Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to stephen walker,
Danyl might find it more elucidating. For me, it's pretty much exactly what happened to me in management, I discovered 2 important things.
1. It's really easy if you have half a brain
2. If you have a whole brain it's really boring and stressful -
They could. But it costs money (money to pay lawyers to get user details out of twitter, money to draft letters, money to file cases, money to settle, money to build the courthouses and pay the judges to decide the extra cases for those who won't).
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They have to issue summonses and bring you before a court.
It really doesn't sound that hard.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Realistically, they're screwed - they're just not resourced for that level of infringement, and PRwise its a nightmare.
I'm not so sure. They could just send fines to as many people as they can easily get, targeting people with the most followers, making the most posts, or the most obvious ones. There's nothing that requires that they must catch everyone, if they catch anyone. Send out a thousand fines, drop 900 of the lesser ones with a warning, and take the rest through the court, settling for lesser punishment except in the highest profile and most unrepentant cases.
I'm not saying they should, just that they could. The PR could be bad, but it's a commission charged with upholding the law, not a political party, so do they really care?
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Have you not noticed Swedish Rounding?
Who stars in it?
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
If you believe that the first preference is the only important vote, and that proportionality with respect to the first preference is all important, then they shouldn't.
Yes, this is true. It's not the only condition for considering it suboptimal, though. What I really don't like about it is the way the electorate boundaries matter. Gerrymandering raises its ugly head again. But because the proportionality is so bloody mysterious, any disturbances caused by gerrymandering can easily be explained away by the mysteries of runoff, and the hand waving of "well it all evens out across the country". Which was pretty much an excuse for FPP in the old days, when parties actually lost the popular vote count but won the election - it all evens out over time.
I don't want it to even out mysteriously. I want it to even out directly. When I buy something in a shop I don't want my change to be a random handful of coins that's probably near the right amount, I want the actual change counted out, because sometimes I really need that last dollar.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Giving some voters such disproportionate power based solely on where they live is as offensive to democratic principles as the role of safe seats and marginal seats under FPP.
Yes, that's the whole point of the national proportionalizing (can't think of a better word). The threshold has always been a bad aspect of MMP something only the big parties could possibly want, because it gives them the ability to make or break the small parties, just by throwing electorates their way. It also encourages personality cults, which in turn end up giving the system a bad name. Winston IS NZ First, regardless of what any of the other people in NZ First feel about it.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Rich of Observationz,
If a party got 30% in one 5 seat electorate, that would give them one or two seats. If they got 15% everywhere, they'd get nothing.
Yes, that's what I see with the high independent count in the Irish elections. A local personality can get elected, but any viewpoint that has evenly distributed support outside of the top 3-4 parties will suffer badly. And the top 3-4 parties cream a big advantage - Graeme hasn't come back to me about why Fine Gael should be entitled to 27% (=(45.8/36.1)-100%) more seats than it got first preferences for.
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But like I say, with 3 MP constituencies, you're likely to increase disproportionality. I'd be pushing for 4-7 in New Zealand, with 5 or 6 in most.
That would obviously be better. If it were 2, it would be identical to FPP. The further from 2, the less like FPP, and the more like MMP. Personally, since we've already got MMP, and it's already the proportionality that STV is aiming for, I really can't see the point. All voting signals that don't elect a candidate in your electorate are 100% wasted. They don't carry to any national count. If they did, it might actually have advantages over MMP.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
That link really doesn't sell me. The Fine Gael Party had 36.1% of the first preference votes but got 45.8% of the seats?? That's like an FPP result. All of the top 3 parties have hugely distorted proportions. I'm aware that the first preference is not the only preference, and that I'm judging their system by MMP standards, but outcome pretty clearly shows that it's not a system that prioritizes national proportionality over the oddities of how electorates vote.
The high number of independents is very interesting. 13 elected, with 11.8% of first preferences in total. So on average, somewhat below 1% each. But the Greens totally missing out on 1.8% throws that stat into stark relief.
The general answer is that things tend to even out over the the whole country.
I think it could work if our FPP electorate half were done that way, then a plurality of parties would be selected there, and our proportionalizing machine could sort out the actual proportions.
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Proportionality of first preferences isn't guaranteed, but if the electorates are large enough (five or so MPs is generally considered enough), then overall proportionality is quite likely.
I'm struggling to see how 5 MPs can be proportional. If there's more than 5 parties then some of them have to be excluded no matter how evenly the proportions are distributed. If 10 parties got roughly 10% each, then half of them would get 20% representation, and half would get 0%.
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