Posts by Tim McKenzie
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For things like the DHB where you are voting for several people all at once I'd really like some way to vote in tiers so I could nominate a bunch of people I actively wanted, followed by a bunch of people I didn't hate and then a group who should never even get near public office.
This sort of thing would require changes to the way STV works. A Condorcet method, on the other hand, could (in principle) cope (in its natural state) with any consistent set of preferences among the candidates, so you could say "all these people are better than all those people, but I have no preferences within either group". In practice, I suspect any implementation of a Condorcet method would still require voters to give a ranking, leaving us with the problem:
Trying to figure out if candidate A is more or less sort-of-ok than candidate B does my head in.
which I had last night. My DHB has 15 candidates this year, meaning there are about 1.3 billion possible ways in which I could rank them. Choosing to rank them all by comparing pairs of them (and drawing inferences from previous comparisons), there's no strategy that could guarantee sorting them all in less than 41 pairwise comparisons.
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By ranking a candidate lowly, you're not helping them beat people you like more than them
In the context of questions about the (non-)danger of filling in all your rankings, this is a reasonable thing to say; giving someone a low ranking (as opposed to no ranking) never helps them beat people with higher rankings. But giving someone a low ranking (as opposed to a high ranking) can, perversely, help them beat people with higher rankings.
Consider three candidates: A, B, and C, in a mayoral election.
39 people vote A first, B second, and C third;
35 people vote B first, C second, and A third;
26 people vote C first, A second, and B third.
C has the least votes, and all their second preferences say A, so A wins with 65 votes to B's 35.But now suppose 10 of B's supporters had sufficiently accurate polls to know that this was going to happen. They then change their votes to put A at the top, and the votes look like this:
49 people vote A first, B second, and C third;
25 people vote B first, C second, and A third;
26 people vote C first, A second, and B third.
Now B has the least votes, and all their second preferences go to C, so C wins with 51 votes to A's 49.The 10 highly-informed B-supporters got their second preference by raising their third preference to the top of their vote. They didn't get a better outcome for themselves by not ranking their least-preferred candidate (which is the alternative Graeme was contrasting with a fully specified vote); they got a better outcome for themselves by ranking their least-preferred candidate at the top of their ballot.
The above example was adapted from a Wikipedia article, which gives a more plausible manifestation of this perversity of STV (single-winner STV, really, which is also known as PV, and which the Wikipedia article calls "instant runoff", which is sometimes abbreviated to IRV). Specifically, the Wikipedia example doesn't require strategic voters informed by highly accurate polls; instead, the supporters of B genuinely change their minds and support A instead, causing A to lose the election they would have won without that support.
Every electoral system allows some perversities to happen (there's a proven mathematical theorem that says so). But this particular perversity of STV(/PV/IRV) is avoidable (by, for example, a Condorcet method). Essentially, the problem here is that STV can be very sensitive to the order in which candidates are dropped (edit: and it ignores preferences among lower-ranked candidates until higher-ranked ones are elected or eliminated).
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Tim, your argument about splitting a party into two parties contesting electorate and list votes happened in Italy in 2001.
Interesting. Thanks for pointing it out.
I was suggesting standing nominal independents, rather than putting electorate candidates in another party. For the Māori Party, this mightn't make much difference, but if the National Party (and only the National Party) had done it at the last election, I think standing nominal independents would have got them about 66% of Parliament, compared to "only" about 61% (of a larger Parliament) if they'd used two parties.
If all parties did it, I think you'd end up with de facto Supplementary Member, which (in comparison to MMP) favours parties (like the Māori Party) more capable of winning electorates.
This is all assuming that my understanding of how MMP handles independents is correct.
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The 60,000 people represented in your average Maori electorate have far less influence over an election result than the 60,000 people represented in your average general electorate - even taking into account overhang.
OK, I see your point. (Assuming your 1.051 MPs per Māori electorate is roughly accurate.)
Why is this? First, because far fewer of them vote, but most importantly because far fewer of them can vote.
These two factors can be addressed separately, and I'd be interested to know how much each contributes.
There are several ways you could address the first issue:
1. It's not a problem; it's perfectly valid to choose not to cast a party vote, letting the rest of the country decide the proportionality of Parliament.
2. It is a problem, but it should be addressed culturally, by encouraging people to vote (or discouraging people in other electorates), rather than by changing the system.
3. Make it compulsory to vote.
4. Weight party votes so that all eligible voters in an electorate are assumed to have cast their party votes in proportion to how party votes were actually cast by those who actually used their party votes in that electorate; this effectively assumes that people who choose not to use their party vote should be represented by people in their electorate who did use it, rather than by people across the country who used it.There are several ways you could address the second issue:
1. It's not a problem; Parliament's proportionality should be determined by numbers of voters who prefer each party, not by the sizes of their families.
2. It is a problem, but trying to fix it would break something else.
3. Give children the vote (and their parents the right to cast it for them, up to a certain age).
4. Weight party votes according to the ratio of (total population):(eligible voters) in an electorate; this effectively assumes that children are best represented by voters in their electorate, rather than by voters across the country.If I've understood Mikaere's analysis correctly, he effectively took option 4 from the second list (perhaps with the simplifying assumption that the relevant ratio was one constant across all Māori electorates and another constant across all general electorates). But there was still an overhang, distorting the proportionality in Parliament.
So, if you agree with option 1 from both lists, you should be upset that there's an overhang distorting the proportionality of Parliament. If you agree with option 1 from the first list and option 4 from the second list, Mikaere's analysis shows that there would still be an overhang, still distorting the proportionality of Parliament. But if you agree with option 4 from both lists (and assuming the 1.051 MPs per Māori electorate figure is roughly correct), then you should be upset that the Māori electorates are still under-represented in Parliament, in spite of the overhang.
