Comparisons of
different methods of elections of parliaments,
to result in
a democratic means of electing parliaments

1. Regarding the 2008 election of the Western Australian state parliament

Content of Letter To The Editors of the Comment News and the Sunday Times, 02 October 2008

The full text of the Letter to the Editors of the Comment News and the Sunday Times, sent on 02 October, 2008, is below.

Neither published any of the letter.

.............................................

With the recent bodgy state election outcome, it appears that time has
come for a complete overhaul of the state parliamentary and state
electoral systems, in WA.

The following suggestion was sent to recently elected members of the
state parliament, who, as usual for members of parliaments, have not
acknowledged the suggestions.

My suggestion, is that the WA parliamentary two-house, and parliamentary
election, systems, be changed to the same as the New Zealand single
house MMP (Mixed Member Preferential) system, to deal with the issues
that are perceived, regarding the WA state election system and resultant
representation.

Information about the reasoning behind the NZ MMP system, is at
http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/mmp/history-mmp.html ,
and about how the voting is done, is at
http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/mmp/two-ticks-too-easy.html .

Now, the reasoning in the text of the article explaining MMP, for the
MMP system, in its justification, and, the complaint against FPP, that
caused the replacement of the FPP system, with the MMP system, was that
the number of MP's elected by MMP, better reflected the percentage of
votes won by each political party, in elections, and, that complaint of
the number of seats won, not reflecting the number of votes won, as used
in the replacement of the FPP election system by the MMP election
system,equally applies to the WA state election system.

What I suggest, is an MMP system, based on the NZ model, but, as with
the proposal of the NZ First Party, and, with some other NZ political
parties, limiting the number of MP's to 99.

Also, another variance from the New Zealand system, is that I believe that the
awarding of list seats, where the party wins a single parliamentary seat, but
less than the 5% threshold, should not apply.

Thus, where a registered political party, wins at least 5% of the total vote for all
electorates, the party should win list seats for as many of its list candidates,
as would make up that percentage of seats to be occupied by the party,
in the parliament.

If this was done, and, retaining 59 electorate seats, to relate to the
current, existing, 59 lower house seats of the WA state parliament, and
using the percentages of "party votes, for "List MP's", as used in NZ
elections, to make up the numbers, to a maximum of 99 MP's, I get the
following (with a "guesstimate" of the resultant MMP seats counts, below).

From the results as published as at 1730 on Friday 19 September 2008,
the following statistics were stated.

Number of seats won:

Total number of seats: 95

Percentage of vote:

MMP total number of seats: 95

Note: The Greens Party, as shown above, having won 11% of the vote, was awarded only 4% of the seats in the parliament, which shows the electoral system for the Western Australian state parliament, to be defective.

I note and I emphasise, that the result would have differed
significantly from the outcome of the recent state election, in terms of
the forming of a state government, which may have been able to have been
done by an agreement between the ALP, the Greens, and an independent
MP,as can be done in NZ, with MMP.

This could also, then, have resulted in Greens MP's being appointed as
ministers in the government, as has happened in NZ, in portfolios
relevant to their interests.

This would have meant that the Liberal-National Party would not have the
number of seats that it currently has, but, the result would be far more
representative of the voters' wishes, and, the "National Party" did
betray the voters that voted for them on their primary policy, which the
National Party promptly abandoned after the election,when it dishonoured
is election promises, and rejoined its master, the Liberal Party, as
part of that party, having conned the voters into voting for it as an
independent party.

So, I believe that the number of seats, in such a unicameral parliament,
using MMP, could be kept sufficiently close to the current total number
of seats in both houses of the state parliament, and, the
representation, in terms of the relationship between the number of seats
won, and, the percentage of votes won, bit each party (and by
independents), would be truer than the existing system.

Now, this proposal is quite a significant change from the existing WA
form of state government and election; both in replacing the existing
bicameral system with a unicameral system, and, in replacing the
current, complicated voting system, with a far simpler voting system
(see
http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/votingsub/sample-ballot-paper.html
and http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/mmp/two-ticks-too-easy.html ),
but, it would give an electoral outcome, that should make most, if not
all, happy, (apart from possibly, the National Party of WA, which would
lose some of the seats that it clearly should not have in the state
parliament) as the apparently most democratic form of parliamentary
election, that would most accurately give the number of seats in
parliament, relative to the number of votes won.

As an aside, out of interest, for any expatriate New Zealanders over the
age of 18, in WA, they may be able to register to vote in the current NZ
parliamentary election; more information is at
http://www.everyvotecounts.co.nz/ .

....................................................

2. Regarding the 2007 election of the Australian federal parliament

2007 Australian federal parliamentary election results

House of Representatives (lower house)

From
http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/HousePartyRepresentation-13745.htm
and
http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-13745-NAT.htm

Senate (upper house)

From
http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/SenatePartyRepresentation-13745.htm
and
http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/SenateStateFirstPrefsByGroup-13745-NAT.htm

Totals - both houses

Note:
1. MMP estimate (1) estimates the number of seats, based purely on the percentage of the votes for the whole of the parliament (the average of the percentages for the lower house and the upper house), with a minimum of 5% required to get a percentage of seats.
2.MMP estimate (2) estimates the number of seats on the basis of whichever is greater - the number of electorate seats won, or the percentage of easte of the parliament, based on the percentage of votes won, with a minimum of 5% required to get a percentage of seats.

