Could FPTP and PR be made compatible?

I was thinking about the FPTP vs. PR debate, and I can see some legitimate arguments on both sides. Some people prefer to vote for a candidate based on that candidate's character, and not for a party. Clearly a pure PR system would take that freedom away from them. However, many people want to vote for a party, yet the FPTP system takes that freedom away from them. Needless to say that the first group would vote against PR unless it can somehow accommodate the freedom to vote for independent candidates.

As I was thinking of how it might be possible to mesh the two systems together, I came up with an idea. It appears somewhat inefficient at present, but I hope others here might be able to polish it up a bit or come up with some new idea that could achieve the same objectives but more efficiently.

What if we had a ballot whereby on one side we had a list of all of the registered political parties in the election, and on the other side the names of each independent candidate. The voter would be free to choose whether to vote for a party or a candidate. If he votes for a candidate, then that vote goes to the candidate and his party cannot take it away from him. If, however, the voter votes for a party, then the party owns that vote and is free to then give it to any candidate it wants across the country.

I beleive that one advantage with such a system is that it would also let the candidate know how loyal he needs to be to his party. If he gets alot of individual votes, then clearly his local electorate likes him independently of any party affiliation. If, however, most of his votes come from his party, then he knows that the local electorate might not like him very much personally, but simply likes the party.

What would you think of such a system or similar? I think that such a blend might be able to win some supporters of FPTP to the PR side.

Comments

Submitted by Fidel on February 5, 2009 - 10:00pm.

It's not what I would recommend, but Mohammed Elmasry did propose a PR-FPP hybrid electoral system a few years ago.

Submitted by Machjo on February 5, 2009 - 10:04pm.

Interesting. Have you got a link?

Submitted by Stockholm on February 5, 2009 - 10:41pm.

The question is "could PR and FPTP be made compatible?". The answer is YES. Its called MMP.

Submitted by Unionist on February 5, 2009 - 10:42pm.

Please do not feed this troll.

Submitted by Machjo on February 5, 2009 - 11:03pm.

Unionist wrote:

Please do not feed this troll.

How is he a troll?

Submitted by Machjo on February 5, 2009 - 11:14pm.

Stockholm wrote:

The question is "could PR and FPTP be made compatible?". The answer is YES. Its called MMP.

One problem with MMP is that those who oppose party politics or too much official recognition of a political party would refuse to vote for a party, thus giving them half the votes of those who can vote for both. STV would be a preferable system from the standpoint of a FPTP supporter since it doesn't have to recognize any party.

Looking at it that way we could draw the following spectiom:

FPTP -> STV -> what I'd proposed above -> MMP -> pure RP.

The main advantage that I could see with what I'd proposed above is that it's fair to both sides. unlike the MMP and pure RP systems, it doesn't force anyone to vote for any party without losing votes, but unlike the FRTP and STV systems, it does allow one to vote for a party if he wants to.

The weakness with what I've proposed above, at least in the crude form it stand in now, is that it would also be the most inefficient of the systems above, in that it would likely take a few days for the parties to decide how to strategically place their votes to get the maximum number of candidates.

Submitted by Machjo on February 5, 2009 - 11:16pm.

Thank you stockholm for the info on the MMP system. I'd herd of it before but had forgotten its name. I think that's the system in Germany. And please, never mind Unionist. He'd called me a troll in another thread too, so it's nothing personal.

Submitted by Stockholm on February 5, 2009 - 11:57pm.

"One problem with MMP is that those who oppose party politics or too much official recognition of a political party would refuse to vote for a party, thus giving them half the votes of those who can vote for both."

In the last federal election only 1% of voters voted for independent candidates so this is not a very relevant point.

Submitted by Wilf Day on February 6, 2009 - 12:14am.

There is no need to invent new voting systems. STV has been in use in Ireland since 1922, and even earlier in Tasmania. Various MMP models have been in use in Germany since 1946, including the open-list variant in Bavaria, the list-free ("near-winner") variant in Baden-Wurttemberg, and a variety of mixed models municipally (Hamburg and Berlin have been particularly inventive.) In the past 20 years several other countries have adopted one or other MMP model.

