FPTP vs MMP

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 06:57:47PM -0400, Henry de Valence wrote:
> I agree. (Disclaimer: I can't vote because I'm underage, but I volunteer with 
> the Green Party)
> 
> In my opinion, this has been set up to fail. After all, the Liberals and the 
> Conservatives are the ones with the least to gain and the most to lose.
> 
> The question should not have been "MMP or FPTP?", it should have been 
> something along the lines of "Should we look into some form of proportional 
> representation", because I think that (as much as MMP would benefit the party 
> I like) it's not a good system.
> 
> I like the two votes and the idea of fairer representation.
> I don't like having some party hack stay in power for basically forever as 
> long as they kiss enough ass.

I don't think they can.  No party is garuanteed to get any popular vote
seats.  After all if you do well in the ridings, you will get lots of
those seats, and it is quite likely you will get none of the
proportional seats since those go to the parties with popular votes but
not that many seats.  So the safe bet for someone is to go in a riding
that loves their party (and preferably themselves).  In order to ensure
someone on a list oc candidates gets in would require that you get lots
of votes while simultaniously avoiding winning a lot of ridings (which
of course are very useful seats for the party too, so why would you want
to not win those).

After all lets say party L gets 40% of the popular vote and gets 50%
of the riding seats.  How many of the proportional seats do they get?
Most likely none at all.  If party M gets 35% of the vote but only 25%
of the riding seats, well they would get a good chunk of the
proportional seats to make up for it.

What would happen is that smaller parties would run their best
candidates on the list so that people voting for the party would get to
elect those people, while the actual candidates out in the ridings that
everyone knows has no chance of getting elected aren't that important.
The large parties would have to run their important people in ridings
instead where they are most likely to win since they can't rely on
getting the proportional seats.  This makes the big parties have to keep
their members accountable to the ridings, while the smaller parties will
have to do good with their list candidates in order to maintain enough
popular votes to keep those list candidates elected.  So everyone will
be responsible to voters, whether by riding or by popular vote.

> I don't like the idea of having single-issue parties manipulate the balance of 
> power.
> And I don't like the idea of having members who aren't accountable to their 
> constituents.

Unless you have VERY even split between two parties, an individual seat
isn't going to hold the balance of power.

> I like the idea of MMP, but it's badly implemented. Then again, I personally 
> feel like it's been set up to fail.
> 
> So your choice is (as usual) to vote for what you feel is the lesser evil: a 
> badly implemented but fairer MMP system or a well implemented but unfair FPTP 
> system.

How is FPTP well implemented?

--
Len Sorensen
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