7 Comments

Argument 3. against PR is simply not true if done correctly, like in Germany. Doing it that way also renders your complicated solution obsolete.

Expand full comment
Jul 9Liked by Peter Kellow

The best fleet of Nuclear Power Stations on the planet sit idle in Germany because of the PR power of the small minority of Greens. Germany currently relies on French Nuclear power, in fact most of Europe does. Things go wrong in France with the interconnectors or the French Grid and Europe's lights go dim.

Expand full comment
author

I will look into the German system

Expand full comment

https://www.bmi.bund.de/EN/topics/constitution/electoral-law/voting-system/voting-system-node.html

You can argue about the pre 2013 system being even better, about whether there should be more direct mandates and constituencies, about the 5% requirement, esp. with regard to the change concerning the CSU and that the country still has the same issues as any other Western democracies, but the electoral system itself is pretty simple and fair.

Postal voting is also safe, counting is proper as still done manually and supervised by reps of all main parties and the votes are truly anonymous as ballot papers aren't numbered and

linked to each voter, like in the UK.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks for the link. Very useful for my information

On a minor point I like our French system where the rule is turn up to vote or shut up. No postal, no machines and representatives of all parties present at every juncture. If you really cannot get to vote you can delegate a proxy

Expand full comment

Interesting Idea. Democracy requires compromise and this system still encourages the voters that they can have their ideal. It would be interesting to compare this with Instant Run Off system. Voters need to

Understand number and counting may take longer but voters will practice compromise and the elected candidate is acceptable to majority of voters.

Expand full comment
author

I will look into Instant Run Off. Thanks

Expand full comment