Talk:Proportional representation/Archive 1

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Language cleanup?

• The language seems overly complex for such a non-technical subject. for instance, what does this mean?

• The bloc [vote] can result in "super-majoritarian" results in which, in addition to the normal disproportionality of single-member majoritarian systems, geographical variations that could create majority-minority districts become subsumed into the larger districts.

Agreed it's unclear. Using PR as a "class" of systems not a "feature" of systems seems to be the root problem. Fixing this... need help.

I am not asking for the meaning of "to subsume"

• What is all that talking about districts? The simplest proportional represesentative system is one in which the number of single votes is counted - using districts as administrative counting facilities only - x% of votes should be represented by x% of the available seats.

• districts are a means to cripple the proportionality - as the article states repeatedly.

• I will attempt to clean the article up somewhat, but some Native Speaker might want to tackle simplifying the longer and convoluted sentences.

--Zanaq 5 July 2005 19:26 (UTC)

Working on it. Cutting out POV too..

Removed template

Why was the politics template removed? This is a voting, democracy & politics related articles isn't it? C mon 18:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I am removing the New Zealand section

It is too odd to just have one country listed, and none others. --Midnighttonight 04:29, 28 May 2006 (UTC) Here is the text if people want to re-add it:

==New Zealand== [[New Zealand]] has a system of proportional representation[http://www.nzes.org/exec/show/1996]. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission reported on New Zealand [http://www.unescap.org/huset/women/reports/index.htm] that parliamentary elections "were held under a single member constituency First Past the Post system, i.e. single-seat district elections, until 1996 when following widespread dissatisfaction with the fairness of this electoral system and with political parties in general, a system of proportional representation — Mixed Member Proportional — was introduced. Under this system voters have two votes, one for an electorate MP and one for a party. There are 120 seats in New Zealand's parliament. After the 1999 general election 61 were electorate seats, 6 Maori seats and 53 party seats." Especially the jump of female representatives elected percentage-wise was stark (jump from 21% to 30% in one election). --Midnighttonight 04:31, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

It should come back as it demonstrates what having a more proportional system does to the legislature.

Section at the end

Right at the end of the article is this seemingly out-of-place statement...

One of the limitations of proportional representation is that it has the potential in some jurisdictions, such as Canada, to accentuate vote dilution. This is especially true if list ridings come at the expense of urban ridings. The potential fallout effect is worse representation for urban and minority populations. It seems it was dropped in by an editor who was unsure where to put it. Not only is it out of place, but I'm not sure what it's trying to say. Can anyone explain it? Maury 12:13, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

"Vote dilution" is propaganda from someone who thinks that parties or ethnicities own votes rather than voters owning votes. Not a neutral term. Has no place except as a slogan like vote splitting.

Hi, I'm the editor who moved that statement here from the article on Mixed Party Proportional. It was added by an anonymous user who added a bunch of criticisms all at once to the Mixed Member Proportional page. The text seemed to me like an attempt to politicize the Wikipedia entry in advance of a referendum on the matter in the Ontario provinicial election in October 2007. I felt uncomfortable with the content, but I'm not a policital scientist, so I didn't want to remove it myself. Instead, I prune and grafted the additions to their logical homes, since none of the criticisms were specific to MMP... you'd have to talk to 66.96.29.190 if you want an explanation of what it is. Wikisteff 15:08, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

After rereading the criticism a couple of times, I've decided that as unreferenced material, it deserves to be pulled. It's cryptic and without a worked example, it probably doesn't deserve to be here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikisteff (talk • contribs) 20:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

