Dialogue: Electoral system stays unfair under MMP

By DAVID SIMPKIN*

Most New Zealanders would agree that all votes should count equally in elections, and that the number of seats a party receives in Parliament should be decided by the number of votes that party receives.

Indeed, New Zealanders' sense of fairness was a contributing factor to the introduction of MMP.

But the claim that the number of votes a party receives decides the number of seats it receives under MMP is not necessarily correct. For example, New Zealand First received 87,926 votes (4.26 per cent) and five seats at the 1999 election. The Christian Coalition got more votes - 89,238 (4.4 per cent) at the 1996 election and yet was denied any seats in Parliament.

Another unfair and anomalous situation occurred when the unofficial count of the 1999 election results became known. New Zealand First was represented in Parliament with five seats, having gained 77,688 party votes. The Greens had received 88,908 votes, yet at that stage were unrepresented in Parliament - despite receiving more votes than NZ First.

Our electoral system still does not allocate seats in proportion to how many votes a political party has won. One major distortion is the 5 per cent threshold. Votes for parties gaining less than 5 per cent are disregarded.

Many nations with proportional representation electoral systems have no thresholds. These include Columbia, Finland, Madagascar, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Uruguay and Switzerland. Political parties in these countries can be elected with as little as 1 per cent of the party vote.

There are electoral thresholds in some nations using proportional representation systems, though the threshold varies. In the Netherlands it is 0.67 per cent, Israel's is 1.5 per cent, Denmark 2 per cent, and Greece 3 per cent.

One rationale behind thresholds is the argument that smaller political parties fragment Parliament, causing confusion for the public.

But if we were consistently concerned about fragmentation, independent members would not be allowed to win electorate seats.

Even with no threshold, it would still take around 18,000 votes to win a seat in Parliament. Applying a lower threshold of 3 per cent to the 1996 and 1999 election results suggests there would be only one extra party in Parliament.

It is claimed that small parties in Parliament can lead to instability. Yet lowering the threshold could enhance stability. The larger parties would have greater choice of coalition partners, increasing the likelihood of responsible behaviour by small parties.

After the 1996 election, National had little choice but to work with NZ First. NZ First knew this and took advantage of it.

If other small parties had not been excluded from Parliament by the threshold, National (and Labour) would have had more options.

Even parliamentary behaviour might improve with a lower threshold. The 5 per cent threshold is a built-in incentive for politicians from small parties to allege scandals to keep their poll results above 5 per cent.

Another argument for having thresholds is that they supposedly exclude radical political parties. Germany, which also uses the MMP system, set its threshold at 5 per cent for this reason.

After the Second World War, there was a desire to avoid a radical fascist party such as the Nazis being represented in the Bundestag (German Parliament). To try to prevent this, the threshold was set high at 5 per cent.

The main victim of that threshold in Germany has been the German Greens, who have struggled to pass it, sometimes falling short.

Austria also set a relatively high threshold of 4 per cent. But as recent events have shown, this has not prevented neo-Nazis gaining power.

The 1986 New Zealand royal commission into the electoral system suggested that any MMP threshold in New Zealand should be set at 4 per cent. However, Parliament set the threshold at 5 per cent.

A second distortion exists in the electoral system, which also leads to grossly unfair results. By winning an electorate seat, a party can be entitled to list MPs as well.

Under the present one electorate seat rule, once a party has won an electorate, all its party list votes under 5 per cent are counted towards parliamentary seats.

This applied to NZ First at the last election. It got 4.26 per cent of the vote, less than the required 5 per cent. But because Winston Peters won Tauranga, four NZ First list MPs are in Parliament. The unfairness of this can be quickly seen by a glance at the 1999 election result. United won only 11,065 party votes, yet still received one seat in Parliament. The Christian Heritage Party got 49,154 votes (almost five times United's vote) and no seats.

The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party and Future New Zealand also outpolled United with 22,687 and 23,033 votes respectively, and also won no representation.

Another unfortunate result of a high threshold, coupled with the one electorate seat rule is the encouragement of electoral accommodations.

These are deals where large parties withdraw or endorse small-party candidates in electorates where the small party is a serious contender.

Examples are Wellington Central in 1996, and Tauranga and Coromandel in 1999. Because of the high threshold, as many as four list MPs can be elected through an electorate victory for a small party.

This has the potential to change the government, a task better suited to voters in the whole country rather than one electorate. The public rightly sees electoral accommodations as opportunistic back-room deals that restrict voter choice.

There is a solution: abolish the one electorate seat rule and lower the threshold to 3 per cent. If the threshold were lower, there would be little incentive for parties to make electoral accommodations.

The unfairness of MMP is best illustrated by comparing the 1996 fortunes of Act (which had 113,733 party votes on election night) the Christian Coalition (80,238), Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis (26,228) and United (16,751). Act and United get into the Sainte-League count. The other two parties see their votes cast into the rubbish bin.

The system was especially cruel to the Christian Coalition. Unable to point to a probable win of any constituency, it had trouble assuring voters on the wastage question. Consequently a significant number of people would not vote Christian Coalition. The consequence of that was a guarantee that the vote would end in the rubbish bin.

The high threshold also discourages many people from voting for their first choice of party because of the fear their vote will be wasted.

The final count after the 1999 election narrowly gave the Greens parliamentary representation. This reduced the number of anomalies in the election result, but we can expect similar scenarios in the future unless changes are made.

The most important reform the MMP review select committee should make is to lower the 5 per cent threshold and abolish the one electorate seat rule.

* David Simpkin is youth director of the Christian Heritage Party.