Alan Johnson, Britain’s cabinet minister for Health in the Labour Government, has this op-ed in the May 25 London Times, arguing for proportional representation for Britain. Some people predict that Johnson will be the next Labour Party leader.
Alan Johnson, Britain’s cabinet minister for Health in the Labour Government, has this op-ed in the May 25 London Times, arguing for proportional representation for Britain. Some people predict that Johnson will be the next Labour Party leader.
Remarkable developments in the UK. You have several cabinet ministers calling for immediate enactment of instant runoff voting as well and growing interest in a national referendum on proportional voting. See blogpost with lots of links here:
http://www.fairvote.org/blog/2009/05/will-the-british-rank-the-vote-burst-of-interest-in-irv-and-pr-across-the-pond/
Are there any jurisdictions in the U.S. that use proportional representation?
It depends on the definition of “proportional representation”. The only one I can think of (with partisan elections) is Pierce County, Washington, but some people might not agree with that word usage.
I was using “proportional representation” to mean a system where voters vote for slates (or parties) rather than individuals, and the slates are assigned a number of seats based on the percentage they got.
Arthur,
Based on your definition, the answer is no. To my knowledge, party list PR has never been used in the U.S. The choice voting form of PR (a.k.a. single transferable vote), however, is used in Cambridge, MA (since about 1941) for both city council and school board and will soon be used in Minneapolis, MN for a couple of elected boards and commissions. It has also been used in about 20-25 other jurisdictions in the past.
Richard,
Pierce County is not PR by any definition, since all of the offices are for a single seat (executive offices plus single-member districts for the county council).
“I recognise that Jenkins is gathering dust because we lost the will to carry it through — but that was at a time when it could legitimately be said that there was no public interest and when narrow party political advantage dominated our internal debate in the Labour Party.”
You’d have thought Jenkins would be buried by now.
Translation: Labour is polling at 20%, even with the Lib Dems. If the Westminster elections were held today, rather than the European Parliament, we’d be booted out.
Now it can legitimately be said that there is still no public interest, but a change would be to our narrow party political advantage.
Except for the fact independents (candidates without a party) would be left out in the cold I somewhat like the idea of proportional representation. You do get a little less accountability with less voting strength behind each representative, but you’d probably get better representation with allowing minority views to be heard, albeit with less strength than the majority.
Pennsylvania uses X of Y.
Every County has 3 commissioners elected every 4 years, voters vote for 2 of 3, and parties may only nominate 2, guaranteeing a minority party seat. Philadelphia has 7 at large council seats selected in a similar manner, 5 of 7.
Martin,
Methods of proportional representation differ with respect to how they treat independent, non-partisan candidates. At one end of the continuum, the single transferable vote (a.k.a. choice voting) does not use party labels at all. At the other end, party list systems with very small district magnitudes (and therefore high thresholds) make running as an independent pointless. In the middle are list and mixed-member proportional systems with characteristics both friendly and hostile to independents. Just as in our winner-take-all system, ballot access rules are crucial.
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner —
using pre-election candidate rank order lists to transfer surplus votes and loser votes.
Sorry – way too many voters are brain dead unable (due to rotted pubblik skooools) to even rank choices (even if they claim to be literate) using Number Votes — 1, 2, 3, etc.
Equal nominating petitions for all candidates in the same area.
Sooooo difficult.
#2 There are jurisdictions where each voter is given a number of votes, which they may cast for an individual candidate, or distribute among several candidates. These are generally aimed at racial proportionality rather than political proportionality, where it isn’t feasible to do a racial gerrymander.