There do not seem to be any anti PR links on this article. Further there is nothing about sortition which is presumably a PR system since it involves a random seletion from the electorate as a whole. Also the whole tone of the article sounds like a a pro PR document. There is no pro and con section etc. 70.150.94.194 15:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I came here specifically looking for pro/con discussion as can be found on the Plurality voting system article, but it's lacking that. Moogle001 19:23, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Strongly agree, but I've come to think I was naive two years ago to believe Wikipedia's concept could ever deliver NPOV on any political topic. Why bother to revise or correct? The final content of this PR article (already little more than a blog proposing PR) will be finally controlled by 1) some small group that has an intense interest in replacing the current American voting system 2) not even the more educated from that set, but those who have, as David Letterman used to delicately say, "a lot of free time on their hands." Wiki can handle apolitical trivia, though, provided nobody has even the most trivial financial stake in the article. What was Hepburn's first film? Good article. What is the oldest Cadillac dealership in the USA? Not a chance.Profhum 17:11, 26 August 2007 (UTC) Must admit that I am surprised that there is no mention of sortition yet, since it's the only system that provides true PR without breaking the direct link between constituencies and representatives. Of course it's not popular with the party elite of any party since it would destroy party power if implemented but that's not a good reason for the rest of us to ignore it. -- Derek Ross | Talk 06:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Very strongly agree and have added sections on problems of proportionality and the ideological use of this term as an absolute pass/fail noun (leading to drivel like "semi-proportional" when in fact even strict systems have a cutoff support level and tiny parties are excluded...). The whole presentatino of the systems needs to be neutralized with statistics about party proportionality and actual election results in several countries.

Emphasizing English speaking countries is fine because they are the ones reading this article, in other languages countries that speak those language should be emphasized as the debates are very different. It's the English speaking countries (including India in some ways) that have the old FPTP systems inherited from the UK, so that should be the emphasis.

Question

I had my own idea for a PR system, but I'm not sure whether there's already some official term for it; I can't see it described on this article. I'll describe it and if anyone knows the formal term, please tell me:

The whole constituency, or country, has a list of candidates and parties (each candidate must belong to exactly 1 party). Voters can vote for either just a party, or a candidate, in which case their vote will be counted for that candidate's party. Once the number of seats per party have been decided on a PR basis, the candidates elected for each party are decided by counting each's number of votes and putting them in rank order. Each party may choose a certain small number (say, 5) of their candidates guaranteed to be selected first, in order to form a small core of government (ie. head of state, cabinet/administration, etc.). === Jez === 00:05, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

UPDATE: OK, after digging around a bit it looks like I'm basically describing a 'most open list' party-list PR system. The only thing is, on Wikipedia's "open list" page, it doesn't describe the option of the party reserving a small number of candidates to be selected first, as I've described here. I've added it to the Open list page, if this is wrong for some reason please tell me.

It's "open list" really, since most parties force their candidates to agree to cede their seats to the leaders and deputies if the situation can arise in which there may be a need for this.

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I believe this definition is more accurate/common, but correct me if I'm wrong. I've left the old version at the bottom of this page for comparison. --DanKeshet

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Old Version

An election system where competing factions share seats in an assembly according to the proportion of votes they received. The number of seats they each receive determines the number of votes they get when voting on decisions. This is the most common method for electing legislative assemblies or parliaments in modern democracies.

Single transferable vote in a multi-member constituency

Is this really the system used in Australia's Senate? State Senate elections are for either 6 or 12 candidates so the first sentence doesn't apply. Or does it apply to one of the States? Fat Red 06:19, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

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I removed the following as I deemed it disturbing to the flow of the article -- 213.231.204.211 17:15, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

For example, the electoral system used to elect the Romanian Chamber of Deputies also includes an additional 15 single member seats elected from at large constituencies, each of which represents one of 15 ethnic minority groups too small in number and too dispersed to win representation in parliament under the other electoral mechanism. (See the article, "Seat/Vote Proportionality in Romanian and Spanish Parliamentary Elections," by John Hickman and Chris Little in the Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Volume 2, Number 2, 2000, pp. 197-212.)

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Unluckily, the only anglo-american major nation who has implemented something barely called PR is New Zealand. However, the debate in UK, especially Wales and Scotland (which have already made local improvements and implementations) is fairly old.