No MMP model allows a party to decide what candidate to give its votes to after the fact.

Scotland's regional MMP model, even though it's a closed list model, allows independents to stand for regional seats as well as for local seats. A couple have been successful regionally, and a couple locally.

In almost all MMP models you vote for the local candidate you prefer, regardless of party, since your local vote will not hurt your party even if it is for another party's local candidate. This "ticket-splitting" was invented in Germany in the 1950s to make local MPs more accountable.

And STV means you can rank candidates of your party first, thereby voting by party, or you could rank all the women ahead of all the men, or all the candidates from a certain locality first, or however you prefer, penalizing no one.

Submitted by Machjo on February 6, 2009 - 12:46pm.

STV isn't so bad I suppose.

Submitted by mimeguy on February 6, 2009 - 1:14pm.

The senate needs reform. You could combine STV for the lower house MP and fill the senate based on the party vote. This would allow voters to still vote for the party they prefer and send the strongest representative to the lower house. This might also see more independents elected in certain regions.

Submitted by mimeguy on February 6, 2009 - 1:16pm.

sorry for the multiple post I don't know how I did it. Seem to be all thumbs today.

Submitted by mimeguy on February 6, 2009 - 1:16pm.

sorry for the multiple post I don't know how I did it. Seem to be all thumbs today.

Submitted by Interested Observer on February 6, 2009 - 3:00pm.

My personal favorite is the Preferential ballot/MMP system. You state your order of preference for your local candidate, and select a party you most prefer.

Brian Topp: Our friends on the blue team seem to mostly focus on sticks, and not so much on carrots. ;)

Submitted by Policywonk on February 6, 2009 - 3:41pm.

mimeguy wrote:

Or abolition.

Submitted by Assembly Talker on February 6, 2009 - 4:10pm.

Machjo,

Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform in BC considered questions similar to yours and concluded that a form of STV would be the best solution. 58% of BC voters agreed and supported the idea in 2005.

Electoral Reform is an eventuality!!!

Former Member of the Citizens Assembly of BC on Electoral Reform

Submitted by Machjo on February 6, 2009 - 5:38pm.

Assembly Talker wrote:

Machjo,

Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform in BC considered questions similar to yours and concluded that a form of STV would be the best solution. 58% of BC voters agreed and supported the idea in 2005.

Electoral Reform is an eventuality!!!

Former Member of the Citizens Assembly of BC on Electoral Reform

But would the pro-PR crowd go for it? Though it's preferable to FPTP, STV is still based on voting for the candidate, not the party at all. So it still leans a little more towards FPTP than it does towards PR. the list system of course is just pure PR, and the MMP system leans more towards PR than FPTP. So my concern would be that while thos who prefer to vote for candidates than parties would oppose the list system and might feel quite uncomfortable with MMP, those who support more power for parties are likely to feel that STV might not go ar enough, or am I wrong? 58% of BC voters is an impressive number though, I'll give you that. Do you think this could work at the federal level too?

Either way, I suppose that any supporter of a party system would still prefer STV to FPTP at least. Looking at it that way, even those who might feel it doesn't go far enough are likely to support it as a step forward at least. That's another way of looking at it I suppose.

Another thing I've noticed is that some voters sometimes do not even know the name of teh candidate they're voting for, just voting blindly for the party. Getting rid of listing the name of a party underneath a candidate's name might make voters more responsible by forcing them to at least know the name of the candidate they're voting for.

After all, it does happen that an MP disagrees with his party on some fundamenal issue and ends up leaving the party. For people who vote blindly for the party under a TPTP or STV system might find his vote to be a wasted one. But if he's more familiar with the actual candidate he's voting for, it might help to put independent candidates on a more equal footing and to prevent them from voting for a candidate who's only luke warm to his ideas. To take an example, let's suppose that ideologically the voter sits between the Liberals and the NDP, then clearly it would be better for him to vote for a representative of the NDP's right or the Liberals' left. To do that though, he needs to know the candidate better, so by getting rid of party names from teh ballot might help to accomplish this.

Submitted by Interested Observer on February 6, 2009 - 9:30pm.

Machjo,

It depends on how the regions are setup, but yes, in general the pr crowd did go for it. Although many people would prefer MMP over stv, it is still much better than FPTP. Also, change is WAY better than the status Quo. The move would have had(still could have) an impact on the voting systems in the rest of the country(Although Ontario seems set on keeping the current power structure).

Brian Topp: Our friends on the blue team seem to mostly focus on sticks, and not so much on carrots. ;)

Submitted by Assembly Talker on February 7, 2009 - 1:22pm.

Machjo,

Lot of tradeoffs have to be considered. I think to be fair to everyone you have to include as much information as possible. That information needs to be categorized to meet the needs of all voters. I don't agree with the concept of leaving info off the ballot to appeal to one group or the other. We want an informed vote that clearly represents the views of all voters. We then want the electoral system to sort those vote to reflect the views presented on the ballot.

With BC-STV the ballot will solve many of the conflicts. Candidates listed by Party will give all voters clear recognition of their most popular ways that they tend to vote. If voting choice is made via a party ticket, all Candidates are listed by party, so that they can be easily identified. Those who want to view the candidates also have them sorted for comprehensive selection. When you see what can be done with a well laid out ballot, you realize how clearly the information can be capsulated for the voters benefit. In BC we also asked that rotation and other steps be added to keep the ballot fair to everyone.

What appealed to the CA in BC was the fact that BC-STV offered all choices to all voters, while making every vote count. The second and very important point that voters wanted, was that all successful MLAs were directly elected by the voter. MMP lists proved to be one of the key issues to the rejection of MMP in Ontario. It is very difficult to create a list system that doesn't take the value away from the original intent of the vote in the SMP part of MMP. Your vote gets sorted via the party process often with little influence by the voter who cast the ballot. STV considers your vote a face value, your preferences on the ballot then move your choices through the voting system. The voter has influence on the sorting process. Thus you get a result that is very representative of the views of the voting public when all ballots follow through the STV electoral system.

Submitted by Stockholm on February 7, 2009 - 1:34pm.

"Another thing I've noticed is that some voters sometimes do not even know the name of teh candidate they're voting for, just voting blindly for the party."

If people don't care about local candidates and just want to vote for a party - that is their right. The fact is that in Canadian politics with our iron-clad party discipline, in about 99% of cases the local candidate IS irrelevant and you are really just voting for a trained seal who will vote with his or her party 100% of the time anyways.

I happen to think very highly of my NDP MP. But if I lived in an NDP dead zone like rural soutehrn Alberta, I would not bat an eyelid before voting for whoever the local NDP candidate was - and I couldn't care less about their personal qualities because in my mind I'm not voting for that person. I'm voting for Jack Layton, the NDP platform and the values that the NDP represents.

Submitted by Assembly Talker on February 7, 2009 - 6:11pm.

Just maybe if we made the local candidate more relevant, then just maybe you would have more local representation, the ability to influence the party platform and the end result, policies and performance that reflects more your views.

Right now you are settling for "the trained seal", with change, maybe we can throw the fish the other way.

Electoral Reform is an eventuality!!!

Former Member of the Citizens Assembly of BC on Electoral Reform

Submitted by Wilf Day on February 7, 2009 - 6:48pm.

Machjo wrote:

But would the pro-PR crowd go for it (STV)? Though it's preferable to FPTP, STV is still based on voting for the candidate, not the party at all.

Not true. In STV jurisdictions most voters vote by party. Ireland has a higher rate of cross-party voting than most other STV jurisdictions, but that's Ireland for you. If you look at places like the 51 members of Belfast City Council (all elected by party label by STV, with only one independent elected), or the Tasmanian legislature (25 members elected by STV, three parties, not one independent) you will find strong party loyalty among voters there.

Machjo wrote:

let's suppose that ideologically the voter sits between the Liberals and the NDP, then clearly it would be better for him to vote for a representative of the NDP's right or the Liberals' left. To do that though, he needs to know the candidate better, so by getting rid of party names from the ballot might help to accomplish this.

