Proportional representation (PR) characterizes electoral systems in which divisions in an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. If n% of the electorate support a particular political party, then roughly n% of seats will be won by that party. The essence of such systems is that all votes contribute to the result - not just a plurality, or a bare majority. The most prevalent forms of proportional representation all require the use of multiple-member voting districts (also called super-districts), as it is not possible to fill a single seat in a proportional manner. In fact, the implementations of PR that achieve the highest levels of proportionality tend to include districts with large numbers of seats.
The most widely used families of PR electoral systems are party list PR, the single transferable vote (STV), and mixed member proportional representation (MMP).
With party list PR, political parties define candidate lists and voters vote for a list. The relative vote for each list determines how many candidates from each list are actually elected. Lists can be "closed" or "open"; open lists allow voters to indicate individual candidate preferences and vote for independent candidates. Voting districts can be small (as few as three seats in some districts in Chile or Ireland) or as large as a province or an entire nation.
The single transferable vote uses small multiple-member districts, with voters ranking individual candidates in order of preference. During the count, as candidates are elected or eliminated, surplus or discarded votes that would otherwise be wasted are transferred to other candidates according to the preferences. STV enables voters to vote across party lines and to elect independent candidates.
Mixed member proportional representation (MMP), also called the additional member system (AMS), is a two-tier mixed electoral system combining a non-proportional plurality/majoritarian election and a compensatory regional or national party list PR election. Voters typically have two votes, one for their single-member district and one for the party list, the party list vote determining the balance of the parties in the elected body.
According to the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network, some form of proportional representation is used for national lower house elections in 94 countries. Party list PR, being used in 85 countries, is the most widely used. MMP is used in seven lower houses. STV, despite long being advocated by political scientists,:71 is used in only two: Ireland, since independence in 1922, and Malta, since 1921.
As with all electoral systems, both widely accepted and sharply opposing claims are made about the advantages and disadvantages of PR.
In a representative body actually deliberating, the minority must of course be overruled; and in an equal democracy, the majority of the people, through their representatives, will outvote and prevail over the minority and their representatives. But does it follow that the minority should have no representatives at all? ... Is it necessary that the minority should not even be heard? Nothing but habit and old association can reconcile any reasonable being to the needless injustice. In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. A majority of the electors would always have a majority of the representatives, but a minority of the electors would always have a minority of the representatives. Man for man, they would be as fully represented as the majority. Unless they are, there is not equal government ... there is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them, contrary to all just government, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation.
Many academic political theorists agree with Mill, that in a representative democracy the representatives should represent all segments of society.
Plurality/majoritarian systems can also disproportionately benefit regional parties that can win districts where they have a strong following, while other parties with national support but no strongholds, like the Greens, win few or no seats. An example is the Bloc Québécois in Canada that won 52 seats in the 1993 federal election, all in Quebec, on 13.5% of the national vote, while the Progressive Conservatives collapsed to two seats on 16% spread nationally. Similarly, in the 2015 UK General Election, the Scottish National Party gained 56 seats, all in Scotland, with a 4.7% share of the national vote while the UK Independence Party, with 12.6%, gained only a single seat.
Critics, on the other hand, claim this can give extreme parties a foothold in parliament, sometimes cited as a cause for the collapse of the Weimar government. With very low thresholds, very small parties can act as "king-makers", holding larger parties to ransom during coalition discussions. The example of Israel is often quoted,:59 but these problems can be limited, as in the modern German Bundestag, by the introduction of higher threshold limits for a party to gain parliamentary representation.
Another criticism is that the dominant parties in plurality/majoritarian systems, often looked on as "coalitions" or as "broad churches", can fragment under PR as the election of candidates from smaller groups becomes possible. Israel, again, and Brazil and Italy are examples.:59,89 However, research shows, in general, there is only a marginal increase in the number of parties in parliament.
Open list systems and STV, the only prominent PR system which does not require political parties, enable independent candidates to be elected. In Ireland, on average, about six independent candidates have been elected each parliament.
Supporters of PR see coalitions as an advantage, forcing compromise between parties to form a coalition at the centre of the political spectrum, and so leading to continuity and stability. Opponents counter that with many policies compromise is not possible (for example funding a new stealth bomber, or leaving the EU). Neither can many policies be easily positioned on the left-right spectrum (for example, the environment). So policies are horse-traded during coalition formation, with the consequence that voters have no way of knowing which policies will be pursued by the government they elect; voters have less influence on governments. Also, coalitions do not necessarily form at the centre, and small parties can have excessive influence, supplying a coalition with a majority only on condition that a policy or policies favoured by few voters is/are adopted. Most importantly, the ability of voters to vote a party in disfavour out of power is curtailed.
All these disadvantages, the PR opponents contend, are avoided by two-party plurality systems. Coalitions are rare; the two dominant parties necessarily compete at the centre for votes, so that governments are more reliably moderate; the strong opposition necessary for proper scrutiny of government is assured; and governments remain sensitive to public sentiment because they can be, and are, regularly voted out of power. However, the US experience shows that this is not necessarily so, and that a two-party system can result in a "drift to extremes", hollowing out the centre, or, at least, in one party drifting to an extreme. The opponents of PR also contend that coalition governments created under PR are less stable, and elections are more frequent. Italy is an often-cited example with many governments composed of many different coalition partners. However, Italy is unusual in that both its houses can make a government fall, whereas other PR nations have either just one house or have one of their two houses be the core body supporting a government. The mix of FPTP and PR since 1993 also makes for a complicated setup, so Italy is not an appropriate candidate for measuring the stability of PR.
Nevertheless, some studies have found that on average, compared to countries using plurality systems, governments elected with PR accord more closely with the median voter and the citizens are more content with democracy.
With PR, there are no "swing seats", most votes contribute to the election of a candidate so parties need to campaign in all districts, not just those where their support is strongest or where they perceive most advantage. This fact in turn encourages parties to be more responsive to voters, producing a more "balanced" ticket by nominating more women and minority candidates. On average about 8% more women are elected.
Since most votes count, there are fewer "wasted votes", so voters, aware that their vote can make a difference, are more likely to make the effort to vote, and less likely to vote tactically. Compared to countries with plurality electoral systems, voter turnout improves and the population is more involved in the political process. However some experts argue that transitioning from plurality to PR only increases voter turnout in geographical areas associated with safe seats under the plurality system; turnout may decrease in areas formerly associated with swing seats.
To ensure approximately equal representation, plurality systems are dependent on the drawing of boundaries of their single-member districts, a process vulnerable to political interference (gerrymandering). To compound the problem, boundaries have to be periodically re-drawn to accommodate population changes. Even apolitically drawn boundaries can unintentionally produce the effect of gerrymandering, reflecting naturally occurring concentrations.:65 PR systems with their multiple-member districts are less prone to this – research suggests five-seat districts are immune to gerrymandering.:66 The district boundaries are less critical and so can be aligned with historical boundaries such as cities, counties, states, or provinces; population changes can be accommodated by simply adjusting the number of representatives elected. For example, Professor Mollison in his 2010 plan for STV for the UK set an upper limit of 100,000 electors per MP so that a constituency of 500,000 electors would have five seats (1:100,000) but one of 500,001 six seats (1:83,000). His district boundaries follow historical county and local authority boundaries, yet he achieves more uniform representation than does the Boundary Commission, the body responsible for balancing the UK's first-past-the-post constituency sizes.
Mixed member systems are susceptible to gerrymandering for the local seats that remain a part of such systems. Under parallel voting, a semi-proportional system, there is no compensation for the effects that such gerrymandering might have. Under MMP, the use of compensatory list seats makes gerrymandering less of an issue. However, its effectiveness in this regard depends upon the features of the system, including the size of the regional districts, the relative share of list seats in the total, and opportunities for collusion that might exist. A striking example of how the compensatory mechanism can be undermined can be seen in the 2014 Hungarian parliamentary election, where the leading party, Fidesz, combined gerrymandering and decoy lists, which resulted in a two-thirds parliamentary majority from a 45% vote. This illustrates how certain implementations of MMP can produce moderately proportional outcomes, similar to parallel voting.
An interesting case occurred in the Netherlands, when "out of the blue" a Party for the Elderly gained six seats. The other parties had not paid attention, but this made them aware. With the next election, the Party of the Elderly was gone, because the established parties had started to listen to the elderly. Today, a party for older folks, 50PLUS, has established itself firmly in the Netherlands. This can be seen as an example how geography in itself may not be a good enough reason to establish voting results around it and overturn all other particulars of the voting population. In a sense, voting in districts restricts the voters to a specific geography. Proportional voting follows the exact outcome of all the votes.
Wider benefits from PR have been identified in societies using it as compared to those using FPTP, including higher scores on the UN Human Development Index, a measure of health, education, and personal security, higher economic growth, less inequality, and better environmental protection.
Academics agree that the most important influence on proportionality is an electoral district's magnitude, the number of representatives elected from the district. Proportionality improves as the magnitude increases. Some scholars recommend voting districts of roughly four to eight seats, which are considered small relative to PR systems in general.
In the FairVote plan for STV (which FairVote calls choice voting) for the US House of Representatives, three- to five-member super-districts are proposed. In Professor Mollison's plan for STV in the UK, four- and five-member districts are used, with three and six as necessary to fit existing boundaries.
The minimum threshold is the minimum vote required to win a seat. The lower the threshold, the higher the proportion of votes contributing to the election of representatives and the lower the proportion of votes wasted.
A formal threshold usually requires parties to win a certain percentage of the vote in order to be awarded seats from the party lists. In Germany and New Zealand (both MMP), the threshold is 5% of the national vote but the threshold is not applied to parties that win a minimum number of constituency seats (three in Germany, one in New Zealand). Turkey defines a threshold of 10%, the Netherlands 0.67%. Israel has raised its threshold from 1% (before 1992) to 1.5% (up to 2004), 2% (in 2006) and 3.25% in 2014.
In STV elections, winning the quota (ballots/(seats+1)) of first preference votes assures election. However, well regarded candidates who attract good second (and third, etc.) preference support can hope to win election with only half the quota of first preference votes. Thus, in a six-seat district the effective threshold would be 7.14% of first preference votes (100/(6+1)/2). The need to attract second preferences tends to promote consensus and disadvantage extremes.
Party magnitude is the number of candidates elected from one party in one district. As party magnitude increases a more balanced ticket will be more successful encouraging parties to nominate women and minority candidates for election.
But under STV, nominating too many candidates can be counter-productive, splitting the first-preference votes and allowing the candidates to be eliminated before receiving transferred votes from other parties. An example of this was identified in a ward in the 2007 Scottish local elections where Labour, putting up three candidates, won only one seat while they might have won two had one of their voters' preferred candidates not stood. The same effect may have contributed to the collapse of Fianna Fáil in the 2011 Irish general election.
A president is always elected as a winner (winner-takes-all), and as such a president may exists above a parliament that was voted in according to a different election format. This situation is found particularly in South America. In the case of Brazil, for instance, an empowered President is elected while the House was elected proportionally. The strong position of the single President is countered by a much divided House and this may result in a weakening of the benefits associated with proportional representation. Compare this situation to the United States, where the strong President is countered by just two parties that can be considered both by themselves as also strong. As such, the strong power of the President can be countered by the strong support/opposition of the parties. With a proportionally elected House, a President may strong-arm certain political issues.
A Prime-Minister is never elected, but is a 'derivative' of the general election. In most cases, the power of the government is not split among different sections of the government (of President, Senate and House) and power is found with just the House. A Prime-Minister can be seen more as a manager than as a straight-out leader. Nations with district elections (such as the UK) and nations with proportionally elected representatives (such as Spain) can have a Prime-Minister.
Other aspects of PR can influence proportionality such as the size of the elected body, the choice of open or closed lists, ballot design, and vote counting methods.
A number of ways of measuring proportionality have been proposed, including the Loosemore–Hanby index, the Gallagher Index, and the Sainte-Laguë Index. These metrics actually quantify the disproportionality of an election, the degree to which the number of seats won by each party differs from that of a perfectly proportional outcome. For example, the Canadian Parliament's 2016 Special Committee on Electoral Reform recommended that a system be designed to achieve "a Gallagher score of 5 or less". This indicated a much higher degree of proportionality than observed in the 2015 Canadian election under first-past-the-post voting, where the Gallagher index was 12.
The Gallagher index is similar, but involves squaring the difference between each party's vote share and seat share, and taking the square root of the sum.
With the Sainte-Laguë index, the discrepancy between a party's vote share and seat share is measured relative to its vote share.
None of these metrics (Loosemore-Hanby, Gallagher, Sainte-Laguë) fully support ranked voting.
Party list proportional representation is an electoral system in which seats are first allocated to parties based on vote share, and then assigned to party-affiliated candidates on the parties' electoral lists. This system is used in many countries, including Finland (open list), Latvia (open list), Sweden (open list), Israel (national closed list), Brazil (open list), Nepal (Closed list) adopted in 2008 in first CA election, the Netherlands (open list), Russia (closed list), South Africa (closed list), Democratic Republic of the Congo (open list), and Ukraine (open list). For elections to the European Parliament, most member states use open lists; but most large EU countries use closed lists, so that the majority of EP seats are distributed by those. Local lists were used to elect the Italian Senate during the second half of the 20th century.
In closed list systems, each party lists its candidates according to the party's candidate selection process. This sets the order of candidates on the list and thus, in effect, their probability of being elected. The first candidate on a list, for example, will get the first seat that party wins. Each voter casts a vote for a list of candidates. Voters, therefore, do not have the option to express their preferences at the ballot as to which of a party's candidates are elected into office. A party is allocated seats in proportion to the number of votes it receives.
There is an intermediate system in countries like Uruguay, where each party presents several closed lists, each representing a faction. Seats are distributed between parties according to the number of votes, and then between the factions within each party.
In an open list, voters may vote, depending on the model, for one person, or for two, or indicate their order of preference within the list. These votes sometimes rearrange the order of names on the party's list and thus which of its candidates are elected. Nevertheless, the number of candidates elected from the list is determined by the number of votes the list receives.
In a local list system, parties divide their candidates in single member-like constituencies, which are ranked inside each general party list depending by their percentages. This method allows electors to judge every single candidate as in a FPTP system.
Some party list proportional systems with open lists use a two-tier compensatory system, as in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In Denmark, for example, the country is divided into ten multiple-member voting districts arranged in three regions, electing 135 representatives. In addition, 40 compensatory seats are elected. Voters have one vote which can be cast for an individual candidate or for a party list on the district ballot. To determine district winners, candidates are apportioned their share of their party's district list vote plus their individual votes. The compensatory seats are apportioned to the regions according to the party votes aggregated nationally, and then to the districts where the compensatory representatives are determined. In the 2007 general election, the district magnitudes, including compensatory representatives, varied between 14 and 28. The basic design of the system has remained unchanged since its introduction in 1920.