British Columbia, Canada represents the latest struggle to achive some level of PR after centuries of two-party, single-seat, winner-takes-all, First-Past-the-Post (FTPT) struggles:

http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca

the 30-50 hours of lectures can be considered a good example of the learning prosess for typical FPTP citizens of one of the three major, remaining non-PR nations.

http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public/learning_resources/learning_materials/av

- If you'd like to watch — or listen to — the Assembly's learning phase presentations, visit the Audio and Video link on the left.

To accompany these resources, we also offer other educational material of interest. We have some educational "fact sheets" that are easy to read. Our Other Links page is worth a visit, as it has links to numerous sites that cover electoral reform issues. Students and Educators will be interested in our Educational Resources pages. And, of course, we have info on the BC-STV electoral system that the Assembly decided to recommend for B.C.

The BC situation is also interesting because of its two referenda (in 2005 and 2009) which got radically different results for the same system! Shows the power of a "no" campaign. It was in response to this that I had to add a section clarifying terminology. This drivel about "semi-proportional" needs to disappear, proportional is an adjective and not a noun...

- Dear Anon, New Zealand's system is PR. It is a proportional allocation of seats with two-tiers. Furthermore don't classify NZ as 'Anglo-American' a.) we have no historic links to the US b.) we also have a significant Maori population --Gregstephens 22:59, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Like New Zealand's minority population even comes close to matching America's. You're nation is 95% white, ours is 60%, and falling rapidly. You'd be crazy to say that the UK (anglo's - for the more dense amongst us) and the USA and New Zealand aren't related. Almost all of the countries "related" to the UK in most forms use SMD's instead of PR. And, of course, almost every other nation does use PR. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.251.3.34 (talk) 09:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

this article is full of interesting info BUT

is there a spot on wikipedia or elsewhere to get a quick easy to read run-down of which super tuesday states do proportional representation, and which are WTA? cuz this should be easier to read and figure out what's going on, i think. I'll be around. thanks, PhillyTransplant'08 16:29, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

However, that relates specifically to Super Tuesday. You'll find the table you're looking for at Super Tuesday (2008). —C.Fred (talk) 16:32, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

yo

this article should be renamed 'List of Democracies' Ijanderson977 (talk) 20:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

India

The world's largest democracy with a population of over 1 billion people - INDIA - finds no mention at all in this article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 47phantom (talk • contribs) 10:49, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Now mentioned as one of the countries still using a very non party-proportional system (FPTP). Still not enough obviously, someone knowledgeable needs to add more on what the debate has been on this issue in India. Arguably with universal and widely trusted voting machines it should be incredibly easy to implement an STV, MMP or even a quite complex hybrid type systems and get quick results.

History - Ireland

I've expanded the previous sentence "STV has been used in the Republic of Ireland since 1919.", which was anachronistic and misleading. The election concerned was not to the parliament of the Republic of Ireland; only one constituency used STV; and also the two MPs elected under the system opposed independence for Ireland and did not join the first Dáil. The elected MPs who did not take their seats in the UK parliament, formed the First Dáil, and declared an Irish Republic in 1919 had all been elected under the old Plurality system or else returned unopposed. (Technically, the first General Election after independence wasn't to the parliament of "the Republic of Ireland" either, since the formal "Republic" name wasn't adopted until 1948.) Steve Graham (talk) 11:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Countries using PR (was Mexico)

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_voting_systems_by_nation , Mexico uses Parallel voting, which I don't consider to be proportional. Removing. jlam (talk) 19:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#List_of_countries_using_proportional_representation, should we redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_voting_systems_by_nation

jlam (talk) 19:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

This is exactly the kind of drivel you end up with if you define PR as a noun, which it isn't.

Chile

Chile has not a Party List system, it has a Binominal system, with two chambers and no proportional representation. I live in Chile and i can give faith for it. Sorry the bad english. In fact, if you investigate, recently the senate has decline the opportunity to reform or change the binominal system. If you can fix it, please. --190.45.240.75 (talk) 23:34, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Chile could be considered a party-list system in which each district only has two seats. But, personally, I don't that that fits the criterion. So I guess I agree with you.74.251.26.57 (talk) 07:07, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Removed broken link

I removed a broken link to Two-party_system#Advantages_and_problems. The section "Advantages and Problems" has been removed from that article. It may perhaps have been put somewhere else. I had a quick scan of that article's talk page and got the impression that the section had moved somewhere else, but I'm not certain and don't have time now to look it up properly.

TRiG (talk) 12:56, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Improvements Needed: Simplify and Add countries and examples

1. As other posters have noted this is way too obfuscated, please use simpler language.

2. We also need a list of countries using this method. ie Iraq, Germany et al

3. Examples of proportional voting in action. --Capsela 16:47, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, are all the references to English necessary? Are English-speaking nations the only major exception to a PR world? Neutral world-view and all. Kinst 00:02, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

A 2 column table with a list of countries using PR and PR type (a short 1-5 word term describing what variant of PR it is using), sorted by this latter column, would be great. Rick Anderson of fairvote.org claims there are 80 nations using PR. What do people think? I can start building it on my own user page, once I have 10 or so I can paste it in this article. jlam 18:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Looking around, should Afghanistan and Iraq also be on this list? They look to me like they use PR to at least some extent in their legislatures. See the Wikipedia articles on "Constitution of Afghanistan" & "Iraqi legislative election, December 2005." Snowden666 (talk) 15:31, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I've done some more reading on India's legislature and have talked to folks from India, and I would argue its upper house (the Rajya Sabha) doesn't count as a true example of proportional representation. It's elected in a convoluted way. It’s sometimes noted as an example of “indirect” proportional representation, because it’s elected by the members of the lower house of each state legislature through the voting process single transferable vote. However, the state lower houses (the Vidhan Sabhas) are elected via winner-take-all districts, and this makes the Rajya Sabha not proportionally representative of the people. Since it has much less power, the Rajya Sabha really functions as a way to give honorary offices to people who are otherwise unelectable, as part of political favors or also for good reasons—-to people who are competent technocrats but who don’t know how to campaign politically. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_India , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajya_Sabha , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidhan_Sabha , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidhan_Parishad Snowden666 (talk) 11:38, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Democratic Principles

If no-one can expand or give some additional explanation of the sentence "PR is a democratic principle rather than an electoral system in itself.", it should probably be removed as it adds nothing to the understanding of PR at this point in the text. Thanks. CSProfBill (talk) 17:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Done -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 23:43, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Semi-democratic?

The article states "proportional representation is often categorized as a democratic system, and the US and UK systems as semi-democratic" and cites as a reference a short paper from Mout Holyoke College. That paper nowhere uses the term "semi democratic." In fact, I've never heard that term in any credible source as a categorization of type of government. Does anybody have a better source for categorizing governments as "semi democratic?" If not, I am going to delete that sentence. Bond Head (talk) 17:46, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I have removed this statement. Bond Head (talk) 21:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Loser delegation in a single-member constituency

Does this process exist anywhere? Or is it just original research? It has no citations. --Red King (talk) 13:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Article is biased where it claims "center-based" systems are undesirable and extreme.

A paragraph in the article says: "The undesirable "extreme" of a "Center Based" system (like in Condorcet method) might be seen as a party system where the "center" has an unproportional and undesirable strong position in the formation of any governing coalition." The paragraph should be removed.

Centric systems are obviously not extreme. Centric is the opposite of extreme.

Regarding their alleged undesirability... only someone who believes proportionality is the goal, rather than just a technique that may help achieve some other goal (for example, laws & policies that maximize the welfare of society), would necessarily conclude that centric systems are undesirable. Advocates of proportional representation tend to define the "representativeness" and "fairness" of a legislature in an overly narrow way that makes these terms equivalent to proportionality. That's misleading, since what really matters is the legislature's output (laws & policies), not the characteristics of individual representatives. In other words, a more reasonable definition of representativeness is how closely the laws & policies produced by the legislature match what the voters themselves would produce in a hypothetical well-functioning direct democracy. (It's assumed the voters in the direct democracy would make collective decisions using a voting method at least as good as the one used within legislatures and groups that operate under Robert's Rules: the sequential pairwise majority elimination method, sometimes called agenda voting. Note that this method tends to produce "centrist" median outcomes, and can be considered a Condorcet method since it satisfies the Condorcet criterion, as well as the more general criterion known as "top cycle" or Smith. Ideally the voters in the direct democracy would use an even better Condorcet method, for example Maximize Affirmed Majorities, which minimizes the sizes of majorities who prefer losing alternatives over the winning alternative in the cases where majority preferences are like rock/paper/scissors. MAM constructs the order of finish a piece at a time, by considering the majorities one at a time, from largest majority to smallest majority.)

