Ie you don’t get a receipt that you can show someone else which shows how you voted and no one can watch over your shoulder to see you vote. This stops people from being bribed or coerced.

On direct democracy – it puts a huge burden on the voting public to educate themselves to a level on each issue to a point where they can make an informed decision. I though thats what we elected our representatives to do?

First the republic then direct democracy. The government that governs least.

You may want to read the basic introduction to the system here.

Again, NZ MMP isn’t the be-all and end-all, and TIMTOWTDI. I swing towards open lists myself (hell, I swing towards abolishing the threshold, since small parties have as much right to be represented as large ones, even if I hate the Christian freaks this would see elected), and maybe that would be more to Australia’s liking.

I think you’ve missed somethign there. The “ballot” in question isn’t the ballot presented to the voter, but the party list, whose order is drawn up by the party. Though I’d also question Antonio’s characterisation – in NZ, party lists have tended to be used to protect incumbents and promote talent and diversity. They can also be used to incentivise candidates in marginal seats, and ACT is using it to push its party vote by putting former finance minister Roger Douglas (yes, the antichrist) at position 3, so he won’t get in unless their vote improves. But they’re not usually used to put unpopular people at the top, and popular ones at the bottom (and anyway, the latter would simply get elected in their constiuencies, reducing the number of slots available to the former).

There are ways of giving people more control over he list. Several European jurisdictions use open list systems, with the voter taking a ballot for a particular party and voting for a candidate or candidates on it; those getting more than a cerain threshold of votes go to the top of the list – a system which both gives significant respect to party decisions, while allowing the voters to have their say.

Past elections it’s been up at 85ish%. I don’t know if this suggests that the detractors writing off the high Green vote as a protest vote against the two majors are right, but it is certainly a new element to consider for both the Greens and the other parties.

I agree with the idea we should have proportional voting. I am a Labor supporter myself but I am such mainly because we’re stuck with two alternatives. The only question is where it would leave local independents like Constable and Woollard, I’m not sure quite how the New Zealand system works with regards to those.

As long as the leakage of preferences from the Greens (ie Green prefs that go to the conservatives rather than Labor) is less than the votes the ALP can gain by drifting to the right, why would they change their positions?

Because it would be foolish for the ALP to assume they are always going to be on the right side of the preference distribution.

In some latte-belt electorates, the two-party contest may become ALP-Green rather than ALP-Liberal, if current trends continue.

Organised numbers people used to dealing with MMP know that you always place your least popular candidates at the top of the ticket – so that they will get elected anyway. The key is to put your really popular candidates in the “swinging” spots on the ballot so that their personal vote helps you to claw enough votes to reach quota.

One way to avoid this is to create multiple ballot sheets randomising the order of the candidates for each party – they do this for the ACT elections – Robinson rotation I think its called. It does to some extent take away some power from the party system as they cannot as easily push candidates into the system by placing them on the top of the ticket. I think its something that should be considered for the Senate votes.

enough strength that the Greens have to be taken seriously but not as much as our vote warrants.

This is the bit I don’t quite understand – they do get taken seriously – they hold part of the balance of power in the Senate. I question whether its worth having two houses of parliament if they’re both going to elect people under similar systems.

I don’t think we should underestimate the value of having a single person represent a given area, even if its value has been increasingly reduced by party discipline meaning they tend to represent the party rather than the people who voted for them. If we dilute responsibility too much then no one ends up being responsible for the electorate they (jointly) represent.

It does have a problem of creating overhangs with parties with concentrated electorate support (which in Australia could be the Nationals?). But it has certainly been a massive step forward for fairness, and it has preserved easy access to representatives, which was one of the things NZ has done well historically (as a small society).

Antonio: In terms of NZ, my vague memory was that NZ National was keen on MMP as a way of preserving a broad Right coalition majority (Nats, Act, NZ First etc). I remember this tactical factor being the predominant reason for the change rather than grassroots pressure per se.

Your memory fails you. Both major parties in NZ hated the idea of MMP, seeing it as the end of their cosy oligopoly and hating the idea of having to negotiate with coalition parties for legislation. They fought tooth and nail against it, but in the end, we forced it on them. But the right in particular was not keen on the idea, because they correctly saw it as the death-knell for their neo-liberal policies. While it meant they got ACT into Parliament openly (as opposed to through the Labour party), as we’re seeing in our current election, the right struggles to get a majority under a fair election system, and as a result has been forced to moderate its policies significantly. And they really, really don’t like that.

Hold a public inquiry (a royal commission, or a Canadian-style citizen’s jury) to examine the options, then hold a referendum on it.

In NZ, the former came about because of the patent unfairness of single-plurality member districts (FPP): we had two elections in a row where Labour won a plurality of the popular vote, but National won a majority of seats (something which can happen easily under Australian-style preferential voting as well). The tricky bit was getting from there to a referendum. Our Royal Commission on the Electoral System presented its report in 1986. It took until the 1990 election campaign to beat the politicians (who could see that PR would disrupt their cosy oligarchy) into committing to a referendum, and then we almost lost in the end because big business spent millions to try and retain the undemocratic system which gave its minions a stranglehold on power.

