Legal Beagle: MMP or not MMP
72 Responses
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If tinkering with MMP were an option. The part I would like to change would be the way the electorate vote is managed. Essentially this is an FPP system and therefore those rules would be applied.
So if you win an electorate seat on the night and your Party is below the threshold, then that’s all you get. If that Party’s vote goes above the threshold then proportionality would be applied. Thoughts?
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3410,
So if you win an electorate seat on the night and your Party is below the threshold, then that’s all you get. If that Party’s vote goes above the threshold then proportionality would be applied. Thoughts?
Agree. Given that the usual Nat/Lab split is very roughly equal, those "third" parties that slip through the middle actually have a dispropotionately large influence. To allow them 5% of the house with only one electorate win compounds that further.
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Given that a number of people have argued for reducing or removing entirely the threshold, if that took place, it would continue to happen.
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To allow them 5% of the house with only one electorate win compounds that further.
Parties don't get 5% of the House with one electorate win, they get 5% of the House with 5% of the party vote. For example, Jim Anderton's Progressive got one constituency and have one seat overall based on their 0.9% of the party votes.
Seems about right to me.
And certainly better than a party getting 55% of the seats with 40% of the votes as National managed in 1981, or 50.5% of the seats with 35% of the vote as they did in 1993.
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3410,
You're quite right. I was mistaken. I still don't think it's right that a party that scores 4% nationally should win that share of the house due to a single constituency win.
It's unfair, IMO, against those parties (and supposters thereof) that have broad, rather than concentrated, support and it encourages gaming of the system because it rewards with greater power the voters in electorates that vote in a Hide, Dunne, or Anderton.
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But the playing field could be leveled. There could be two questions: 1. What voting system would you like?, and 2. how many MPs do you want?
Of course, you might want to proffer a different answer to the second question, depending on the result of the first.
The increased MPs wasn't particularly tied to the voting system by the Royal Commission.
It wasn't tied at all. They wanted to increase the effectiveness of select committees, enlarge the talent pool for ministerial office, and increase the number of ministers.
They also thought it should be higher, but were of the view that people wouldn't like that idea, but when the public realised how much more awesome a Parliament of 120 MPs was over a Parliament of 97, they'd be sure to support an increase to 140 and beyond, so that it could be even more awesome a Parliament.
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I still don't think it's right that a party that scores 4% nationally should win that share of the house due to a single constituency win.
I concur. A party that gets 4% of the party vote nationally should get 4% of the House irrespective of whether they win a constituency.
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3410,
Well, I don't think that's quite concurring.
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Well, I don't think that's quite concurring.
I favour abolishing the constituency seat exception.
I favour lowering the threshold (or abolishing it).
I particularly favour doing both.Lowering the threshold is more important to me than abolishing the constituency seat exception, but I would favour doing that even even if we didn't lower the threshold.
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3410,
Your ideal level of threshhold?
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Your ideal level of threshold?
Probably zero, but moving from Sainte-Laguë to modified Sainte-Laguë.
If we're to have one (which I concede is likely), no higher than 3%, probably 2.5% (which is three MPs in a 120-seat Parliament - a level I consider high enough that your party isn't a joke, can play a small but very real role in legislating and holding the government to account, and is sufficiently high that there's something really wrong about telling the voters who supported that party that they're not important enough to matter).
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Probably zero, but moving from Sainte-Laguë to modified Sainte-Laguë.
so help me with this! ... (the implication is)
1) proportionality would not applied to the electorate seats and
2) a lower threshold ...2.5% or 3% ... to the Party vote
within 120 seat parliament ...ish ... given that this discussion (overall) seems to be saying MMP is preferable to the other options on offer?
So not so much a change to the formula by the way it is applied? .. or is that something else! -
so help me with this!
Not a whole lot of change from the current system:
1. Keep MMP.
2. Parties with 2.5% or more of the party vote receive seats in Parliament proportional to their Party vote.
This includes electorate MPs: e.g. a party with 10% of the party vote gets 12 MPs; if they have no electorates, these would all be list MPs; if they have 1 electorate MP, they would get that person and 11 list MPs.
3. Parties with less than 2.5% of the Party vote would not receive list MPs, but if candidates from their party won an electorate, that person would of course be the electorate MP.The method by which party votes get turned into list seats would stay the same, but I would support modifying it somewhat, if we got rid of the threshold completely.
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For those of you that don't understand Proportional Representation...
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Didja catch the bit right at the very end?
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Shirtcliffe et al declare for SM
No great surprise there. It will be interesting to see who slots in behind. ACT? John Key? The Herald? etc.
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Hmm, so Shirtcliffe's press release praised the Scottish system, which I had always understood to be of the same general class as MMP, except with regional rather than national lists.
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Shirtcliffe's press release praised the Scottish system, which I had always understood to be of the same general class as MMP
Yes, Scotland uses the additional member system, which is how MMP is known in Britain. A party's overall strength is proportional to its party vote.
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So why would Shirtcliffe be praising Scotland I wonder? Is it just that he likes the fact there are more constituency than list MPS?
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Submissions on this close Thursday 10 June. For those that are wanting to keep/tweak MMP: Campaign for MMP has quick submission online forms plus more.
I presume the bad guys have a web site as well if you tend that way.
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I presume the bad guys have a web site as well if you tend that way.
http://www.petershirtcliffe.co.nz/
I kid you not.
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