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Submission KENNEDY-0751 (Online)

Submission ByMr John Kennedy
AddressBurnaby, BC, Canada
Organization
Date20040625
CategoryElectoral system change
Abstract
A note on the problems of a mixed member proportional (MMP) electoral system, and proposals for modifying the system or replacing it with other systems. [3 pages]

Submission Content
 

New Zealand's Mixed Member Plurality/Additional Member System

Summary

The rampant enthusiasm for NZ's MMP system seems to be at least a little bit blind. NZ's MMP is somewhat of a false idol. Their experience has not been all golden.

Comment

No one should support NZ's MMP without first reading the 2001 NZ Parliamentary Review [NZPR] of their MMP. This report can be found on this CA website under Learning Resources - Other Links/Electoral System - General, the 6th item, Nelson Thompson - Electoral Systems (scroll down to the report and click). Also, the Independent Commission Report on PR in Britain [ICPR] should be referenced. It too is under Other Links/Other Countries, the third item, Changed Voting Changed Politics. Read at least the NZPR Summary of Findings at the beginning, and pay especially close attention to Appendix C at the end.

The Kiwis have found their MMP surprisingly complex. And it falls short of their expectations. The situation in 2001: More than half the voters want either to return to FPTP or modify the devil's details of the MMP they have. Since there is not a clear choice one way or the other, the government decided to do nothing either way.

On the other hand, the government, comprised of party elites, had no hesitation about closed lists. The voters do not like them, but the elites do. So they kept them. There are no surprises here. This should be a cautionary tale. We must take care to not establish a system that serves the interests of the political elite. They are stunningly adept at serving their own interests, without any help from us. It must be noted that by 2003 support for MMP increased [ICPR, p.61, sec.7.21].

Here in BC, we do not want to have our rulers appointed. We want to elect our rulers. And if they cannot get elected, they should not hold office. This is basic representative democracy.

How much nepotism, cronyism, and patronage do you want to put up with? If Jack got elected, and could appoint his wife, Olivia, do you think he would hesitate? If Paul's wife wanted a seat, would she get it? She got to use an official government hotline phone to find out how her son was during the onset of the 911 Crisis. Could Paul deny her anything? What do bears do in the Canadian woods? Do you remember the Eatons, the Woodwards, the McCains, the Irvings? I cannot speak for the Kiwi's, but Canadian practice has a certain cast to it.

What if some Mafioso, some terrorists, or other kind of extremists made the party lists. These people look as regular as bread and butter, until they get caught at something. Some of them are upstanding, leading members of their communities, until they are exposed. You cannot rely on parties to filter them out - they want community leaders and supporters. How many planes have to blow up? How many car bombs and sidewalk executions, before we are leery of having our rulers appointed? Sociopaths are renowned for their social skills. The back door is just to easy to get into.

We do not want to give dictatorial powers to political parties. The procedures and practices of nomination meetings are hair-raising and shockingly undemocratic far too often.

We do not want to have our rulers appointed by cigar-chomping party hacks, by sly greasy-lipped bagmen, by moneyed cliques of arrogant, self-appointed elites, nor by the current leader of the party. This is not representative democracy. This is rule by cabal.

In short, we do not want European-style Party Proportional Representation, in whole or in part. The behavior of political parties is bad enough as it is. Do not encourage them.

Proposal

If we are going to be stampeded into NZ style MMP, we should at least try to avoid the worst mudholes.

The closed list is blatently anti-democratic and illegitimate. Just because you can get a lot of people to meekly and insouciantly accept what is wrong, does not mean you should give it to them. They will find out later what they do not know now.

The open list is democratic and legitimate, but it does not work on the ground. Even for a political junkie, it is too much stuff to comprehend and too many candidates to rationally choose between. So what does the ordinary voter do? He votes the party line. So the open list ends up being the equivalent of the closed list, on the ground [ICPR, p.46,sec.6.46]. Effectively,list systems are undemocratic.

Candidates are knowable at the riding level. Choose the most successful runners up to be the additional "top up" MLA's. It is a legitimate, democratic, and doable compromise.

Computer simulations of the 1997 elections in Britain were run to see what would happen under different electoral systems [ICPR, p.128,Appendix A]. Apparently, a one-third top up, two-thirds riding split seems to optimize disproportionality. In BC, that would be 26:53.

Unlike the Kiwi's, who took months in 1996 to form an unpopular coalition, the canny Scots require the formation and ratification of the First Minister and Executive within 28 days [ICPR,p.123,sec.14.33]. Follow the Scots.

MMP in NZ accomplishes what you might expect of any PR system: Parliament is strengthened against the Executive [ICPR,p.102,fig.12.4] in various ways.

A Less Common Proposal

The ICPR report [p.103,sec.12.15] identifies five drawbacks of coalitions.

  1. The actual government is unknown after the election -- it is dependent on post-election party bargaining.
  2. Accountability is not assignable to a specific party in the coalition.
  3. Smaller parties can hold larger parties to ransom to get what they want.
  4. Coalitions are unstable and more likely to collapse. And they are less dynamic and slower at policy making.
  5. When coalitions are comfortable with each other and not unstable, they are hard to remove.

Most of these objections would be met by a preference ballot for the party choice vote, and a Borda count of that ballot. The first choices on a preference ballot are exactly the same as a FPTP ballot and count. The FPTP count would determine each party's popular vote and number of top up members. It would also determine the winner of the election -- the party with the most first preferences.

The Borda ballot has the voter rank all the parties by preference. Then the Borda count assigns points in reverse order to the ranks: with five parties, a first choice is worth 5 points, a second worth 4, etc. When the points over all the ballots are totalled, we have the voters' ranked preferences of the parties.

Okay, at this point we can demand that the winner of the election form a coalition with the party that received the most Borda points. A refusal would move the election winner to engage the next party down the preference scale. All within 28 days.

This method permits the voters to choose the coalition (between their most favourite parties). It also gives the voters some control over the general direction of the political agenda. Further, it allows the voters to remove cozy coalitions. The effects of smaller parties and accountability become non-issues under this method.

Naturally, I still prefer The Seven Cent Solution (Kennedy 0740).

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