Proportional representation
Proportional representation (sometimes referred to as full representation, or PR), is an
electoral system delivering a close match between the percentage of votes that groups of candidates (grouped by a certain measure) obtain in elections and the percentage of seats they receive (usually in
legislative assemblies). It is often contrasted to
plurality voting systems, where disproportional seat distribution results from the division of voters into multiple electoral districts, especially "winner takes all" plurality (
FPTP) districts.
Various forms of proportional representation exist, such as
party-list proportional representation, where the abovementioned groups correspond directly with candidate lists as usually given by
political parties. Within this form a further distinction can be made depending on whether or not a voter can influence the election of candidates within a party list (
open list and
closed list respectively). Another kind of electoral system covered with the term proportional representation is the
single transferable vote (STV), which, in turn, does not depend on the existence of political parties (and where the abovementioned "measure of grouping" is entirely left up to the voters themselves).
There are also electoral systems,
single non-transferable vote (SNTV) and
cumulative voting, that due to their behaviour are sometimes categorized as "semi-proportional" or "pseudo-proportional".
Mixed Election Systems are usually defined as combination of a proportional system and a
FPTP (winner-takes-all, single-seat-district) system, attempting to achieve some of the positive mechanisms of both of these. This mixed system is usually needed for large populations to balance the mechanisms of elections focusing on local or nation wide elections in terms of the goal of proportional representation.Other examples include nations with very diverse voting populations in terms of geographic, social, cultural or economic realities.
More parties exist in nations with full representation, making it close to impossible for a single party to obtain the majority of votes and seats. Coalitions therefore occur, often between two parties, sometimes based on the cooperation of three or more parties. On rare occasions, a minority government can be formed, which consists of a
coalition government that has less than half the seats, but is allowed to govern as long as the majority agrees to their actions. The particular system in place matters, as for instance in New Zealand, where two especially large parties result, leaving them with no other options than to form a
government together or to form a government of one of the two large parties with several small parties. The particular system as found in most
Scandinavian countries, delivers many parties, but with three or four larger parties, who can often create a government with just two parties.Coalition governments are often based on the direct support of about a third to half of all eligible voters, while elections in districts tend to deliver a ruling party that is supported by a fourth to a fifth of all eligible voters. For instance, based on the
Federal Election Commission of the United States, the US Senate is lead by the Republican Party with the direct support of only 17% of all eligible voters
http://www.localparty.org/SenatorMinority.html.
A proportional representation system was devised in the late
19th century, by
Victor D'Hondt of Belgium.
Victor Considérant, an
utopian socialist, also devised the system in a 1892 book. After some Swiss cantons (beginning with Ticino in 1890), Belgium was the first country to adopt list-PR for the 1900 elections to its national parliament. Similar systems were implemented in many European countries during or after
World War I.
Single Transferable Vote was first used in
Tasmania in 1907.
Proportional representation is a much more common system of voting than the plurality voting system. All of the members of the European Parliament, or
MEPs, including those elected from constituencies in Britain, are elected by proportional representation. Proportional representation is also used in many European countries.
While first-past-the-post is commonly found in countries based on the British parliamentary system, and in the Westminster Elections in the
United Kingdom, a form of proportional representation known as the
mixed member system is now being used in the
United Kingdom to elect the members of the
Scottish Parliament and the
Welsh National Assembly. Although once an unknown system, proportional representation is now gaining popularity in
Canada with five provinces: British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick currently debating whether to abolish the first past the post system, and at the federal level, a Parliamentary Committee explored the issue in 2005. Political analysts point out the fact that the current attitude and sequence of events is very similar to what happened in
New Zealand when New Zealand opted for
Mixed Member Proportional Representation and the analysts conclude Canada is heading towards the same direction.
