By Ally Mullord
On November 26, there is an election. As well as selecting who we would like to guide the stampeding elephant of democracy into the international jungle of the future, avoiding the baboons of inequality and seeking the delicious peanuts of economic success, there is something else we must do.
We must select a voting system. This is a blog about voting systems. Wait! Where are you going? Please come back. I promise it will be educational and not very boring.
I spent approximately 10 million years writing detailed explanations of the voting systems, and thought it would be nice for people to learn about them without hurting their brain and giving themselves wrinkles (from frowning).
In order to keep it understandable I’ve simplified some of the examples. If you find them too simple, the detailed explanations are here.
Basics: All the systems have 120 Members of Parliament, because that is how many seats are in the debating chamber and if you change the number of seats it ruins the feng shui.
MPs are either list or electorate: electorate MPs are voted in by the people living in a certain area (these are the ones whose billboards you deface), and list MPs get in by being highly ranked in the party.
There are five systems to choose from:
1. MMP: Many Minor Parties.
This is what we have now! If you like it, we can keep it forever, until our alien overlords abolish voting all together and turn us into a food source with very little democratic representation.
The first 70 MPs are electorate MPs: win your electorate, go straight to Parliament, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
The other 50 are list MPs, organised based on the party vote – if a party gets half the vote, they get half the seats in Parliament.
Here is an example: The Happy Feet Penguin Political Party (HFPPP) gets 50 percent of the vote, because of its charismatic leader and ‘black and white policies’. That’s 60 seats in Parliament for the HFPPP (note: it is rare for one party to get more than half the vote under MMP, but Happy Feet is a popular leader). Candidates from the HFPPP won 20 electorate seats, leaving a gap of 40 – so the 40 highest-ranked MPs on the HFPPP party list come into Parliament. These 40 list MPs bring the HFPPP up to their 60 seats.
Sadly, they do not achieve anything, because they are all penguins.
People like MMP because it’s relatively easy for small parties to get in– it only takes one electorate seat or 5 percent of the party vote to have a seat in Parliament – which means more opinions and sectors of society are represented in Parliament.
People dislike MMP for two major reasons:
Minor parties can wield un-minor power when coalitions are formed – if neither major party has enough votes to govern alone, they need to team up with smaller parties and often have to compromise to do so.
Example: You want to buy a $4 pie, but only have $3.80. Sarah offers to lend you 20c, but says the pie has to be vegetarian.
You don’t really want a vegetarian pie but if you don’t take her up on the offer Todd, who also has $3.80, will do the deal with Sarah… and he has offered to give her half the pie. You only offered her a quarter.
Sarah is totally in charge of the pie outcome, despite only having 20c!
Paul and Suzie have 10c each and will also go in on the pie, but have their own pie specifications. You just want a damn pie.
(You are a major party with less than 50 percent of the vote, and so is Todd; Sarah, Paul and Suzie are minor parties who are willing to form a coalition.)
Secondly, MPs can get in on the list, even if their electorate rejects them. Example: Rupert has bad breath (and policies), and the voters of Blenheim did not choose him. However, Rupert is number 2 on his party list and gets in anyway. The voters of Blenheim are not pleased.
2. FPP: Fast Polarised Parliament
120 MPs win their electorate, go straight to Parliament, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. List MPs become extinct and create fossils. That’s it.
People like FPP because every MP is voted in, and no-one comes off the list – Rupert, with his bad breath and policies, does not claw his way up the Beehive. It also generally gives a majority government, so there’s no faffing about with minor parties and coalitions.
FPP annoys people because candidates don’t need over half the votes to win an electorate, just more than the next guy. This makes it completely possible for a party to have half the seats in Parliament, but only get 35 percent of the vote nationwide.
Also: Minor party candidates don’t usually win electorates because of an ancient curse, so there’s less diversity in Parliament.
(The Green Party didn’t win any electorates in the last election, but got enough of the vote to get list MPs in under MMP – in FPP they would not have been there at all and then we would not get to look at Gareth Hughes and go “Awwww”.)
FPP also creates the best-looking Parliament, because all the people who don’t know much about politics just vote for the handsomest candidate.
