One big advantage would be solving the whole “X can’t win here! Only Y can keep Z out!” problem, and allowing people to express their actual preference rather than one based on a best guess as to what other people would do. Even if that leaves us with safe seats, they will be safe because a majority of the people in the constituency genuinely want them to be. At the moment, there are some safe seats (e.g. Hazel Blears’ seat in Salford) where a majority of the voters want their MP out, and the MP is genuinely horribly unpopular, but there’s no way for those voters to co-ordinate between themselves and settle on the most likely alternative to kick them out.
I’m speaking in more meta terms than the particular advantages of this as a proposed system for the indefinite future. Would kicking the system every few decades actually be a very good idea?
It could be—except that at some point you have to move from a ‘better’ system to a ‘worse’ one. At which point, people complain—rightly—that they are getting a worse democracy because of some meta-rule.
Possibly one option, if we’re talking about that kind of radical change, would be for every election to also have a referendum on how the next election would be held—with four or five options each time (say FPTP, STV, AV, AMS, AV+ or something). Each time, the least popular option from last time will be removed from the ballot and replaced with a different system.
(Of course then you get into a meta-meta argument about how to count the referendum votes...)
One big advantage would be solving the whole “X can’t win here! Only Y can keep Z out!” problem, and allowing people to express their actual preference rather than one based on a best guess as to what other people would do. Even if that leaves us with safe seats, they will be safe because a majority of the people in the constituency genuinely want them to be. At the moment, there are some safe seats (e.g. Hazel Blears’ seat in Salford) where a majority of the voters want their MP out, and the MP is genuinely horribly unpopular, but there’s no way for those voters to co-ordinate between themselves and settle on the most likely alternative to kick them out.
I’m speaking in more meta terms than the particular advantages of this as a proposed system for the indefinite future. Would kicking the system every few decades actually be a very good idea?
It could be—except that at some point you have to move from a ‘better’ system to a ‘worse’ one. At which point, people complain—rightly—that they are getting a worse democracy because of some meta-rule. Possibly one option, if we’re talking about that kind of radical change, would be for every election to also have a referendum on how the next election would be held—with four or five options each time (say FPTP, STV, AV, AMS, AV+ or something). Each time, the least popular option from last time will be removed from the ballot and replaced with a different system. (Of course then you get into a meta-meta argument about how to count the referendum votes...)
It’s meta-arguments all the way down, yes :-)