Proportional representation does have some history in the
United States. Many cities, including
New York City, once used it for their city councils as a way to break up the
Democratic Party monopolies on elective office. In
Cincinnati, Ohio, proportional representation was adopted in 1925 to get rid of a
Republican Party party machine, but the Republicans successfully overturned proportional representation in 1957. With proportional representation, otherwise marginalized social, political and racial minorities were able to attain elected office, and this fact was ironically a key argument opponents of proportional representation used in their campaigns â€" "undesirables" were gaining a voice in electoral politics. While most jurisdictions no longer use proportional representation, it is still used in
Cambridge, Massachusetts and
Peoria, Illinois.
San Francisco did not have proportional elections; rather it had city-wide elections where people would cast votes for five or six candidates simultaneously, delivering some of the benefits of proportional representation, but not all. A comparison [
1] between San Francisco and Rotterdam shows how emancipation and access are more entrenched in district elections.
Some electoral systems incorporate additional features to ensure
absolutely accurate or more comprehensive representation, based on gender or minority status (like ethnicity or race). Note that features such as this are not strictly part of proportional representation; depending on what kind of PR is used, people tend to be already represented proportionally according to these standards without such additional rules.
In Ireland, proportional representation has resulted in a strange situation whereby a centre party with a large support base, known as
Fianna Fáil, has 45% of the vote but the opposition parties are extremely fragmented with the only thing that unites them being their dislike of Fianna Fail. Therefore although people do want a strong alternative to Fianna Fail, they differ greatly on what form that should take, thus an extremely fragmented opposition vote. This has led to a series of coalition governments in power.
In his essay,
Overcoming Practical Difficulties in Creating a World Parliamentary Assembly, Joseph E. Schwartzberg proposes the use of proportional representation in the
United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in order to prevent, for instance, lower castes of
Indians from being excluded[
2]:
There are certain other
advantages to proportional representation.
There are different methods of proportional representation, which achieve either a greater degree of proportionality or a greater degree of determinate outcome.
Party list system in a multi-member constituency
The parties each list their candidates according to that party's determination of priorities. In a
closed list, voters vote for a list, not a candidate. Each party is allocated seats in proportion to the number of votes, using the ranking order on its list. In an
open list, voters may vote, depending on the model, for one person, or for two, or indicate their order of preference within the list.
* This system is used in
Israel (where the whole country is one closed list constituency), the
Netherlands (open list) and for elections to the
European Parliament in the
United Kingdom (closed list) as well as in
Finland using multi-member districts and
open lists.
Additional-member system, mixed-member system
''Main articles:
Additional Member Systems -
mixed Member Proportional and
Parallel voting;
Alternative Vote and
alternative vote top-up* This system, or variations of it is used in
Germany,
New Zealand, the
Scottish Parliament and the
Welsh Assembly.
Italy has changed between sub-systems.
Single transferable vote in a multi-member constituency
A constituency elects at least three, rarely more than six representatives. Consequently the constituency is three to six times larger than a single member constituency in the plurality voting system. Parties tend to offer as many candidates as they most optimistically could expect to win: the major parties may nominate almost as many candidates as there are seats, while the minor parties and independents rather fewer. Voters mark their ballot, giving their preferred ranking for some or even all the candidates. Consequently, it is the voters, rather than the party, who have final say over which candidates succeed — some say it is not a good system for party
apparatchiks. A successful candidate must achieve a quota of one-fourth plus one of the preferences in a three-member constituency, one-fifth plus one in a four-member, and so on. Only in a few cases is this achieved at the first count. For the second count, if a candidate wins election his surplus vote, in excess of the quota, is transferred to his voters' second choices; otherwise, the least popular candidate is eliminated and his votes redistributed according to the second preference shown on them. This process continues for as many counts as are needed until all seats are filled. Although the counting process is complicated, voting is clear and most voters get at least one of their preferences elected. All deputies are answerable directly to their local constituents. Some political scientists argue that STV is more properly classified as 'semi-proportional' as there is no assurance of a proportional result at a nationwide level.
* This system is used in
Australia, the
Republic of Ireland,
Northern Ireland and
Malta.