Not necessary. With STV, in a five-seater district there will be three or four NDP candidates and three or four Liberal candidates, and that voter can form a conclusion on which Liberals are too far right and which NDP candidates are too far left, and rank the candidates accordingly. That's very common in Ireland.

Machjo wrote:

So it (STV) still leans a little more towards FPTP than it does towards PR. The list system of course is just pure PR, and the MMP system leans more towards PR than FPTP. So my concern would be that while those who prefer to vote for candidates than parties would oppose the list system and might feel quite uncomfortable with MMP, those who support more power for parties are likely to feel that STV might not go far enough, or am I wrong?

That's a big oversimplification. FPTP gives a great deal of power to parties, since the voter has no real choice of candidate: if you vote primarily by party as the great majority of voters do in countries with a parliamentary system, you have to vote for your party's local candidate. MMP gives more voter choice, since you can vote for the local candidate you like best regardless of party. Open-list MMP gives even more voter choice since you can choose the regional candidate of your party that you like best, as well as voting for the local candidate of any party you like best. STV gives more voter choice too, in a large STV district where your party is likely to win at least one seat. In small STV districts a voter for a smaller party may find his or her second choice getting elected, but if your party gets less than the 4% or 5% threshold electing your second choice is better than your vote not counting at all.

Machjo wrote:

Do you think this could work at the federal level too?

STV could work federally, in theory. The only difference is the size of the districts. BC has one MLA for 50,000 people, so an urban five-seat district will have 250,000 people, which suits the size of local cities in the Lower Mainland. But with federal seats having, in Ontario, about 118,000 people each, a five-seater would have 590,000 people. That might be acceptable to voters in Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga or Hamilton, not so much elsewhere.

Stockholm wrote:

If I lived in an NDP dead zone like rural soutehrn Alberta, I would not bat an eyelid before voting for whoever the local NDP candidate was - and I couldn't care less about their personal qualities because in my mind I'm not voting for that person. I'm voting for Jack Layton, the NDP platform and the values that the NDP represents.

Which nicely shows the problem. With an open-regional-list MMP system, if the south half of Alberta is a region, that rural southern Alberta NDP voter will likely help elect at least one NDP MP. although he or she may well be from Calgary. With STV, a four-seater rural southern Alberta district would likely elect three Conservatives and one Liberal, so your second choice for the Lethbridge Liberal would count. No matter how you slice it, there aren't enough rural southern Alberta NDP voters to elect one of their own.

Interested Observer wrote:

My personal favorite is the Preferential ballot/MMP system. You state your order of preference for your local candidate, and select a party you most prefer.

Hungary has a system which is similar to MMP, and they elect the local MP by preferential ballot. I don't know of any actual MMP jurisdiction which does this, but we might have had the first: when the BC Citizens' Assembly designed their excellent MMP system, that was a feature of it. They then voted between the two systems they had designed, and decided that BC-STV was the better fit with BC's geography and political culture.

Submitted by Machjo on February 7, 2009 - 10:10pm.

Stockholm wrote:

"Another thing I've noticed is that some voters sometimes do not even know the name of teh candidate they're voting for, just voting blindly for the party."

And this is where I see a flaw in both FPTP and STV. Since they're based on the candidate and not the party, the result is that if you vote for a candidate based on his party affiliation, and after he gets into Parliament he leaves the party, your vote is lost (it has happened on occiasion after all). That's where MMP or pure RP could be more beneficial to voters like yourself.That's why I was thinking in the original post in this thread of actually giving each voter the choice of voting either for a candidate or pure RP, with the list of all registered parties at that level of government (be it provincial or federal) appearing on one side of the ballot with no candidate's name appearing (besides, it would include all parties, not just those represented in that riding), and the names of all the local candidates on the other but without party affiliation mentioned.

This way, those who vote for parties can in fact vote for a party system whereby if a candidate elected based on party votes should leave his party, those votes can be withdrawn from him, forcing a loval bi-election.

