FPTP vs MMP

Christopher Browne cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Wed Oct 10 16:24:34 UTC 2007


On 10/10/07, JoeHill <joehill-R6A+fiHC8nRWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Evan Leibovitch wrote:
>
> > Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > > 39 out of 129 seats is 30% not 45%.  So instead of 107 ridings you end
> > > up with 90 ridings, so yes a decrease would occour.  It takes 3% or more
> > > of the popular vote before you can get any of the proportional seats
> > > (which makes sense since 2% would require 50 seats and there are only
> > > 39 of them available)
> > >
> > The numbers such as 3% and 39 seats are completely arbitrary. They give
> > the Greens power while shutting out the Family Coalition Party.
>
> I'm cool with that ;)

Unfortunately, that's not a good enough reason to say that it's an
acceptable arbitrary choice.

> > As such, they indicate a wilful manipulation designed to advance the cause
> > of small parties -- providing they're not too small. And the definition of
> > " what is too small" is totally arbitrary.
> >
> > While FPTP has its downsides, it doesn't by design impose arbitrary
> > limits on anything.
> >
> > And, as I mentioned before, MMP is designed to work against independent
> > candidates as well as really small parties.
>
> Waitaminnit...I thought you said the MMP benefitted fringe parties, a bad
> thing. Now it's a bad thing that it doesn't let in _enough_ fringe parties?
>
> Okay...

Well, that's where this particular *implementation* of MMP has a
particularly interesting edge case.

Generally speaking, one would expect MMP to be of benefit to fringe
parties that have some general popularity that is too diffuse for them
to get any "FPTP" seats.

But the proposed implementation has a cut-off that essentially cuts
out any party below a particular "popularity level."

And it fairly inherently biases against independent candidates; they
are a "political animal" that tend to be geographically based, who
would only be able to capture enough votes to capture one region's
seat.  Getting publicity outside a local seat is hard enough (even
with the Internet!) that independents can't expect to go far on a
"general province" basis.
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