Two-choice party voting or The Spare Vote
No wasted votes >>> If your first choice party fails to pass the threshold, your vote goes to your second choice
Comment on events that are relevant to the issue
On Saturday 23 September 2023 the German democratic advocacy group Mehr Democratie is holding a Voting rights Conference https://www.mehr-demokratie.de in Berlin.
From the website I see that there is a demand to reduce the 5% threshold, which has become a greater barrier as other thresholds are being removed.
There is also a group pushing for the substitute vote (spare vote).
This post is about progress of the New Zealand Independent Electoral Review, as I have seen it and responded to it, up until 17 September 2023.
In June 2023 the review secretariat published an interim report. It was to be found at https://electoralreview.govt.nz/assets/PDF/IER-Interim-Report.pdf
It may also be found here IER-Interim-Report
Submissions were invited, and I sent this one 3717Submission3Hitchcock. This submission provides a good summary of the issues involved.
I was disappointed by the Interim Report regarding its discussion of the Second choice of party vote. The report inappropriately lumped my submission in with those advocating preferential voting. The second choice of party vote is not a form of preferential voting, because it involves only a second choice, it is a second choice of party vote, because it is very simple to implement, and because the results in each polling place are independent of each other except for needing to know which parties passed the national thresholds.
The second choice of party vote involves a second choice of party vote. The second choice is there to allow every voter to have a say in deciding the number of seats for each qualifying party. This is important because all voters should have equal voting rights.
My submission suggested that the final report should demonstrate an understanding of the issues driving consideration of changes.
The closing date for submissions to the 2022 Independent Electoral Review is 14 November 2022.
I have made two submissions and sent them the following documents:
I have just learnt from facebook that the Justice select committee of parliament is holding an inquiry into the 2020 election. This is apparently something routine after each election. Unfortunately the closing date for submissions was 6 April 2021, so I missed it by a week or so.
From what I have read, the problem of wasted votes creates a barrier to participation in the electoral process. In the 2020 election, about 8% of party votes were disregarded because the voter voted for a party that did not pass either of the thresholds, being 5% or an electorate seat.
Young voters are likely to be interested in new ideas and new parties. But we have a system that disenfranchies anybody who votes for a party that does not pass one or other threshold. This disenfranchisement of minor party voters, perhaps mostly young voters, has a discouraging effect on voter participation.
MMP aims to be a proportional system. But bizarrely we have chosen to disenfranchise a small but significant proportion of voters by discarding their votes. This is a severe deficiency in our supposedly proportional electoral system.
And the problem is not one of the size of the threshold. Reducing the threshold would indeed reduce the problem, and eliminating the threshold would eliminate the problem.
But the problem can be better eliminated by giving voters a second choice of party vote. This solution means that every voter can have a say in the makeup of parliament, as well as expressing support for a minor party.
The two-choice system for party voting effectively decouples the size of the threshold from the issue of wasted votes. We can retain MMP with the threshold at whatever level we want, and still have a highly proportional electoral system.
On 4 February 2021 an article advocating two-choice MMP was published on the site democracyproject.nz, hosted by Victoria University of Wellington.
Here is a link to the article:
An item on stuff.co.nz on 31/10/2020 says that the Labour-Greens Cooperation agreement contemplates electoral reform, including the recommendations of the 2012 review of the MMP system.
That report proposed lowering the existing 5% threshold but that change does not seem to have universal support. Two-choice MMP may be a solution that is a good compromise. It allows the threshold to remain while ensuring that people supporting parties that do not pass the threshold can still have a say in the makeup of parliament.
This would remove the ‘threshold anxiety’ that arises every election:
A post from another site from November 2008. An example of where the threshold had the effect of moving the result towards the right, by having 7% of votes wasted. Read it here :
The final results of the 2008 New Zealand general election were announced in the last few days. Analysis of the results shows some interesting things:
I’d like to see the rules changed to avoid votes being wasted like this. Two ideas:
On Stuff (stuff.co.nz) 1 July 2017 there was an item about TOP party created by Gareth Morgan.
A major theme of the article is that this party may not make the 5% threshold for gaining seats in Parliament. If the party does not make the threshold, the effect will be to take votes away from other parties.
The difference between making the threshold or not could decide the government. We have already had parties from right and left gain more than 4% of the party vote, but fail to pass the 5% threshold. So far these situations have not had a huge effect.
But imagine a situation where one party (or grouping) (‘group A’) receives 48% of the vote, another (‘group B’) 47%, and a small party (‘Party C’) 5%. But did that small party receive 4.99% or 5.00001%.
Under present rules, the answer to that question (insignificant as it may seem), can change the government. If it was 4.99% or less for party C, group A can form a government with a 48% to 47% majority. If party C made 5.00001%, it can join with group B to form a government with a 52% to 48% majority.
This situation, eminently possible, would have all sorts of undesirable effects:
And just the possibility of this kind of result puts many people off voting for small parties. And that defeats much of the purpose of MMP. That is that small parties be able to grow, and when they have adequate support have representation in Parliament.
A solution to this was proposed by at least three submitters to the 2012 MMP review. The solution seems, unfortunately, not to have been seriously considered. It was mentioned briefly in the final report, hidden away under a heading related to different ways of selecting electorate MPs.
These submitters suggested that voters be given a second choice of party. There would be two column on the party voting form, one for first choice party, and one for second choice. Votes with a first choice of a party that fails to make threshold, would instead be given to the second choice party.
Most people voting for a party at risk, would give their second choice to a larger party more likely to make the threshold.
Thus the vast majority of votes would count in the final proportionality of Parliament.
Under the present system 10 to 15% of votes can be wasted. Under the proposed two choice system, this percentage could drop almost to zero.
More information will be going up on this site in coming days and weeks.
Two-choice party voting or The Spare Vote 