Do You Support Dictatorship Lite?

[Gromit]

Excellent CPG Grey video
" Why the UK Election Result is the Worst in History "

Worth a few minutes of your time, and your comments would be appreciated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9rGX91rq5I

[Jackdaw33]

interesting. This novel by Nevil Shute, published in 1953, affords an insight into what might have been.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Wet

[Theland]

I take your point, but the problem still persists, where so many people only take an interest in politics for the last week or so of the campaign, and then are swayed by appearances and sound bites, and of course, headlines.

[Svejk]

^Know what you mean. I've met people in the pub who show no interest in politics but 'chunter on' about every government policy, all of which have disadvantaged working people for 20 years. Typically, all the factories around here that supplied generations with a decent if steady living, changed ownership (well, changed names), laid off the workforce, then re-employed them through agencies paying the minimum wage. Of course, no-one held a gun to their heads and forced them to return, some became those infamous lazy Brits who wouldn't go to work (for nothing), but no matter, they were easily replaced by the peasantry of Eastern Europe.
But the point is, come polling day, they'd proudly announce that they've voted for another 5 years of the same 'punishment'. Well, that's democracy for you, I suppose. ;)

[ToraToraTora]

they all look like variants on AV to me jim, ie PR.

I think theland has a strong point, we should look at the voters and knowledge more than the system. What if you could earn extra votes by passing an exam for example. It always angers me that some 18 year old air head can negate my vote because of they like one leaders hair style or some some point irrelevant to politics.

[Kromovaracun]

But as Gromit's original video shows, the more people who involve themselves with the UK electoral system, the greater the representation error becomes.

Tora, if you think AV is a proportional system... you are simply ignorant. There is not a more polite way of saying it. You are wrong. It is not a PR system. It is not a system which is designed to give parties representation proportional to their share of the vote. AV systems are usually designed to engineer majorities for a single candidate by distributing voter preferences.

If you think voter education and knowledge is the UK's biggest problem, I strongly suggest that you begin with yourself.

[jim360]

Thanks to Kromo for emphasising the point for me. I'm sorry TTT, I don't usually get angry or at least don't usually put it into words, but lumping AV and PR together just shows a basic misunderstanding of how voting systems work, and what they are designed to achieve.

Put as simply as possible:

- Proportional Representation systems are designed to ensure that the number of seats a party obtains is related to the number of votes it receives.

- AV, and related systems (like the various ones I mentioned, all of which I am guessing you haven't bothered to read into before dismissing) are based on single-member constituencies and are designed to improve the legitimacy of the individual seat winners. The overall make-up of the house can end up being a little more proportional, but this is coincidental rather than a deliberately-engineered outcome, and indeed the overall make-up could just as easily become less proportional, rather than more.

So the two systems are very separate, and saying that they are the same is complete nonsense.

[Gromit]

The video showed how having 650 local elections, to pick the national government greatly adds to the error. Scotland is nearly all SNP MPs at Westminster, but they only got half of the votes cast. If voting is about fairly representing the people, then the method we have of determining that is broken.

Also, because of the way local boundaries are designed (through a co-gerrymandering agreement between Con and Labour), the majority of the constituencies have a built in bias to favour one or other of the main two parties. That means that only a few marginal seats decide the result, and the majority of votes don't matter.

[ToraToraTora]

just PR at seat level chaps. I must say jim and kromo do seem to find it personally annoying that I don't agree with them. Calm down dears.

[Kromovaracun]

3T - you do not understand what the difference is between a majoritarian system and a proportional one, and seem completely incapable of acknowledging the difference as it has been explained to you, or explaining why you think that distinction is wrong.

Yes, it's a bit irritating.

[ToraToraTora]

i do understand, PR at seat level.

[Kromovaracun]

No, 3T, you do not. This is why you keep saying things that are wrong.

PR stands for Proportional Representation. It is a kind of system rather than a specific one - meaning there are lots of different systems that can be called PR, many of which function in different ways. A PR system is a system that is designed so that parties represented in parliament are represented proportionally to the % of votes they receive.

Some PR systems abolish constituencies, and some don't. The fact that you think this is the distinguishing factor between the two proves that you are talking out of your behind and pretending to understand something that you are totally clueless on.