One can similarly define accountability: how closely the laws & policies produced collectively by the office-holders match those that would be produced by a well-functioning direct democracy. Or a stronger definition: minimizing the number of voters who on some issue prefer a policy other than the one enacted.

Given representativeness & accountability defined in terms of collective output rather than individuals' characteristics, it's quite plausible--and likely, in my opinion--that a good Condorcet voting method (for example, Maximize Affirmed Majorities) will elect legislatures (and executive offices) significantly more representative and accountable than proportional methods do. (To see this, consider a candidate who wants to win and is deciding what position to take on some issue. If she takes a position away from the median voter's position, she risks that some other candidate will take the median position on that issue and match her positions on the other issues, so that a majority would tend to prefer that other candidate, all else being equal. The further from the median position, the larger the potential majority who would prefer another candidate. Given a voting method such as MAM, which pays attention to majorities' relative preferences, why would she choose to take that risk?)

(The same is plausible for centrist quasi-proportional voting methods. For example, a method that awards much power and/or many extra seats to the party that would win if voters' rankings of the parties were tallied using a good Condorcet method, as if it were a single-winner election. If the system is also parliamentary, the powers awarded to that party might include selection of prime minister and cabinet. Such methods would make parties who take accountable positions much more competitive electorally than proportional systems do.)

The big advantage of the best Condorcet methods over proportional methods is that the electoral competition to take accountable positions (by candidates who want to win) would cause compromises on issues to be, in effect, chosen by the voters on election day, rather than left to be determined later by legislators who rarely make it clear to the voters before election day how they will compromise after they fail to win a majority of seats. Given proportional methods, candidates & parties tend to win seats by advocating what their "supporters" believe is best on a few issues, without revealing what compromises they will settle for when they fail to win a majority of seats, and saying even less about other, less salient issues. That's where most corruption occurs, by which I mean policies that favor rich special interest minorities to the detriment of society. (I'm not saying corruption is limited to proportional methods; I'm saying Condorcet methods ought to be best at reducing it, due to the stronger incentive to avoid taking unaccountable positions.)

(Above I used the term "supporters" reluctantly, since "support" is not yet defined in Wikipedia in the context of voting, and the word is often misused. A proper definition would mention that support is relative; in other words, "support of X" is a linguistic abbreviation that means a preference for X over some unspecified Y that may or may not be clear in the context, and X might not be the most preferred alternative of the supporter of X. Similarly, opposition is relative. It's misleading to equate support with "voting for" since the voter may prefer alternatives she didn't vote for; voting for a less preferred alternative is a common strategy when the voter believes her more preferred alternatives can't win. For example, many voters who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries and for Obama in November 2008 presumably still preferred Clinton when they voted for Obama, but after the Democrats didn't nominate Clinton those voters concluded, reasonably, that she no longer had a chance to win. To say they supported Obama is less precise than saying they preferred Obama over McCain. For another example, a voter may vote for a less preferred party when she believes a more preferred party won't win enough votes to reach the minimum quota required by some proportional representation systems, or when she fears some even worse party might win a plurality of seats and the perks that tend to accompany that, such as the prime minister's office and agenda control. All of these are examples of "lesser of evils" voting--which is a nasty rhetorical way of saying voting for a compromise in order to defeat a less preferred alternative--and the latter example may explain why there tend to be two large parties and less competition than one might expect even in proportional representation systems that don't require a minimum quota.) SEppley (talk) 16:02, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

History section

Thomas Hare in 1859 wrote to JS Mill regarding PR - something Mill himself was working on and featured in his essay 'Recent Writers on Reform' (1859) and his work 'Considerations on Representative Government' (later!). I don't really know enough, nor have the time to incorporate this into the History section, so maybe someone else could? 82.46.100.224 15:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC) (Gazelle - oops, didn't sign in!)

