Referendum Options Simulator
July 24th, 2011 at 9:00 am by David FarrarFrom the Centre for Mathematical Social Science blog:
New Zealanders will vote in a referendum in November asking whether they want to change the current voting system used for deciding the makeup of Parliament.
Dr Geoffrey Pritchard and Dr Mark C. Wilson, members of the Centre for Mathematical Social Science at the University of Auckland, have created a simulator intended to voters to compare the 5 proposed electoral systems in a quantitative way, by allowing them to compute quickly, for a given polling scenario, the party seat distribution in Parliament under each system. It is written in Javascript and the source code is publicly available. The assumptions made are detailed in the FAQ.
Try the simulator now!
Some of their assumptions around Maori seats are questionable, but still a useful tool.
Related posts:
- Referendum Simulation
- A referendum on referendums!
- Armstrong on Referendum timing
- The Referendum Toolkit
July 24th, 2011 at 9:06 am
I object most strongly to this fraudulent and totally biased refrendum which does NOT include the preferred option of many.
That is the retention of MMP with some changes to the current rules on list placing and the thresholds for minor parties.
Vote:July 24th, 2011 at 10:43 am
Perhaps dynamic simulation (as opposed to static simulation) is more appropriate, since voters opinions can change rapidly in an unpredictable auto-catalytic manner over a short period of time where static simulation cannot describe or account for. Dynamic opinions an active topic of research today in the Sociophysics community. The model in #1 collects and analyzes data from social media sources, which can track political sentiments of the general population & voters in real time.
#1) Modeling political opinion dynamics through social media and Multi-Agent Simulation
Vote:#2) On Opinion Dynamics in Heterogeneous Networks
July 24th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Plug in the current poll numbers and look at the result under any voting system and one thing becomes obvious: no voting system “works” without an effective opposition and, if it’s designed to be proportional, effective minor parties attractive to a reasonable proportion of the electorate.
And presently we have neither, which means no matter what referendum choice we make, we’re effectively getting unfettered single party FPP-style government.
We don’t just need to improve the mechanics, we need to improve the human factor – we need parties with candidates who inspire confidence and just plain inspire. And while we leave that entirely to small cabals within the parties themselves, it’s not going to happen.
I think it’s not coincidence that the large and small parties with the most democratic selection processes – National and the Greens respectively – are doing the best in their respective categories.
Unfortunately that’s not enough to ensure a genuine choice come polling day. If the other parties won’t democratise their selection processes then legislation is needed to force them to do so. Saying “if you don’t like their methods you don’t have to vote for them” is glib… it denies a real choice to people for whom a National or Greens manifesto holds no appeal.
Vote:July 24th, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Good point about an effective opposition, Rex. Using the 2008 election percentages on the simulator showed that Labour would have got thrashed with FPP!
Vote: