Saturday, August 08, 2020

Local democracy to increase

New Zealand’s city of Kirikiriroa-Hamilton—my current home—is about to gain some more fairness and local democracy. The City Council has just voted to replace the old-fashioned and anti-democratic “First Past the Post” (FPP, or sometimes FPTP) with the more democratic and fair “Single Transferable Vote” (STV) system for the 2022 local elections. This is a major step forward for local democracy.

Hamilton City Council ran an online survey between June 17 and July 17, and received 928 responses. 726 respondents (78.1%) wanted to switch to STV and 202 (21.9%) wanted to keep using FPP. (Full disclosure: I took part and said I wanted to switch to STV). To be honest, I’m not certain that a high response among a tiny minority of people represents a statistically significant thing to base a major decision on, even though I support it. Still, I prefer councillors to make the decisions we elect (and pay) them to make rather than kicking everything down the road by holding referenda. If we don’t like what they decide, we can vote them out and put in people who will do what we want; the whole point of representative democracy is that we’re represented, and we’re the final arbiter of whether they got it right or not.

Quibbles about what they based their decision on aside, I do support the move for the reasons I stated in my submission:
STV ensures elected candidates don’t get in with a small minority of votes. It also removes the spoiler effect in which votes for one candidate might accidentally elect the one we least want elected. All of which encourages diversity among candidates, and so, the people elected.
The video above from C.G.P. Grey explains STV, which really is a pretty confusing system for anyone who only knows FPP. The important point is that it introduces proportionality, unlike a system called “Alternative Vote” (AV, or also called “Instant Runoff Voting”, used in parts of the USA). While both systems eliminate the spoiler effect that FPP actually encourages, STV is the only one of the two that discourages the descent into a two-party system, which both FPP and AV encourage.

STV is best used in multi-member districts, and that’s exactly why STV is best to elect Hamilton’s city councillors.

Hamilton elects its city councillors from two wards, East and West (of the Waikato River), both of which elect six councillors (the mayor is elected citywide). In the 2019 local elections, there were 22,284 votes in the East, and 18,213 in the West, for a total of 40,497 votes citywide.

The mayor, Paula Southgate, was elected under FPP with 13,452 votes, some 3,000 votes more than the next candidate. What that means, however, is that more than 27,000 people didn’t vote for her—twice as many as those who did—she won with about a third of all votes cast citywide (629 votes in the city weren’t for any official candidate). This is the fatal flaw of FPP voting: It makes it easy for someone to win an election with a minority of the vote, something that also happened in the races for City Councillor. (Full disclosure: I wasn’t living in Hamilton at the time of the election, and so, had no vote).

In the East Ward, the top candidate got 8,342 votes, which means that 13,945 voters in East Ward didn’t vote for him, and that he won his seat with around 37% of the vote. The other five candidates, obviously, had even less voter support.

In West Ward, the top candidate received 10,105 votes, which is more than half of all votes cast, but all the rest got less than half the vote, including the second-highest polling candidate who was just below half.

Electing councillors from the six candidates winning the highest number of votes in descending order means that candidates can—and often do—win with less than half the votes cast, and it also encourages voters to vote strategically, such as, to vote for one or two candidates only to avoid electing someone they like the least, in the hope it will put their favoured candidate over the line. In a one-winner scenario, like for Mayor, strategic voting is even more important

STV eliminates the need for strategic voting, but, ironically, makes it more potent at the same time. This is because under STV, voting to block a candidate isn’t necessary. However, it allows voters to rank the candidate they want the most as first without risking electing someone they detest. If their chosen candidate doesn’t win in the first round, then the second choice can still help block a detested candidate by advancing one who’s not as bad (this is shown in more detail in C.G.P. Grey’s video below). In this way, it encourages independent and minor-party candidates, which is both more fair and democratic, while also not forcing voters to choose only between the lesser of two evils.

Still, STV isn’t a one-size-fits all solution. While it introduces proportionality to an elected body, for true proportionality a system like MMP (Mixed-Member Proportional), which is used to elect New Zealand’s Parliament, is much better, more fair, more representative, and more democratic. It could be used for city councillor races, but councils’ small size would make it hard to achieve proportionality, and no one wants hundreds of councillors just to ensure proportionality. STV is a logical alternative.

So, from 2022, Hamiltonians will elect their city councillors using a system that will eventually encourage a more representative and diverse city council. In the meantime, we won’t risk decreasing representativeness on the council merely by casting votes for the candidates we really want. But I bet a lot of voter education will need to take place first.

“The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained” [WATCH].
“The Alternative Vote Explained” [WATCH].


Roger Owen Green said...

There have been some pockets of fairer voting in the US, but I think it's lost its momentum because of other issues. Still a good idea.

Arthur Schenck said...

The reformer in me sees electoral reform as vital to restoring democracy to the USA, but the pragmatist in me sees getting rid of the current occupant of the White House as the only thing that matters right now. If he's not soundly defeated in November, then electoral reform will be irrelevant. First things first: Save the republic, then fix it. IMHO.