they are more 'democratic' in a sense, instead of just excluding the minority out of the political system.
[QUOTE=Hamsteronfire;46903893]I think an even bigger problem with the Westminster system is executive dominance. If the legislature and executive were separated it would lead to a weaker governing party in the Commons (or your equivalent in Australia) which would mean better scrutinisation and opposition to government policy.
However, first past the post in this country heavily favours the Labour Party, where most of their support is based in populous urban area. But the Conservatives seem to enjoy a lot of support in the Lords due to its traditionalism. I tend to agree that proportional electoral systems are a much better means of representing the various views and interests within a country's political system and so they are more 'democratic' in a sense, instead of just excluding the minority out of the political system.[/QUOTE]
In Australia, the issue of executive dominance often isn't really an issue, this is because parties which win majorities in the lower house (which is majoritarian using the instant runoff vote) never win majorities in the upper house (which is proportionally elected). In the upper house the balance of power is often held by the Greens (which is stupid, as they are to the left of both major parties rather than in the middle of them), which used to be held by the Democrats until they faded into obscurity in the last decade.
However, yes, executive dominance is an issue with the Westminster system - the party(s) which have a majority in the house/commons can allocate every Cabinet position, so of course 100% of Ministers will be from that ruling party or coalition. One idea I've been floating in my head is to transform the Ministerial portfolio of each Ministry form having a single Minister to multiple Ministers, like a Board of Directors. First of all, proportional representation would need to be implemented for the election of MPs so that each party has a proportional mandate. Then, Ministers would be elected by the members of the chamber in a proportional manner too. If you had three-member Ministries elected using STV with the Hare quota (or Hare LR), a member from each party would need one third support of the chamber, so you'd have a Minister from the largest party, a Minister from the second largest party, and a Minister from the remaining bloc of parties.
The actual administration of the Ministries would ideally be done on consensus - meaning that Ministers may break from their party lines - and so that a degree of confidentiality should be instilled (eg Ministers may never vote on issues in the chamber regarding their Ministry, and the meetings of the Ministry would not be disclosed while that Ministry was still in office). All of this is similar to the Swiss directorial system of its Federal council - but done at a per Ministry level, rather than across the entire government.
[editline]13th January 2015[/editline]
Another idea for the election of Ministers would be to have candidates for the Ministries to be MPs from the previously elected chamber go up for election to Ministerial positions, by the people, at the same time that the whole chamber goes up for election. That way, those candidates would have already had a few years of experience in the chamber, and the people would ideally know of the tendencies of those MPs. How it would work is there would be a ballot for the local representatives for the new chamber, and a ballot for each Ministry (which would be the same ballot across the nation).
However if you had like ten Ministries, that would be tedious for voters having to fill out ten ballot papers plus one for their new representatives. So voters could be given the option of giving their vote to a delegate (or voting for a delegate), who would vote for Ministers based on the political stance of the voter. Another problem is that the Ministers wouldn't exactly be answerable to the new chamber, as those ministers wouldn't sit in that chamber (having instead sit in the previously elected chamber and forfeited their seats in place of becoming candidates for Ministry). At least it may soften partisanship somewhat. But it does make Ministers answerable to the people and not the party line, and Ministers could be removed by no confidence motions via supermajority of the chamber.
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