The single transferable vote (STV), also called choice voting, is a ranked system: voters rank candidates in order of preference. Voting districts usually elect three to seven representatives. The count is cyclic, electing or eliminating candidates and transferring votes until all seats are filled. A candidate is elected whose tally reaches a quota, the minimum vote that guarantees election. The candidate's surplus votes (those in excess of the quota) are transferred to other candidates at a fraction of their value proportionate to the surplus, according to the votes' preferences. If no candidates reach the quota, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, those votes being transferred to their next preference at full value, and the count continues. There are many methods for transferring votes. Some early, manual, methods transferred surplus votes according to a randomly selected sample, or transferred only a "batch" of the surplus, other more recent methods transfer all votes at a fraction of their value (the surplus divided by the candidate's tally) but may need the use of a computer. Some methods may not produce exactly the same result when the count is repeated. There are also different ways of treating transfers to already elected or eliminated candidates, and these, too, can require a computer.
In effect, the method produces groups of voters of equal size that reflect the diversity of the electorate, each group having a representative the group voted for. Some 90% of voters have a representative to whom they gave their first preference. Voters can choose candidates using any criteria they wish, the proportionality is implicit. Political parties are not necessary; all other prominent PR electoral systems presume that parties reflect voters wishes, which many believe gives power to parties. STV satisfies the electoral system criterion proportionality for solid coalitions – a solid coalition for a set of candidates is the group of voters that rank all those candidates above all others – and is therefore considered a system of proportional representation. However, the small district magnitude used in STV elections has been criticized as impairing proportionality, especially when more parties compete than there are seats available,:50 and STV has, for this reason, sometimes been labelled "quasi proportional".:83 While this may be true when considering districts in isolation, results overall are proportional. In Ireland, with particularly small magnitudes, results are "highly proportional".:73 In 1997, the average magnitude was 4.0 but eight parties gained representation, four of them with less than 3% of first preference votes nationally. Six independent candidates also won election. STV has also been described as the most proportional system.:83 The system tends to handicap extreme candidates because, to gain preferences and so improve their chance of election, candidates need to canvass voters beyond their own circle of supporters, and so need to moderate their views. Conversely, widely respected candidates can win election with relatively few first preferences by benefitting from strong subordinate preference support.
As a result of a parliamentary commission investigating the 2013 election, from 2016 the system has been considerably reformed (see Australian federal election, 2016), with group voting tickets (GVTs) abolished and voters no longer required to fill all boxes.
A mixed compensatory system is an electoral system that is mixed, meaning that it combines a plurality/majority formula with a proportional formula, and that uses the proportional component to compensate for disproportionality caused by the plurality/majority component. For example, suppose that a party wins 10 seats based on plurality, but requires 15 seats in total to obtain its proportional share of an elected body. A fully proportional mixed compensatory system would award this party 5 compensatory (PR) seats, raising the party's seat count from 10 to 15. The most prominent mixed compensatory system is mixed member proportional representation (MMP), used in Germany since 1949. In MMP, the seats won by plurality are associated with single-member districts.
Mixed member proportional representation (MMP) is a two-tier system that combines a single-district vote, usually first-past-the-post, with a compensatory regional or nationwide party list proportional vote. The system aims to combine the local district representation of FPTP and the proportionality of a national party list system. MMP has the potential to produce proportional or moderately proportional election outcomes, depending on a number of factors such as the ratio of FPTP seats to PR seats, the existence or nonexistence of extra compensatory seats to make up for overhang seats, and election thresholds. It was invented for the German Bundestag after the Second World War and has spread to Lesotho, Bolivia and New Zealand. The system is also used for the Welsh and Scottish assemblies where it is called the additional member system.
Voters typically have two votes, one for their district representative and one for the party list. The list vote usually determines how many seats are allocated to each party in parliament. After the district winners have been determined, sufficient candidates from each party list are elected to "top-up" each party to the overall number of parliamentary seats due to it according to the party's overall list vote. Before apportioning list seats, all list votes for parties which failed to reach the minimum threshold are discarded. If eliminated parties lose seats in this manner, then the seat counts for parties that achieved the minimum threshold improve. Also, any direct seats won by independent candidates are subtracted from the parliamentary total used to apportion list seats.
The system has the potential to produce proportional results, but proportionality can be compromised if the ratio of list to district seats is too low, it may then not be possible to completely compensate district seat disproportionality. Another factor can be how overhang seats are handled, district seats that a party wins in excess of the number due to it under the list vote. To achieve proportionality, other parties require "balance seats", increasing the size of parliament by twice the number of overhang seats, but this is not always done. Until recently, Germany increased the size of parliament by the number of overhang seats but did not use the increased size for apportioning list seats. This was changed for the 2013 national election after the constitutional court rejected the previous law, not compensating for overhang seats had resulted in a negative vote weight effect. Lesotho, Scotland and Wales do not increase the size of parliament at all, and, in 2012, a New Zealand parliamentary commission also proposed abandoning compensation for overhang seats, and so fixing the size of parliament. At the same time, it would abolish the single-seat threshold – any such seats would then be overhang seats and would otherwise have increased the size of parliament further – and reduce the vote threshold from 5% to 4%. Proportionality would not suffer.
Dual member proportional representation (DMP) is a single-vote system that elects two representatives in every district. The first seat in each district is awarded to the candidate who wins a plurality of the votes, similar to first-past-the-post voting. The remaining seats are awarded in a compensatory manner to achieve proportionality across a larger region. DMP employs a formula similar to the "best near-winner" variant of MMP used in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. In Baden-Württemberg, compensatory seats are awarded to candidates who receive high levels of support at the district level compared with other candidates of the same party. DMP differs in that at most one candidate per district is permitted to obtain a compensatory seat. If multiple candidates contesting the same district are slated to receive one of their parties' compensatory seats, the candidate with the highest vote share is elected and the others are eliminated. DMP is similar to STV in that all elected representatives, including those who receive compensatory seats, serve their local districts. Invented in 2013 in the Canadian province of Alberta, DMP received attention on Prince Edward Island where it appeared on a 2016 plebiscite as a potential replacement for FPTP, but was eliminated on the third round.
Biproportional apportionment applies a mathematical method (iterative proportional fitting) for the modification of an election result to achieve proportionality. It was proposed for elections by the mathematician Michel Balinski in 1989, and first used by the city of Zurich for its council elections in February 2006, in a modified form called "new Zurich apportionment" (Neue Zürcher Zuteilungsverfahren). Zurich had had to modify its party list PR system after the Swiss Federal Court ruled that its smallest wards, as a result of population changes over many years, unconstitutionally disadvantaged smaller political parties. With biproportional apportionment, the use of open party lists hasn't changed, but the way winning candidates are determined has. The proportion of seats due to each party is calculated according to their overall citywide vote, and then the district winners are adjusted to conform to these proportions. This means that some candidates, who would otherwise have been successful, can be denied seats in favor of initially unsuccessful candidates, in order to improve the relative proportions of their respective parties overall. This peculiarity is accepted by the Zurich electorate because the resulting city council is proportional and all votes, regardless of district magnitude, now have equal weight. The system has since been adopted by other Swiss cities and cantons.
