Steve Baron

MMP: To Disembowel or Develop?

(2,142 words)

It was Winston Churchill who said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to
repeat it.” Like the names of loves long lost, we often forget, and so it is with politics.
Politicians hungry for power often pray on this weakness of human nature and give us the
opportunity to make the same mistakes over again. Yes indeed, we do have short
memories, especially on political matters. At the next election voters will decide whether or
not to keep MMP or replace it with something else.

So what does history tell us about our voting system and why did we change to MMP? For
a start, in 1978 and 1981, the Labour Party received more votes than the National Party
but National remained the government, because they held more electorate seats. That is
how First Past the Post (FPP) works. In 1978 the Social Credit Party (now Democrats for
Social Credit) received sixteen percent of the vote, but only one seat in Parliament, then
twenty one percent of the vote in 1981 which gave them only two seats in Parliament. In
1984 the New Zealand Party received twelve percent of the vote, but no Members of
Parliament. These results, along with a growing distrust of politicians due to many broken
election promises, and New Zealander's innate belief in fairness, led to calls for a Royal
Commission, and change.

As one of the many New Zealanders who got to vote for the first time in my life as an
eighteen year old, in 1978, it just didn't seem fair that the party that got the most votes
didn't become the government, and the votes received by third parties did not reflect that
vote in Parliament. In other words many votes were 'wasted votes'.

Even as far back as 1979 there were calls for change, Professor Geoffrey Palmer, later to
become Prime Minister in a Labour government wrote,
New Zealand passes too many laws and it passes them too quickly. Legislative
overload is not unique to New Zealand, although it is more pronounced here than in
most other countries.
As a proponent of MMP, Professor Palmer saw this as an opportunity to slow this process.

I also remember Garry Knapp, leader of the Democratic Party (formerly Social Credit and
now Democrats for Social Credit) and a number of supporters barricading themselves into
one of Parliaments Select Committee rooms, as a protest to highlight the unfairness of
FPP. They remained there for a number of days, even taking a porta-loo in with them.
Knapp was seen on the six o'clock news waving from the balcony in defiance, after
requests from the Speaker of the House and Police to remove themselves.

National won the 1990 election and a date was set in 1992 to hold a non-binding
referendum to decide if the existing system of FPP was to be retained or if it should be
replaced with a new voting system which was to be decided in a later binding referendum.
An overwhelming 84.5% of voters wanted the system to changed.

After this, battle lines were drawn and all hell broke loose. All sorts of organisations and
lobby groups were set up either to support MMP or to denounce it, leading up to the 1993
general election where the second referendum would take place. The Electoral Reform
Coalition was the main advocate for MMP. It was organised by Phil Saxby, a Labour Party
member, along with many other individuals, as well as members of many of the smaller
political parties who joined together on a shoestring budget to bring about change. Political
Scientists also entered the frey saying greater representation of minorities, furthermore,
has been shown to lead to greater trust in government on the part of minority citizens.

On the other side of the battle lines was the Coalition for Better Government who opposed
MMP. It was organised by wealthy businessman Peter Shirtcliffe, chairman of Telecom
New Zealand. He was quoted as saying MMP "would bring chaos". They ran full page
adverts in major newspapers at great expense. Some newspapers at the time estimated
they spent over $1.5m. Australian academic, Malcolm McKerras, was invited to New
Zealand to put his case against MMP. In 1988 McKerras had said the Royal Commission's
recommendation was, "so radical that it had virtually no prospect of popular endorsement
at a referendum", and following the 1992 referendum, had condemned MMP as "a rat bag
scheme". The Green Party later made the comment, “From our point of view McKerras
became our secret weapon with his arrogance tipping the swinging voters in our direction.”

Journalist Graeme Hunt was also an opponent of MMP. He claimed it would be the
“electoral disaster of the century”. He also argued that the Royal Commission had been
“stacked” with a Royal Commission in favour of MMP by Geoffrey Palmer (an MMP
supporter) who by then was Minister of Justice and responsible for deciding who would be
on the Royal Commission. Hunt also argued that MMP would elect “political greenhorns to
positions of power” and would allow the “tail to wag the dog” as minor parties would get too
much power. Many opponents also claimed that MMP would cause unstable governments.
National Cabinet Minister Bill Birch said MMP would be "a catastrophic disaster for
democracy". Former National Party Minister of Finance, Ruth Richardson, said MMP
"would bring economic ruin". In effect they were trying to convince the public that we could
trust them, and that our faith should be put in them, and not some new political system that
would limit their powers.

The first MMP election in 1996 produced a more diverse representation as expected. A
record number of women were elected, along with an increase in the number of Maori and
Pacific Island MPs. A lot of water has passed under the political bridge, as there have now
been a number of MMP elections. The economy has not gone to ruin as predicted. Neither
has it been a catastrophe for democracy and governments have been extremely stable
after an initial settling in period. Perhaps one could argue that from time to time the tail has
wagged the dog, however, the alternative to that is the undesirability of absolute power in
the hands of just one political party.

