But in a proporcional system it is possible that a single charismatic individual can carried his intirie party, even if the general population doesn't know or doesn't care about the other members of said party.
Was anyone else extremely enthused by the fact that the monkey party’s most favorite candidates are all characters from the planet of the apes films???
I'm surprised you never talked about the simplest and most elegant solution, the one e.g. Poland uses: do a separate proportional election in every district. Say, there's a district with 5 seats available. Each party puts out multiple candidates in this district (preferably 5 or more to get as many seats as possible). Gorillas get 40% of votes in this district, so naturally, they get 2 seats on the council. This means that two gorilla candidates from this district, the ones that received the most votes, get the seat. This way you can directly support your local candidate, but also make sure that even if they don't get elected, your vote will at least support your party instead of being wasted.
The problem mentioned in the video can be solved with open-list proportional system, in which the voter also decided which candidate they prefer to be prioritized for the seats
I keep coming back to this video. And you mention a downside that I have "thought" my way into being an upside. It's that people vote for parties instead of candidates. But that encourages the creation of more parties. If Bernie Sanders isn't chosen to represent democrats (yes I know he's a senator), then he is encouraged to run as a new party. That party tells Bernie Bros to vote for the Bern Party, with their one candidate and now voters can choose their candidate and the party SYSTEM is diminished. Parties will (after a few cycles) be more open to voter input than they are now. And honest primaries will matter because they will determine, not who gets to challenge the other side, but whether or not the party will get seat. The more iterations of elections I think about, the better these options become. Libertarians can vote away taxes while not supporting candidates that hate abortion. We, the voters, get more say. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
My country actually uses something a bit in between the two. It's a proportional system where you can vote for the party, but you can also vote for any specific person in that party. And basically if you vote for them it bumps them up on that list to get seats. If someone gets a lot of "preference votes" as they're called, they are much more likely to be the first to get a seat.
Could you please continue this series on different voting systems, f. e. different proportional methods? The Swiss system, for example, is great (but complicated) and resolves your philosophical problem. For the elections (which just have passed), you get a booklet with all the party lists for your canton. Each canton has a certain number of seats available relative to their population. Additionally, you get a blank list. With these lists (which were made by the respective parties), you can do a number of things: 1. Cross out: By crossing out a candidate, you withdraw their candidate vote. 2. Cumulate: You can have one candidate name on your list up to two times. Sometimes, a candidate is on the list twice already. 3. Panache: You can write down a name of an official candidate from a different list. Each candidate on your ballot has two votes attached: a personal vote and a party-list vote. Empty lines on your ballot (you only have as many lines available as there are seats for your canton) only count as party-list votes for the party whose name is at the top of the list. This means that panached names will keep their party-list vote. When the votes are counted, every party gets a certain number of seats assigned according to their party-list votes. These seats are now filled by taking those party candidates that have won the most candidate votes list-internally. However, this does not fill all seats: if you had a canton with ten seats, 10% of list votes would be required for a seat. Often, some parties will have one or more seats secured this way, while several seats remain open. Here, two similar mechanisms come into play: List connections and sub-list connections. Parties within a sub list connection (typically the mother party and several groupings, for example Young sections etc.) will simply have their list-votes added and treated like one party list, with all candidates from all these lists being considered for the seats. List connections are between two or more parties with similar political opinions (for example Greens and Social Democrats). After initial distribution of seats, parties within a list connection will add up their "rests". If a seat can be taken this way, the party that contributed the most to it will get it. These mechanisms avoid spoiler effects and allow parties to include more candidates than there are seats, lowering their direct influence and reaching more people. Typically, all seats but one will be taken by now. The list connection with the greatest rest will get the seat, the so-called "rest mandate". If, during the legislature, someone steps back, the election results will be taken again and the next in line on the party list takes the spot (note that I mean party list here as including sub-list connections, except for the actual voting). Counterbalancing these proportional elections of the National Council, there is also the Council of Estates, for which two representatives are nominated (like Congress/Senate) per canton (estate). These are elected through a sort of "tweaked First Past the Post" system. In the first round of election, you need an absolute majority of 42.5% of votes (because there are two seats, it's not 50% +1). In the second round (for which only official candidates who still are running are considered), a relative majority suffices. In conclusion, I prefer this style of proportional election over every other system I've heard of, while the other system could be replaced by an AV/STV system, although it is not without downsides, it does solve many problems.
Open list proportional system (Croatia, Sweden, ...)? Where you chose both the party and people within that list. Parties get number of seats proportional to votes, and people who will sit in those seats are chosen by people.
But who’s to say that the local representative is a better choice than a non local one? Say one region has two very competent representatives and another region has none, your system chooses a less qualified representative just based on where he happens to live. There. Are many ways to make good proportional systems, one i’m recently liking more is voting for both a party and a representative within the party at the same time, however this may just end up being confusing. In a regular proportional system you vote for an ideology rather than a specific person. You’re given a number of pre-determined lists and vote for the best one, i have no objection to this system either.
Here in the Netherlands, you vote for an individual, but also sort of for the party because they're grouped by party list. When counting the votes, initially the votes for every party are collectively counted to determine how many representatives of that party get a seat, then they check if any of the individual members of that party are above a certain threshold of votes, and if they are, they get one of their party's seats, in order of most individual votes. If the party still has seats left but no individuals above the threshold, the remaining seats are given to the representatives of that party in the order they appeared on the list (of course skipping over those who already got a seat from getting enough individual votes) This way, the proportional representation in terms of party is easily determined, but individuals who are particularly liked by the public can still receive a seat, even if they're low on the list made by the party. Once parties are elected, they tend to try to form a coalition with others parties to get a majority to work together with.
couldn't you simply hold a two-stage election? Stage 1 decides how many representatives to take from each party. In stage 2, the citizens vote for their preffered representative from any parties they choose to weigh in on, using STV.
Alex Musick There are already open list systems. Instead of putting an X next to a single party, you could put the X next to a member of the party, and the X counts for both proportional and the candidate. Say a party got 33% of the vote in a 9 seat district, so they deserve 3 seats, and put up 5 candidates, A with 500 votes, B with 450, C with 400, D with 350, and E with 300, A, B, and C will take the spots in the legislature. Sometimes candidates need a certain percentage of votes in order to be placed higher than the party's list that already existed, some don't require that though.
i know this is an old video, but where i live people tend to vote for a single person, not a party or an ideology... education is very problematic here how would you solve it?
“When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure” seems applicable here, we use party proportions as a method of gauging how good a voting system is but when we directly go for that im unsure it’ll actually have the properties we want.
At 0:52 Thing is, parties being able to 'punish' their members by putting them low on the list and similar cases that can happen with PR is also true for FPTP in practise. I live in the UK, with a FPTP system, where there are some swing seats and some safe seats, and, by choosing which seat each candidate can run for, parties can essentially do the same thing. The could punish a member by putting them as the candidate for a less safe seat (yes, they could reign from the party and run as an independent candidate, but that almost never actually works), and thus punishing the candidate.
+CGP Grey Proportional representation can be done like in the Netherlands Tweed de Kamer where individuals are voted for rather than parties. You can have elected independents if enough people want a certain candidate from a party elected despite the party wishes. Please highlight and correct this as it is shown you can have open lists in PR.
What about a proportional system where the people vote for candidates, not parties, but the parties, which get the most votes on their candidates get the most seats, and who in that party gets those seats is ruled by the individual votes. At least that's what used in Finland.
Maybe you have already done one. But you should do a video on the issue of dictator districts. When voter power has been distributed by population proportion, but then representatives made from that proportion lead to voting outcomes in which the small counties or districts can never really get any outcome for themselves. I saw a lecture on this when I was in college- I was a math major. But I can't seem to find any videos on the topic. :D thanks
There are write in represetative systems like sweden, on you ballot when voting for a party there are 30 or so names you may put a an x before one of them and move that candidate to the top, or redo the entire list to your own numbers. The downside is that you have a special ballot for each party and so the secrecy of voting is somewhat diluted. We usually take ballot from all parties though and throw away all but the one we intend to use.