AV aka Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is not a "kind" of system, like PR is. It's a specific one, although it has some variations. The purpose of it is to engineer a majority for a given candidate. Nothing about PR systems guarantee majorities, because votes very rarely break down that way and it would not be proportional to force them into a majority.

In short - it is extremely rare for PR systems to turn out majorities because they are not designed to do it. Turning out majorities is the whole point of AV. It is what the system is designed to do. If you had any idea how either system actually works, this would be staggeringly obvious to you. You do not, and it isn't.

I won't explain this again. This is stuff that an average A-Level student could understand.

[ToraToraTora]

Reel em in! I'm having so much fun here today!

[Kromovaracun]

Great comeback.

[jim360]

I'm perhaps annoyed because of contextual reasons rather than anything else. If you want to ignore the facts of how things are defined, then be my guest and while it's irritating that someone won't listen to reason I can't do my best. But I spend an inordinate amount of time listening to you accuse me of being brainwashed/ anti-British etc. In the latter case you did at least apologise once I'd pointed out your error (I'm thinking of the Corbyn anthem thread, by the way) -- in the former, I still think you believe that. And yet you never seem to bother yourself with troubling to do any research any more. Here, some cursory research would show you that you have been simply wrong about basic facts -- wrong about CGP Grey, wrong about your use of definitions -- when it took me not 30 seconds to find the video of CGP rubbishing the US system, and not much longer (albeit in the past) to do some equally basic research into the differences between various voting systems. And you call me brainwashed?! You can't even be bothered to check if you're right or not, instead choosing to basically parrot the sort of nonsense FPTP fanatics come out with every time someone suggests that there might be a better way (Cameron, sadly, is another example of this, which means that for now the debate doesn't matter anyway as the people in power won't listen).

That is what is irritating -- not just lack of knowledge, but the lack of any desire to, you know, try and learn something for a change.

If "PR at seat-level" is the best you can come up with, you should know that this is a contradiction in terms. Since only one person can win a single seat, it follows automatically that single-seat representation can never by proportional. Only multiple-seat systems -- ie, systems such as the one currently used for EU elections, where each constituency contains somewhere between 7 and 10 seats -- can hope to be at all proportional. "PR at seat level" is as nonsensical a statement as, say, chocolate with no cocoa beans, or conservative socialism. They cannot -- they do not -- go together. AV is not PR in any way whatsoever.

[Jackdaw33]

That's you told. TTT. Quit before the hole gets any deeper.

[ToraToraTora]

If the cap fits jim.

[ToraToraTora]

under AV the candidate with the most votes can lose unless he gets the holy grail amount of 50% in round 1, your yankee mate would have something to say about that would he not? Yes one winner in the seat but decided based on people's rankings of candidates they don't favour. In the Labour election, many were saying that Corbyn would not win unless he get's over 50% on round 1, ie a direct indictment of how the winner can lose.

[jim360]

Threads like this probably expose the problem about education as a precondition of voting very starkly indeed. What counts as "educated"? Who decides? What sort of education is necessary/ optional? I suspect that, for many, an "educated" voter is one who votes for the same party as they do.

So it's subtle and difficult to see what sort of reform is really possible. For some any change away from FPTP is sacrilege, but for others it's necessary. It would be a sad world indeed if agreeing with one side or the other was necessary to be able to vote at all.

The most immediate reforms worth considering, outside any reform of the system itself are trying to redraw boundaries to drastically reduce the number of "safe" seats. If we are going to stick with FPTP it is in our interests to make the elections as competitive as possible. Then you might want to consider making voting a civic duty, rather than a right. I'm not sure about this last one, but perhaps the obligation to turn out will help encourage more people to engage with the process.

[jim360]

If you're wanting a serious discussion of the merits and disadvantages of AV I'd be happy to answer any questions you have -- the point is not that AV is intrinsically the best system ever (it's not, although it does have arguably fewer problems than FPTP), but that lumping it in with PR is just plain wrong.

[jim360]

And just as the point where he's offered the chance to engage in a serious discussion, TTT vanishes from the thread. Quelle surprise.