There are also calls to change MMP to another voting system. The main options being
Approval Voting (AV), Preferential Vote (PR), Single Transferable Vote (STV), and the
Borda Count (BC)

AV is a simple and easy to understand system, as well as simple to implement with little
change needed to ballot papers. It was first formulated in 1971 by Robert J. Weber who in
1977 also wrote a book called "Comparison of Voting Systems". AV became popular in the
1980's when a group of academics started to promote it for use in the American elections.
It was never adopted there, but is used by the United Nations to elect the Secretary
General. According to proponents, a major virtue of AV compared to conventional voting
systems is its greater 'honesty' in the sense that it encourages sincere voting and is less
vulnerable to strategic manipulation. Also, AV does not violate monotonicity. Having non-
monotonicity means that getting more votes may actually stop a person from being
elected. Rather a strange consequence, but evidently mathematically probable. So
therefore, if it is good enough for the United Nations, is it good enough for New Zealand?
Here's what outspoken AV proponent Professor Steven Brams has to say.
While AV is a strikingly simple election reform for finding consensus choices in
single-winner elections, in elections with more than one winner - such as for a
council or a legislature - AV would not be desirable if the goal is to mirror a diversity
of views, especially of minorities; for this purpose, other voting systems should be
considered.
Given these comments above it is hard to choose AV as an option.

Some, like Peter Shirtcliffe, prefer Preferential Voting (PV). This is certainly a better option
than FPP, because it will stop the most unpopular candidate from winning (as can happen
under FPP). However, PV allows popular candidates to be eliminated too early making it
an unappealing aspect of this system. PV is also susceptible to insincere voting as well as
bullet voting. This is a tactic where even though a voter can select more than one
candidate, they only tick their first preference. If enough people do this, the system
effectively reverts to FPP, which is undesirable. However, rules can be imposed to
penalise this tactic, although this could possibly result in high numbers of spoiled ballots.

One system that has an almost cult following is STV. It has grown in popularity and was
even considered by the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System. Thomas Wright
Hill first came up with the concept of the transferable vote in 1821, but it was never used.
Then in 1855 Carl Andrae promoted using it for Denmark elections. Most people credit
Englishman Thomas Hare with the concept however, as he became well known in
Australia where it has been used. In Australia STV is known as the Hare-Clark proportional
method. STV is used in Ireland, the Australian and South African Senate, Malta, Tasmania
and even in a number of local body elections in New Zealand. The down side to STV is
that very few people understand how it works. STV was rejected by the Plant Committee,
which reported to the British Labour Party, because of non-monotonicity. STV is also
susceptible to insincere voting. However, STV certainly achieves more diverse
representation by allowing more minorities to be elected.
Another option is the Border Count (BC). This election system was developed by
Frenchman Jean-Charles de Borda, in 1770. A little known fact is that the BC is
successfully used on two Pacific Islands being the Republic of Nauru, the Republic of
Kiribati and also Slovenia. The idea of BC is to take all voter preferences into account.
This is a desirable feature, because a candidate is unable to lose by 'doing better' as can
happen under other systems. Samuel Merrill conducted a study of seven voting systems,
which showed the BC was the most likely procedure to select both a Condorcet winner
(round robin against all candidates) and the candidate with the highest social utility.
However, the BC can be susceptible to insincere voting and small changes to choices can
make an immense difference. BC determines the winner of an election by giving each
candidate a certain number of points corresponding to the position in which he or she is
ranked by each voter. Once all votes have been counted the candidate with the most
points is the winner. Some feel this is more favourable than a simple majority because it
often elects a candidate more broadly acceptable to voters. It is considered more
consensus orientated.

While there is no “perfect” system I can't help but feel the current MMP system is
reasonably fair and reasonably understood by New Zealanders. There is some
controversy over the fact that NZ First received more votes than the ACT Party for
example, but failed to meet the five percent threshold and therefore did not receive any
seats in Parliament, whereas ACT (with less votes than NZ First) got a number of MPs
elected because Rodney Hide won the seat of Epsom. Perhaps this needs to be
addressed by lowering the threshold to less than five percent or simply doing away with
the ruling that allows a party to get seats in Parliament based on the percentage of votes
received, if it can get just one Member of Parliament elected.

In my opinion, MMP has certainly been a step forward in our democracy and any
consideration to changing the current system should be taken carefully and slowly for such
an important constitutional type issue. MMP may not have given us as much control as
some would have liked, but that is unlikely to happen until New Zealanders get to
experience what 190 million people in Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein and twenty three
States in the USA now embrace, the referendum system. This experience has proved how
successful binding referendums can be at empowering nations, deciding national issues of
importance and giving voters more control over issues that directly affect their lives. The
Swiss have used direct democracy for over one hundred and thirty years through the Veto,
Recall (which would allow us to remove unwanted List MPs) and Citizens Initiated
referendum. All of which are binding on the government.

So, now the debate starts all over again, but does New Zealand really want to go back to
the days when Labour got more votes than National, but National remained the
government even with a minority vote? Or have a return to the old two party club and the
fastest law makers in the west, as Geoffrey Palmer referred to New Zealand?
Disembowelling our electoral system by returning to FPP would be a step backward. Let
us improve on what we have and step forward into a better democracy. Only time will tell
what we decide, but at least we all get to participate in the debate.

Steve Baron is an author, Founder of Better Democracy NZ, and a

regular contributor to publications throughout New Zealand. He
resides in Cambridge. steve@betterdemocracy.co.nz
www.betterdemocracy.co.nz