The Hare system of STV was put into use in Alberta, Canada in 1926 and was used as the province's voting system until 1956. Although, as is pointed out on this webpage, using STVs in single-emember ridings (the rural parts of the province)is not really PR. The province's large cities were given multi-member constituencies to help ensure PR in those places. (Tom Monto, 2012/August)) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.3.241.17 (talk) 14:36, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

These sentence in the 'Methods of Proportional Representation' either wrong or deeply misleading

"Proportional representation allows all voters a degree of influence on the political process. Proportional systems typically use political parties as the measure of representation. For example, a party that receives 15% of the votes under such a system receives 15% of the seats.[1] By contrast, the established parties in current US and UK elections can, and most often do, win control of the parliament with support from as little as 20-25% of eligible voters, at the cost of smaller parties.[2]"

The 2nd sentence either means with 20-25% of the vote, or with the support of 20-25% of the electorate.

If the first it is wrong. America has a strong 2 party system meaning that the winning party in elections almost always has a share of the vote in the high 40's if not actually more than 50%. The UK roughly has a 2 and a half party system, meaning lower vote shares but still the lowest record for a party to get a majority is 35%, and that's the only time ever below 40%.

If it actually means % of the electorate, i.e. the people eligible to vote rather than who acutally vote then it is misleading as it refers to a different statistic than the first sentence and hence you can't just contrast the two. A party under PR with 15% of the vote receives 15% of seats, it doesn't matter what % of the electorate that is. The 2nd sentence should be deleted or altered as it is just misleading as is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.227.171 (talk) 20:28, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Removed the first/worst of these sentences. Didn't change the statistics, but added more that I'm sure of (for Canada). Percentage of all voters in the electorate vs. actual voting in any given election seems to be what's at issue in these statistics. Feel free to further clarify.

If the article is going to refer to low percentages of eligible voters for non-proportional systems, it should cite percentages of eligible voters for proportional systems too, so that the statistic provides a meaningful comparison rather than misleading rhetoric. SEppley (talk) 16:08, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I came here to make the same comment; the implication seems to be that a system with 20-25% representation is less biased than systems with 40% representation, which does not seem accurate. I am removing “the situation is arguably more biased”, so as to let the Canadian statistics speak for themselves without comment. This way the system’s results stand on their own as an example of bias.Sallijane (talk) 10:45, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

MMP

The article currently has a section for List PR and a section for STV, but none for MMP. Yet if you look at the map, only one country has STV, so it seems to me that STV is getting disproportionate attention. I will add a section on MMP--Reallavergne (talk) 01:13, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Map

I find it confusing that the map includes a category called Mixed Member Majoritarian (MMM), while the list only speaks of MMP. The two need to be reconciled. The expression MMM does not appear to be used very much (certainly there is no Wikipedia article on it), but New Zealand used the notion and called it the Supplementary Member proposal in the New Zealand Referendum, defined there as follows: "Supplementary Member system (SM); commonly called the parallel system, used in Japan and previously in Russia and Italy; a semi-proportional mixed system with proportional representation used only for the seats filled by lists; and a larger proportion of seats elected by FPP." The Law Commission of Canada's 2004 Report called this same model a "Parallel or Mixed Member Majoritarian System (p. 25) and referred to it as a "semi-PR System." It is a useful distinction, that could be discussed in a section on MMP, but that leaves open how best to reconcile the map and the list. --Reallavergne (talk) 01:19, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Definitions

After adding "Definitions" as a title for the first section, I changed the title of this Talk section to match. Reallavergne (talk) 13:34, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

