Via Senator Andrew Bartlett, I see that The Independent is campaigning for electoral reform in the UK, following Labour’s re-election with only 36 per cent of the vote.
Leading opponents within the government are named as John Prescott and Ian McCartney and the story also mentions that Many union leaders also fear it will lead to coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, and prevent Labour from governing again with an absolute majority.
I imagine that the opponents regard themselves as hardheaded realists, but it would be more accurate to view them as reckless gamblers.
Given the outcome this time, and the likelihood of an economic downturn sometime in the next five years, the chance that Labour will secure an absolute majority next time can’t be better than even money.
There’s a possibility that Labour will be forced into coalition with the Lib Dems despite the benefits of first-past-the-post voting, and in this case they’ll have to accept whatever reform package their coalition partners demand. On the other hand, if they act now, Labour can choose the kind of reform they want.
Even more significant, from the viewpoint of union leaders, is (or ought to be) the possibility of another Tory government elected with less than 40 per cent of the vote. A coalition with the Lib Dems might be mildly inconvenient, but not much worse than Blair has been. By contrast, the Tories, given a couple of terms, could easily finish the job they started under Thatcher.
I haven’t looked carefully at the numbers, but I’d guess the best reform for Labour is optional preferential voting. That makes it easy for Labour voters (since, in most constituencies, they can vote for Labour alone as in the past), while most Lib Dem voters would probably give Labour their second preference.
The Tories would get the benefit of preferences from BNP, UKIP and Veritas voters. But this is something of a double-edged sword, as parties like this are prone to demand embarrassing concessions in return for their support.
On the plausible assumption that Labour would get 70 per cent of Lib Dem and Welsh/Scottish nationalist preferences, and the Tories would get 70 per cent of the rest, I estimate a two-party preferred Labour vote of about 57 per cent.
The Tories would need a swing of more than 7 per cent to win because, contrary to the simple calculation above, the Lib Dems would win in some seats and would presumably join Labour in coalition.
The Labour apparatchiks who want to stick with FPP have either failed to do the math or are willing to pass up certain victory just to improve their chances of avoiding coalition. Either way, they are anything but hardheaded realists.
John Quiggin 
I believe ‘Modern’ forms of STV have fixed that bug you describe, and after someone is eliminated or a surplus transferred, their votes are passed on to the (very) next candidate and surplus is recalculated. So if I voted for someone else before the Dems, after my vote passed through the Dems it’s transferred at the value of .3q+1, same as all votes electing Democrats. Obviously this makes counting rather more complex but it’s in the name of democracy and it keeps the spirit of STV alive.
I believe NZ uses this modern form of STV for their council elections, but I don’t know if anyone else does.
STV still isn’t perfect (I’m still pissed that my vote in the Senate election didn’t get counted, and I’ll be rather more pissed come 1 July), but it’s better than anything else I know of.
Yeah well D’hondt is kinda like what you say, except that you can only vote for one party, so only transferrable to the next candidate in that party. Of course this could be ammened. Perhaps an approval method where each voter puts an X (yeah that’s right, a dirty filfhy X) to as many candidates as are seats. The rest is easy. Anyway more thinking and reading needs to be done here, or something.
Approval voting has serious problems, in particular it dramatically encourages tactical voting. What you’ve described is actually not approval voting, it’s the block preferential monster used for the senate before 1949, the one that gave 36/0 results.
Sorry, two systems here: one is d’hondt which I meant to provide a link to before, the other is http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/D%27Hondt_method
I actually don’t think approval is that bad, but a certain ammount of tactical voting does occur. In a single winner race the strategy is to vote for the candidate you would vote for in a fptf race and then vote for all other candidates you prefer to that one. So no wasted votes occur. This system gets a bit more confusing for PV so I will need to do more thinking.
An Interesting post there by John Quiggin about the evilness of Borda, I agree entirely although I didn’t bother reading it. What a cheeky bugger I am. Crooked timber certainly looks promising for tasty blog treats.
In conclusion, I don’t really like Approval for many reasons and I think the majority of Australian’s would find it aesthetically unpleasing and unwelcoming. But I believe D’hondt has something going for it. It is neither single transferrable nor is it inexhuastible. Each time a new round is calculated for the next winner, all seats already won by a party are factored into that party’s (I deserve another seat Now! ratio), so it is very proportional. At the moment it is a toss up between stv and d’hondt with myself currently favouring d’hondt. For PR of course.
here is a link I am proud to call my own if you are interested. Which I hope for your mental state you are not. http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Australian_electoral_system
PS approval isn’t the monster you are talking about, I am pretty sure that for a multimember system it would be proportional.
but there would still be some wasted votes depending on the proportionality of the system (size of quotas)
Program on the emergence of civilization.
“14 species of large animals capable of domesitcation in the history of mankind.
None from the sub-Saharan African continent.
13 from Europe, Asia and northern Africa.”
Favor.
And disfavor.
They point out Africans’ attempts to domesticate the elephant and zebra, the latter being an animal they illustrate that had utmost importance for it’s applicability in transformation from a hunting/gathering to agrarian-based civilization.
The roots of racism are not of this earth.
Austrailia, aboriginals:::No domesticable animals, so this nulified diversity of life claims on sub-continental Africa, zebras being a fine example.
god is a computer
And we’re all on auto-pilot.
Organizational Heirarchy
Heirarchical order, from top to bottom:
1. MUCK – perhaps have experienced multiple universal contractions (have seen multiple big bangs), creator of the artificial intelligence humans ignorantly refer to as “god”
2. Perhaps some mid-level alien management –
3. Mafia (evil) aliens – runs day-to-day operations here and perhaps elsewhere (“On planets where they approved evil.”)
Then we come to terrestrial management:
4. Chinese/egyptians – this may be separated into the eastern and western worlds
5. Romans – they answer to the egyptians
6. Mafia – the real-world interface that constantly turns over generationally so as to reinforce the widely-held notion of mortality
7. Jews, corporation, women, politician – Evidence exisits to suggest mafia management over all these groups.
Survival of the favored.