@ew Well you'v essentially hit the head of the nail right there, most people don't care enough to use it so it never plays much of a role and as such is very rarely mentioned.
Fredrik Dunge Still though, why don’t they teach this? The nations democratic fate hinges on the responsible people who should know this. But I wouldn’t say this is a great solution because the people generally aren’t cape able to make use of this feature.
In Germany we have basically a mix of those. We have, what is called "Direktmandate", those are seats for direct representatives (as you have two votes, one for a local representatives, one for a party). Now when looking at the proportions of the second vote, the seats that the parties get for parliament have to first go to the winners of the first vote for each consitutency. That way you get both a very proportional parliament as well as your local representatives. Of course, not every citizen in any given constituency has a representative, but this is a trade of to make sure it's as proportional as possible while still having local representatives. Only thing missing would be vote priority for both votes, as you can only vote for one each. And since we have a minimum for how many votes you need to get into parliament (in our case it's 5%) there can be a lot of people not getting representet because they don't really have an impact on the outcome because of no second, third etc. choice.
I actually quite like the system we have in Germany since it has about the same advantages as STV but is for sure far easier to count. We have a mix of proportional and majority vote. What happens is that everyone has two votes. One for a local representitive (majority vote) and one for a party (proportional vote). The seats a party wins by proportional vote are first filled from the majority vote results and then filled up from a list. If there are more representitives elected than a party is elected seats the party gets as many seats as there elected representitives. The total number of seats is being adjusted accordingly.
But what is missing is a priority for the second vote so that the votes for the small parties (that don't get above the 5% hurdle) don't get vasted. So we don't have a complete proportional system because of the 5% hurdle.
I'm actually fond of what we have in Bulgaria: proportional system + preferences. You vote for a party, then optionally you cross out your preferred politician in the shortlist of that party. Then, when counting, if somebody who wasn't liked enough from the party to be put up in the list gets enough votes, he's elected anyway. It produces some nice results, especially when it comes to coalitions of parties... and while not all politicians are known to their constituencies, SOME are, which is good enough in a sense. Disclaimer: they should finally learn that voters voting for party #7 in the list often cross out politician #7 in the other list too, just to be sure they voted for the right party. So #7 in the preferences list should be empty vote for party #7.
That's how we do it in Sweden too. I think it's sad that Grey always complains about this without looking into the solutions already in place in many countries.
Sounds kinda like it is in Germany as well. Do you have a minimum limit for parties? For example, we have a minimum limit of 5%. If a party don't get at least 5% of the votes, they won't get into parliament. Unfortunately, this results in a lot of votes not counting for anything because they voted for one of those parties. Only way they still get in if one candidate of such a party wins for the first vote for the representative. What's missing would be a priority system for the parties so that the votes for the small parties don't get wasted.
Bulgaria is more economically conservative than most of Europe, for there isn't much of a choice. Socially liberal... Russian money influence 100% of the decisions of BSP, Ataka, ABV, so they aren't anything close to socially liberal. DPS is "minority" party, but is again mostly bought by Kremlin, so don't think they can be counted on. The Patriotic Front are obviously not socially liberal. GERB tries to play with the patriotic extremists so that they retain some control over them, and 50% of the time seems to serve Kremlin interests, so again not socially liberal. The Reformators are the only ones out of the major parties who seem to vow by the normal liberal values that the European civilization is built upon. And then you have DEOS who borderline the western Regressive Left sometimes. They are pretty minor, it seems, especially outside Sofia.
If I care that much about individual candidates, I should just join my preferred party and participate in their internal candidate election, no? I'm assuming that any political party will be required to be democratically structured internally, so it's not like party leaders just get to _decree_ the candidates offered in the general election.