Balinski has proposed another variant called fair majority voting (FMV) to replace single-winner plurality/majoritarian electoral systems, in particular the system used for the US House of Representatives. FMV introduces proportionality without changing the method of voting, the number of seats, or the – possibly gerrymandered – district boundaries. Seats would be apportioned to parties in a proportional manner at the state level. In a related proposal for the UK parliament, whose elections are contested by many more parties, the authors note that parameters can be tuned to adopt any degree of proportionality deemed acceptable to the electorate. In order to elect smaller parties, a number of constituencies would be awarded to candidates placed fourth or even fifth in the constituency – unlikely to be acceptable to the electorate, the authors concede – but this effect could be substantially reduced by incorporating a third, regional, apportionment tier, or by specifying minimum thresholds.
Reweighted range voting (RRV) is a multi-winner voting system similar to STV in that voters can express support for multiple candidates, but different in that candidates are graded instead of ranked. That is, a voter assigns a score to each candidate. The higher a candidate's scores, the greater the chance they will be among the winners.
Similar to STV, the vote counting procedure occurs in rounds. The first round of RRV is identical to range voting. All ballots are added with equal weight, and the candidate with the highest overall score is elected. In all subsequent rounds, ballots that support candidates who have already been elected are added with a reduced weight. Thus voters who support none of the winners in the early rounds are increasingly likely to elect one of their preferred candidates in a later round. The procedure has been shown to yield proportional outcomes if voters are loyal to distinct groups of candidates (e.g. political parties).
RRV was used for the nominations in the Visual Effects category for recent Academy Award Oscars from 2013 thru 2017.
Systems can be devised that aim at proportional representation but are based on approval votes on individual candidates (not parties). Such is the idea of Proportional approval voting (PAV). Unfortunately counting ballots under PAV may be uneasy, so that that sequential variants have been proposed, such as Reweighted approval voting (RAV). This method is similar to reweighted range voting in that several winners are elected using a multi-round counting procedure in which ballots supporting already elected candidates are given reduced weights. Under RAV, however, a voter can only choose to approve or disapprove of each candidate, as in approval voting. RAV was used briefly in Sweden during the early 1900s.
In asset voting, the voters vote for candidates and then the candidates negotiate amongst each other and reallocate votes amongst themselves. Asset voting was independently rediscovered by each of Lewis Carroll, Warren D. Smith, and Forest Simmons.
The random ballot, or lottery voting, is a single-vote, single-winner voting method in which one of the marked ballots is selected at random, and the candidate supported by that ballot is declared the winner. Although it has been described as "a thought experiment", the system is statistically likely to produce proportional election outcomes if applied over a large number of single-member districts.
In a related method called sortition, one dispenses with voting altogether and simply appoints randomly selected individuals from a population to serve in a representative decision-making body.
It should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this Assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or in other words equal interest among the people should have equal interest in it.
A representative body is to the nation what a chart is for the physical configuration of its soil: in all its parts, and as a whole, the representative body should at all times present a reduced picture of the people, their opinions, aspirations, and wishes, and that presentation should bear the relative proportion to the original precisely.
In February 1793, the Marquis de Condorcet led the drafting of the Girondist constitution which proposed a limited voting scheme with proportional aspects. Before that could be voted on, the Montagnards took over the National Convention and produced their own constitution. On June 24, Saint-Just proposed the single non-transferable vote, which can be proportional, for national elections but the constitution was passed on the same day specifying first-past-the-post voting.
Already in 1787, James Wilson, like Adams a US Founding Father, understood the importance of multiple-member districts: "Bad elections proceed from the smallness of the districts which give an opportunity to bad men to intrigue themselves into office", and again, in 1791, in his Lectures on Law: "It may, I believe, be assumed as a general maxim, of no small importance in democratical governments, that the more extensive the district of election is, the choice will be the more wise and enlightened". The 1790 Constitution of Pennsylvania specified multiple-member districts for the state Senate and required their boundaries to follow county lines.
STV, or, more precisely, an election method where voters have one transferable vote, was first invented in 1819 by an English schoolmaster, Thomas Wright Hill, who devised a "plan of election" for the committee of the Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement in Birmingham that used not only transfers of surplus votes from winners but also from losers, a refinement that later both Andræ and Hare initially omitted. But the procedure was unsuitable for a public election and wasn't publicised. In 1839, Hill's son, Rowland Hill, recommended the concept for public elections in Adelaide, and a simple process was used in which voters formed as many groups as there were representatives to be elected, each group electing one representative.
The first practical PR election method, a list method, was conceived by Thomas Gilpin, a retired paper-mill owner, in a paper he read to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 1844: "On the representation of minorities of electors to act with the majority in elected assemblies". But the paper appears not to have excited any interest.
A practical election using a single transferable vote was devised in Denmark by Carl Andræ, a mathematician, and first used there in 1855, making it the oldest PR system, but the system never really spread. It was re-invented (apparently independently) in the UK in 1857 by Thomas Hare, a London barrister, in his pamphlet The Machinery of Representation and expanded on in his 1859 Treatise on the Election of Representatives. The scheme was enthusiastically taken up by John Stuart Mill, ensuring international interest. The 1865 edition of the book included the transfer of preferences from dropped candidates and the STV method was essentially complete. Mill proposed it to the House of Commons in 1867, but the British parliament rejected it. The name evolved from "Mr.Hare's scheme" to "proportional representation", then "proportional representation with the single transferable vote", and finally, by the end of the 19th century, to "the single transferable vote".
A party list proportional representation system was devised and described in 1878 by Victor D'Hondt in Belgium. D'Hondt's method of seat allocation, the D'Hondt method, is still widely used. Victor Considerant, a utopian socialist, devised a similar system in an 1892 book. Some Swiss cantons (beginning with Ticino in 1890) used the system before Belgium, which was first to adopt list PR in 1900 for its national parliament. Many European countries adopted similar systems during or after World War I. List PR was favoured on the Continent because the use of lists in elections, the scrutin de liste, was already widespread. STV was preferred in the English-speaking world because its tradition was the election of individuals.
In the UK, the 1917 Speaker's Conference recommended STV for all multi-seat Westminster constituencies, but it was only applied to university constituencies, lasting from 1918 until 1950 when those constituencies were abolished. In Ireland, STV was used in 1918 in the University of Dublin constituency, and was introduced for devolved elections in 1921.
It is also used for the Northern Irish assembly and European and local authorities, Scottish local authorities, some New Zealand and Australian local authorities, the Tasmanian (since 1907) and Australian Capital Territory assemblies, where the method is known as Hare-Clark, and the city council in Cambridge, Massachusetts, (since 1941).
PR is used by a majority of the world's 33 most robust democracies with populations of at least two million people; only six use plurality or a majoritarian system (runoff or instant runoff) for elections to the legislative assembly, four use parallel systems, and 23 use PR. PR dominates Europe, including Germany and most of northern and eastern Europe; it is also used for European Parliament elections. France adopted PR at the end of World War II, but discarded it in 1958; it was used for parliament elections in 1986. Switzerland has the most widespread use of proportional representation, which is the system used to elect not only national legislatures and local councils, but also all local executives. PR is less common in the English-speaking world; New Zealand adopted MMP in 1993, but the UK, Canada, India and Australia all use plurality/majoritarian systems for legislative elections.
