Friday, 29 May 2009

None Transferable

We urgently need electoral reform. But we must not adopt the Single Transferable Vote. It is very likely to eliminate in early rounds candidates with high numbers of lower preferences, whom many voters had in fact wanted to elect in a multimember context.
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8 comments:

  1. JohnJGMooney29 May 2009 at 17:13

    STV is great.
    Not only does it help to decide who "my" candidate will be, it also helps me decide who my enemy's candidate will be.

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  2. David Lindsay29 May 2009 at 17:20

    Seriously, though, this is what happens.

    People are eliminated at the start who would have topped the poll if it had simply been a matter of voting for as many candidates as there were seats to fill, all by means of an X.

    Either that, or the final result is exactly the same as the first one.

    And then you have people losing their seats to members of the same party as themselves.

    Vote for one candidate by means of an X, and let the requisite number be declared elected at the end.

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  3. JohnJGMooney29 May 2009 at 18:17

    Having voted in STV Elections since the Local Govt Elections 36 years ago and always having voted in Council, Euro and Stormont elections, I am kinda familiar with the process.
    Losing seats to a member of the same Party is a pitfall but not if the Party actually manages the vote well.
    The idea is that each candidate is given a "patch" and should not campaign outside that area or on the strength of a "big" name.

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  4. David Lindsay29 May 2009 at 18:26

    So everything that I said is true, then.

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  5. JohnJGMooney30 May 2009 at 17:49

    My comment that your analysis was only true for amateurs has been lost in the Internet.

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  6. David Lindsay30 May 2009 at 23:58

    Nothing could be more ameuterish than a system in which a party's fully approved candidate in good standing loses his seat to the same party's fully approved candidate in good standing.

    It is quite beyond Pythonesque, and was only introduced in Northern Ireland in order to benefit people who then carried on blowing other people up anyway.

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  7. JohnJGMooney31 May 2009 at 01:09

    Proportional Representation was introduced in 1973 when people had been blowing other people up for more than three years.
    It was hardly intended to facilitate the people doing the blowing up as they did not take part in any elections until 1981 (by proxy initially).
    So you are of course.....wrong. Arent you?

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  8. David Lindsay31 May 2009 at 01:12

    Everyone always knew who their favoured candidates were and weren't.

    Frank Maguire wa nothing to do with them? Bernardette Devlin was nothing to do with them? And so on, and on, and on.

    Like everything else in Northern Ireland politics, this is about allowing them to define the debate. Why?

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