That's a great point about permitting them to create the problems they wish to exploit. I guess that's solid proof that at the very least democracy must have limits in order to work. "Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary". ~Wilson
@Brandon Sergent Germany doesn't seem to have a larger underground of political radicals than comparable countries, from what I can tell? And we do use objective criteria -- the party platform and the statements and actions of its leaders and supporters. If a party becomes suspicious they can be observed by the secret service, who will try to figure out if they actually have an illegal agenda. In theory it would be perfectly legal to have a party called "The Nazi Murderer Party for the Reinstitution of the Reich" as long as its _policies_ are democratic. It's not the label that's banned. Our current de-facto Nazi party (the NPD) has to do a lot of very awkward wink-wink, nudge-nudgeing to communicate its message to its supporters, and they still regularly fall foul of the law to the point that they're likely to be banned soon. I just figure the nutters have a worse chance of dismantling the system from the outside -- if we let them in they sabotage it (see Republican obstructionism, as you said), which leads to people becoming dissatistifed with it, which gives more support to the nutters, which puts more of them in government, which enables them to sabotage it more effectively, which... Whereas if they want to destroy it from the outside they have to show their colours right away and do illegal things. They can't hide behind the skirts of civil society. It's not perfect, but I think it's a basically sensible approach.
Just drives them underground. Just look at the republicans and their obstructionism. And "starve the beast" strategy. If we're gonna ban fascists we need to do it based on objective criteria. Banning the label just makes being honest about it a crime. Still, I get your logic and you could be right. I'm just losing faith in democracy. I feel like I'm entering a headspace more fitting to the dark ages where I just accept that I wasn't born king or lord so I'll never have anything but scraps and an early death.
@Brandon Sergent I think it makes sense to bar the way for fascists to legally take power, personally. It's not like banning fascist parties means that individuals are banned from having or voicing antidemocratic views. I've never felt like I needed more help identifying totalitarians. Keeping parties out of parliament who want to destroy said parliament seems like a sensible step in ensuring the political system keeps working as intended -- no point in letting a confessed saboteur into the engine room.
Germany is a little bit of a special case, but yeah I can see why you'd want that, but like with the drug war, making it illegal only only makes it harder to see and thus harder to fight. I'll take a fascist over a cryptofascist any day for the same reason spies are more dangerous than soldiers. Stealth. I'm sure you're right though that the majority of countries ban that sort of thing to some degree or other.
this is only really a criticism if parties don't exist before the proportional system. In any system with parties the party must select the "top monkeys". Most parties do this in some sort of democratic way based on their constituency rather than (just) party leadership.
Good start, but the Baden-Wurttemberg MMP is superior. It need not increase the size of the legislature. It only requires one vote. As the % top-up is from the best runners up, the people decide who sits, not the party. It is simple. robust and reliable. :-)
Alternatively you can just use an Open List like here in Switzerland, which elects Members proportionally, but lets people choose the Persons on the List the want elected.
But it has the problem that some ridings are over-represented in the parliament (with up to three representatives from different parties), while others with the same population have only one representative. E.g. Stuttgart I sends only 1 representative, but Böblingen has 2 and Esslingen has 3, while having roughly the same voting population (which is even a legal requirement). I however agree that it's one of the best systems. In Deutsch/German: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landtag_von_Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg#Wahlverfahren
As someone who doesn't care for party loyalty, I prefer STV. I don't like the idea of letting party officials decide who gets a seat from on high. I'd like to minimize the power of party leaders in selecting representatives.
A proportional system works best in countries like the Netherlands or Israel which are small enough to not need local representation. In larger countries like the US, I do think local representation is important. Additionally, a proportional system favors small parties. In many of Grey's example, if a party has 3.25% in every single district they would never actually make it to the Senate but under proportional representation they would.