STV has some history in the United States. Between 1915 and 1962, twenty-four cities used the system for at least one election. In many cities, minority parties and other groups used STV to break up single-party monopolies on elective office. One of the most famous cases is New York City, where a coalition of Republicans and others imposed STV in 1936 as part of an attack on the Tammany Hall machine. Another famous case is Cincinnati, Ohio, where, in 1924, Democrats and Progressive-wing Republicans imposed a council-manager charter with STV elections to dislodge the Republican machine of Rudolph K. Hynicka. Although Cincinnati's council-manager system survives, Republicans and other disaffected groups replaced STV with plurality-at-large voting in 1957. From 1870 to 1980, Illinois used a semi-proportional cumulative voting system to elect its House of Representatives. Each district across the state elected both Republicans and Democrats year-after-year. Cambridge, Massachusetts, (STV) and Peoria, Illinois, (cumulative voting) continue to use PR. San Francisco had citywide elections in which people would cast votes for five or six candidates simultaneously, delivering some of the benefits of proportional representation.
 Nationwide closed lists and open lists in each of 13 election districts. If needed to ensure a stable majority with at least 54% of the seats, the two best-placed parties participate in a run-off vote to receive a majority bonus. Threshold of 5% for parties and 7% for election blocs.
Nationwide closed lists and open lists in multi-member districts. The winning party receives a majority bonus of 50 seats (out of 300). Threshold of 3%.
If needed to ensure a stable majority, the two best-placed parties participate in a run-off vote to receive a majority bonus. Threshold of 3.5%.
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The European Parliament Election, 1999 was the United Kingdom's part of the European Parliament election 1999. It was held on 10 June 1999. Following the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999, it was the first European election to be held in the United Kingdom where the whole country used a system of proportional representation. In total, 87 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom.
The change in voting system resulted in significant changes in seats. The Conservatives won double the number of seats they had won in the previous European election, in 1994, while the Labour Party saw its seats reduced from 62 to 29. The Liberal Democrats saw their number of seats increase to 10 from just 2 in the previous election. The UK Independence Party (UKIP), Green Party and Plaid Cymru gained their first ever seats in the European Parliament.
The House of Commons Library calculated notional seat changes based on what the result would have been if the 1994 European elections had been held under proportional representation. The notional results and seat changes are shown in the results box for this article.
It was the first European Parliament election to be held since the 1997 general election which resulted in a change of government from Conservative to Labour.
Turnout was 24%, the lowest of any member state in the 1999 election where the EU average was 49.51%. It was also the lowest of any European election in the United Kingdom, and the lowest of any member state until the 2009 election.
At-large is a designation for members of a governing body who are elected or appointed to represent the whole membership of the body (for example, a city, state or province, nation, club or association), rather than a subset of that membership. At-large voting is in contrast to voting by electoral districts.
If an at-large election is called to choose a single candidate, a single-winner voting system must necessarily be used. If a group of seats must be covered, many electoral systems can be possible, from proportional representation methods (such as party-list proportional representation, or PR-STV) to block voting.
Closed list describes the variant of party-list proportional representation where voters can (effectively) only vote for political parties as a whole and thus have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters have at least some influence then it is called an open list.
In closed list systems, each political party has pre-decided who will receive the seats allocated to that party in the elections, so that the candidates positioned highest on this list tend to always get a seat in the parliament while the candidates positioned very low on the closed list will not.
However, the candidates "at the water mark" of a given party are in the position of either losing or winning their seat depending on the number of votes the party gets. "The water mark" is the number of seats a specific party can be expected to achieve. The number of seats that the party wins, combined with the candidates' positions on the party's list, will then determine whether a particular candidate will get a seat.
The D'Hondt method or the Jefferson method is a highest averages method for allocating seats, and is thus a type of party-list proportional representation. The method described is named in the United States after Thomas Jefferson, who introduced the method for proportional allocation of seats in the United States House of Representatives in 1791, and in Europe after Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt, who described it in 1878 for proportional allocation of parliamentary seats to the parties. There are two forms: closed list (a party selects the order of election of their candidates) and an open list (voters' choices determine the order).
Proportional representation systems aim to allocate seats to parties approximately in proportion to the number of votes received. For example, if a party wins one-third of the votes then it should gain about one-third of the seats. In general, exact proportionality is not possible because these divisions produce fractional numbers of seats. As a result, several methods, of which the D'Hondt method is one, have been devised which ensure that the parties' seat allocations, which are of whole numbers, are as proportional as possible. Empirical studies show that the D'Hondt method is one of the least proportional among the proportional representation methods. The D'Hondt slightly favours large parties and coalitions over scattered small parties. In comparison, the Webster/Sainte-Laguë method, a divisor method, reduces the reward to large parties, and it generally has benefited middle-size parties at the expense of both large and small parties. The axiomatic properties of the D'Hondt method were studied and they proved that the D'Hondt method is the unique consistent, monotone, stable, and balanced method that encourages coalitions. A method is consistent if it treats parties which received tied vote equally. By monotonicity, the number of seats provided to any state or party will not decrease if the house size increases. A method is stable if two merged parties would neither gain nor lose more than one seat. By coalition encouragement of the D'Hondt method, any alliance cannot lose the seat.
Legislatures using this system include those of Albania, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Kosovo, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Mozambique, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Scotland, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela and Wales.
The system has also been used for the "top-up" seats in the London Assembly; in some countries for elections to the European Parliament; and during the 1997 Constitution era to allocate party-list parliamentary seats in Thailand. A modified form was used for elections in the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly, but this was abandoned in favour of the Hare-Clark system. The system is also used in practice for the allocation between political groups of a large number of posts (Vice Presidents, committee chairmen and vice-chairmen, delegation chairmen and vice-chairmen) in the European Parliament and for the allocation of ministers in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Dual-member proportional representation (DMP), also known as dual-member mixed proportional, is an electoral system designed to produce proportional election results across a region by electing two representatives in each of the region's districts. The 1st seat in every district is awarded to the candidate who receives the most votes, similar to first-past-the-post voting (FPTP). The 2nd seat is awarded to one of the remaining district candidates so that proportionality is achieved across the region, using a calculation that aims to award parties their seats in the districts where they had their strongest performances.
DMP was invented in 2013 by a University of Alberta mathematics student named Sean Graham. The system was intended as a possible replacement for FPTP in Canadian national and provincial elections. Whereas campaigns to adopt mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) or the single transferable vote (STV) had recently been defeated in a number of Canadian provinces (see 2005 British Columbia referendum, 2005 Prince Edward Island referendum, 2007 Ontario referendum, 2009 British Columbia referendum), the intent behind DMP was to gain broader acceptance by retaining salient features of FPTP. These features include a one-vote ballot, relatively small districts (compared with STV), and a single tier of local representatives (in contrast to MMP).Proposals to consider DMP were submitted to the Government of Canada, Alberta, Prince Edward Island (PEI), and British Columbia (BC). In April 2016, the PEI Special Committee on Democratic Renewal officially recommended that DMP appear as one of five options on the 2016 PEI plebiscite, with the winning voting system determined by instant-runoff voting. The plebiscite took place from October 29 to November 7, 2016. DMP was eliminated on the 3rd round, and after its votes were redistributed MMP was declared the winner ahead of FPTP. In May 2018, DMP was one of three proportional systems selected to appear on the 2018 BC referendum. The referendum involved a two-question mail-in ballot to be returned by the extended deadline of December 7, 2018. On the first question, a 61% majority of voters chose to retain the current FPTP voting system instead of switching to a form of proportional representation. On the second question, which would have decided the specific proportional system, MMP enjoyed the most support, with DMP collecting slightly more first-choice preferences than rural–urban proportional representation.
