Voting systems - which is the most fair, democratic, simple to understand?

There is no perfect electoral system that fits every situation. Selecting a single winner such as a President may be quite different from electing a government, or a parliament. Assessment of an electoral system involves comparing both process and outcomes. Every country adapts its electoral system to its own special circumstances.

Processes, for example voting and counting procedures, can be analysed and compared, but it is not always possible to remove judgement or politically influenced opinion. Simple processes can have complex democratic outcomes and political consequences. Judgements about the suitability of an electoral system depend on ideas about representative democracy.

Democracy is ‘unthinkable save in terms of the parties’ as E. E. Schattschneider famously put it, and yet in some electoral systems, including 'First Past the Post', we do not vote directly for our chosen party. Voting directly for a party is a feature of PR systems (ie Party Proportional systems).

It's not just how you vote, but how you count the votes.
Advocates of ‘First Past The Post’ argue that the process is simple, and that the outcome is more likely to be decisive. As a result the leading party will able to govern without having to depend on other minor parties.
Third, fourth and other minor parties tend to be the casualties of a system that tends to hand complete power to one of the two main parties.
At the subsequent General Election, the electorate can 'hold the Government and the individual MPs to account'. In practice this means that if a relatively small number of voters change the way they vote, the election result can be reversed. (The other of the two main parties will be able to form the Government.)

However in practice, the rules of FPTP can have less than obviously democratic results. Under FPTP, to be elected as an MP to represent a constituency a candidate must get more votes than any other candidate. This seems straightforward. It is not necessary for the candidate to get a majority (50%) of the votes.
However because the overall result of the election depends on the total of these individual constituency contests rather than the total votes cast, it can turn out that a party can win an election under FPTP but not get the most votes (if it is accepted that a vote for a candidate of a party is equivalent to a vote for that party).

In a multi party environment it is also likely that a party can win enough seats to be able to form the government but only have a minority of votes cast - that is that the opposition parties combined will have won more votes than the governing party. Thus winning depends on seats won, not necessarily votes cast. Parties develop strategies for winning the most seats, not the most votes, knowing that votes cast for a loosing candidate are ignored by the system. This leads parties to a focus on the so called marginal seats and ignore 'safe' seats.

Politics tends to be more adversarial, with issues being presented more simplistically. Where issues are controversial or complex, the Government can pass the legislation without difficulty, confident that they have a political majority to support the measure. The ability of the legislature to contribute to a system of checks and balances is therefore limited. MPs from within the governing party may have more influence in opposing proposed legislation than MPs from the opposition parties.

The principle alternatives to majoritarian electoral systems are proportional systems and hybrid systems, although classification is not always precise.

Advocates of Proportional Representation, PR, argue that an electoral system should produce a result that is proportional to the way all the people have voted. If this means that two or more parties have to join together for a coalition to govern, this is more democratic than designing a system to produce a single winner when there is no clear single winner in terms of votes cast.

A consequence of PR is that politics tends to be more consensual. Where issues are complex or controversial, it may be more difficult to find a political majority to support the measure. However debate about an issue becomes more important since the outcome may be in doubt, and thus the legislature is increased in importance.

Electoral systems and politics are difficult to separate
In some instances supporters argue that particular electoral systems may result in specific political ‘benefits’. For example, some systems might result in more left wing/ right wing/ extemist/ moderate governments, more women, more members of ethnic minorities, more working class people etc being elected.

Care should be taken in making these assessments.
Voters may not predict the outcome of the election, but the outcome of one election may influence how they vote the next time, and this might result is a correction that negates an expected outcome. Voters will, to some extent, adapt to a new system to achieve political outcomes they desire.

Secondly, from the viewpoint of democracy, it is questionable as to whether it is democratically valid to implement an electoral system in order to achieve an expected political benefit. Rather the electoral system should be designed as far as possible to determine the wishes of the voters without bias. The system should measure the result. It should not contribute to or directly influence the result.

The reader will make up his or her mind as to whether the FPTP system of tending to elect a party with a Governing majority at the expense of smaller parties is an example an the electoral system contributing to or directly influencing the election result.

The challenge for electoral reform.
The challenge for electoral reformers is that they are trying to change the rules of the game while the game is still in progress. There will be winners and loosers in the game, who will hope for some advantage from a rule change. They will have difficulty being objective about the merits of any new set of rules.
The quest is not to find the best system - there is no best system. It is to find a system that can be seen as a significant improvement compared to FPTP, the existing system. Just as importantly, in order to form a winning consensus, the system has to have as few drawbacks as possible. Any consensus has to include parties, politicians and the general population.

Systems can be compared in terms of the simplicity of their mechanics. FPTP has very simple counting and voting. Some PR systems are more difficult. There may be many more candidates and more choices to be made by the voter. Counting an STV election is distinctly complex and difficult. These factors have made it difficult to find a consensus for a PR system.

The use of single member constituencies or multimember constituencies is significant, both in terms of the simple mechanics of an election but also issues of voter choice, accountability, geography, and cost. The mechanics of some PR systems are more complex than FPTP. The supporters of such systems will downplay the significance of this, but simplicity is important to the general public. The expected political consequences, both personal and political, may sway the politicians.

An electoral system has to be considered holistically in its specific social and political context. Simplicity is a virtue, but at what cost? Despite much work on electoral system models it is not always possible to make reliable predictions about the consequences of a particular electoral system. It is very difficult to separate opinions on electoral systems from wider political considerations and this makes it even more challenging to form a consensus.

Politics is the art of the possible and thus the best chance for electoral reform may be to adopt a system that combines the familar benign characteristics of FPTP, while introducing key aspects of PR. The system that best embodies this is DPR Voting. Judge for yourself if this is worthwhile