IMHO, the WA result provides a perfect reason for starting this process. A party getting 12% of the vote but no reprsentation (while another party with 5% gets 7% of the seats) is so patently unfair that it is obvious to everyone.

I reckon the most likely breakthrough will be Balmain and maybe Marrickville too in the 2011 NSW election. But when you look at the New Dems in Canada (29 seats out of 308) and the Lib Dems in the UK you can see that third parties can break through in single-member electorates, but it’s hard.

In reality I think electoral reform will follow the Greens breaking through and getting a handful of seats in inner city Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and maybe Brisbane and (Federal) Hobart, enough strength that the Greens have to be taken seriously but not as much as our vote warrants.

The most impressive thing in WA is we have broken through the 9-10% barrier decisively. It’s easy to think that the Greens have hit a ceiling at around 7, 8, 9, 10% depending on what state you are in (excluding Tasmania and the ACT), but truth be told the demographic that makes up much of the Greens vote makes up about 20% of the population, meaning that the Greens have more room to grow. And the Greens polling 15-20% will probably hold a handful of lower house seats, and likely a Senator in every state.

Organised numbers people used to dealing with MMP know that you always place your least popular candidates at the top of the ticket – so that they will get elected anyway. The key is to put your really popular candidates in the “swinging” spots on the ballot so that their personal vote helps you to claw enough votes to reach quota.

In terms of NZ, my vague memory was that NZ National was keen on MMP as a way of preserving a broad Right coalition majority (Nats, Act, NZ First etc). I remember this tactical factor being the predominant reason for the change rather than grassroots pressure per se.

Going back to Mark’s original statement:

“If, as has been reported, Rudd also has some sort of dream of a grand and enduring re-alignment which would consign the right of politics to a permanently embattled position, the best way to achieve this would be through electoral reform which would enable the ALP and the Greens to work together in a much less adversarial fashion.”

There are quite a number of people on the Left that seem to share this view that Australia has a natural Left majority which is stymied by an electoral system which favours the Right. I’m not so convinced by this and I wonder where the evidence for this lies. As it stands, the current electoral systems seems to encourage both major parties to move somewhat to the centre in order to secure preferences and an ever-increasing share of the non-tribalised vote. This suits those on the Right of the ALP and the Left of the Libs. Under an MMP system, I would expect (pace Germany, Austria & the Scandinavian countries) that there would be a fracturing of the major parties over time. Left wing ALP members would eventually drift organisationally towards the Greens or a new Left party. Similarly, it is not inconceivable that social liberals would move out of the Libs towards an avowedly liberal party (cf. the German FDP). At the same time, I think there would be an increased opportunity for the radical Right. How this all plays out is anyone’s guess. In Holland and Germany there are grand coalitions across the political spectrum in order to lock out the radical Right & Left respectively. In Denmark the Right government seeks the support of the Radical Right party on certain budgetary bills and the broader support of the Left parties on more centrist legislation.

Certainly none of this adds up to a permanent Left majority to me. Simply adding up the polling numbers in elections, placing the Greens & ALP in one column & the Coalition & FF in another and seeing that the Left seems to have more support does is not necessarily reflective of how the cards will fall in an MMP election where minor party preferencing has less power and quota is paramount.

I had East Timor in mind when I made the first comment: the nation is one electorate, which does make the division of seats more or less exactly proportional, but has a “representation” weakness, In the sense that no one really has an MP from their district or local area. Party list only.

They did in the first parliament 2002-7: 75 PR and 13 District reps, but in 2007 PR was reduced to 65 seats and district reps abolished.

Again, thats why I like the MMP system a la NZ- especially the party list top-up approach. Good balance of PR and local representation. Bring it on here!

It may be blamed for it, but it’s hard to see why on the numbers.

Until the 1980s Japan’s House of Representatives was elected from single member districts, whose boundaries were established during the US occupation. There were some minor adjustments made during the 80s but the gross malapportionment remained where rural districts had only one-third the voters as urban districts. It wasn’t until the fall of the LDP in 1993 that the short-lived coalition government redrew all the boundaries and introduced some proportional seats.

Currently the Reps is comprised of 180 members elected from 11 multi-member districts and 300 members from single member districts. Voters get two votes, one for their local member and one for the Party, but it’s Parallel Voting, not MMP.
The number of ‘Party’ seats is determined entirely by the Party vote and without regard for the number of individual seats won. Party list seats are not used to ‘top-up’ numbers the way they are in NZ or Gernmany

The top two results in the 2005 election were:

LDP vote: 38% Local seats: 291 Party seats: 77
DPJ vote: 31% Local seats: 52 Party seats: 61

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