An electoral list is a grouping of candidates for election, usually in proportional election systems, but also in some plurality election systems. An electoral list can be registered by a political party or can constitute a group of independent candidates. Lists can be open, in which case electors have some influence over the ranking of the winning candidates, or closed, in which case the order of candidates is fixed at the registration of the list.
Electoral lists are required for party-list proportional representation voting systems.
An electoral list (not to be confused with an electoral roll) is made according to the applying nomination rules and election rules. Depending on the type of election, a political party, a general assembly, or a board meeting, may elect or appoint a nominating committee that will add, and if required, prioritize list-candidates according to their preferences. Qualification, popularity, gender, age, geography, and occupation are preferences that may influence the committee's work. The committee's proposed list may then be changed in a selection meeting, where new candidates may be added, or existing candidates may be moved or removed from the list. When the internal process is over, the final list is made public and is printed on the ballot paper used in the election. The right to vote comes under Universal adult franchise. Minimum age required for vote is 18years. And each vote have an equal value.
Voting systems, such as proportional representation, a two-round system (runoff voting), instant-runoff voting, Instant Round Robin Voting called Condorcet Voting, range voting, approval voting, citizen initiatives and referendums and recall elections.
Galgamuwa electoral district was an electoral district of Sri Lanka between July 1977 and February 1989. The district was named after the town of Galgamuwa in Kurunegala District, North Western Province. The 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka introduced the proportional representation electoral system for electing members of Parliament. The existing 160 mainly single-member electoral districts were replaced with 22 multi-member electoral districts. Galgamuwa electoral district was replaced by the multi-member electoral district at the 1989 general elections, the first under the proportional representation system.
The General Assembly of Uruguay (Asamblea General) has two chambers.
the Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputados) has 99 members, elected for a five-year term by proportional representation.
the Chamber of Senators (Cámara de Senadores) has 31 members, 30 members elected for a five-year term by proportional representation and the Vice-president.
The Hokkaidō proportional representation block (比例[代表]北海道ブロック, Hirei [daihyō] Hokkaidō burokku) or in official usage the "Hokkaidō electoral district" (北海道選挙区, Hokkaidō senkyo-ku) is one of eleven proportional representation (PR) blocks for the House of Representatives in the Diet of Japan. It consists of Hokkaidō and is one of two PR blocks that covers only one prefecture, the other being Tokyo. Following the introduction of proportional voting, it elected nine representatives in the election of 1996. Since 2000, the Hokkaidō PR block has been represented by eight representatives.
A list MP is a member of parliament (MP) who is elected from a party list rather than from a geographical constituency. Their presence in Parliament is owed to the number of votes that their party won, not to votes received by the MP personally. This occurs only in countries which have an electoral system based on party-list proportional representation.
This is a list of legislatures by country. A "legislature" is the generic name for the national parliaments and congresses that act as a plenary general assembly of representatives and that have the power to legislate. All entities included in the list of sovereign states are included in this list.
Mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation is a mixed electoral system in which voters get two votes: one to decide the representative for their single-seat constituency, and one for a political party. Seats in the legislature are filled firstly by the successful constituency candidates, and secondly, by party candidates based on the percentage of nationwide or region-wide votes that each party received. The constituency representatives are elected using first-past-the-post voting (FPTP) or another plurality/majoritarian system. The nationwide or region-wide party representatives are, in most jurisdictions, drawn from published party lists, similar to party-list proportional representation. To gain a nationwide representative, parties may be required to achieve a minimum number of constituency candidates, a minimum percentage of the nationwide party vote, or both.
MMP differs from parallel voting in that the nationwide seats are allocated to political parties in a compensatory manner in order to achieve proportional election results. Under MMP, two parties that each receive 25% of the votes may both end up with 25% of the seats, even if one party wins more constituencies than the other.
MMP was originally used to elect representatives to the German Bundestag, and has been adopted by Bolivia, Lesotho and New Zealand. It was also used in Romania during its 2008 and 2012 legislative elections. In Germany, where it is used on the federal level and in most states, MMP is known as personalized proportional representation (German: personalisiertes Verhältniswahlrecht). In the United Kingdom such systems used in Scotland, Wales, and the London Assembly are referred to as additional member systems. In the Canadian province of Quebec, where an MMP model was studied in 2007, it is called the compensatory mixed-member voting system (système mixte avec compensation or SMAC).
Party-list proportional representation systems are a family of voting systems emphasizing proportional representation (PR) in elections in which multiple candidates are elected (e.g., elections to parliament) through allocations to an electoral list. They can also be used as part of mixed additional member systems.In these systems, parties make lists of candidates to be elected, and seats get distributed to each party in proportion to the number of votes the party receives. Voters may vote directly for the party, as in Albania, Argentina, Turkey, and Israel; or for candidates whose vote total will pool to the party, as in Finland, Brazil and the Netherlands; or for a list of candidates, as in Hong Kong.
Voters in Luxembourg's multi-seat constituencies can choose between voting for a complete list of candidates of a single party ("list vote") or voting for individual candidates from one or several lists ("panachage").
The order in which a party's list candidates get elected may be pre-determined by some method internal to the party or the candidates (a closed list system) or it may be determined by the voters at large (an open list system) or by districts (a local list system).
The highest average method, including the D'Hondt method (or Jefferson's method) used in Albania, Argentina, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cambodia, Estonia, Finland, Israel, Poland, Spain and many other countries; and the Sainte-Laguë method (or Webster's method) used in Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, the German Bundestag, and in six German states (e.g., North Rhine-Westphalia and Bremen).
The largest remainder (LR) methods, including the Hamilton method.List proportional representation may also be combined in various hybrids, e.g., using the additional member system.
LR-Imperiali (greatly favors larger parties)While the allocation formula is important, equally important is the district magnitude (number of seats in a constituency). The higher the district magnitude, the more proportional an electoral system becomes - the most proportional being when there is no division into constituencies at all and the entire country is treated as a single constituency. More, in some countries the electoral system works on two levels: at-large for parties, and in constituencies for candidates, with local party-lists seen as fractions of general, national lists. In this case, magnitude of local constituencies is irrelevant, seat apportionment being calculated at national level.
In France, party lists in proportional elections must include as many candidates (and twice as many substitutes for the departmental elections) as there are seats to be allocated, whereas in other countries "incomplete" lists are allowed.
Plurality voting is an electoral system in which each voter is allowed to vote for only one candidate, and the candidate who polls the most among their counterparts (a plurality) is elected. In a system based on single-member districts, it may be called first-past-the-post (FPTP), single-choice voting, simple plurality or relative/simple majority. In a system based on multi-member districts, it may be referred to as winner-takes-all or bloc voting. The system is often used to elect members of a legislative assembly or executive officers. It is the most common form of the system, and is used in most elections in the United States, the lower house (Lok Sabha) in India, elections to the House of Commons and English local elections in the United Kingdom (although in the UK proportional or preferential voting is now used for elections to the Scottish and European Parliaments, Welsh, N Irish and London Assemblies, for mayors and Scottish and N Irish and some Welsh local elections) and Canada.
Plurality voting is distinguished from a majoritarian electoral system, in which, to win, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of votes, i.e., more votes than all other candidates combined. Both systems may use single-member or multi-member constituencies. In the latter case it may be referred to as an exhaustive counting system: one member is elected at a time and the process repeated until the number of vacancies is filled.
