A couple of days ago, my tweet on proportionality in Australia’s lower house made a lot of people very mad: Although I worded this tweet a little provocatively, I was making a serious point: Lack of proportionality results in unfair outcomes. This affects minor parties most (The Greens got 12% of the vote and 2.6% of the seats, One Nation got 5% of the vote and 0% of the seats) but major parties too (Labor won more than half the seats while receiving fewer total votes than the LNP bloc).
In simple terms preferential voting leads to the election of the least unpopular candidate (as opposed to the most popular), I think this is a good thing.
As for the neutrality of AEC, in name, yes, but in practice that’s questionable. I refer back to the late Peter Andren’s requests to the AEC for differing outline this then electorate of Calare.
Or even my current electorate in central west NSW that ridiculously goes all the way down to the very different Riverina
You're generalising the term gerrymandering beyond its usual meaning. If I'm reading you correctly, endorsing (or not actively moving to) any system other than thresholdless PR is gerrymandering.
I have a few other quibbles:
1) gerrymandering implies an active manipulation of the boundaries by the political parties, yet I think you still need to show that it has happened.
2) There's a tradeoff in any kind of voting system. There's a tension between ensuring local community representation and proportionality. That is not inherently undemocratic, just a difference in the choice of principles.
3) PR can also waste votes depending on the thresholds set.
I don't love STV, and I do like proportionality (I'd like multi-member STV districts). But if you suggest that we get fairer or better outcomes in a PR system, you need only look at Europe to see that the problem is not so easily fixed as with a change in the voting system. I wish it were that easy, but there's a deeper problem with elite capture of government that happens regardless of the voting system.
Start with Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem and work out to the larger theory.
It is *mathematically impossible* to have a democratic system that can’t be criticised along these or similar lines.
Electoral systems that have features that favour smaller parties sound more representative, such as those that are used in Israel or Italy, but in practice they result in coalitions that are decidedly not representative of the majority very often.
So many things I disagree with here.
In simple terms preferential voting leads to the election of the least unpopular candidate (as opposed to the most popular), I think this is a good thing.
As for the neutrality of AEC, in name, yes, but in practice that’s questionable. I refer back to the late Peter Andren’s requests to the AEC for differing outline this then electorate of Calare.
Or even my current electorate in central west NSW that ridiculously goes all the way down to the very different Riverina
I may look again later.
You're generalising the term gerrymandering beyond its usual meaning. If I'm reading you correctly, endorsing (or not actively moving to) any system other than thresholdless PR is gerrymandering.
I have a few other quibbles:
1) gerrymandering implies an active manipulation of the boundaries by the political parties, yet I think you still need to show that it has happened.
2) There's a tradeoff in any kind of voting system. There's a tension between ensuring local community representation and proportionality. That is not inherently undemocratic, just a difference in the choice of principles.
3) PR can also waste votes depending on the thresholds set.
I don't love STV, and I do like proportionality (I'd like multi-member STV districts). But if you suggest that we get fairer or better outcomes in a PR system, you need only look at Europe to see that the problem is not so easily fixed as with a change in the voting system. I wish it were that easy, but there's a deeper problem with elite capture of government that happens regardless of the voting system.
Start with Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem and work out to the larger theory.
It is *mathematically impossible* to have a democratic system that can’t be criticised along these or similar lines.
Electoral systems that have features that favour smaller parties sound more representative, such as those that are used in Israel or Italy, but in practice they result in coalitions that are decidedly not representative of the majority very often.
There will always be such issues. Get over it.