Abstract
An exploration of competing electoral systems—single-member district plurality systems (predominant in the U.S.) versus proportional representation systems (STV in particular)—and competing theories of participatory democracy: J.S. Mill’s optimistic deliberative democracy model, and Richard Posner’s more pessimistic elite democracy model. Mill assumes voters are politically educable, capable of making informed contributions to legislative processes through electoral action. Posner assumes voters are too narrowly self-interested to be substantively educable. Elections, consequently, serve merely as a crude form of quality control and smooth succession of political authority. It is argued that the latter theory is plausible only under single-member district plurality electoral systems like ours, so that the electoral system grounds the theory, not the other way around. Under a single transferable vote system (Mill’s preferred system), in which voters’ ordinal preferences among candidates govern the outcomes in multi-member districts, Mill’s deliberative democracy model has a realistic prospect of success.
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Notes
- 1.
The most commonly used threshold formula, known as the Droop Quota, is calculated as follows: [(# of votes)/(#of seats +1)] +1. Thus, in a 5-member district in which 12,000 valid ballots were cast, a candidate could secure 2,000 first-preference votes without being guaranteed a seat, because it is theoretically possible that five other candidates could also secure exactly 2,000 votes each, resulting in a six-candidate dead heat, necessitating a run-off. But if one of the candidates secured 2,001 votes, that candidate, having met the Droop Quota (barely), would be guaranteed a seat.
- 2.
In some STV systems, the surplus ballots are literally paper ballots that happen to be at the top of the pile of first-choice ballots for any candidate who meets or surpasses the Droop Quota: every ballot counted for that candidate after the Droop Quota has been met counts as an “extra” first-choice ballot for that candidate, to be transferred to the various second-choice candidates indicated, during the second round of ballot-counting. In computerized vote-counting systems, fractional portions of all of a winning candidate’s first-choice ballots could easily be used instead. I.e., the # of second-choice ballots for candidate y, among all those cast for winning candidate x as first choice, will be added to y’s first-choice ballots during the second round of counting, but discounted by the fraction:
For detailed accounts of the mechanics of single transferable vote balloting and ballot counting, see Farrell 2011, Chapter 6, 119–152 or Amy 2000, Chapter 4 (in part), 95–106. For a specific historical example, see Sinnott 1999.
- 3.
Hare’s initial approach, the first scholarly publication on STV (Hare 1857), was to treat the entire country as a single multi-seat district. This was dropped later as unworkable.
- 4.
Posner acknowledges his debt to Schumpeter in the latter work.
- 5.
On this last point, see Farrell 2011, 140–141. Closed list systems, as a proportional representation alternative to STV, are discussed in 6.2.
- 6.
See Farrell 2011, 119–125, for the Irish case.
- 7.
Each Maltese legislative district has five seats.
- 8.
That is, they can use ordinally-ranked voting to favor some candidates from the rival party, but they typically vote only for a subset of the preferred party slate. (Both parties frequently offer slates in excess of the five-seat districts being contested.) See Hirczy de Miño and Lane 2000.
- 9.
- 10.
See Amy 2000, 18, 32, and Farrell 2011, Appendix Table A.2, 234–237. In Farrell’s table there are two notable exceptions to two-party rule among single-member plurality nations: Canada, with an effective number of parliamentary parties average of 3, and India, the world’s largest democracy, with a 5.77 average.
- 11.
See Farrell 2011, Figure 1.1, and accompanying discussion, 7–9. See also Farrell, Appendix Table A.1, 231–233.
- 12.
On this point, see Farrell and McAllister 2000, at 21–22 & 28–32.
- 13.
Whether this is also true when the competitor is a proportional representation system, or a mixed system involving proportional representation, is a question beyond the scope of this chapter. (Dummett 1997) in particular proposed a novel and rather complex system involving a mixture of STV and Borda counts, a concept not discussed here. His assessment of conventional STV systems is colored though by his oddly visceral hostility: “STV occupies an extraordinary position among electoral systems, in that it is the object of a cult. A large body of electoral reformers are committed to STV as to a religious faith.” (Dummett, 90–91) Dummett’s mixed STV/Borda count alternative, which has never been used anywhere, has its own problems, having to do with the issue of accurately identifying political minorities. I’m offering STV as the best option among at least the existing systems, but I am here far from making that case in any comprehensive way.
- 14.
Voter participation is routinely higher in proportional representation systems (75–90 % average voter turnout during the last two decades), with Malta topping the list at 95–98 % of the voting age population. (See Amy 2000, 39; Hirczy de Miño & Lane, 190). Tasmanian electoral turnout during the same period falls in the 80–90 % range, although voting in Australia is nominally compulsory. (Appendix B, Tasmanian Election Commission’s 2007–2010 House Assembly Election Report, http://tec.tas.gov.au/pages/HouseMain.html.) Among STV constituencies, Ireland has been less impressive over the past two decades, ranging between 64 and 74 % of the voting age population (generally better than neighboring U.K.). But the U.S., together with other single-member plurality systems (see Amy, 39), has been even less impressive, occupying the 47–57 % range during Presidential year elections, and consistently below 40 % during intervening Congressional elections. (Data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance [IDEA], at: http://www.idea.int/vt/survey/voter_turnout1.cfm.)
- 15.
Here the Fourteenth Amendment superseded the corresponding passage of Article 1, §2.3 of the Constitution, by eliminating the references to “free persons” and three-fifths of “other persons.”
- 16.
Six states (AZ, CA, HI, ID, NJ, WA) implement redistricting by means of independent bipartisan commissions. This trend may be on the rise, but the extent to which it has successfully eliminated partisan redistricting is unclear.
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Nunan, R. (2014). Proportional Representation, the Single Transferable Vote, and Electoral Pragmatism. In: Cudd, A., Scholz, S. (eds) Philosophical Perspectives on Democracy in the 21st Century. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02312-0_7
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