In some jurisdictions, including France and some of the United States including Louisiana and Georgia, a "two-ballot" or "runoff election" plurality system is used. This may require two rounds of voting. If on the first round no candidate receives over 50% of the votes, then a second round takes place, with just the two highest-voted candidates in the first round. This ensures that the winner gains a majority of votes in the second round. Alternatively, all candidates above a certain threshold in the first round may compete in the second round. If there are more than two candidates standing, then a plurality vote may decide the result.
In political science, the use of plurality voting with multiple, single-winner constituencies to elect a multi-member body is often referred to as single-member district plurality or SMDP. This combination is also variously referred to as winner-takes-all to contrast it with proportional representation systems. This term is sometimes also used to refer to elections for multiple winners in a particular constituency using bloc voting.
Instant-runoff voting, referred to as "preferential voting" in Australia and as "ranked choice voting" in United States, is one type of ranked voting method.
The single transferable vote (STV) is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through ranked voting in multi-seat organizations or constituencies (voting districts). Under STV, an elector (voter) has a single vote that is initially allocated to their most preferred candidate. Votes are totalled and a quota (the number of votes required to win a seat) derived. If their candidate achieves quota, he/she is elected and in some STV systems any surplus vote is transferred to other candidates in proportion to the voters' stated preferences. If more candidates than seats remain, the bottom candidate is eliminated with his/her votes being transferred to other candidates as determined by the voters' stated preferences. These elections and eliminations, and vote transfers if applicable, continue until there are only as many candidates as there are unfilled seats. The specific method of transferring votes varies in different systems (see § Counting methods).
The system provides approximately proportional representation, even in non-partisan elections, and that minority factions have some representation; enables votes to be cast for individual candidates rather than for parties and party machine-controlled party lists, and – compared to first-past-the-post voting – reduces "wasted" votes (votes being wasted on losers and surplus votes being wasted on sure winners) by transferring them to other preferred candidates.
STV is the system of choice of groups such as the Proportional Representation Society of Australia (which calls it quota-preferential proportional representation), the Electoral Reform Society in the United Kingdom and FairVote in the USA (which refers to STV as fair representation voting and instant-runoff voting as ranked-choice voting, although there are other preferential voting methods that use ranked-choice ballots). Its critics contend that some voters find the mechanisms behind STV difficult to understand, but this does not make it more difficult for voters to rank the list of candidates in order of preference on an STV ballot paper (see § Voting).
The Southern Kantō proportional representation block (Hirei [daihyō] Minami-Kantō burokku (比例[代表]南関東ブロック)) is one of eleven proportional representation (PR) "blocks", multi-member constituencies for the House of Representatives in the Diet of Japan. It consists of Southern parts of the Kantō region covering Chiba, Kanagawa and Yamanashi prefectures. Following the introduction of proportional voting it initially elected 23 representatives in the 1996 general election, then 21 after the total number of PR seats had been reduced from 200 to 180, and 22 representatives since the reapportionment of 2002.
The Tōkyō proportional representation block (Hirei [daihyō] Tōkyō burokku (比例[代表]東京ブロック)) is one of eleven proportional representation (PR) "blocks", multi-member constituencies for the House of Representatives in the Diet of Japan. It consists solely of the prefecture of Tokyo making it one of two blocks covering only one prefecture, the other being Hokkaido. Following the introduction of proportional voting Tokyo elected 19 representatives by PR in the 1996 general election, and 17 since the election of 2000 when the total number of PR seats was reduced from 200 to 180.


Believed to have been drowned whilst swimming across Volkerak from Willemstad towards Ooltgensplaat.
Believed to have been drowned on Hollands Diep,whilst crossing from Willemstad.
It is not sure where he was killed, There is a suggestion that he was killed in Rotterdam.


text:
'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' 'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' 'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' 'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' + 'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' E-mail
'To be a state, you need a state's mentality'
Foreign affairs secretary argues for exhausting all options in convincing the international community to support a move towards Catalan independence and thus achieve recognition
Albinyana poses for a photograph during the interview. O. DURAN.
'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' 'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' 'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' 'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' 'To be a state, you need a state's mentality' E-mail
Òscar Palau
The Catalan parliament has passed legislation boosting the extent of its reach abroad.
–It is a pioneering law, which makes Catalonia the only place in Europe with regional status but with a law allowing us to consolidate our activities abroad within a legal framework.
But is it constitutional?
–We have the conviction, and the Consell de Garanties Estatutàries agrees, that the law is constitutional. It was passed with wide parliamentary support, and we'd be surprised if the Spanish government opposed it.
Spanish diplomacy supervises all foreign activity. Has the boycott intensified?
–I'm not sure it can be intensified, as the hostility is so great, and not only towards democratic Catalan institutions working abroad. There are also Catalans in international institutions that have had difficulties in carrying out their duties.
Will the plebiscite elections be recognised abroad?
–We think we need this tool to know what support the government has going into independence. It is completely legitimate to use a legal mechanism to find out public opinion. After that, the government has to see what the reaction is.
Is the State's refusal to cooperate understood abroad?
–There is fatigue with the Spanish government's handling of the case. There is also perplexity at the proceedings by the public prosecutor; it is not understood how, in a democratic system, a political conflict can be solved by holding democratically elected politicians criminally responsible for fulfilling a public and parliamentary mandate.
Could that benefit the sovereignty process?
–It does it no harm. In the past two years, all activities of the Catalan institutions, and the negative reactions to them from the state institutions, allow us to justify the path chosen by the people of Catalonia. A process like this can only reach its end if all options are exhausted.
Artur Mas says a single unity candidacy list is vital for international recognition.
–The danger of different lists with different manifestos is that it blurs the message. We are in a place that requires clarity because often we have difficulty explaining what is happening in Catalonia. It is fundamental and vital that the tool we use to express the will of the people be absolutely clear. Clarity is what a referendum provides. Elections do not, and that's why we have to turn them into a tool that sends a single message.
How would separate lists play out abroad?
–We are talking about carrying out the referendum that Madrid would not let us hold. We do not have support abroad and nor are we a world power with great economic sway, which makes voting the only tool we have. And we only have it once. The conclusion is that fewer lists equal greater clarity.
Is there a chance of foreign mediation after the fact?
–We would have to see because it would depend on the reaction of the Spanish government. If there is no willingness to talk, we would make an appeal abroad. It is difficult to say at this point whether they would be prepared to intercede. Yet, there are signs of a willingness to find a lasting solution to the problem, which does not cause too much economic or financial turbulence.
At what point does the road map look for international recognition?
–The day after a government is elected, formal channels of communication would be established abroad: with the Spanish government, Brussels and influential European countries. Obviously, recognition can only come after a formal declaration of independence. However, there is more to it; if you declare independence that day after the elections, the most likely thing is that no one will offer recognition. The first thing they will say is that you are in no position to guarantee effective control of your territory. You have to show to the world that you are sovereign and that you can maintain relations with other countries.
Would asking for recognition be part of the announced activities for 2015?
–No. There is an obsession with that. If you want to be a state, you have to act with a state's mentality and you cannot beg for recognition. Recognition can only come when a declaration of independence has been made effective, and that would be at the end, when the right conditions have been fulfilled.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Home World News Update Bully, Berate, Manipulate: 3 Ways Trump is Attempting to Steer the Fed...
Bully, Berate, Manipulate: 3 Ways Trump is Attempting to Steer the Fed to Lower Interest Rates
See that guy grimacing behind Jerome Powell? That picture was taken back when Trump nominated him to run the Federal Reserve. And that was the high point of their relationship.