Some nations with proportional elections, like Israel and the Netherlands, have one electoral district only: the entire nation, and the entire pie is cut up according to the entire outcome. Most nations have district systems in place where more than one person is elected per district. The constituency or district magnitude (DM) of a system is therefore measured by the number of seats in a constituency, and plays a vital role in determining how proportional an electoral system can be. The greater the number of seats in a constituency, the more proportional the outcome will be. PR applied to a single-member district (SMD) is by necessity majoritarian. If the constituency is in a jurisdiction using list PR in its multi-member districts (MMDs) the winning candidate simply needs a
plurality, otherwise called a simple or relative majority, of the vote to win, so that the election in the SMD is by
first-past-the-post. If the constituency is in a jurisdiction using PR-STV in its MMDs, an absolute majority of 50% plus 1 will likely be the minimum required for victory (depending on which quota is used) so that the election in the SMD is by the
alternative vote. Four elected officials per district delivers a threshold of 20% (1/M+1) to gain a single seat. However, constituency borders can still be
gerrymandered to reduce the overall proportionality. This may be achieved by creating "majority-minority" constituencies - constituencies in which the majority is formed by a group of voters that are in the minority at a higher level. Proportional representation with the entire nation electing the single body, cannot be gerrymandered.
Multiple-member districts do not necessarily ensure that an electoral system will be proportional. The
bloc vote can result in "super-majoritarian" results in which geographical variations can create majority-minority districts that become subsumed into the larger districts. Also, in theory, a party, who does not provide a list with enough people to fill all the seats won by it, may be given those unfilled seats. This is termed an
underhang.
Some nations, with either exclusively proportional representation or â€" as is the case with Germany â€"
additional member systems, require a
party list to achieve an
election threshold â€" a certain minimum percentage of votes to receive any seats. Typically, this lower limit is set at between two and five percent of the total number of votes cast. Parties who do not reach that margin will not be represented in parliament, making majorities, coalitions and thus governments easier to achieve. Proponents of election thresholds argue that they discourage excessive fragmentation,
disproportionate power, or what may be seen as extremist parties. Opponents of thresholds argue that they cause unfair redirection of support from minor parties, thus giving the parties which cross the threshold disproportionally high percentages of the seats and creating the possibility that a party or group of parties will assume control of the legislature without gaining a majority of votes.
There are several ways of measuring proportionality, the most common being the
Gallagher Index.
Election systems based on proportional representation tend to favor a multi-party result which demands a coalition to form a government supported by a majority of the voters or elected candidates. If the election system as well as the mechanisms for forming a governing coalition also tend to support the existence of a centrist party, the resulting over-all system is often defined as a "center-based proportional representation multi-party system".Election systems which tend to result in socalled two-block (many parties forming coalitions, blocks, but with no party, or "block", in the "center") systems are not seen as "center-based" but multi-party variations of two-party (two-block) systems.
The undesirable "extreme" of a "Center Based" system might be seen as a party system where the "center" has an unproportional and undesirable strong position in the formation of any governing coalition.
*
John Hickman and
Chris Little. "Seat/Vote Proportionality in Romanian and Spanish Parliamentary Elections"
Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Vol. 2, No. 2, November 2000
* Martin Linton and Mary Southcott. "Making Votes Count: The Case for Electoral Reform", Profile Books Ltd, London, 1998.
*
Plurality voting system*
D'Hondt method*
Sainte-Laguë method*
List of politics-related topics*
Wealth primary*
Proportional approval voting*
Proportional Representation Library*
Quantifying Representativity Article by Philip Kestelman
*
FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy*
PR page from old
CVD web site.
*
PR page from new
CVD web site.
*
The De Borda Institute A Northern Ireland-based organisation promoting inclusive voting procedures
*
Electoral Reform Society*
Proportional Representation Society of Australia*
PR page at
Center for Range Voting*
Fair Vote Canada*
LocalParty.Org California*
Voting methods survey Describes 19 multi-winner systems
*
PR Simulator A web-based application that converts historical or theoretical voting data into proportional results
*
PR Simulator Results (US Election 2004) An example of how the above PR Simulator can be used - in this case following the failed
Colorado proposal to assign
Electoral College votes proportionally