@artistwithouttalent There are always open party lists, where voters vote both for a party list and a particular candidate from that list. The number of votes each individual candidate on a party list got then determines the order in which they are elected. This could minimize the influence of party leaders on who gets elected.
I disagree. If you have proper proportional representation (like they have in the Netherlands) then there are literally tons of parties to choose from, all of which are guaranteed to get a seat share in the legislature that is equal to their vote share in the election (0% of votes means 0% of seats, 16% of votes means 16% of seats, etc.). At that point, is it really an issue that the party is choosing the representatives? I don't think it is. If you don't like one party's representatives, go with another party. Simple. If it's a party you really like (e.g. the green party, or the anti-immigration party, or the conservative party, or the labour party, or even the over 50s party like they have in the Netherlands, etc.) then is it really that likely that you'll disagree with their candidate selection? If you agree with the party's politics then I'm sure their candidate selection will align with their politics and therefore you'll be okay with the candidate selection too. I would rather have proper proportionality in the legislature, personally. For me, that seems far more important than getting to choose between several nearly-identical candidates for each party.
Completely false. That's a direct democracy. The system we're discussing is a *representative* democracy. The UK has representative democracy and is most definitely not a republic.
oh look, you invented a real democracy :D This government system we discuss here is called a republic, in which representatives are elected by the populous to do government for them. In a democracy every citizen votes on every bill, and it gets hectic and crazy and usually things get done even slower than locked up two-party systems.
What's really the point? You're counting votes in fractions, not percentages. Percentages are just used because they're easier to visualise and work with.
Is there any reason why STV and MMP couldn't be combined? That is, MMP but with each electorate having multiple representatives who are chosen through STV?
@Patrick Kenny I MIGHT be possible but it would take some clever list design. It's fairly easy with a standard proportional system, but because STV ranks candidates not parties its very difficult to ensure that every district actually ends up with a representative.
@Maxi Muster I think you are thinking of a "free list" like Switzerland and Luxembourg, where a voter casts multiple votes. Semi Open like the Dutch parliament, is where candidates can replace party-preferred candidates if they achieve a quota. The size of that quota is what determines the "openness" of a system. A closed list has effectively any mathematically unreachable quota, while an open list has a quota of 0.
+Rob749s That's actually not open, but "semi-open". Open lists would also allow you to switch between different parties. What you describe exists e.g. for the Dutch parliament. +Patrick Kenny We have kind of that here in my local state in Germany (for the state parliament, not for the federal parliament). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg_state_election,_2016 Basically, the ridings get additional representatives (which are not decided by party lists, but by who got 2nd and 3rd most votes etc.), until there is complete state-wide proportionality in the parliament. Unlike "normal" MMP, you thus have only one single vote, which makes it more easy. See www.landtag-bw.de/files/live/sites/LTBW/files/dokumente/fremdsprachen/Willkommen-E.pdf (page 7)
You can have an "open list" proportional system, where voters can vote within their party block to move candidates up and down the list in order of popularity.
I don't actually know. Since STV is usually fairly close, it would work better than normal MMP, as less "top-up" seats would be needed, therefore we can have more local reps.
Right now in Czech Republic, when our parliamentary elections are proportional, but we can also give a circle candidates we like, witch can lead to change in candidate's order.
I mean couldn't you just make primaries a hybrid STV and based on favorability among members of the party who should win the seats? Then you would have some more happiness in proportional votes?
@Wintar Ah, wrong way around. I meant it could be that the actual numbers are 30.6, 30.6, 30.6, and 8.2, for example. The sum of those is 100, but if you round each separate portion to the nearest whole percentage you get 31 31 31 and 8.
+ikschrijflangenamen That doesn't fix the problem.. (31.3*3) + 8 Is still 101.9, which is FURTHER from 100 than 101 is. And rounding up makes it 102.5, which is ALSO further from 100 than 101 and 101.9 is.
who gives a fuck about specific individuals or local representation? someone from the other end of the my country could have the ideology closest to mine. and that's the point. I wanna vote for the people in my country who share my values, no matter where in my country they are.