Trump upped the ire Thursday in a tweet storm railing against the Fed. Among other things, Trump wrote, "The Fed's high interest rate level, in comparison to other countries, is keeping the dollar high, making it more difficult for our great manufacturers like Caterpillar, Boeing, John Deere, our car companies, & others, to compete on a level playing field."
Many presidents—including Trump, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and the first Bush, according to multiple Fed experts, researchers, and historians—have tried to push the Fed into lowering interest rates before an election in hopes of wooing voters by goosing the economy. Under LBJ, then-chair William McChesney Martin famously said that the role of the Fed was to "take away the punch bowl [by raising interest rates] just as the party gets going." Johnson shoved him into a wall during one discussion.
Trump hasn't shoved anyone. But here's what he is doing to try and steer the Fed in the direction he wants.
This has been Trump's least effective approach. It would take a majority of the Fed board of governors to consistently vote for lower interest rates to satisfy his desire, but the seats have staggered terms and it is difficult for one president to name a controlling majority of the board before sometime into a second term.
Trump nominated Powell as Fed chair in November 2017 and the Senate confirmed him. By November 2018, the President said he was "not even a little bit happy" with Powell because of the rate increases the Fed has undertaken over time.
Trump's other Fed governor appointees have been seen as supporting lower interest rates but getting confirmation has been tricky. Multiple candidates—Herman Cain and Stephen Moore—were considered controversial enough that Senate approval was unlikely, so the administration withdrew their names.
The latest two candidates—Christopher Waller, director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and Judy Shelton, U.S. executive director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development—have yet to receive a vote. But it is unclear that their inclusion will create automatic support for continued interest cuts.
Tirades
Trump has pumped forth a regular volley of criticism targeting both Powell and the Fed, whether in tweets like those on Thursday or through comments to the press. An example from June was when Trump told ABC News that U.S. GDP growth would be "at least a point and a half higher" if the Fed hadn't increased interest rates so much in 2018.
Given the number of times rates climbed, and dropped less in July than Trump wanted, suggesting that the approach was highly effective is questionable. What it has done, however, is attract an unusual amount of potent criticism.
Former Fed chairs Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen took the unusual step to write rote in Monday's Wall Street Journal that "the Fed and its chair must be permitted to act independently and in the best interests of the economy, free of short-term political pressures and, in particular, without the threat of removal or demotion of Fed leaders for political reasons."
Weaponizing tariffs
What has been new—and potentially disturbing—is Trump's apparent use of tariffs to indirectly manipulate interest rates.
A day after the Fed lowered interest rates on July 31 by 0.25%—and Trump upbraided Powell for not making the cut larger—the president indulged in a tirade on Twitter, but one directed at China. He claimed the country had backed out of a trade agreement and said that in retaliation the U.S. would put a 10% tariff on another $300 billion of goods annually from the country start Sept. 1.
"It could be coincidence," said Steven Blitz, chief U.S. economist at investment research provider TS Lombard. "I think the timing is definitely suspicious."
The sideways glance from Blitz and others is the result of a newly regular dynamic. Trump announces increased tariffs and uncertain markets fall. He lowers them and talks of a trade deal and the markets improve.
That's because investors hate uncertainty. And each drop becomes a signal to the Fed that the economy might falter, which becomes one of multiple factors that could push the organization into lowering rates in an attempt to increase economic activity. As Powell said in his July testimony to Congress, "crosscurrents, such as trade tensions and concerns about global growth, have been weighing on economic activity and the outlook."
Aside from the novel approach to monetary arm-twisting, the byproducts could be economic disaster.
"There's no precedence in the modern world of two gigantic economies going into a trade war," said Peter Earle, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research. "Even in addition to what we know, there are many possibilities for unintended consequences."
"We had tariff wars in the past, but he's using them to pressure into bilateral agreements with individual countries," said Sheila Tschinkel, a visiting economics professor at Emory University who has previously worked for the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund. "Unfortunately, China is extremely large, which makes it risky."
Tschinkel, who isn't certain that tariffs are an attempt to manipulate the Fed, says that the current strategy, no matter what the reason, is a potential problem.
"When he's acting against China, it's making lower- and middle-income people worse off," Tschinkel said. "When you put pressure on real income at the lower end of the income distribution, it's more negative for the economy than on the upper end." Money earned goes largely into spending, which stimulates the economy, and not into savings. Tariffs are consumption taxes that redirect money from the economy into government coffers.
A second danger is that repeated uncertainty can cause markets to retreat enough to become a self-fulfilling prophesy of economic weakness.
Third, and perhaps worst, is that the Fed and other central banks show that they have no mechanisms left to help the economy. Trump is assuming, "I follow my strategy on trade so even if things turn sour, I always have the Fed to reduce interest rates and bail me out," said Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and former governor of the Reserve Bank of India and chief economist and director of research at the International Monetary Fund.
"The danger is the central banks don't have that much ammunition to bail out … and all these unconventional policies seem to have limited and diminishing effects over time," Rajan said. "Central bankers have to continue pretending that they can achieve their objectives because otherwise it could make things worse because of expectations."
And so, while the central banks indeed may be dressed only in their skivvies, Trump is pushing an agenda that could backfire drastically on the economy.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—What people get wrong about artificial intelligence and China
—Will Apple will absorb tariffs on Chinese-made products?
—Is it "only human" to feel anxious about money? Talking finance with Sophia the Robot
—The currency that's quietly emerged as Asia's safest bet
—Listen to our audio briefing, Fortune 500 Daily
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.
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eBook Come Clean [MP3 AUDIO] by Terri Paddock 100% free!
There she begins a strict boot-camp routine of humiliation and discipline, where they attempt to strip her of her identity in order to rebuild her a better person. Justine escapes the daily torture at the centre by talking to Joshua in her head, reflecting back on their childhood and trying to puzzle out why her brother was a tortured soul… and why he chose to leave her.
Because of the intensely personal nature of the narrative, this book engages the reader instantly and, however tough the subject matter, it is a real page-turner. At its heart, Come Clean is about a girl's inability to deal her grief and her family's ignorance of her pain. Justine shows strength, resilience, courage and hope while living a nightmare reality.
Although she has written one book for adults - "Beware the Dwarfs" -, "Come Clean" is her first book for children.


Our primary interest is to provide Southwest Missouri with exceptional amateur repeaters to use for regular and brief QSOs.
Treat them as a "Regional Service" repeaters, not local "rag chew" repeaters. We absolutley never intended for hams to sit on the machines for hours at a time. Our intention is to provide great regional repeaters for people to hold QSOs driving to work etc. and for contacting each other any time of day. Healthy usage, brevity and courtesy to all listeners is important to us.
The 147.12 machine is the Skywarn backup repeater. We have no intention of taking over the primary role. We were approached by NWS about using the 147.12 as a backup repeater and we agreed to that ONLY. We appreciate all the positive comments on how well this repeater works and NWS knows full well, they have our approval to use the machine anytime they wish. Though we are not interested in being the primary Skywarn machine for training and standard nets.
Maintain a "neutral-ground" community. Heavy right or left discussions foster disagreement, which in-turn fosters resentment. Topics/opinions on politics or negative comments about other ham operators, bands or modes isn't warranted on a machine that is meant to be inviting to all amateurs.
Remember, this is a hobby. Just like fishing, hiking or canoeing; there are no entitlements. Any nefarious activity, will result particular repeaters being turned off. We are all here to appreciate amateur radio. Enjoy it. Please don't abuse the equipment.
Have fun and enjoy all your fellow hams.