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MMP or Not MMP

Entry 778, on 2008-05-26 at 20:10:00 (Rating 2, Politics)

The old subject of New Zealand's electoral system seems to have come up again with the usual debate over the merits or otherwise of MMP. If you don't know, MMP stands for mixed member proportional, and its a voting system where each voter votes for a local candidate and for a party. The party votes determine the proportion of candidates for each party who are elected and the proportion is made up by adding "list" MPs to those elected by the first (local electorate) vote. I think I got that right, it sounds a lot more complicated when you have to explain it!

The previous system was called FPP (first past the post) and under that system there was one vote for a local MP only and the party with the most MPs won. That was much simpler but it tended to have some significant problems which MMP was designed to fix. The question is, do the advantages of MMP over FPP outweigh its disadvantages?

So that's the introduction to the subject. Now, what about a discussion of those advantages and disadvantages...

The big problem with FPP was that it wasn't very fair from the perspective of getting the right proportions from different parties. There were several occasions in the past where the winning party had much less than 50% of the vote (on one occasion it was less than 40% if I remember correctly), there were occasions when the winning party had less votes than the loser, and there were situations when a smaller party got a lot of the total vote but no one elected into parliament. How is that fair?

On the other hand, MMP isn't perfect either. The list MPs aren't voted for directly (they are appointed by the party hierarchy), small parties who might hold the balance of power can put demands on their more senior partners which are out of proportion to there portion of the vote, and the system of two votes is more complex and less well understood by the voters.

So obviously neither system is perfect (but should we realistically expect it to be?) but if I had the choice between the two I would choose MMP and here's why...

The fact that it is difficult for one party to gain an absolute majority under MMP is often mentioned as a disadvantage but I look at it as more of an advantage. If a major party (National or Labour) has to rely on one or more smaller ones to gain the majority it needs to pass new legislation I think that is good because it means they can't unilaterally sneak in any extreme changes after being elected.

The party list is a definite problem but when someone votes for a party they should know who is on the list. So if the list is that objectionable to them they simply shouldn't vote for the party (they can still vote for a local candidate). Under FPP people tended to vote for parties rather than people anyway so the person you voted for was largely a side effect of your vote for a party, just like it is with the MMP list.

And the small parties wielding too much power is more a perceived rather than a real problem. I can't think of any really terrible changes which the smaller parties have pushed through by using their influence on senior partners. In fact on balance, the smaller parties have done a lot of positive things, Jim Anderton was responsible for Kiwibank for example, which has been a great success.

A recent survey put New Zealand quite well up the list in terms of its degree of democracy and it was also ranked near the top as far as lack of corruption is concerned. If MMP was that bad these independent surveys would rate us lower. There is a lot of emotion shown in comments against MMP and a lot of focussing on its bad points, but there is often little consideration about whether the bad points of the alternative are even worse.

Maybe there is something even better than both MMP and FPP. STV is probably the fairest system but it is unfortunately too complicated for most people to understand. So on balance I still think MMP is still the best option. I just hope that people don't get fooled into ignoring the good points because then we'll be back to the bad old days of one of the least representative systems imaginable.

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