If you thought the British couldn’t find a better waste of money than the Royal Wedding, just wait until this Thursday, when David Cameron’s government conducts a national referendum — the second in UK history — that Cameron himself opposes. The subject is a new voting system that some US libertarians have fancied for this country. And I think I’m going to have to side with Mr. Cameron on this one.
After last year’s general election produced a hung parliament, Cameron’s Conservative Party formed a coalition with the third-place Liberal Democrats. The price of Lib-Dem support was Cameron’s agreement to hold a referendum on the so-called Alternative Vote system. Instead of simply voting for a candidate and declaring the person with the most votes the winner, the Alternative Vote allows voters to rank all candidates. If no candidate receives a majority of the first-preference votes, the candidate with the lowest total is eliminated and his votes are redistributed according to each voter’s subsequent preferences. This process repeats until a candidate obtains a majority.
Many US Libertarian Party activists support the Alternate Vote system — the national LP platform has endorsed it — which is referred to here as instant-runoff voting (IRV). The system has been used in some local elections. Burlington, Vermont, conducted two mayoral elections under IRV, but after the second election resulted in the first-preference winner losing the final count, voters repealed the system.
As the term IRV suggests, supporters tout the method as eliminating the need for costly runoff elections in cases where there is a minimum threshold to elect a candidate (for example, Burlington has always required a 40% threshold to elect its mayor). Why have a second election when you can have voters rank their second (or third or fourth) choice in advance? This seems to drive a lot of LP support for the idea.
In the UK — where elections have always been “first past the post” without requiring a minimum percentage — AV supporters say the system is “fairer” and more democratic, since House of Commons candidates will now need a majority to win election; under first-part-the-post, a winner might only receive one-third of the votes if more than two parties contest the seat. And since voters can rank their preferences for multiple candidates, they can cast a first-preference ballot for a minor-party candidate without worrying their vote will be “wasted,” since they can still cast a lower-preference vote for a mainstream candidate.
This is the sore point for AV opponents. David Cameron, opining against the referendum in Sunday’s Telegraph, who insists the traditional, first-past-the-post method is actually fairer:
It is enshrined in our constitution and integral to our history – and AV flies in the face of all that because it destroys one person, one vote.
If you vote for a mainstream candidate who comes top in the first round, your other preferences will never be counted.
But if you vote for a fringe candidate who gets knocked out early, your other votes will be counted.
That means the second, third, even fourth votes of someone who supports the Monster Raving Looney Party can count as much as the first vote of someone who supports a mainstream party. That is unfair and undemocratic.
The pro-AV campaign counters that ranking preference merely allows the voter to transfer his existing vote without actually generating a new one. As the Yes in May 2011 organization’s website put it, “If you go to the chip shop, and order cod and chips but they are out of cod, and you choose pie and chips instead, you have still only had one meal.”
From the libertarian — small l, not LP — perspective, it’s unclear how AV helps or hurts individual rights one way or the other. It seems AV supporters’ primary objective is increasing voter participation, and that’s far from a desirable libertarian objective. Every increase in the franchise has coincided with a massive expansion of state power. When voting becomes a “right,” natural rights tend to suffer.
Indeed, the principal “benefit” of AV is that it manufactures the illusion of majority rule. The whole point is to manipulate the ballot count until someone has a majority of the votes counted, if not an absolute majority. Thus the winner can claim “legitimacy” based on the fact he received most of the votes that were counted — the final time.
The only large-scale democracy that employs AV is Australia, which has used it in lower house elections since 1912. Australia also has compulsory voting, where people are fined if they don’t go to the polls — yet another handy tool when you’re trying to maintain the illusion of majority consent for the state’s operations.
And if the Australian example is instructive, AV does not substantially improve the competitiveness of minor parties. Australia, like the UK, has two dominant parties with a third party that occasionally swings the balance of power. Only one seat (out of 150) in the current Australian House of Representatives is not held by one of these three parties. In contrast, the current British House of Commons has 29 (out of 650) seats held by minor parties.
That Britain’s third party, the Liberal Democrats, back AV is also telling. They are unlikely to gain many more seats under this system versus the current one. But AV could help them preserve their niche as a swing bloc in the House. AV will help prevent “erosion” of Lib-Dem voters who might turn to the Labour Party, and it could create a structural leftist majority for the two parties — which would also explain the veracity of the Conservative opposition.
AV could also be a stepping stone towards the dream of third parties everywhere — proportional representation, where seats are assigned in the legislature by popular support for political parties without regard for local constituencies. Again, there are some LP-types who think this would be good for their cause. And again, I’m skeptical. Proportional representation can be the worst of all worlds. Legislators are loyal to a political organization first, not any particular group of voters. More importantly, proportional representation fractures legislative bodies to the point where governments build “coalitions” by nakedly bribing smaller parties with favors — which means more government spending and more economic intervention.
Small-l libertarians should avoid the temptation of AV/IRV, proportional representation, and other electoral system “reforms.” The absence of competing political parties within a legislature is less problematic than the absence of competition between legislative and executive (and judicial) powers. As Danny Sanchez noted the other day, “It was after the House of Commons became all-powerful in the late 19th century that Great Britain became a welfare-warfare state” — a consequence of the weakening of the monarchy and Lords as competing sources of political authority.
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The question they should be asking us of course first is whether we want to vote for rulers to rule us at all, and I shall answer that one on my ballot paper instead on Thursday.
