Talk:Proportional representation

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[edit] 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.

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

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)

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.)

---

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. -


- 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)

[edit] 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.
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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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!)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

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)

[edit] Disadvantages of PR

"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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] yo

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

[edit] 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)