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The voters in an average Maori electorate have enough party votes between them to elect 1.051 MPs. The voters in the average general electorate (because there are many more of them per electorate) have enough party votes between them to elect 1.849 MPs.
Thinking about this again, I've come to the conclusion that my objection is this:
When I first read it, I got the impression (whether you intended it or not) that you were saying that Māori electorates were disadvantaged, because they only elected 1.051 MPs each, compared to 1.849 MPs per general electorate. Therefore (so I thought) you were suggesting that voters in the "disadvantaged" electorates were also disadvantaged. As discussed above, this is not the case; voters in "disadvantaged" electorates have more influence than the average voter on the distribution of electorate seats, and if this extra influence results in an overhang (as you argue is very likely), then they have more influence on the overall distribution of seats in Parliament
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If Maori were (as Craig calls it) Te Borg, the tactical vote implications would be quite impressive.
Actually, the Māori Party could do some quite spectacular tactical manipulations without requiring any tactical voting. Consider this strategy:
Tariana Turia stands in Te Tai Hauāuru as normal. All other Māori Party electorate candidates who have a reasonable chance of winning (probably just the ones in Māori electorates) resign from the Māori Party and stand as "independents". The Māori Party and the "independent" candidates make it plain that they still support each other as much as ever.
Then, based on the last election, something like this happens:
Tariana Turia and four supportive "independents" win their electorates. Because there are four independents, the proportionality of Parliament is worked out for the remaining 116 seats. The Māori Party gets its fair proportion of those 116 seats (coming in on Tariana Turia's coat-tails). But in addition to that fair proportion, they also get the four "independent" candidates, giving them a much higher proportion of Parliament than their party votes entitled them to.
Any party could benefit by using this strategy, but it works best for parties like the Māori Party that win disproportionately many electorate seats compared to their party vote. If all parties did it, you'd effectively end up with Supplementary Member.
So why doesn't anyone try this? I suppose the risk for parties that get disproportionately few electorates compared to their party vote is that they'll give other parties ideas, and end up suffering from de facto Supplementary Member. But if someone like the Māori Party starts it, they should seriously consider joining in, to mitigate their suffering.
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The voters in an average Maori electorate have enough party votes between them to elect 1.051 MPs. The voters in the average general electorate (because there are many more of them per electorate) have enough party votes between them to elect 1.849 MPs.
I'm still not sure how useful these numbers are. It sounds like a round-about way of saying that voters in Māori electorates have a disproportionate influence on the distribution of electorate MPs; as you point out, individual voters in Māori electorates have as much influence as any other voters on the overall proportionality of Parliament --- unless their disproportionate influence on numbers of electorate MPs causes an overhang.
No, it disadvantages the Maori Party. We have a 120 seat Parliament. The Maori Party won 5 of those seats. That's 4.17% of Parliament. But we have an overhang. Which means the Maori Party get 4.10% of Parliament, despite winning 5 seats.
To answer my own question about this, the Māori Party got 2.39% of the party vote. In a system that's meant to be proportional, how are they disadvantaged by having 4.10% of Parliament?
At the moment, I'm not saying anything about whether proportionality is good or bad, I'm just trying to assess our version of MMP by its own standards --- as an allegedly proportional system.
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Maori electorates and general electorates represent the same number of people overall, but in 2008, the average general electorate was responsible for electing 1.849 MPs (1 electorate MP (duh!), and 0.849 list MPs). Because of lower enrolments and lower turnout, the average Maori electorate was responsible for electing 1.051 MPs (1 electorate MP, and 0.051 list MPs).
Oh, and according to these numbers, the general electorates elected 1.849 * 63 = 116.487 MPs, and the Māori electorates elected 1.051 * 7 = 7.357 MPs, for a total of 123.844 MPs in Parliament. I don't think this is right.
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No, it disadvantages the Maori Party. We have a 120 seat Parliament. The Maori Party won 5 of those seats. That's 4.17% of Parliament. But we have an overhang. Which means the Maori Party get 4.10% of Parliament, despite winning 5 seats.
And what proportion of the party vote did the Māori Party get?
However boundaries are drawn with respect not to the voting age population, but to the electoral population, which includes non-voters, especially children.
How do they decide if a child is a non-voter on the Māori roll or a non-voter on the general roll?
Maori electorates and general electorates represent the same number of people overall, but in 2008, the average general electorate was responsible for electing 1.849 MPs (1 electorate MP (duh!), and 0.849 list MPs). Because of lower enrolments and lower turnout, the average Maori electorate was responsible for electing 1.051 MPs (1 electorate MP, and 0.051 list MPs).
I'm not sure how meaningful these numbers are. List MPs aren't elected by electorates. They're determined by the party votes cast by all eligible voters who choose to use their party votes. And the 50 list seats aren't even given in proportion to party votes; they're allocated so that the whole 120-seat Parliament is in proportion to the party votes. But an overhang distorts this proportionality in favour of the party whose disproportionate success in geographical electorates caused the overhang.
In this thread, I'm not trying to advocate for or against the present system; I'm just trying to clarify exactly how it works --- for myself as much as for anyone else.
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The "normal" situation would be that there are 70 electorate MPs, and 50 list MPs. There are two overhang MPs, making 52 lists overall. The two extra list MPs - the overhang MPs - are from the National Party and the Green Party.
I don't think this is the right way to look at it. The "normal" situation involves the 70+50 being distributed in proportion to the party votes. Subtract two Māori Party MPs from the current Parliament (as it was immediately after the election, anyway), and you get that proportionality. In that hypothetical Parliament, Māori people are represented by the various parties in proportion to the party votes Māori people cast. In our actual Parliament, we have those numbers, plus two extra Māori Party MPs.