Repubblica gives some excellent reportage/hearsay which shows three things:
- generally, preference voting is supported by parties with better grassroots organisation;
- generally, preference voting is supported by non-leadership groups within parties;
- specifically, in the Italian case, preference voting is supported by the non-Veltroni factions in the PD, and the AN within the PdL.
Principled opinions are always strangely aligned with the interests of their supporters.
Link | July 20th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Interesting Chris.
As someone who lives under a preferential voting system that I think works fairly well I like the system.
One thing that we also do in most ‘upper houses’ here in Australia (ie senate etc.) is that there is no arbitrary percentage limit (sbarramento) but a quota is calculated a bit more complicated perhaps, but I think more fair.
Link | July 24th, 2008 at 8:24 am
The usual rap against preferential voting is that it leads to corruption; the incentives to cultivate a personal (and corrupt) vote are too high to resist. That’s less so in Australia, where only one person has to be elected, and, AFAIK, only one candidate per party stands. If voters vote first on the basis of party, the incentives to cultivate a personal vote are reduced. Then again, much of this literature is based on Italy (surprise!) and Japan. See Eric Chang, “Electoral Incentives for Political Corruption under Open-List Proportional Representation”, Journ. of Politics, Vol. 67 (3) (2005)
Link | July 24th, 2008 at 11:53 am