This reads like someones theory rather than any understood definition that I've ever come across and doesn't have single reference to support it. "Party-proportional representation" rather than a well-defined or accepted term seems to be a phrase entirely invented within wikipedia. Mighty Antar (talk) 13:01, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I have edited the first paragraph for clarity, based on the definition in "Electoral System Design: the New International IDEA Handbook" cited in footnote 2. The main change I made was to clarify that proportionality has a normative dimension to it (hence use of the word "should"). I also wished to clarify that perfect proportionality might not be achieved (notably when mixed systems are used, but also under STV). I also removed the word "proportional" in the first sentence because it is not realistically possibe for all segments of society to be proportionately represented. The general idea of the first sentence is good, but it needed to be expressed more precisely. Reallavergne (talk) 17:33, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I have also considerably reworked the paragraph on Mixed proportional systems, adding a reference and simplifying the presentation somewhat. In particular, I removed the reference to the Additional Member System (AMS), which would only confuse our readers. As best I could determine, AMS is just a variant of MMP, and that terminology is just how MMP is called in the UK with reference to Scotland. I went to the AMS page on Wikipedia, and in particular the Talk page. I found the Wikipedia page to be confusing, and while numerous people have commented about that, it seems that the community has been unable to resolve the confusion, despite a number of intelligent comments about it. Rather than try to clarify that page myself when others before me have evidently failed, I decided to simply remove any reference to AMS in the current page. It is not needed and only confuses things. Reallavergne (talk) 13:34, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Advantages and Disadvantages of PR

"In other words, it's possible to receive 'too many' votes, causing a candidate to lose where he or she would have won without the added votes."

What? Can someone please explain how this phenomenon might occur? Is it more likely with a list system or with STV? I believe the explanation should be part of the main page, not just listed here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scott Trimble (talk • contribs) 17:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Scott Trimble (talk) 17:16, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

An historical example of this happened in Alberta, Canada when that province had a system of party-based STV. Former WWII flying ace Johnnie Caine running in Edmonton received enough votes to be elected on the first ballot but then running as an Independent he did not receive many added votes on subsequent rounds so did not capture a seat. (see Wikipedia "Alberta election, 1944") — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.3.241.17 (talk) 14:25, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

"One of the concerns with proportional systems is that they can encourage and enable special interest groups to target single issues, and thus elect candidates who are answerable only to the group."

I am not sure I understand the logic in this. What is wrong with the winning candidate answering only to the group who elected him/her? Who else should they be answerable to?

Edward Carson 01:56, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree and also think there needs to be some expansion of the disadvantages as others have said here. I expanded the section a bit, adding the main technical disadvantage. I don't have time right now to go hunt down references, I'll do so later unless someone has some urls handy.

--Zkzkz 12:09, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

The idea is that the winning candidate should be answerable to all the people they represent - not just those that voted for them. And the criticism (in this regard) of proportional systems is that they encourage more radical, fringe and polarizing candidates since it is possible, in effect, to cherry pick a constituency, resulting in people who don't vote for a winning candidate from lacking any real representation. I believe that's a crude version of the philosophical position. -- SiobhanHansa 15:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The section on advantages and disadvantages of PR needed work. I have reworked it into two separate sections, the first one covering a number of advantages, and the second one covering a number of what I have called "issue areas" rather than disadvantages. I prefer to call the issue areas, because the problems identified here do not manifest themselves in each case and depend upon the type of PR system in place. I have tried to beef up the references, and added a new section covering some of the empirical evidence on the subject. Reallavergne (talk) 00:09, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

New Aug 2014 lead, 1st para.

Dear Reallavergne, I find it mightily odd (to put it mildly) that in the first sentence, obviously an attempt to define proportional representation in a single not too long sentence ("..by which divisions in an electorate ... are reflected proportionately in the elected body"), you see fit to delete "proportionately", a word most people might think was a key characteristic. In Talk:Proportional representation#Definitions you say "I also removed the word "proportional" in the first sentence because it is not realistically possible for all segments of society to be proportionately represented". But the 1st sentence doesn't say "all", it just says "divisions", unqualified. If I had meant all I would have said it. What I wrote is not much different from what Mill wrote (which is why his book is the first ref.) and he does use "every".

