First of all, thanks for the epic reply; there’s nothing better about the blogosphere than when a post actually gets people thinking and there’s no better sign of that than coherent replies and well-structured arguments, which yours quite obviously is.

As regards your arguments, I know there’s many benefits to the PR-STV system and you rightly give good examples as to its benefits, particularly in slightly more unusual political realities such as NI where cross-party appearances are even more of a requirement than in other settings. What I think there might need to be more of, though, and to a degree we’ve made progress in this, is a movement away from situations where we’re simply over-represented. Five-seater general election constituencies do nobody any favours; where there’s more than one rep, people can be pushed from pillar to post trying to get things done, and this is especially so when there are more than one party rep in any one place. In a Meath five-seater, if I was to contact an FF rep, I could be pushed to either of the other two, on the basis that they live closer to me and thus unofficially represent only that part of the constituency. It’s better in a three-seater where this problem arises less but even still, in the two Meath constituencies it’s 2 FF and one FG, so the major problem still arises.

PRSTV is great for stability but frankly I think Ireland has gotten too used to its stability. It breeds coalition governments but these are too predictable to begin with. What good is a system that would, in the midst of the greatest Fianna Fáil dissatisfaction in history, would still return about 50 of their TD’s? We’ve only had a handful of different coalitions in Ireland – FG (or its predecessors) plus Labour, FF and the PDs, FF and the Greens, and FF with Labour. A system distinct from PRSTV would probably do more to break up the duopoly of FF and FG; it would give the impression of real power for chance and (ideally) give rise to a political landscape populated by groups with far more distinct political motivation rather than just a system of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Imagine, a political sphere populated by an actual liberal party! AND an actual Conversative party! AND an mainstream, possibly Government-leading Socialist bloc! I don’t doubt that in such a landscape, PRSTV would be a perfect tool for choosing which parties you’d want and giving each the appropriate dollop of power, but we need another system to help break up the duopoly in place first. (Either that or we use PRSTV to engineer a scenario where FF and FG both have about 45% of the seats, forcing the two of them to enter a grand coalition, but that’s a case I’ve made elsewhere).

What I think needs more address though, and the main issue with Ireland – which sadly exceeds the issues of PRSTV – is that whenever there is appetite for reform, which there clearly seems to be at the current time, there’s no obvious spot from it to come from. Even though almost the entire Dáil is in agreement that some reform needs to take place, though they’re not agreed on what such reform should be, nobody is making any overture to get about examining what alternatives might be suitable for the modern Ireland. THAT’s what the real motivation of my post was – if the legislature is willing to reform itself (at least in theory) but isn’t making any actual overtures to do so, then one, what hope do we have for an actual democracy, and two, where does the reform actually come from?

Well done on the blog!

It’s interesting to see a debate about the Irish electoral system given what’s being discussed in Britain at the moment. I have to say I disagree with any suggestion to change our system.

Ireland has the most proportional electoral system in the world. We are one of only two countries to use it – Malta’s the other one. It’s the system of choice now for divided societies because it allows a broader reflection of the electorate’s preferences – that’s why it was chosed for the North. The reason that it’s used in so few places is that politicans pick electoral systems, and they try to pick ones which make it easier for them to perpetuate their power. The reason nobody picks PRSTV is because it’s difficult to hold on to power. We should be incredibly grateful for the wisdom and foresight of the drafters of our Constitution not only in picking this system, but putting it in the Constitution so it can’t be changed by legislation alone.

PRSTV with multi-member districts allows us to pick not only the party, but the politician who we want to represent us. We can also spread our votes across parties, even if it’s not strategic. We can pick the people we trust, and ignore their party colleagues that we don’t. The arguments against PRSTV usually include claims of instability (proved patently not true by Ireland) and that it’s too ‘local’ – that politicians spend too much time looking after their constituents and not enough actually running the country. Well, be that as it may, I think what’s ‘local’ is important, and I’m willing to accept that my TD will have to actually spend time in my constituency.

PRSTV allows small parties to form and grow. I like the fact that we have coalition governments. I think a divergence of opinions is a good thing in lawmaking. Even if you don’t believe they’re represented in practice, I like to know they’re there, and that it’s not just faithful backbenchers being nodding dogs to an all-powerful Taoiseach, in the hope they’ll get a chair at the grown-ups’ table next time around.

If you disagree with all that, consider the alternatives. List PR? I would rather not hand that much power over to political parties, thank you. I reserve the right to vote for one candidate and not their party colleague. Single Member Plurality, as per Westminster elections? Possibly the most undemocratic there is. Two-Round System? Bad for small parties. Block voting? Just… no. Alternative Vote? Needs single-member constituencies, which is disproportionate.

We are lucky to have PRSTV. It doesn’t give us a nice clean result, but it does mean we have more freedom of choice than many voters, and end up with results which better reflect the range of views held in the country. We’ve had two referenda on it now, and both times we’ve been clever enough to resist change.

Remember: without PRSTV, Mary Robinson would never have been President. We would have Brian Lenihan Snr instead.