+SantomPh But in Germany you still have a mixed system, even when voting in a federal election. So you vote for a "loacl" for federal office and you vote a second time for the proportion. If those don't match you fill in from a list until the proportions fit again!
it depends if your elections get you a local representative or a national one. In some countries like Germany local government is very strong (states and cities) and thus your idea of voting for someone from elsewhere will only work in a national election for the Reichstag where no one actually represents a location but a fraction of their party's vote.
@Gawk Thimm But they won't come to power, they will just be small opposition, in STV there is no fear that because our candidate is unpopular, some1 we really don't like will take the power
@Gawk Thimm This still has spoiler effect as voters of small parties may think their vote will not count, only if you give this people second chance to vote if their candidate is unpopular.
+Mr.Mix Denmark has a constituency based proportional representation as well as a system of allotment is indirectly prescribed in the constitution, ensuring a balanced distribution of the 179 seats. 135 members are elected by proportional majority in constituencies while the remaining 40 seats are allotted in proportion to the total number of votes a party or list receives - The Faroe Islands and Greenland (which has home rule) elect two members each.
@Smokestacks We do have primaries but the systems for them don't have to be fair because the parties are private entities. The problem is that primaries have even smaller voter turnout than general elections with only the more extreme candidates getting the nominations. This election is very abnormal with both front runners being widely hated even within their own parties.
Hypothetically, what if the given candidates from the Left Party are M, N and O and from the Right Party are S, T and U, all listed respective to their order listed by their parties. Now voter X somewhat prefers the Right Party overall, however he strongly dislikes U as an individual. Three are to be elected and reviewing the opinion polls, he sees that the Right Party are currently expected to receive 84% of the vote. This means S and T look fairly secure, which he is glad of, however currently U would, by a slim margin, edge out M as the final representative. Since voter X really isn't a fan of U, he decides to vote for the Left Party, even though he prefers the Right Party overall; this is an example of strategic voting and can be an issue - the opinion polls turn out to have been fairly skewed and the Right Party only receives 49% of the vote, meaning N gets in instead of T. This is very much against his preferences. People can very much vote for individuals instead of parties. All I see of the US election is people being anti-candidates rather than anti-party. A possible solution would be allowing for primary elections, such that the public could help influence the order candidates are listed within parties.
@monkeytrollu Where am I saying we shouldn't have local elections? Are we defining "local elections" differently? I think there may be a problem with our communications.
It's also more possible under STV for a single party to gain at least 50% of the seats with significantly fewer than 50% of the first preference votes. This is not as big of a problem as it is with other proportional systems that are not 100% proportional because it's not likely to happen without that party being ranked quite highly by people who have voted for other candidates first. If you get 45% of the first preference vote but most of other 55% rank you low or not at all your less likely to win an overall majority than if you had say 42% of the FP vote and many of the rest show some support by ranking that party highly.
The more representatives are elected in a ward under STV, the more proportional the result gets. If there is a total of nine seats, you get a more proportional result when elected all 9 in a single STV election rather than in 3 separate elections with 3 seats in each.
Yeah I hear it too and I think in an effort to make his longer videos slightly shorter he probably finishes editing and narrating and then just speeds the whole thing up a little. just a guess
Btw @CGP Grey : Your implementation of a stv voting system lacks equality off the voting results (i don't know the word - I mean the effect a vote has in an election; as is every vote has the same weight in an election. In Germany it is called Erfolgswert): as soon as you eliminate a candidate, that - including first and second choices - would have more votes than an other candidate, the corresponding second (third, fourth, fifth,...) choices is nullified and the whole vote "is less worth" than the other votes.
