Tentative conclusions on democracy & governance
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Malta tinkers with STV
This would have been a more detailed discussion, but the better Times of Malta piece is inaccessible due to site maintenance.
In any event, Malta has used the single transferable vote in 5-seat districts for elections to its House of Representatives since the 1920s. Apparently since 1987, it has tinkered with the specifics of seat allocation. Recent developments:
The Maltese Parliament on Wednesday night approved changes in the Maltese Constitution that cater for significant changes in general elections. Gozo will remain a single unified electoral district while strict proportionality between the number of first preferences and the number of seats obtained will be guaranteed when two parties are elected.
STV seeks to guarantee proportionality of seat shares to support for factions through surplus transfers and eliminations, that is, by minimizing wasted votes. Each seat in the district corresponds to a quota of votes. Votes in excess of the quota are transferred to voters’ next-preferred candidates. There are different ways of determining the quota, two being the Hare and Droop methods.
Without knowledge of context or, perhaps, some deeper understanding of micro-dynamics, it’s hard to tell what change would effect “strict proportionality.” Thoughts?
I hope the other site comes back online soon.
3 responses to to “Malta tinkers with STV”
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With an almost purely two-party system, as in Malta, the district magnitude of 5 leads to disproportionalities at the district level. Often these cancel each other out across districts but sometimes they don’t.
Here’s the history: “… the 1981 election produced the ‘perverse’ result of the the PN obtaining a majority (50.9 percent) of the first-preference votes nationally but nevertheless failing to obtain a majority of the parliamentary seats. … To prevent a recurrence of such a result, a constitutional amendment was adopted in 1987 to ensure that the party winning a majority of the first-preference votes will also be given a parliamentary majority by allocating so many additional seats as are necessary to give it a one-seat majority. …” Hirczy and Lane, “Malta: STV in a Two-Party System”, pp. 178-204 in Bowler and Grofman, eds., Elections in Australia, Ireland, and Malta under the Single Transferable Vote, Ann Arbor, 2000. The quote is on page 186.
These additional seats are somewhat analogous to overhang seats in some implementations of MMP.
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Thanks, Bob. So one might assume the reform is a top-up based on first choices/preferences? (That’s how I understand your answer.)
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That’s my understanding as well — they add just enough seats to the legislature to get a result proportional to the first preferences.
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