3. SM: Simplest Maths
The first 90 MPs are electorate MPs: win your electorate, go straight to Parliament, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
The other 30 MPs are list MPs, worked out by party vote, and this is where I stop copy-pasting from the section on MMP because the party vote has bugger all to do with the total number of seats in parliament – it only determines the makeup of the 30 list MPs.
It is indeed the simplest maths. The main difference between this and MMP is that the party vote doesn’t have as much effect and winning electorate seats becomes a lot more important.
People who like SM see it as a comfy middle ground between FPP and MMP; minor parties get to have a (moderate) say, but the majority of the MPs are elected and don’t sneak in on the list.
People who don’t like it think it’s a wussed-down version of FPP and/or MMP. FPP supporters think the minor parties have too much influence; MMP supporters think they don’t have enough.
4. PV is the most complicated system. It stands for Passionate Vampires.
120 MPs win their electorate, go straight to Parliament, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. It sounds so simple! It isn’t.
In FPP, MMP and SM, if you vote for Rupert and he doesn’t get in, that’s it. You have had your electorate voting chance. In PV, you get to go again (sort of).
When you vote, you rank the candidates in order of preference – first choice Magnus from the Liberal Oxen, second choice Sally from Legalise Kronic, third choice Sebastian from the Communist Whatevers, and so on.
To win an electorate, a candidate has to get over half the votes (unlike SM, FPP and MMP, where you only need more than the next guy). When the votes are tallied, if one candidate has half the votes they’re off to the House (Parliament, not the Big House) and everything is hunky-dory; if no-one gets more than half the votes things get messy.
The candidate who the fewest people picked first is eliminated, becomes traumatised by the memory of always being picked last for sports, and leaves politics forever.
If you voted for him as your first choice, how embarrassing! That no longer counts. Your second favourite now gets counted and added to everyone else’s first choices.
Hopefully the second votes of Candidate Loser’s supporters, plus everyone else’s first votes, are enough to get someone over the halfway mark. If not, we do the same thing again and again and again until we have a winner. It is exhausting.
People who like PV think it’s a neat alternative to FPP, because candidates have to get over half the vote – which means you’ll never have a Parliament where one party has more than half the seats, but less than half of the total votes nationally.
Also, just because your first choice sucked doesn’t mean your vote is wasted – it can help get your second choice over the line.
The main reason people dislike PV is because it’s hugely complex and, as with FPP, is a more difficult system for minor parties to get decent representation – because major party candidates still tend to collect more of the seats.
This is also the most expensive option because it takes so long to count. I made that up, but it may very well be true.
5. STV: Several in The Vicinity
120 MPs win their electorate, go straight to Parliament, do not pass- wait, what? There is more than one MP per electorate?
There is more than one MP per electorate! I know, it is exciting. There are between three and seven MPs per electorate. I saved the most exciting voting system for last, as a treat for the three of you who are still reading.
In STV you vote for your electorate MP and rank your favourites just like you did in PV, but this time candidates have to get a certain number of votes based on how big the electorate is and how many candidates there are.
Example: Smurf Village has 60,000 voting occupants. In order to be one of the four MPs for Smurf Village you need 10,000 of those votes. (Please be aware that these figures, and Smurf Village, are fictional.)
If not enough candidates reach the quota – the Smurfs only elect three MPs, and the rest all get below 10,000 votes each – the votes are shuffled about in more or less the same way as PV, with an extra bit where if a candidate gets more votes than they need, the spare votes are transferred to the next favourite candidate.
This is the best system for people who say, “I really can’t be arsed picking my favourite candidates, I wish someone would do it for me” because with STV, they can! You have the option of ticking a box that allows your favourite political party to allocate your votes based on their favourites, thus sparing you the massive brain strain of choosing for yourself.
People like STV because it makes it easier for smaller parties, independents and your politically-opinionated uncle to get into Parliament.
People don’t like STV for the same reasons as MMP – it’s too complicated and it gives too much power to smaller parties, and your politically-opinionated uncle.
Congratulations! You have successfully navigated the treacherous waters of voting systems.
Happy Feet salutes you.
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