[Chancery] Results of the September 2019 referendum (prelim)

[Lüc da Schir]

Those are all interesting examples. One objection I would immediately raise is that it would be difficult to democratically justify outcomes such as this one:

Picture a hybrid Real SenaCosa with 20 seats; 8 "Senate" seats and 12 proportional seats. This is effectively parallel voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_voting); the Senate component is elected under the usual rules. Our friends at NGP, the New Generic Party, could win a resounding 2/3rds majority in the popular vote; this would net them 134/200 seats today, but would only net them 8 of the 12 proportional seats. You can easily imagine how they could possibly not get a majority after all: of the 8 Senate seats, only 3 are up for grabs at each cycle, meaning that (assuming that they had no Senators) if they fail to win just one of the seats, they don't even get an overall majority.

So my answer would be let's not mix and match term lengths in the same chamber (and please, make the Government only accountable for confidence and supply to a fully popular vote based chamber!); MMP works because constituency MPs are no different from list MPs.

[Eðo Grischun]

Sept 25, 2019 8:55:11 GMT -6 Lüc da Schir said:

Those are all interesting examples. One objection I would immediately raise is that it would be difficult to democratically justify outcomes such as this one:

Picture a hybrid Real SenaCosa with 20 seats; 8 "Senate" seats and 12 proportional seats. This is effectively parallel voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_voting); the Senate component is elected under the usual rules. Our friends at NGP, the New Generic Party, could win a resounding 2/3rds majority in the popular vote; this would net them 134/200 seats today, but would only net them 8 of the 12 proportional seats. You can easily imagine how they could possibly not get a majority after all: of the 8 Senate seats, only 3 are up for grabs at each cycle, meaning that (assuming that they had no Senators) if they fail to win just one of the seats, they don't even get an overall majority.

So my answer would be let's not mix and match term lengths in the same chamber (and please, make the Government only accountable for confidence and supply to a fully popular vote based chamber!); MMP works because constituency MPs are no different from list MPs.

Scotland uses the additional member system, which I have never heard referred to as parallel voting as until now. In those elections we have a 2 sheet ballot, the first elects individual candidates in FPTP constituencies (you vote for a person to represent you), the second elects proportionally from party lists (here you vote for a party).

This has always been what I would love for Talossa to adopt. I argued for it in the past during the debates on bringing in party lists.

The main benefits are:

* The parliament is more representative. Each voter/district/region has multiple representatives elected proportionally to the actual desire of the electorate.

* It is less likely for majorities to be elected. Coalition governments are a feature. It forces parliament to work together instead of against each other more often.

* New parties and small parties are more likely to be represented. (Particularly relevant to Talossa).

MMP works because constituency MPs are no different from list MPs.

THIS! THIS! THIS!

A system similar to Scotland's AMS system would not work if we continued to view two different classes of MZ (ie: Senators and MCs). It only works when they are on equal footing, with equal power, within the same chamber.

SUCH A SYSTEM DOES NOT BENEFIT THE POLITICIANS, PER SE. THE GENERAL ELECTORATE ARE WHO BENEFITS.

[Lüc da Schir]

Tbh, I don't believe Scotland has parallel voting. AM is basically MMP with a different name: the constituency MPs are seated, then the other seats are "topped up" with list MPs in order to achieve proportionality. Conversely, parallel voting is what Italy has: you still elect constituency MPs as you would in MMP/AM, but the share of the vote that parties get in the proportional part only affects the share of list MPs that get elected, not the composition of the whole House. This typically helps stronger parties get a majority.

For example, Holyrood after the latest elections was SNP 63, Tory 31, Labour 24, Green 6, Lib Dems 5. Of those, the 73 constituencies were 59 SNP, 7 Tory, 3 Labour and 4 Lib Dems. Now the SNP only got 4 proportional seats under AM/MMP so that 59+4=63 was roughly the same share of seats as the proportional vote they received (41.7%)

Under parallel voting, however, that 41.7% applies to the 56 proportional seats, not all 129. Therefore, in addition to the 59 SNP, 7 Tory, 3 Labour and 4 Lib Dems from the constituencies, a quick'n'dirty calculations shows that the list MPs are as follows: SNP 24, Tory 13, Labour 11, Greens 4, Lib Dem 3 and UKIP 1, for a total of SNP 83 (+20), Tory 20 (-11), Labour 14 (-10), Lib Dem 7 (+2), Greens 4 (-2), UKIP 1 (+1).

You see how under parallel voting the SNP has 64% of the seats, 37 more than the opposition parties, with just 41.7% of the proportional vote. That's not as bad as if there were only FPTP constituencies (you can immediately see that in 2016 the SNP won 81% of the constituencies), but still definitely not what the electorate voted for.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Sept 25, 2019 3:45:35 GMT -6 Lüc da Schir said:

Sept 24, 2019 19:10:14 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

b) Senäts and Cosâ voting separately

I'm down to discuss b) in the next term, when hopefully we'll have the new OrgLaw in place. In the meantime, it's worth considering that separate voting would present numerous challenges. For instance, separate voting is useless without amendments being allowed, which would need the whole system of the Hopper and the Clark to be rethought.

Excellent, I agree with all of that.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Can I also say that I've slightly gone off the "Real Cosa" idea, unless someone persuades me that it would be all right for a party to win 4 or 5 votes in a general election and not get any seats.

You could still have MMP by allocating 10 seats to each province for individual members (but would it be winner-takes-all or proportional?)

[Eðo Grischun]

Sept 25, 2019 16:19:07 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

Can I also say that I've slightly gone off the "Real Cosa" idea, unless someone persuades me that it would be all right for a party to win 4 or 5 votes in a general election and not get any seats.

You could still have MMP by allocating 10 seats to each province for individual members (but would it be winner-takes-all or proportional?)

Unless I've misunderstood, ideally it would be both; some FPTP and some PR.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Sept 25, 2019 17:51:14 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

Unless I've misunderstood, ideally it would be both; some FPTP and some PR.

No, specifically for the 10 seats per province.

If Iác beats Txec by 12 votes to 8 in Vuode, does Iác get all 10 Vuode seats; or does Iác get 6 and Txec 4?

[Eðo Grischun]

Sept 25, 2019 18:11:59 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

Sept 25, 2019 17:51:14 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

Unless I've misunderstood, ideally it would be both; some FPTP and some PR.

No, specifically for the 10 seats per province.

If Iác beats Txec by 12 votes to 8 in Vuode, does Iác get all 10 Vuode seats; or does Iác get 6 and Txec 4?

I think we're muddling up conversations here.

In a wholly FPTP system with a single constituency, Iac get's all 10.

In a system where PR is used, it's 6 to Iac and 4 to Txec.

In a system where AMS is used, Iac gets 1 constituency seat (FPTP) then a separate ballot is counted for additional top up seats by party (PR).

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Sept 25, 2019 18:29:22 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

I think we're muddling up conversations here.

What I'm talking about is an MMP system which sticks with the current 200 seat Cosa.

10 seats elected by each of the 8 provinces, another 120 topped up from party lists.

Now. We can elect the Provincial seats either proportionally, or FPTP. Got it?

[Eðo Grischun]

Sept 25, 2019 18:34:59 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

Sept 25, 2019 18:29:22 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

I think we're muddling up conversations here.

What I'm talking about is an MMP system which sticks with the current 200 seat Cosa.

10 seats elected by each of the 8 provinces, another 120 topped up from party lists.

Now. We can elect the Provincial seats either proportionally, or FPTP. Got it?

I think so.

I would say elect the 10 provincial seats FPTP. One winning candidate takes all 10. (10 per province, right?)

The 120 list seats by PR.

But, I'd much prefer if we can somehow work it so that we don't have 1 person to multiple seats. Why cant the provincial seats just be 8 individual seats and the 120 list be 12 or whatever?

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Sept 25, 2019 18:45:26 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

Why cant the provincial seats just be 8 individual seats and the 120 list be 12 or whatever?

The only answer to that is that a party would need 4 or 5 votes to win even 1 seat. I don't think there's a stomach out there for putting a "threshold" on Cosa representation. I might be wrong.

[Eðo Grischun]

Sept 25, 2019 19:03:17 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

Sept 25, 2019 18:45:26 GMT -6 Eðo Grischun said:

Why cant the provincial seats just be 8 individual seats and the 120 list be 12 or whatever?

The only answer to that is that a party would need 4 or 5 votes to win even 1 seat. I don't think there's a stomach out there for putting a "threshold" on Cosa representation. I might be wrong.

Ah. Yeah. OK.

Nah, your not wrong. I doubt there's enough appetite (yet) for that.

I don't see how we could change it then. Like Luc brought up, unless the provincial seats have equal power to the list seats there just isn't any point to doing this. It would end up working nearly the same as we already have, just that the labels would be different. Instead of calling a Senator a Senator, we would call them a provincial rep. Why bother shifting to multiple member unicam if the voting power doesnt equalize?

[Lüc da Schir]

Sept 25, 2019 16:19:07 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

Can I also say that I've slightly gone off the "Real Cosa" idea, unless someone persuades me that it would be all right for a party to win 4 or 5 votes in a general election and not get any seats.

Maybe say that "shut off" parties have precedence in occupying the vacancies in list (not constituency) seats that inevitably arise?

The process for filling vacant seats could play out like this: 1) proportional seat is vacated; 2) a call is issued where anyone can propose alternate MCs for that seat; 3) the seat is adjudicated by the SoS with the following order of preference:

a) Replacements proposed by "shut off" parties, in order of votes won at the latest GE;

b) If none were proposed or if no parties were "shut off", the replacement proposed by the party of the vacated MC;

c) If the party proposed no eligible replacement, the replacements proposed by other parties, in order of greater remainder;

d) If literally no party proposed an eligible replacement, a Talossa-wide midterm election is finally called to fill the seat using IRV.

[King John]

Back in the day (the day of King Robert I, to be specific), there was a weird hybrid Provincial-based method of electing the Cosa, so that the seats were proportionally distributed to the Provinces based on population, and proportionally distributed to Parties within each Province based on share of the Provincial vote. Which had all kinds of bad possible results (made worse by the lower population in those days), and sometimes ended up with a Party being hugely underrepresented in the Cosa, and other times overrepresented. And there were times when two voters in different Provinces would have completely different effects on the outcome -- Joe could vote for a Party, and it would make no difference, but Jack could vote for the same Party and swing several seats. We got rid of all that arcane stuff. Everyone altogether votes for the Cosa now, and the Parties always have, within one seat's worth of error, the "right" number of seats.

— John R