Wipe-out results (elections)

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

An election might be judged to have a lopsided or wipeout result if the winning party wins far more seats than its share of the votes would justify, winning most if not all of the seats.

Since a strong opposition capable of developing alterate policies and holding the government to account is generally regarded as a good thing, lopsided and wipeout results must be regarded as regretable.

This problem of lopsided and wipeout results is most noticable with the First Past The Post voting systems in single member constituencies, since FPTP is a winner-takes-all system, while single-member constituencies have no element of proportional representation.

Some examples of lopsided or wipeout results include:

Contents

1 Australia

1.1 Queensland

2 Canada

2.1 Alberta
2.2 British Columbia
2.3 Manitoba
2.4 New Brunswick
2.5 Ontario
2.6 Prince Edward Island
2.7 Saskatchewan

3 Mongolia

4 Singapore

5 Zimbabwe

6 Voting systems to reduce wipe-out results

Australia

Between 1901 and 1949, the upper house of the Federal parliament (Senate) was elected by a system of majoritorian voting. Each state had 3 senators retiring at each half-senate election. Each voter had 3 First Past The Post votes (FPTP). It was often the case that the 3 seats all went the same way, leading to lopsided results in the six states such as 36-0 or 3-33. These results brought the parliament into some disrepute. In 1948, a system of Single Transferable Vote PR was introduced.

Since the introduction of STV in the Senate, the parties have generally been evenly balanced, with minor parties and independents holding the balance of power. While frustrated, the government in the lower house has at least had a lot of different people to negotiate with.

In the 2004 election, the government did the near-impossible and gained the 57% of the vote in one state to obtain a majority in its own right in the Senate from July 2005, when the new Senators take up their seats. The quota winning a majority of seats at 54% is so high because there are an even number of seats; if there were an odd number of seats, the quota would be a more realistic 51%.

In the lower house, FPTP was changed to Preferential Voting in 1919. Preferential Voting allows the so-called Coalition to hold three-cornered contest without any risk of the result be spoiled by rogue candidates. At almost all elections, the government has had a clear majority - even a majority of 1 will do. It would be hard to show that only FPTP achieves strong government.

Queensland

In the 1974 election, using Single member electorates and Preferential Voting, the Labor opposition was reduced to a "cricket team" of eleven, against the coalition government at 72(?) seats.

Canada

Lists of general elections in Canada

Prince Edward Island

List of Prince Edward Island general elections
Prince Edward Island general election, 2003 54.0% 42.9% - 23 -4 (wipe out)
Prince Edward Island general election, 2000 57.9% 33.7% - 26 -1 (wipe out)
Prince Edward Island general election, 1996 47.8% 44.8% - 18 -8 - 1 (strong government; strong opposition)

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan elections
Saskatchewan general election, 1991 51.1% - 25.5% 55 - 10 - 1 (lopsided)
Saskatchewan general election, 1986 44.6% - 45.2% 38 - 25 - 1 (strong opposition)
Saskatchewan general election, 1982 54.1% - 37.6% 55 - 9 (wipe out)
Saskatchewan general election, 1978 48.1% - 38.1% 44 - 17 (strong opposition)
Saskatchewan general election, 1975 40.7% - 31.7% 39 - 15 - 7 (strong opposition)

Saskatchewan general election, 1944 53.1% - 35.4% 47 - 5 (wipe out)
Saskatchewan general election, 1934 48.0% - 24.0% 50 - 5 (wipe out)

Canadians appear to be content that elections are carried out efficiently and fairly, and that redistricting is also carried out fairly.

Mongolia

In the 2002? election the former government was defeated in a FPTP wipe-out, even though it still had 40%+ of the vote.

Singapore

From independence around 1959 to about 1980, the ruling party obtained 60%-70% of the vote, and was easily able to win all the single member constituencies under the First Past The Post system. At best, other parties only ever won 1 or 2 seats.

More recently, some additional members were created with the following criteria:

- Best runner-ups. Two or three of the runner ups not of the ruling party were appointed to parliament, with full voting rights except on the budget matters and on constitional changes.

- Worthies. Two or three members are selected for seats in parliament from distinguished and worthy citizens, with voting rights similar to the best runner-ups.

- Group Seats. FPTP and single member constituencies make things difficult for small minorities to get anyone elected, and this has been tackled by the creation of group seats. A group seat elects its four memebers all or nothing, and one member of the group must be a member one of the minorities. There are several group electorates in parliament.

Zimbabwe

For the first 20 years of independence, the ruling party of Zimbabwe held all but three, then all the seats in parliament. Accountable to no-one, the government acquired bad habits during this time.

Voting systems to reduce wipe-out results

FPTP and Single member constituencies may be a double barrier: first your side may be divided while the government happens a unitary party. Secondly, your supported may be by random chance badly distributed amongst the constituencies, even if the re-districting is fair.

The first change is to convert FPTP into some other system, IRV is best, but you can try LimV, AppV. With voting machines, one might even allow the voter to choose which system to use, because you can convert LimV and AppV to IRV.

The second change is make a proportion of the seats into "non-constituency" seats, elected by some kind of Top-Up, Runner-Up or PR system. The proportion might be 10%, 15%, 25%, 50%, 75%.