Our electoral system: why Mosta is not 1981

This article appeared in the Times issue of Thursday 29th March 2012.

After the Mosta local council election ended up favouring a PN majority, with PL having had a 14-vote advantage in the first count (48.4% of votes, a relative majority), some have compared it to the perverse result of the 1981 general election. This clearly shows that most of us do not understand how the single-transferable-vote system works, and its advantages and disadvantages. This is very serious, because the vote is the means by which we elect our representatives and the means by which our democracy works. This ignorance is further instigated by the two 'big' parties and the most ardent of their supporters, in an attempt to keep voters under close control. Well, I prefer an informed voter who makes choices consciously than one who makes them under fear and misinformation, so here's a first article which uses this election as an example.

The biggest advantage of the single-transferable-vote is that it assures the voter that his vote is never wasted. In Mosta for example, the voter was free to vote AD and independent candidates without fearing that this could hand victory to Labour (as happens in the general election, due to district divisions and the constitutional amendments). This happens because the voter is assured that if AD is eliminated from the race, his vote will not be wasted, but will be transferred to his second preference, which in Mosta happened to be PN. In simple terms, one can look at the votes which elected the PN majority as a coalition of the voters who gave their first preference to PN, and those who gave a first preference to AD and a second preference to PN, a coalition which was needed to get the necessary 50% majority to gain the seat majority. It's the most beautiful thing about the STV system: no vote goes wasted, and when no divisions are involved (the locality is a single and whole constituency, unlike Malta during a national election), it results in the most proportionate and exact adherence to the wishes of the electorate. After all, AD voters made a choice in giving 2 to a PN candidate and not a PL candidate. Such a system urges parties to present the most valid candidates, who not only attract the first preference but also attract the second, third and fourth preferences, in an election where the people are fortunately growing wiser than the bi-partisan system and are free to experiment with cross-party voting.

The problem with the 1981 election, and all our general elections since then, is when the STV system is applied to a constituency divided into separate districts. The Labour Party, before the 1981 election, perfectly understood the deficiency of this system, and applied malicious district-boundary manipulation to create a bigger surplus of the 'wasted' votes of the last standing candidate in PN-leaning districts than in PL-leaning districts. It led to the PN winning 51% of the popular vote but still obtaining three seats less, something which in a single-constituency STV election would not have happened. This gerrymandering led to unproportionate and perverse results in all the general elections to this day, thus creating the need of constitutional amendments which though necessary, have actually killed the most beautiful advantages of STV: the freedom of cross-party voting without fearing vote-wastages, and the need of parties to present valid candidates who keep attracting second, third and later preferences.

Luckily, this still survives at local council and MEP elections. Luckily too, voters are learning the advantage of this system and are experimenting with cross-party voting. This is a step in the right direction, as voters are increasingly basing their choices at local council and European level on the validity of the candidates rather than on the party ticket. Proposing that the constitutional amendments being applied on a national level are to be applied to the local level (where no district division exists), would definitely be a step backwards. It would turn to reality the fear of the 'wasted' vote and prevent people from voting with a more open mind. It would enforce the bi-partisan mentality at local level, further turning people away from using their vote wisely and from voting at all. If parties want to ensure that a relative majority turns itself into a majority of seats, it's up to them to present valid candidates which keep attracting the second, third and later preferences. It's up to them to persuade the voter that all their candidates are valid, and not try to force the result they want through fear.

If anything, it's the national electoral system that needs to learn from the local electoral system, and not vice-versa. But I would go into that in a later blog-post.

In the meantime, have a look at the below video. It doesn't specifically explain STV, it explains AV, but both systems are very close. The only difference is that it in AV only one candidate is elected by reaching a 50% quota, in STV more than one candidate are elected by reaching a quota which depends on the number of seats to be filled.

And here's another one which specifically explains the STV system: