The election committee, chaired by RA member Beathan Vale and advertised here and here, has been running for some time now. Unfortunately, I've been unable to attend these meetings so I've put together some thoughts to post here.
As I've said elsewhere I consider our electoral system to be badly flawed and in need of reform. One of the prime motivations for the reform the RA agreed last term was to allow voters to vote 'No' on a faction they didn't agree with by eliminating that faction from their ballot. As it turned out, this wasn't thought through properly - we discovered after the fact that those voters who eliminated other factions made their vote count for more; those who eliminated all other factions bar their first choice made their votes count the most. The RA reversed that electoral reform so we're back to the situation we had before; we still don't really get to choose between the factions because we're forced to rank all of them. In fact, this combination of ranking and proportional representation produces perverse results because it massively over-represents minority factions; the citizens' voting pattern is rendered largely irrelevant, it's the number of factions contesting an election that really counts. As some have pointed out, our current electoral system can be gamed. If a faction with sizable support in the CDS, such as the CSDF, were to split into 2 or even 3 sub-factions, it could artificially inflate the number of seats won if its voters could be persuaded to vote in an organised fashion for the sub-factions. I think the case for further reform remains.
There are several options open to us and I want to outline a few of them later in this post; we discussed these at our regular CSDF meeting yesterday. First I'd like to consider what kind of principles we might want our electoral system to embody. These mostly come from discussions the community has held in the past and are not meant to be definitive. I'm sure others will have other principles that they will want to play into the discussion.
1. Platforms not personalities. The Constitution says the Representative Assembly is a body of factions, not individuals. It makes sense that we try to focus on ideas rather than personalities in electing RA members. The RA has never ended up with the same people at the end of a term as at the start. People leave for all sorts of reasons during the term and need to be replaced. Electing factions rather than individuals means that voters can be clear they're voting primarily for policies rather than the people who are on the slate. This idea has been challenged recently but this is still a principle many of us subscribe to
2. Comprehensibility. Our electoral system isn't too difficult to follow. You rank the factions, you rank the candidates in your first choice faction and then, through the mysteries of the Borda count and the Saint Lague method the result is delivered! It's not as straightforward (or as unfair) as first-past-the-post, plurality elections but it's a system I feel I could explain to a layman.
3. Voter choice. We currently force voters to rank all the factions whether they agree with them or not. That denies voters the power to exercise their choice to vote 'No' by crossing factions they don't agree with off the ballot paper.
4. Fairness. This a principle I think our current system fails because it does not deliver an RA which represents the views of the CDS citizens in rough proportion to their presence in the electorate. A system where parties gaining 23 and 4 first preferences respectively end up with the same number of seats in the RA is not fair. A system where a faction gaining roughly 50% of the first preferences ends up with 2 out of 7 seats is not fair. This is another principle I'd like to see electoral reform address.
Here are some options we could consider:
i) Retain the status quo. This is unattractive for the many reasons outlined above and in previous debates about electoral reform.
ii) Switch to a system using Single Transferable Vote. The CSDF and CARE both put forward proposals for STV last term but we could not agree on the details. We may be able to do better this term. In terms of the four principles outlined above, it brings personalities more to the fore so could undermine our faction-based system of government to some extent. It scores high on comprehensibility when casting a ballot but understanding how seats are allocated is a little more involved. The count is horrendously complex when you do it manually but there is open source software available to do this for us now. The major advantage of STV is that it allows voters a great deal of choice in casting their ballot - they can rank all candidates of one faction, then another, then another. Or they can rank individuals in order of their perceived ability to do the job regardless of factional label. They can choose to rank only one candidate or all on the ballot or any number in between. And it is fair, few votes are wasted and the resulting RA would truly reflect the choices of the citizens.
iii). Give citizens one vote to be cast for one faction, keep ranking for that faction's candidates and keep proportional allocation of seats. This retains the faction-based electoral system we're used to and keeps the focus on platforms. It is very easy to understand both in casting a ballot and in working out how the seats get allocated. It could be argued that it limits voter choice in restricting voters to plumping for one preferred faction rather than allowing voters to discriminate between them. I would argue that this is a fake choice if you have no way to avoid voting for factions you disagree with though. It scores highly on the fairness test; seats would be allocated in very close proportion to the distribution of votes.
iv). Allow voters to rank one or more factions but modify it so that all votes weigh the same. Essentially this means following Jon's analysis of the problems with the elimination system we trialled in January. From the voters' perspective they face the same type of ballot paper as in January and can choose to rank one or more of the factions. The change comes in the counting where the votes are adjusted so there is no artificial advantage gained from eliminating one or more factions. This retains the platform aspect of our electoral system as in alternative iii). One disadvantage is that working out how the votes translate into seats is quite complex so working out how seats are allocated is difficult to explain. It also preserves our current electoral system while providing more voter choice and it makes it harder to game the system through elimination or splitting factions to gain seats. It is fairer in that all voter choices are respected in the outcomes but no one's vote is worth more than another just because of the decision to eliminate one or more competitors.
I can see good arguments for ii), iii) and iv). I lean towards option iii) because I tend to prefer simple solutions and ones that are easy to understand but I can see why some would not like to make that shift. iv) would enact the kind of reform we intended to carry out last term and is probably best from that perspective. I also have a soft spot for STV but I think that with the comings and goings that are inevitable in the RA it might not be right for us.
I hope that these ideas can be fed in to the Election Committee discussions and that others will pick them up and debate them here too.
