No Leaving Early

Coalition negotiations between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives produced agreement regarding some fundamental changes to the British electoral system.

One of those changes is that Parliament should sit for a fixed term of five years, before the next general election. That will end the traditional practice, which I described here and here, of allowing the prime minister to set the election date.

The other method of cutting short the term of a Parliament has been the vote of no confidence. By a simple-majority vote, the House of Commons has been able to, in effect, fire the prime minister. Under the coalition agreement, that will still be allowed, but it will require a supermajority of 55%.

A no-confidence motion could be blocked by 294 MPs. The Conservatives, with 306 seats (and possibly 307 after the delayed vote in one constituency), could defeat such a motion, unless (as if often the case for a governing party) their numbers are eroded over the next five years via by-election losses.

In the short term, the effect will be to lock the two coalition parties into their deal, and not enable either of them to bring about the scenario that many had expected, i.e., another general election within a year or so, to try to resolve the deadlock, and produce a parliamentary majority for one party or another.

In the long run, it will probably change British politics in ways that are neither intended nor anticipated.

Also, the two parties are committed to a referendum on adopting the Alternative Vote system for electing the House of Commons. That method is sometimes called Instant Runoff Voting, and I described it here, in an American context.

While falling short of the Liberal Democrats' ultimate goal of proportional representation, Alternative Vote might increase support for that party in future elections, and make coalition negotiations, such as those that have taken place over the last few days, commonplace in Britain.

Spanish Civil War in New York

Between 1936 and 1939, a civil war was fought in Spain. In retrospect, that war is seen as a dress rehearsal for World War II, which started soon thereafter. Germany and Italy backed the winning side, whose leader, Francisco Franco governed Spain as a dictator until his death in 1975. The other side was backed by the Soviet Union, and by leftists from the U.S. and elsewhere.

Fast-forward to the present day, and Republicans in the U.S. are positioning themselves for all-out war over their party's 2012 presidential nomination. A special election next Tuesday for a U.S. House seat in New York State's 23rd district has become a proxy war, analogous to the Spanish Civil War, among some of the GOP presidential prospects.

I wrote here about the third-party Conservative candidate who is trying, apparently successfully, to doom the candidacy of a moderate Republican.

Presidential hopefuls Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty have endorsed the Conservative candidate Douglas Hoffman. Their potential rival Newt Gingrich is supporting the Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava.

Gingrich advocates maximizing the number of Republicans in the House, in order to weaken or eliminate the power of Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who holds the office that had been Gingrich's from 1995 to 1999.

Palin and Pawlenty subscribe to the school of thought (that seems to be predominant among Republicans nationally) that the way to restore their party to power is to present a clear ideological message to the American electorate.

I don't think the New York result will be decisive in resolving the 2012 nomination battle, but any candidate on the winning side might score some points in the battle to emerge from the pack as a front-runner.

The blogosphere is debating the meaning of polls that have been conducted for this contest.

That's more important in this case than it would be in a two-way race. If the third-party candidate Hoffman can prove that he's a viable candidate, that will probably boost his support, in that those who vote for him won't fear that their vote is wasted.

As an aside, the Instant Runoff Voting system, which my native city of Minneapolis is going to try out next week, would eliminate that issue. Not that I'm advocating that. It would encourage more third-party voting, potentially making parties even more ideologically rigid than the Democratic and Republican parties have become. While there are pros and cons to that, on balance, I don't think it would be healthy for the system.

But back to the 23rd district polls.

In 538, Nate Silver makes a cogent argument that polls commissioned by Hoffman's supporters, that show him in the lead, can't necessarily be relied on.

But Chris Cillizza, in The Washington Post's The Fix blog, cites a poll conducted on behalf of the left-wing blog Daily Kos, that shows Hoffman in a dead heat with Democrat Bill Owens.

On the other side, Hoffman's backers on the Power Line blog are strongly arguing that Hoffman is ahead. I think Scott Johnson misses the point, in defending the integrity of the pollster whose results were challenged by Silver. There are many ways in which the biases of a pollster can affect the results. The wording of the questions, the order in which questions are asked, and adjustments to the numbers in an attempt to have the sample better reflect the whole population, tend to sway the results in favor of the sponsors of a poll. To acknowledge that is not to impugn the integrity of the poll-taker.

Frozen Instant Runoff Voting

Last year, in a series of posts, including this one, I discussed proportional representation. There are other alternative voting systems that, like proportional representation, have mainly been used outside the U.S.

Now, my native city of Minneapolis is adopting one of those systems, Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), for its municipal elections. Actually it's normal IRV, not FIRV as indicated in the headline on this post; I'm merely fondly remembering (from a safe distance) the winters of my childhood.

That city's former procedure had involved a non-partisan primary. There was only one primary, rather than a separate one for each party. And no candidate was identified by party on the ballot. The top two vote-getters in the primary would face off in the general election, again without being identified by party. Barring a tie (highly unlikely, although the state came close to such an outcome in its U.S. Senate election last year), the winning candidate in the general election had a majority of the votes.

Rather than casting one vote for their favored candidate, under IRV a voter will rank all of the candidates in order of preference. If one candidate gets a majority of first-place votes, he or she is elected. Otherwise, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and the second-place votes of that candidate are distributed among the remaining candidates. That procedure is repeated until one candidate has a majority. (The city also holds elections, such as that for its park board, which involve filling multiple positions. The math gets more complicated in those cases. For a further explanation, see this court opinion which rejected a challenge to the city's adoption of IRV.)

One clear benefit for Minneapolis is that it will avoid the expense of holding separate primary and runoff elections. The electorate will vote only once, and the "runoff" will merely be a matter of doing the math.

Other practical considerations involve potential difficulties. People like me, who eat, sleep and breathe politics, will have known about IRV for many years, and will be ready to go, when the first IRV election comes up. But I'm absolutely certain that, despite all efforts at voter education by the state, the parties, and the candidates, there will be many voters who go to the polls, and still need to have it explained to them, why they can't just put an "X" next to their favorite candidate's name, as they've been doing all their lives.

Also, there will be some issues with counting the votes. According to some reports, polling places will not, yet at least, be equipped with voting machines designed to handle the IRV process.

But aside from all that, how might it change voting behavior? My guess is that, in places such as Minneapolis where it's replacing a non-partisan primary, not much. IRV is just a more efficient way of implementing the same runoff that that system has always had.

If, however, IRV were implemented at a general election, following partisan primaries, I suspect that it would result in increased support of third-party candidacies. In recent years, the Independence Party, the third party that grew out of Jesse Ventura's successful gubernatorial candidacy in 1998, has been getting a sizable share of the votes in Minnesota's statewide elections. None of its candidates, other than Ventura, have come anywhere near victory, but it continues to garner much higher percentages than, for example, the Libertarians or the Greens.

Under the traditional system, an Independence voter will have no say about the preference between the Republican and Democratic candidates, if, as is usually the case, the Independence candidate finished third. But, under IRV, a voter can vote Independence with a Republican second choice, or Independence with a Democratic second choice. That would not be a wasted vote. And if there were enough such voters, then perhaps third-party candidates might win every once in a while, and not only once in a lifetime when the stars are aligned just right, as they were for Ventura in 1998.

Whether that would be a good or a bad thing depends on whether you want 1) the stability represented by continuation of the existing two-party system, or 2) the shake-up that would come with at least occasional third-party victories. I lean toward #1, but I think it's somewhat of a close call.