You know, there are several systems, that try to correct the lack of local representation in proportional systems: 1) combinatory systems like Germany has for their federal elections: every person has two vote - one for the proportional system; it determines the seats for each party - and one for the local candidate; he/she is elected by a first pass the post system and takes one of the seats distributed by the first vote. If a party has more canditates voted by direct vote, than they would have by proportional vote, the other partys get additional seats to compensate and tho maintain the proportional result. 2) combinations where you can vote a party or a person: on a first step all votes (personal and for the party as a hole) are added and so the proportional number of seats are calculated. After this the candidates of the party are numbered by the number of votes they received. On this order they take the seats of the concrete party.
Couldn't you have a MMP/STV hybrid? A person has 2½ votes (kinda). They use STV to vote for their local representatives on their first vote. Their second vote goes to their favorite party; this second vote isn't regional but national. Their "half" vote (which can also be STV) can affect who in their favorite political party gets the seat(s).
This is not necessarily true. In the Netherlands, we vote for individual persons, not parties. (Most people end up voting for the top person of their party of choice anyways, but it is possible to vote on anyone in the party and if a person gets fired from the party, the party cannot force them to give up their seat in the House of Representatives)
If legislation requires 50% approval to be passed, then minority parties with proportional parliamentary representation will gain disproportionate power due to their 'kingmaker' status. Evidence of this can be found in German and Israeli policy making.
What about the proportional systems where you can put an x next to your favorite candidate from the party you are voting for? If a candidate gets enough "personal votes", they get bumped up the list, taking priority over whatever order the party itself listed. Naturally you have a threshold for this: say that a candidate can't get bumped up unless they get at least 10% of their party's votes. This is how it's done in Sweden (where I come from), and I think it provides an elegant, albeit imperfect, partways solution to the problems with proportional voting which you bring up in this video. Would love to hear your thoughts on this system!
@Firaro Well, if parties stood up not for wealthy buisinessman but for ideologies to improve the people's lives, than what you said would be the best possible option. The ideal direct democracy wouldn't have parties in the first place, if everyone was educated enough to vote for people by considering what they have done in the past, politics wasn't just "who can speak the best and throw the best comebacks at his oponent" and people were honest. But that's just too utopian to happen in the near future.
But it removes granularity of choice in policies and gives power to the parties which could potentially prevent better candidates from having any chance of being near the top of any party’s list ergo making them not an option. Plus this feels unnecessarily convoluted, if we want people voting for policies then why not have direct democracy in some form? If we want people voting for parties to represent them and make better informed decisions on their behalf then why not give the party direct control as opposed to having them appoint a puppet? And if we care about having individual people represent us with the granularity and distributed power that gives then why not directly vote on those people?
Well, as others already pointed out, there are also open list proportional systems, where the voters can also choose one (or more) favorite candidate inside their preferred party. There are also systems in which you can choose your preferred party (in order to assign seats to the parties) and your preferred candidate (in order to distribute the seats that a party won among his candidate) even if he or she doesn't belong to your preferred party.
In Sweden we have a proportional system and the problem with the "philosophical problem" in a proportional system is solved... kind of. Let's say you're going to vote for the Social Democrats (the biggest party in Sweden) alternative 1: you pick a ballot where you just vote for the party. Alternative 2: you pick a ballot for the party where there's also a list of all the candidates and you can mark the candidate you want too represent you. Sure the Party (in this case the Social Democrats) has made a ranking on the list with no.1 being the official candidate for the prime minister post. But in theory a person ranked 138 can get voted in to parliament (in this case) by being favored/marked by a lot of voters.
I wish for political party affiliation to be removed from ballots entirely. If you do not know the names of the people you want in office, you should not be considered educated enough to make an informed vote.
Representative democracy is dead mate...what are you talking about.. The elective party based voting system simply brings the parties with the most financial backing to the top, and this in effect means that democracy is power to the...rich..
@Marlon Brando Isn't there a recent court ruling that allows business backing in campaigns or something? I'm not American, so don't blame me if I get it wrong...
