Greetings EM list members, STV and MMP are not too complicated. The insides of your video recorder are too complicated for most, but we do not need to understand the inside in order to enjoy its function, as long as it does the job it was designed to do. That's the main point. That is also the main point of any election method, does the method do the job it was designed to do? District STV and MMP do not. In order to continue this subject, I must establish a standard of Proportional Representation(PR) as follows: This standard of PR states that each one percent of the votes will elect one member per 100 seats in the entire election. (If anyone knows of a better standard, please inform us, I am willing to learn.) There are two methods that will meet this standard. STV used in an One-Area election will elect one member for every whole percent each party has. Party List will also be as good. (I advocate Open Party List). But, District STV will not meet this standard, its member-elect party proportionality will be off ten or twenty percent from Popular Vote proportionality, depending on the size of the districts. District STV is not the same as One-Area STV - it's a different ballgame. This is where supporters of STV feed misinformation. When they say STV is great, they are talking about its qualities when it is used in an One-Area election, but then they will talk about District STV, falsely inferring that it still has these great qualities - that these qualities have somehow carried over to District STV. Not so! This is one of the Dirty Little Secrets of STV. (STV has two more Dirty Little Secrets). MMP is better than District STV, not as good as One-Area STV or Party List. MMP has the flaw of cross party voting, which causes distortions in the proportionality by electing additional members. This is called `OverHang'. I agree with those who say we should not advocate any certain system at this time. While the two One-Area systems, STV and Open Party List, would both give us good PR, the district systems, District STV and MMP, have flaws that their supporters seem not to be willing to face at this time. So, being as the use of districts is favored, and the two main district methods are flawed, it is best not to advocate either. A person by the name of Chris was correct when he wrote: "My own preference is a combination STV, open-list PR system." I have posted this quote before, but it is worth repeating. This future mix of STV and Open-List will be the best system, but some members of this list will not be able to accept it until they are willing to face the flaws of their current favored systems. Each supporter of District STV should present an argument as to why MMP is better than District STV, and each supporter of MMP should present an argument as to why District STV is better than MMP. After they have done this, then maybe they will realize that they are both wrong. That will be the time when everyone can consider a system that is a mix of STV and Open-List, as suggested by Chris. In the meantime, here are some slogans you can use to promote PR: "Your just representation is when you and twenty percent of the voters elect twenty percent of the members, or when you and sixty percent of the voters elect sixty percent of the members in the entire election." "Your just representation is when the proportionality of the elected members is the same as the proportionality of the popular vote across the entire election." "Each one percent of the voters should be able to elect one member per 100 seats." Or, maybe someone will be able to design a better slogan, but a slogan should be used by everyone to express PR. This will tell the public what is our standard of belief. It is not enough to merely complain about the current system. These three slogans are all repeating the same standard in different words - the same standard that I established at the top of this letter, and the most valid standard, because, if you will think about it, this is the exact same standard that people are alluding to when they complain about elections not being proportional. These people complain that the party proportionality of the members elected is not close to the party proportionality of the popular vote. These people are crying that the election does not meet a standard, which happens to be the exact same standard that I have established for this letter. And then, can you guess what soom of these people will do? They will go and advocate a system of District STV that will also not meet the standard. Makes a person wonder why they are complaining about the current election method - District STV is not much better. The following chart shows the kind of results we can expect from the four different election methods. Popular | M E M B E R S E L E C T E D Votes | One-Area Party District Top-Up | STV List STV MMP ------- | ------- ------ ------- ------------ A 30% 30 30 44 31 29.5% B 23 23 23 32 24 22.9% C 20 20 20 10 21 20.0% D 13 13 13 4 14 13.3% E 10 10 10 0 11 10.5% F 4 4 4 0 4 3.8% ----- ----- ---- ---- ---- ------ 100% 100 100 100 105 100.0% Going from One-Area STV to District STV is the same as imposing an artifical threshold. Before anyone embraces One-Area STV as their favored solution, I must tell you that it has its own problems, some of which would change the results from above. * The question of District-Member Link. * The high number of exhausted ballots. * The second `Dirty Little Secret' is the rule that transfers exhausted ballots to remaining candidates, who were not choices on the exhausted ballots. * The third `Dirty Little Secret' is the Droop Quota, which in the case of a large One-Area STV election would have little influence because it would be offset by the exhausted ballots. (Droop has a big `Bad' influence in District STV,) Party List also has its problems. * The question of District-Member link. * Closed Party List - the order of the list not determined by the voters, which can be solved by Open Party List - having the order determined by the voters. And, the best way to do that is use STV to determine the order of the candidates on the lists. This brings us back to the best future system, a mix of STV and party list, which can also be used in districts, so that will solve the District-Member link question. Any questions? Regards, Donald +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ | Q U O T A T I O N | | "Democracy is a beautiful thing, | | except that part about letting just any old yokel vote." | | - Age 10 | +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ N E W S L E T T E R Worldwide Direct Democracy Newsletter Four Issues per Year by Postal Mail Cost per year: Czech Republic 200 Kc, Europe 12 DM Outside of Europe $10 Make check payable to: Mr. Bohuslav Binka Mail to: Mr. Bohuslav Binka Bellova 15 Brno 623 00 Czech Republic - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - N E W D E M O C R A C Y A Source of Study Material for Political Change http://www.mich.com/~donald - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -