Saturday, October 11, 2008

A Term Which Has Always Bugged Me

Many political junkies like to refer (usually derogatorily) to a kind of voting scheme as a "first past the post" system, thereby implying something shady and underhanded. As I understand it, this is contrasted with a proportional representational system, where voters don't get to choose a particular representative from their area to represent them, but do get to make more sure that at least the leaders of their favored party (even if it's small and kooky) get into the legislative body to make trouble.

(Close readers may have noted that my sympathies lie mostly on the other side.)

Now, to my ear, "first past the post," when applied to voting, would mean a system where the first candidate to get, for example, fifty thousand votes in a district would win that district, no matter what happens later. This is what first means -- that it happens before something else.

As far as I know, this is not actually the system in use anywhere in the known universe. "First past the post," in practice, means "winning a majority of the votes actually cast legally in that district." To my mind, that's winning.

The other alternatives -- which also include instant-runoff ballots, to encourage the indecisive and obsessive reshufflers of their "Top Six" -- all seem to be deliberately designed to encourage and succor small, radical parties that will never become broad enough to actually govern, and so will be focusing all of their energies on being spoilers or minor coalition partners.

And, to be blunt, I don't see why the designers of any political system would want to encourage parties that will never govern. The point of democratic politics is not to let people "have their voices heard," or to make them feel better about themselves -- it's to give those people a say (second-hand and limited as it is) in how their country is governed. And forcing single-issue folks to form coalitions and make compromises will give them more of the tools to be able to govern than letting them stay off in their own little dreamlands.

7 comments:

Nick said...

FPP systems are called that because that's what they're called. It's the technical name, as opposed to the various forms of proportional representation. You may not like the name, that it's been in common use for a very long time.

But to use the example of my country, New Zealand, a PR system was introduced in order to "give those people a say (second-hand and limited as it is) in how their country is governed". We had a system were minor parties were regularly receiving significant parts of the vote but the people who voted for these parties never had any cay in how the government worked.

Now we have a system that means that the vast majority of people do end up with having meaningful representation in parliament and no one party gets to rule without consultation with the others. That can cause problems sure, but no more than we had when we had "elected dictatorships" (as one political scientist described the old system) where one party got to make decisions unopposed for three years until the next election. Interestingly, no 'single issue' parties get elected, although a numebr of parties that come from more niche routes do.

I think that the system in NZ now means that the variety of views within the community are now better represented and are taken into consideration when making policy. It's not as petty as 'letting people have their say' - that's whey we have freedom of association and freedom of expression. But it does mean we have more nuanced and complex policy that has to please a number of stakeholders to get up.

I can't see how that's a bad thing.

Anonymous said...

"First past the post," in practice, means "winning a majority of the votes actually cast legally in that district." To my mind, that's winning.

Actually, in countries with more than two viable parties, it's possible to win more votes than any other candidate (thus winning the seat) without getting more than a plurality of the votes. In my riding, there are at least five registered candidates (CPC (non-communist, Liberal, NDP, Green [1], and an independent using her facebook account as her campaign website). In theory, when the Liberal wins, she might manage it with slightly over 20% of the vote.

In reality, this is pretty solidly Liberal riding and I should have picked one where the contest was more dynamic.

In any case, it's not uncommon for 60% or more of the Canadian population to have plausible deniability where the actions of the Federal government are concerned. In 1997, for example, Jan "the strangler" Chretien's Liberals won 155 of 301 seats but only got 38% of the vote.

Our system for historical reasons allocates some regions more MPs per unit population than others, which means well placed concentrations of voters in certain regions can pay off absurdly well. The PEI for PEIers (Except Those Bastards in Summerside) Party could get four seats of on just .25% of the national vote, which is twice as many seats as the PCs won in 1993 on 16& of the vote.


1: Whose candidate looks, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, a bit like Matt Parkman on Heroes.

Ray said...

Two corrections -

"a proportional representational system, where voters don't get to choose a particular representative from their area to represent them"

In a multi-seat constituency PR system, such as the one used in Ireland, the representative you elect is from your area. You mean a list system and even there, the list can operate at different levels and may not exclude something you'd call 'your area'.

"First past the post," in practice, means "winning a majority of the votes actually cast legally in that district."

As James points out, it's usually a plurality, not a majority. (even in the US, candidates like Nader may take enough of the vote that the winner has less than 50%)

Andrew Wheeler said...

James and Ray:True -- I should have said plurality rather than majority.

It's my impression that these kinds of systems generally have thresholds (of the percentage of the vote) that must be met for a candidate to be certified the winner -- and that, in the case when that doesn't happen, the top two candidates have a second, run-off election. (This may be a US-centric assumption, though -- are there countries/regions where a candidate could "win" with 25% of the vote?)

Nick: Fair enough; I don't know the history of the term. I may be reacting to how I've seen it used by people on the Internet (always a danger), but I wouldn't be surprised if it were originally coined to have a slightly derogatory air to it. (Something like "snail mail," perhaps.)

I guess the biggest difference -- and it's a continuum, with the USA on one end and Italy on the other -- is whether a political system encourages a small number of large coalition parties, or many smaller and more-focused parties. I am an American, so the big-party model looks "normal" to me, and I mostly notice the places in the world (like Italy, and intermittently Israel) where the lots-of-parties model breaks down regularly. Things that run smoothly stay out of the news, so I haven't seen much about coalition governments working well.

Nick said...

I shudder to think what Italy would look like with a Berlusconi government that wasn't impeded by coalitions, but I take your point. And coalitions can be terribly unstable as you say.

From the US point of view (and I was going to write about this originally but didn't) is the mess caused by unmanageable coalitions any worse than the situation you had when no one would sign off the federal budget in the mid 90s? Checks and balances can get messy...

Anyway, in NZ you could win a seat with 25% of the vote easily. But the over all distribution of seats in parliament is decided by your party vote (you vote twice - once for the electoral seat you live in and once for the party you want to see run the country) so you'd need more than that to actually run the country.

Ray said...

In the UK, there is no run-off election, the seat is won by the candidate that wins a plurality. This can be (but usually isn't) as low as 26%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_general_election_records#Lowest_winning_share_of_the_vote

Anonymous said...

In reality, this is pretty solidly Liberal riding and I should have picked one where the contest was more dynamic.

*sob*

Kitchener Centre

Conservative Stephen Woodworth 16,480 votes

Liberal Karen Redman 16,141 votes

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