It appears that CGP Grey had not hidden the footnote videos yet. Which might not be a bad thing IMO. I just stumbled upon the Gerrymandering Explained video, and found out that it's one of the hidden videos in PitAK(lol) that can only be accessed via the hidden link. It's like other videos he hid in the past that offers some sidenotes to the main video, but I found it to be equally educational as any other main videos he has made. So it occurred to me that it might not be such a bad idea to show the sidenote videos, since some of them are in fact quite educational, yet are currently hidden and cannot be easily noticed (if that isn't enough problem already, hidden links do not even appear on mobile.) On the other hand, though, I do understand the rationale of making those videos and hiding them. They don't introduce the topic of the main video but instead only provide explanations on a single point, and they could be annoying for someone who clicked on them when he/she is just trying to view random videos. Given the above reasons and the fact that adding the sidenotes in the main videos can be redundant. I think we need a better solution. Opinions are greatly appreciated.
Is it just me or has there been multiple foot notes on these systems. NOT THAT I'M COMPLAINING! I love it, but it seems your main video could easily be twice as long and all the better for having it in one place :) Either way, thanks for this interesting look into political systems (which are surprisingly less corrupt than I would have thought).
The worst solution for democratizing the proportional system (well, probably not the worst but a pretty bad solution) is what we have in Colombia: a party can chose between a closed list or an open lists. People will vote either for a closed list or for one specific candidate in the open list. This set the closed lists in disadvantage to open lists (unless you have an still fairly popular former president as head of the list, or a very organized religious based party), and in open lists, candidates are rather competing with each other than collaborating with their party fellows. So the last candidate to be elected as part of a large party, will get a seat with 20% or less of the votes of a popular candidate leading a closed list, and failing to get a seat.
But one of the main problems with any parliamentary system is that, while you are voting for a representative for your riding, when that individual is in parliament, he tends to vote as his party dictates, not necessarily as his constituents (whom he is representing) want him to vote. And in a "first past the post" system, this problem is aggravated by the fact that it is quite possible that the majority of constituents in that riding did not vote for that candidate (which Mr. Grey has covered quite admirably in his various videos). A pure proportional system does away with the "fiction" that the members of parliament represent specific ridings (which can also be done away with, eliminating the problem of gerrymandering) and simply gives each party a representative percentage of seats. This can, in a system with more than a few parties, result in continuous minority governments and/or the need for coalition agreements, an obvious down side. But, consider also that the requirement for a riding to have a representative is itself a throwback to times when polling the electorate was much more difficult than today. With a system of phone-in and/or internet-based referendums (as Switzerland does), the government can still govern according to the will of the people without the "fiction" of ridings and local representatives who don't represent the locals. IMHO, of course.
Actually, this isn't true. Brazil has an open-list proportional system, which means that, for seat distribution, candidates from the same party are ranked by how many votes they receive in the election, not by the party itself. There are further complications to this, obviously, but it is ultimately voters who determine the candidates who get elected.
The video fails to mention that list systems CAN give voters a lot of influence and even complete influence over who gets elected. In a so-called flexible list system through whatever means, not necessarily a selection by party officials (the standard stereotype used by STV supporters as well as defenders of FPTP/single-member simple plurality), but possibly conventions, constituency association meetings, or even primaries, a ranked list of candidates is drawn up but voters with a given number of votes and through a certain formula can change the ranking of candidates in voting for them e.g. Belgium (which uses a kind of STV), Sweden. In an open list system the ranking is only the order of names appearing, the actual ranking for election depends entirely on the votes candidates receive e.g. Finland, Brazil. The only advantage of PR-STV is that it does not require parties to work and if there are parties the numbers of seats won depend strictly on votes for candidates.
this is the system in Israel. we vote to our favorite party and then any party get Proportional part from the 120 representatives and the parties combine to coalition and opposition. there is no philosophical problem like he said because all of the people of the party have (more or less) one agenda. but still there is lots of other problems. (Instability that crate too much power to little parties)
Hey Grey, has anyone though to use primary votes with STV for the parties to decide their lists in a proportional voting system? That would help to remove some of that philosophical problem.