If the dashed list is the problem (it was spoilt by anon.changing "of gender" to "or gender", a change which is wrong three different ways) then change the dashes to "such as": "by which divisions in an electorate, such as political, religious, regional, ethnic, linguistic, and of gender, are reflected ...".

Then it finally dawned on me that your 2nd sentence "The core idea of PR systems..." (taken from IDEA 2005 p.29) is the word "proportionately" "expressed more precisely". It long-windedly says nothing that isn't already said in the 1st sentence (if it still had "proportionately"), or indeed the 3rd. You had to remove "proportionately" from the 1st sentence because you realized that otherwise your 2nd would be redundant. Is that what's going on? This is being "more precise" and "clarifying"? If Mill didn't need to qualify "proportionately" we don't need to, at least not in the lead. En passant you delete my point "The essence of PR..." that PR values all votes equally, also indubitably a "core idea", and not (yet) mentioned anywhere else in the article.

In the third sentence, "...roughly 30% of seats will be won by that party", you change "will" to "should" because you "wished to clarify that perfect proportionality might not be achieved". The word "roughly" doesn't already do that? Normative, shmormative, the correct word is "will". If you want to philosophise about degrees of proportionality put it in the body of the article.

Please revert these changes. BalCoder (talk) 13:42, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Balcoder. In the literature referenced, PR is described as a system for allocating seats in proportion to votes for a party. That is what the second and third sentences add to your first sentence: the emphasis on parties. From this perspective, when I first saw your first sentence, my reaction was "What?" and I was inclined to take it out. I did not do so partly out of respect for the work of those who preceded me (yours, it turns out). But also, I feel that it does add something, because parties are not the only way that voters are divided. For instance, we often seek to have geographic representation as well; and some systems may add quotas for linguistic representation or for gender representation. So I left the sentence in, but treated it as a general consideration rather than one that reflects the usual definition. It is probably not possible or desirable for a system to be proportional with respect to every one of these social divisions as it would involve so many quotas of different types as to be unmanageable.

I made use of "such as" as you recommended, but left "gender" the way it was. It is being used as an adjective here, and that is fine. However, I added the word "differences" so that it is clear that all of the preceding words are adjectives qualifying the word "differences." I also changed the order of the list somewhat, bringing the more conventional criteria of political and geographic differences to the fore a bit more, and grouping linguistic, ethnic and religious together as a family of sorts. I moved gender closer to the front, as it concerns a large part of the population.

I don't remember removing your point about valuing all votes equally, but my logic would partly have been that some votes are always wasted at the margins, so "all" might be a bit strong. The issue seems to be a good one to make when explaining why people might prefer PR, but it does not seem to me something to add to the definition.

Finally, I had no problem reverting "should" to "will" if it is taken as a description of what would happen under PR. So I worded it that way and made the reversion. Reallavergne (talk) 17:23, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

"PR is described as a system for allocating seats in proportion to votes for a party". But PR is not restricted to parties. Obviously, if you quote from a book on political electoral system design they will talk about parties, that's how politics is organized. But an "emphasis on parties" is what I was trying to avoid, at least in the first sentences. The 3rd sentence "If 30% of the electorate support a.." already mentions them. If the article were entitled "Proportional representation (politics)" then Ok, but it isn't.

"I also changed the order of the list". A completely unnecessary change. The problem with this 1st sentence is it is too theoretical, the problem is not the word "proportionately", the removal of which remains unexplained.

"I don't remember removing your point about valuing all votes equally". This is what I assumed: you replaced it without thinking. That ""all" might be a bit strong" is just being paranoid. The principle is that all votes are equal. For good reasons thresholds are used to exclude the margins, but that is discussed in the body. "All" is perfectly ok in the summary. Otherwise how are you going to reconcile Netherlands (only 0.67% of votes excluded) and Turkey (10%). You can't. The principle is "all". An important point has been lost. BalCoder (talk) 09:38, 1 September 2014 (UTC)