MMP at 25: how proportional representation changed New Zealand forever | Hacker News Reader

MMP at 25: how proportional representation changed New Zealand forever

stuff.co.nz

12 pointsfanf28 comments

I'm hoping to see similar reform as a result of the UK election today.

Reading this doesn't raise my hopes unfortunately. Seems like a series of happy accidents that eventually broke through the self-interest of the politicians.

We had a chance to change from FPTP in 2011 but didn’t take it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternat...

I would be concerned that adopting PR would force dominant parties to agree to the demands of smaller, fringe parties in order to form a working majority. FPTP, to some degree, stops this from happening..

Is this a dumb take?

What PR enables is the fighting that is _within_ parties to more naturally split out into _new_ parties. This is inherently more democratic.

As under PR there is no/little consequence of splitting into a new party.

As an analogy, imagine if open source prevented forking by ensuring if you forked nobody could find you.

All PR has some negative consequences to be sure - they are not absolutely perfect - but I would argue on balance better.

Some say PR requires compromise. To my mind this is a feature. If the voting public don't give an absolute and clear majority then what they're saying is maybe your mandate isn't great. How about we limit you to just the issues where there is clear cross-party consensus. Rather than being reckless with a "majority" (which under FPTP could be well under 51% of population)

It's not a dumb take. It very much happens.

However this happens in FPTP as well, they're just called wedge issues.

Obviously a view on abortion shouldn't dictate a parties view on tax. In FPTP it does dictate that implicitly where as in MMP it would be explicitly negotiated as part of a support agreement between two or more parties (to varying degrees, i.e. explicit suppport, or perhaps supporting a bill to the point it will be voted on while allowing a conscience vote by their members).

In the 2014 election, a party calling themselves "UKIP" won 13% of the vote (but only a single seat). UKIP were right wing populist, attracting people who would otherwise have little choice but to vote for the Tories, and after this election and a previous strong showing in the European Parliament elections, the Tories felt threatened. In FPTP, UKIP cannibalising Tory votes could be a big problem, constituencies that would normally split 50% Tory 45% Labour suddenly becoming 10% UKIP 40% Tory 45% Labour could lead to a big swing in seats.

Tory leader David Cameron's solution to this was to undercut UKIP support by offering a referendum on leaving the EU, their core policy. Eurosceptic voters would be appeased by the offer, and return to the mainstream Conservative fold, but the anticipated Remain victory would confirm Cameron's business as usual leadership.

This did not happen.

The moral here is that far from stopping a dominant party agreeing to the demands of a fringe party, FPTP itself led directly to a fringe party being able to pressure a dominant party into lurching towards an extreme position. It is a stupid system.

I'd like to see this reform happen in my country, Australia. The two major political parties always last at least 2 terms in government. (There are no midterms like in the USA). And both parties have their flaws. An MMP system might allow the smaller parties to force compromise on the brittleness of the thinking of the major parties. Labor with its policies that disregard economic consequences (boosting immigration to very high levels while the housing industry is experiencing high cost inflation) vs liberals/nationals with their heads buried in the sand about climate change and being constrained by the ultraconservative factions from making any useful centrist reforms.

Of course it's a major change to the system of government and never going to happen.

It was the liberals that boosted immigration to high levels.

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