Which would work (the MMP estimate (2) figures, using 150 electorates and the balance (to make up percentages, where a party gains 5% or more of the party vote) made up of list MP's.

This clearly shows that the Australian election system for the federal parliament, that is currently used, does not reflect the wishes of the voters, and, instead, represents only the interests of the two major parties; the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Party, and may as well be a conspiracy between those two parties, to represent their interest, and act directly and deliberately against the interests of the Australian electors.

Thus, MMP, as proposed above, is the only fair way of reprepresenting the wishes of the Australian electors, in electing the Australian federal parliament.

3. Regarding the UK election of the House of Commons, May 2010

British parliamentary election results
- House of Commons

-from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/election2010/results/
as viewed at 1450WST 20100511

"After 649 of 650 seats declared".

Now, my analysis of those figures:

As 29653638 was 65.1% of eligible electors, this implies that the total number of eligible electors, was 45,550,903.

So, as the Conservatives have promised to reduce the number of seats by 10%, with 45,550,903 electors (in this election), I now create a projection based on the percentages of seats won by each party, using electorates of 100,000, giving 456 electorates, leads to the following, using the assumption that the parties with numbers of seats won, less than 10 per party, would maintain those numbers of seats, totalling 28 seats, subtracted from 456, gives 428 seats.

So, for the three major parties (being the parties that gained a minimum of 5% of the votes), we have
Conservatives 47% -> 201 seats
Labour 40% -> 171 seats
LD 9% -> 39 seats

Now, from those figures, using a target total number of seats of 500, the Conservatives and Labour have exceeded the number of seats that are proportional to their respective percentages of votes; the LD's got 23% of the total votes, and 23% of 500, is 115, so taking the number of seats of the LD's up to 115 (using the difference of 76 seats as list seats), then gives 115 + 171 + 201 + 28 (the seats won by the parties with less than 10 seats) = 515 seats, which then gives
Conservatives 201 seats - 39% of 515 seats
Labour 171 - 33% of 515 seats
LD 115 - 22 % of 515 seats

which, whilst it does not accurately reflect the relative percentages of votes, that were won by each of those three parties, gives a far more accurate repepresentation, in the percentages of seats, of the percentages of votes won by each of the parties, than the existing method of election.

Now, it must be remembered, that this model is based on a number of assumptions, including that the major parties would win the same percentages of electorate seats, and would not need the list seats.

Electorates sized at 75,000 voters, would give 607 electorate seats, which would give more than the existing 650 seats, with the MMP system and list seats.

Electorates of 90,000 would give 506 electorate seats. which would transform (on a proportional basis) the set of figures based on electorate sizes of 100,000, to
Conservatives 47% of 506 -> 238 electorate seats
Labour 40% of 506 -> 202 electorate seats
LD 9% of 506 -> 46 electorate seats; using 600 seats as percentage base, 23% of 600 = 138; thus, 92 list seats

giving a total of 238 + 202 + 138 + 28 = 606 seats, which then gives

Conservatives 238 seats - 39.27% of 606 seats
Labour 202 seats - 33.33% of 606 seats
LD 138 seats - 22.77% of 606 seats

Now, once again, these percentages of seats do not accurately reflect the percentages of votes won by the respective parties, but, once again, they are closer than the existing method of electing the British House of Commons, and, the total number of seats, is close to the reduction in the number of seats that the Conservative Party wants to implement.

So, I suggest that this is the way for the British Government to make elections most accurately reflect the wishes of the voters.

And, it should be remembered, and, emphasised, that the suggestion that Britain should implement the Australian preferential system of voting, is extremely harmful, apart from being clumsy, gratuitously inefficient and anti-democratic (being forced to vote for candidates that the voter does not want, in order to cast a valid vote), the Australian preferential voting sustem, being also named the "Two Party Preferential System" of voting, is designed to eliminate all parties, apart from the two major parties, from the parliament, as it has been doing in Australia, eliminating all parties other than the two main parties; the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Party. The Greens clearly do not have proportional representation in either stae parliaments or the federal parliament, and, the Greens Party is the only party, other than the two major parties, that is "still left standing", at this stage, and, that party will probably be eliminated over time, like the other minor parties before it, due to the design of the Australian electoral system.

Of course, if the British Parliament decides to similarly eliminate all political parties, apart from the two major parties, from its parliament, by adopting the Australian system of preferential voting, thus, eliminating the Liberal Democrats from the British parliament, then that is the choice of the British parliament.

(Added 05 March 2016)
Of course, the simplest, most efficient, and, most democratic, system of selecting members of a legislature, is to exclusively apply first past the post voting, with provision for recall elections. But then, the members of the legislature, would be representing their electorates, and, the other methods, involve the members of the legislature, representing their political parties and sponsors, so the question is, who exactly, are the members of the legislatures, supposed to represent? If it is the electorates, then first past the post voting, with provision for recall elections, is the appropriate method of selecting the members. If it is the political parties and the sponsors, then MMP is the most appropriate menthod of selecting the members.

And, in conclusion, can any voting system both reflect the wishes of the voters, and, prevent a "hung parliament", where the result is a minority government? No. The only ways to prevent elections resulting in a "hung parliament", are either rigged elections, or, dictatorships (which are pretty much the same as rigged elections).

This web page was created on 13 May 2010, and last updated on 06 March 2016