Yet for those who vote for the candidate, any vote received by that candidate belongs to him and cannot be withdrawn even if he should leave his party. The fact that candidates and parties would be kept separate on the ballot would eliminate any possible confusion, with the voter knowing full well whether he's voting for the candidate or the party.

In the end, candidate votes woudl go to the candidate in a traditional FPTP fashion, but party votes would go to individual parties, which the party would be free to give to whatever candidate it wants, likely done strategically to maximize the number of seats for its party in Parliament. This way, a candidate would have a better sense of whether he ought to vote on his own conscience or on that of the party, depending on the sourse of the majority of votes that get him into power.

This would seem to me to be the most fair system to both sides, essentially a combination of both extremes, giving each voter the freedom to choose whether to vote for party or candidate.

Granted, the idea in the OP is still quite crude and would need alot of polishing up to figure out more exactly how the parties would give out the votes to their candidates.

On the other hand, if the PR crowd can accept STV, then essentially the problem is solved.

Submitted by Machjo on February 7, 2009 - 10:19pm.

In response to Stockholm's last post. I never realized that they sometimes groups seats into regions. Now that gets complicated.

All I'm getting over all, is that except for the list system, you can generally vote for a candidate. Anyway, I'll think more about this.

All I know is that I'm in somewhat of a minority in that I tend very much to vote for the candidate as opposed to the party, probably because no party actually reflects my views and when I look at their platforms, I tend to see my views scattered across all the parties, from the far left to the far right and everything in between. As a result, I've tended to lean more in favour of independent candidates who might be less ideological and more open to borrowing ideas from across the sepctrum in a more eclectic fashion rather than just towing an ideological line.

Submitted by Interested Observer on February 8, 2009 - 2:44am.

Wilf Day wrote:

Interested Observer wrote:

My personal favorite is the Preferential ballot/MMP system. You state your order of preference for your local candidate, and select a party you most prefer.

Good to know. Thanks for that Wilf Day. I wasn't sure whether a country had actually implemented something similar or not.

Brian Topp: Our friends on the blue team seem to mostly focus on sticks, and not so much on carrots. ;)

Submitted by Interested Observer on February 8, 2009 - 2:51am.

Machjo wrote:

In response to Stockholm's last post. I never realized that they sometimes groups seats into regions. Now that gets complicated.

The stv system proposed in BC was regionally based. The bigger the region, the more likely that the proportional inclinations of stv are stripped back to FPTP.

Were you thinking more along the lines of The Preferential ballot system in Australia, as they don't have regions?

(If I make a statement which is factually incorrect, please don't hesitate to correct me.)

Brian Topp: Our friends on the blue team seem to mostly focus on sticks, and not so much on carrots. ;)

Submitted by Wilf Day on February 8, 2009 - 1:05pm.

Interested Observer wrote:

The stv system proposed in BC is regionally based. The bigger the region, the more likely that the proportional inclinations of stv are stripped back to FPTP.

If you mean bigger geographically, maybe, if the number of MLAs in the district is smaller. That's true in the North.

It's clearer to say that, the fewer MLAs per region, the less proportional the result. Three-seaters are to be avoided whenever possible, because governments love them: in a place with two main parties the strongest party will usually win two of the three seats, creating a "largest party bonus" which, if there are too many seats like that, will give that party a "manufactured majority." Eamon De Valera perfected that trick in Ireland. After his retirement they rolled back the number of three-seaters, but they still have far too many for my taste. The current BC-STV map has only three, all unavoidable.

You mght think the Green Party could never win a seat in a four-seater, but you'd be wrong: in their strongest district, if they are lucky, if they get 14% or more on the first count, the second NDP or Liberal might drop before the Green candidate does, and give the Green enough transfers to get elected. Still, in general the Greens want six-seaters or seven-seaters.

The same principle applies to regional MMP with self-contained regions, as in Scotland. They have no legal threshold, but with 16 MPs to a region, and using "highest average" rather than "highest remainder" for their rounding rule, in practice a party needs between 5% and 6% in the region to get a seat.