Comment by CaptainMarvel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CaptainMarvel | Hacker News Reader

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First Past the Post is less democratic than other systems of voting.

Consider various definitions of democracy, they're usually along the lines of:

> Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the “people,” a group historically constituted by only a minority of the population (e.g., all free adult males in ancient Athens or all sufficiently propertied adult males in 19th-century Britain) but generally understood since the mid-20th century to include all (or nearly all) adult citizens.

https://www.britannica.com/question/What-is-democracy

Put simply, democracy is a government by the people.

But in the elections I referenced, we see that some groups of people are underrepresented in government. Their opinions are not contributing to decisions as much as other people's.

It's similar to gerrymandering. Keep the same voting system, but distribute electoral areas so that a certain group of people will never have political power. Wouldn't you say that's less democratic?

>First Past the Post is less democratic than other systems of voting.

Arrow's theorem <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...> states that no voting system can be "perfect". Every electoral system can be gamed in some way to result in non-obvious results. That does not invalidate the system.

There is nothing inherently about proportional, mixed-member, AV, or other systems that make them more "democratic" or "fair" than FPTP. Democracy is any system in which the will of the people is reflected via a systematic manner choosing its representatives. Conversely, if the goal is to make a system as "democratic" as possible, the only logical conclusion is direct democracy, with no representative layer whatsoever. That's a reasonable stance to take. What is not reasonable is to claim that any systematic, regularized manner of election with abundant precedent in reflecting the will of the populace is inherently and objectively less "fair" than another, or even that "fairness" is an abstract ideal that can be achieved.

Err… as it says on the page:

- Arrow's theorem does not apply to first past the post

- Arrow's theorem does not apply to proportional representation

- Arrow's theorem only applies to ranked voting systems.

Arrow himself said about US elections (FPTP), "The first thing that I'd certainly do is go to a system where people ranked all the candidates."

So yeah… I’m still maintaining FPTP is less fair, as the evidence you supplied is not applicable.

Gerrymandering is different to the system itself getting less democratic. The UK Electoral Commission is meant to be non-political in setting boundaries. Obviously, there will be pressure applied for advantage but, frankly, that's how adversarial politics works. As I pointed out, you get groups who are over represented as well. While FPTP is not 1:1 mapping of voters to representation, it's still democratic, particularly in a representative democracy, as "the people" choose someone to represent them.

Watching PR in action in Europe, I also don't think it's the panacea some people see it as. The horse trading happens behind doors when forming coalitions, rather than upfront, at least in theory, in a manifesto. It seems to start promisingly, but fragments to the extent that there is no stable government formed (Belgium), or a minority government that can't actually do anything (France), or having to bring in formerly shunned "unpleasant" groups (as I mentioned before, I can see there are pros and cons to that) because voters are so disenchanted with the disfunction (Germany) they don't vote for the more palatable options anymore.

I don't have a good answer to what is "better", but the main thing in any democracy is to get informed and vote. Even if you are in a location where your vote is taken for granted or diluted, it is still pressure on the main parties to change their position (vis UKIP and the Conservatives) as votes slip away quickly.

I think we actually agree a lot and I appreciate your reflection on voting systems and democracy.

I agree with you that FPTP is democratic, and that you get groups who are over-represented (such as your example with SNP).

I respect your point about deficiencies with alternative voting systems as seen in other countries in Europe, and do distrust anyone that promises a panacea in general.

I couldn't agree more about being well-informed and actually voting.

I also agree with your earlier points that I didn't mention in my other comment, about other recent anti-democratic measures (specifically Voter ID), and your particularly prescient point about a partial driver of Brexit.

That last point is something that I've thought about a lot, and I think it's worth pondering more.

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