The outcome of the last election has prompted more talk about proportional representation, but what is PR? "Suffrage?" is a simulation that allows you to compare the general principles of different voting systems and judge which is the most democratic and which wastes the right to vote.
Some of the voting systems are:
1. PLURALITY VOTE (eg. Britain)
Candidates must poll more than any other single candidate.
2. MAJORITY VOTE (eg. Australia)
Candidates must poll a quota of 50% of the votes or more than the combined votes for other candidates. If no candidate wins a seat, the weakest candidate is eliminated and their ballots distributed to the voter's second choice. This is repeated until one candidate meets the quota.
3. SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE (eg. Republic of Ireland)
Candidates must meet a quota in multi-member districts. Voters place candidates according to their preference. Ballots in excess of the quota have the voters second preference alloted to the "runner-up" candidate's first preference votes.
4. PARTY LIST largest average (eg.Belgium)
Voters vote for a list of candidates rather than individuals. The Party with the most votes is awarded a seat then their votes are divided by two. The votes for each Party list is then compared again and the Party with the most votes is awarded a seat. The divisor for each party is incremented after that party has been awarded a seat. This continues untill all the seats have been awarded. Seats are alotted to candidates in the order that they appear on the Party's list.
5. PARTY LIST greatest remainder (eg. Italy)
Uses list of candidates again, but the initial seats are won by parties that meet a quota. The number of times their vote can be divided by the quota is the number of seats they are awarded. Seats not won by quota are awarded to parties in the order of the largest remainder first, smallest remainder last.
(Only 3-5 are proportional voting systems)
|USING "SUFFRAGE?"
|The Simulation provides you with a scaled down model of the UK. The size of each constitueny is 2% of the UK average (60,000). There are just three political parties (RED, BLUE and YELLOW) and 12 seats (just under 2% of the UK's 650) to be won. Data on each of the 12 seats can be called up by pressing keys "A" to "L".
There are many variations of PR and only the variants shown here are used in the simulation. As all these PR systems require multi-seat districts, there is the small problem of how many seats are available. Either Parliament would need an extension, or constituencies combined to form larger districts along the lines of those for Euro MPs. The Party List systems here treat all constituencies as one large multi-seat district with a list of 12 candidates from each of the three parties competing for 12 seats.
An accurate STV election is more complex to model. One of the reasons is because systems using a second choice require statistics indicating likely second choice. However, second candidates sometimes recommend a second preference. So in reality the second preference would not go to an opposition candidate, but to a candidate with a similar manifesto.
Both STV and the Majority systems use the second choice vote. STV puts more emphasis on individual candidates than parties. There are usually three to five seats according to the size of the constituency. A three/five seat constituency causes problems in a three party model where the candidates are only present implicitly. I've only worked from simple formal descriptions of political systems without any practical knowledge of them, so I hope the following compromise works.
For the STV model constituencies A-F are merged with G-L to form six larger two seat districts. The support for each candidate/party is split in two by the two opposition candidates/parties. Support for each opposition candidate/party is given as a percentage of the support for the first choice. This doesn't need to add-up to 100% as the missing votes can be taken as votes for imaginary candidates, either allied to the main party or "no chance" independents. The values are initially set at 50% for each of the "opposing" parties.
These "second choice" values are also used by the MAJORITY model, but here the second choice votes are taken from the weakest candidate when no candidate can obtain a majority (more than 50% of the vote) in their constituency. The Majority model, like the Plurality model, uses 12 single member constituencies.
|MENU OPTIONS:
|1. VOTING PREFERENCE - Initially party support is set to 33% for each party. This option is used to change Voting preference. This also randomizes the distribution of the votes across the constituencies.
Population can be redistributed for a new election by using this option without changing preference.
2. SECOND PREFERENCE - Sets second choice for each voter. Votes are split as % for each of the opposing parties.
3. MOVE VOTERS - Moves votes to a different constituency/seat. Of course this only has any effect when using the Plurality, Majority or STV system.
4. ELECTION - Calculates an election result for the five different voting systems. The same voting parameters, set-up with the other options, are used for each voting system. Change the parameters to see how different voting systems respond to change. A simple random POLL of voters intentions is also presented. More comprehensive details are available using option five.
5. PRINT DATA - Prints out the parameters for each seat A-L and the results from each of the voting systems along with details of vote wasted and effective suffrage. Note that "effective suffrage" indicates representation obtained by voting.
Print-outs are made through LPRINT. Any printer initialization required must be added yourself.
6. SAVE PROGRAM - Saves the current simulation/program.
You might like to try the program with the results of previous Elections in Britain. You can enter the percentage of vote from statistics available at your local library, but you'll need to re-interpret allocation of seats as follows: add seats of three parties and divide by 100 then by .12 to get percentage of one seat on model; divide number of seats each party has by this value and round-up to get the number of seats they would have gained on the model. This means that any party with (sum of seats/100/.12) seats may not gain a seat using the plurality system (depending on population distribution in the model).
This simulation is only a simple model, nonetheless the correct equations have been used for calculating the seats won in each voting system. Of course a simulation with this coarseness of resolution does give an over simplified view. With just 12 seats, each seat represents 8% of the electorate, but in the UK each seat represents around .16% of the electorate.
All the same it is an interesting exercise to play around with this simulation. You'll need to display or print-out the results of several elections using the same parameters, but with different distributions. Then compare another run with new parameters.
You may want to check on the validity of the program or write a more detailed simulation. I used the local reference library for my source of information, the references used were Encyclopedia Brittanica, Economist World Atlas of Elections and World Encyclopedia of Political Systems & Parties (Edited by George E. Delury Published by Facts on File). A detailed "comment per line" listing of "Suffrage?" is also available for `1 (stamps, IRCs or PO) from G. Rowland, PO Box 49, DAGENHAM RM9 5NY
