Which Tyler wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 9:03 am
Is it worse than have a minority at the extreme end of 1 party holding that power? (see ERG in Cameron's government or DUP in May's; or that 1 senator in the US who's name I can't remember, but was the most right-wing Democrat in a 50:49 split).
IMO PR typically seems to bring a more collaborative parliamentary system, rather than combative; obviously far from completely so, especially in immature PR systems and coalitions.
I fail to see a way in which cooperation is worse than combat.
Besides, such warnings come across (to me) as a bit of "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the achievable"
There is no perfect system, but whilst we have political parties, FPTP is (about?) the least representative form of representative democracy.
Earlier this year (or was it last year?) there was a suggestion here that I thought was great, an adaptation of the Kiwi system.
If I've got this right:
You have
X seats for a region, of which half are constituency MPs that are elected with FPtP as per normal. The other half are then filled up from the best performing losers in such a way that total
X is fully proportional (and not just flown in by the party's preference).
A party only gets into the PR portion if they ran candidates in every constituency within the region (so SNP do for Scotland, PC do for Wales, Count Binface doesn't for wherever he stands).
Sensible to add transferable vote in there as well, which would boost the representational value of the PR portion.
To take a fictional region in England, and let's call it... Central.
Central has 60 seats in Westminster, split into 30 constituencies.
Those constituencies get their seats filled by FPTP, winner takes all.
Which may end up as (figures taken from yesterday's Electoral Calculus porediction) Con 3, Lab 24, Lib 3, Reform 0, Green 0
But with a vote split of Con 23.3%, Lab 44.7%, Lib 9.2%, Reform 11.8%, Green 5.8%, Other 5.2% (this "Other" really doesn't help the maths)
The losing candidates for each party in Central, are arranged in order of vote share locally
The 12 best performing, losing Conservatives candidates, get a PR seat for 25.0% regional representation
The 4 best performing, losing Labour candidates, get a PR seat for 46.7% regional representation
The 3 best performing, losing Lib Dem candidates, get a PR seat for 10.0% regional representation
The 7 best performing, losing Reform candidates, get a PR seat for 11.7% regional representation
The 4 best performing, losing Green candidates, get a PR seat for 6.7% regional representation
Each constituency gets the most popular local MP
Each region get represented proportionately, with the MP based on the vote share of each candidate.
Of course, if you're worried that a more accurate representation of voters being a bad thing, then you can always go for 30 FPtP, and 30 straight PR - so 3+7, 24+14, 3+3, 0+4, 0+2 - still a LOT better than the current system that would give 6, 48, 6, 0, 0 under FPtP
Personally, of courses, I'm in favour of devolved power (about the same as Scotland's) to the 9 English regions anyway (and bringing Wales and NI up to the same power-level), with elections as above, and then PR representation from each regional parliament to Westminster for national issues. But that's very much me.