For people outside the debate on electoral reform, one thing that is often not clear is there are a lot of different systems.
There is not one system called ‘Proportional Representation’. Proportionality is just an aspect of electoral systems. Some alternatives to FPTP can be even less proportional, including the AV system put to the public in 2011.
For me, proportionality is desirable but its not the priority,
In this post I’ll look at a specific group of systems, known as List Systems
List Systems
In a list system, the ballot paper would look something like this. This may look familiar to you if you used your vote in the European Parliament election in 2019 and before. Those elections were operated on a List System.
In a List System election, voters cast their choice for the party they support. Seats are then awarded to the parties based on the proportion of votes cast, though the method by which that is done is not as straightforward as that.
Before we come to that, we need to distinguish between a ‘closed list’ and an ‘open list’
In a closed list system, the parties decide the order in which their candidates will be elected. If the party’s vote proportion qualifies for two MPs (or MEPs) then the top two candidates on their list elected. If your favoured candidate was third or fourth on the list, then their chance of being elected is low. If they are bottom of the list, they might as well not have stood.
The bottom line here is the Parties stay in control, the elections become less personal. This is often given as an argument against reform by supporters of FPTP, that in PR you can’t vote for a person, just a party. It’s a valid criticism and a reason I am opposed to closed list systems.
Of course, coming from FPTP supporters conveniently ignores that the same is true in their system. If you want to vote for Party Y, you are stuck with their choice of candidate
An improvement is the open list system, where a voter votes not only for a party but can effect the order of the lists. In countries like Brazil, Belgium or Finland, voters can vote for the party OR a candidate. In other systems, it is possible that a voter can do both. The methods by which these are counted can be complicated, and might seem to mimic the advantages of STV. My preference would be to go straight for that goal, but an open list system would be my second preference.
The D’Houndt method of counting
The logical thing to do would be to just distribute seats in proportion. The party with 30% gets 3 out of 10 representatives. But the numbers are not usually as convenient as that, so a system is needed to deal with fractions.
Belgian mathematician Victor D’Houndt invented a method used in many places, including the UK when we had European elections. I’d have to do some maths to prove how and why, but it does produce proportional results.
It involves dividing a Party’s votes by number of its candidates so far elected… plus 1 Its most easily shown by an example
Let's say we are electing 4 members to a constituency with the following vote distribution:
Party A: 60 votes
Party B: 40 votes
Party C: 25 votes
Party A wins the first seat, with the most votes. Because it now has 1 person elected, its vote is divided by 2 (1 + 1) to give 30. Party B is now in the lead with 40 so wins the next seat, but their vote too is divided by 1 + 1, to give 20. Party A gets the next elected candidate, based on the figures 30; 20; 25, and their running figure then becomes 20 (60/2+1).
The 4th elected candidate would come from Party C (20;20;25).
If there was a 5th, we have a 20-20 tie. I believe the initial vote is used as a tie breaker, but that’s not an issue for here because I restricted elected people to 4
Other counting Methods
D’Houndt does tend to favour the larger parties. Other methods of counting, like Sainte-Laguë Method and Largest Remainder Method, favour smaller parties.
Comparison with STV
List systems are perhaps the most common form of PR across Europe, and its favoured by many parties who back PR - perhaps because it leaves considerable power in the hands of the parties. Also it makes it much harder for Independents to get elected because it generates a ‘Party Mindset’.
STV opens the field for Independents, and also allows voters to choose between candidates of the same party.
Mixed systems
Some elections are held on a mixture of FPTP and list systems to make the result more proportional. I’ll look at those in another post
There’ll be more discussion pieces added
Subscribe for free updates
Return to the Menu Page