But there is one claim that the “No2AV” campaign makes which might yet make me want to vote yes – they claim that AV will lead to weaker governments because there will tend to be more coalitions. Whilst this is by no means borne out by the evidence in places like Australia that use AV, if the claim is true, bring on weak governments!
Well, sir, I’m not sure that weak governments – government meaning the group of people also referred to as the Cabinet – is a good thing, but weak government in the broader meaning of the ruling apparatus, sure.
So, does AV/IRV work better or worse or indifferent in non-compulsory democracies such as those created by fiat in games?
Well outside of the political arena AV and its cousin STV in multi-member elections is pretty ubiquitous here – e.g. for electing the boards of co-ops. In voluntary collective organisations I’d say these are definitely fairer.
One other hope that people seem to voice on the AV debate is that because of the potential “nightmare scenario” of a permanent left leaning coalition, parties may actually split into smaller more ideologically homogeneous groups. At the moment all three British “main” parties are broad churches with, for instance, people scattered probably all around the “Nolan Chart” sort of spectrum in all three parties. But I don’t buy it personally.
The correct election reforms for 3rd party supporters to be pushing for are Proportional Representation (probably “Mixed-Member Proportional” like Germany where you get to vote for a politician and a party to represent you, rather than true proportional like the EU) for the House of Representatives (and state legislatures) and a 2 round system (like that of France) for the Presidency and other executive positions. These systems are proven to encourage a multi-party system.
In the case of Britain, I know people over there assume that the result of proportional would be that the Lib Dems would permanently be in power, but based on actual results from EU elections, it is just as likely that UKIP, the Tories, and Labour would be the 3 biggest parties. British libertarians and British conservatives who consider the Tories too moderate might want to look into this kind of electoral reform because UKIP is pretty good from a libertarian perspective (I know I’d prefer UKIP to the GOP or the Tories).
In the United States, it is plainly obvious that the biggest beneficiary of proportional representation in the United States would be the right-wing 3rd parties (the Libertarians and the Constitution Party). For generations, the Republican Party’s base has been trying to purge the party of the “moderate” wing that constantly betrays them and advances the interests of the left-liberals. With proportional representation, the base could abandon the GOP and form their own parties.
Mixed-Member Proportional could be implemented in the US by doubling the number of Congressmen (while retaining the current districts). Then, the new 435 seats would be distributed according to votes for a specific party. The alternative to electoral reform (and the only viable path at the moment in the United States) is to work within one of the major parties. Due to the primary system and the relative freedom of entry in both of our political parties (from what I’ve heard, it isn’t very difficult to become a party official), it is possible to take over either the Democrats or Republicans. If we were to end up with a large portion of the Republicans in Congress as fairly principled libertarians, then we could effectively say that we had largely “taken over” the GOP by stealth. In Britain, a strategy like this probably has no chance of success because party leaders choose candidates (I saw stories from last year’s UK elections about how Cameron might have blown his shot at a majority in the House of Commons by choosing a bunch of mostly under-achieving politically-correct candidates in swing districts). Yes, separation of powers and checks and balances are more important than electoral reform, but electoral reform is essential if we are going to have a shot at electing libertarian candidates outside of the 2 major parties.
The other problem with AV is that it can sometimes result in even more disproportionate results than FPTP – Labour would have had a majority of over 200 in 1997 for example.
Here’s a thought, while not quite the anarcho-capitalist ideal, but something better -
1. Assign each district 1,000 votes that can be cast in any House action. 1,000 votes is used to allow for votes to be tabulated down to 1/10 of a percent, rounded (12.39 = 12.4). Any remainder above or below 1,000 is taken out of the winning candidate’s total.
2. Hold the election as normal.
3. The 1,000 votes are then divvied up to candidates based on the percentage of the votes won in the district. So if the Republican gets 32% of the vote, the Democrat 50%, the Libertarian 13%, and Steve the Carpenter at 5%, then the district sends four people to the House of Representatives with the Republican armed with 320 votes, the Democrat 500 votes, the Libertarian 130 votes, and Steve with 50. The physical number of representatives doesn’t matter if the district gets a block of 1,000 votes in total.
This system would effectively be one vote for every 647 people in a district and be far less than the 10,000+ representatives necessary to get a 1 for 30,000 mixture. If 50% of the average 646,946 people in a district really want a specific representative, then they should be able to get that representative, something they couldn’t get if we dramatically shrunk the district sizes.
Alternative voting is still based on a “dumb ruling class”, so to speak, of dividing the electorate up into districts whose boundaries the oligarchy define and control, thus creating predictable outcomes for themselves. This is why Australia’s ruling class is much the same as the UK or Canada’s.
A real democratic voting system would have voters choose any individual directly, and then those individuals with the most votes would be elected to the legislative body. This would bypass the party system whole and force its collapse. It might also mean the election of the worst democratic characters, such as billionaire tv celebrities.
I really don’t like the IRV system, but the first-past-the-post system is horrible too. I suggest “voting reform” to follow the system developed in the free-market during the internet age: Approval voting. Each voter ranks EVERY candidate on the ballot on a scale (0-10 for example).
Candidate A: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Candidate B: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Candidate C: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Candidate D: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Thus, every voter has the chance to not only support a candidate they like, but to show disapproval for candidates as well. Tallying the votes is a simple matter of adding all the numbers together, the candidate with the highest total wins (and presumably has the actual approval, or at least the toleration of a true majority). Additionally, this voting method has the advantage of giving the elected a truer perspective of just how much support s/he has (an electoral “win” with an average approval of 3.5 doesn’t create a “mandate for change” it shows a field of bad options).
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