Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to BenWilson,
The problem I see is that its proportionality is non-guaranteed side effect, and it seems sensitive to a whole lot of balances being right, the main one being the number of candidates that will be selected in any discrete election.
Proportionality of first preferences isn't guaranteed, but if the electorates are large enough (five or so MPs is generally considered enough), then overall proportionality is quite likely. That said, proportionality of first preferences is also quite likely, particularly if above the line voting is allowed and is popular.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to BenWilson,
The others boil down to clever ways to exclude minority interests.
Single Transferable Vote (STV) is generally accepted to be a proportional system, in which minority views are properly represented.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Idiot Savant,
Now, we can’t take those electorate seats off them. But your implied solution – penalising other parties – actually produces a less proportional, and therefore less fair, result. And for what? A round number of MPs?
1. National got 44.93% of the party vote. And its 58 seats are 47.54% of the House.
The Green Party got 6.72% of the party vote. Its 9 seats are 7.38% of the House.57/120 seats would be 47.5% of the House. 8/120 seats would be 6.67% of the House.
With a smaller 120 MP House, no overhang, and National and the Greens each dropping a seat, their seat share would be closer to its proper proportion.
2. It’s not my solution. I’m fine with overhang, but I do note that others (e.g. Scotland, Wales, London(?)) don’t have overhang and are fine. Getting rid of overhang wouldn’t break MMP, and if the majority of people want the feature gone, I’m happy to go along with the flow.
3. Mostly, my comment was about how we look at things. There are 70 electorates, and there are (ignoring Te Tai Tokerau) 70 electorate MPs. In this Parliament, there are 52 list MPs, although the system is set up that there should ideally be 50. I do not think you can accurately say that the Maori Party benefits from an overhang. They'd probably prefer to be 5 (ignore Hone) out of 120. The overhang has caused there to be 52 list MPs in this Parliament, who got those extra two? National and the Greens.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to uroskin,
The playing field isn’t level when any party obtains overhang.
The Māori Party didn't obtain overhang. National and the Greens are the beneficiaries of an overhang caused by the Māori Party.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to bmk,
So I disagree with people who say that a zero threshold will mean that stable governments cannot be formed.
The concern that many people have with it is the supposed likely proliferation of really small parties.
If 4/5 parties can get enough party votes to earn a single seat when there is a threshold, how many single MP parties would there be when people knew that their votes wouldn't be wasted by voting for them? etc.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to bmk,
Which would have actually made a huge difference in voting blocks. The only realistic easy governing solution would be a National-Green coalition because I couldn’t see the National party getting the Family Party and ALCP happy with each other.
How about the one we have now?
National + Māori Party + Act (+ United Future) = 63 (or 64) seats. -
Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to bmk,
Does anyone know how this election would have looked with a zero percent threshold using our St Lague method of allotment?
Here's one I prepared earlier.
New Zealand National Party – 55 seats
New Zealand Labour Party – 41 seats
The Greens – 8 seats
New Zealand First Party – 5 seats
Māori Party – 5 seats
Act New Zealand – 4 seats
Jim Anderton’s Progressive – 1 seat
United Future New Zealand – 1 seat
The Kiwi Party – 1 seat
The Bill and Ben Party – 1 seatWhich might have led to the following blocks:
National, ACT, United Future, Kiwi Party - 61 seats
Labour, Progressives, Greens, New Zealand First, Māori Party - 60
Bill - 1 -
Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to linger,
Is the fact that it is possible to get some seats with less than 0.83% also the (ultimate) source of overhangs, or am I mixing up two entirely independent features of the system?
No. Indeed, it means overhang is less likely.
Overhang is, as noted, what occurs when a registered party that is contesting the party vote wins more electorates than its party vote would give it overall seats. If a party wins 1 electorate, but has to get 0.83% of the party vote to “earn” it’s first seat, then it is more likely to cause overhang than if all it needs is ~0.41% of the party vote.
Overhang is caused by two things:
1. Split voting – voters voting for a party with their electorate vote and a different party with their party vote. If enough people do this, in the same electorates, a party can win ‘too many’ electorates, and cause overhang.
2. Low voter turnout: caused by either people not voting, or people not be able to vote (e.g. because of youth). We draw our electoral boundaries with respect to population as a whole, not voting age population, which causes some electorates (the Māori electorates in particular, due to the relative youth of the Māori population) to have substantial lower numbers of eligible voters.
Māori Party candidates received 76,836 electorate votes between them. Had these been evenly spread over the Māori electorates, and had all these voters also party voted Māori Party, and no other person in the country had party voted Māori Party (i.e. no split voting at all, same turnout as now), then the overhang would be three.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to bmk,
How does that work exactly? 120 seats suggest to me that every 5% should get 6 seats. Mathematically I get that if all seats were to be allocated evenly every 0.83% earns one seat. But obviously it doesn't work that way? How come?
Simplifying a bit: rounding. You get the first seat at ~0.41% and each seat thereafter is an additional ~0.83%.
It's one of the foibles of the Sainte-Laguë method, but it does result in a more proportional parliament.
All vote allocation counting systems will have weird effects under certain circumstances. Your one from the Alabama Paradox, for example.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to bmk,
I feel if enough people vote for a party to get them a list MP (I am guessing about 0.8% - would this be right Graeme?) then those people deserve a list MP.
Around 0.4% will get you one MP under our current system. ~1.2% will get you 2 MPs. ~2.0-2.1% will get your 3 MPs. ~2.8-3.0% will get you 4 MPs.
However, I suspect that if we were to adopt a zero threshold, we'd make it slightly harder to get the first seat.