After painstakingly sifting through nearly 5000 public submissions, the Electoral Commission has released its long-awaited Proposals Paper on MMP.
While most of the proposals are agreeable, some of them fall short.
Lowering the party vote threshold, the minimum share of support a party needs to gain seats in Parliament from 5% to 4% falls into the latter category.
The Commission cited public support for its recommendation, with 55% of submissions recommending lowering the threshold and the remaining 45% either maintaining the status quo or raising it.
The Commission has reasoned that it was important to ‘strike a balance between proportionality and effective governments and parliaments on the other.’
But by placing too much weight on proportionality, it got the balance wrong.
Proportionality is an important aspect of representative democracy, but it is not everything. As Professor Andrew Geddis (of Otago University) has argued, representation inherently involves compromise. Even if we got rid of the party-vote threshold entirely (as many submissions asserted was the only democratic option), we would still be left with 120 MPs representing 4.4 million kiwis.
It is therefore inevitable that some voices will not be represented and some MPs who received votes will not make it to Parliament.
The question then remains – Where to set the threshold?
Research from the Maxim Institute submission indicated that lower the threshold, higher is the likelihood that Parliament will be fractious and ineffective. This is because “in a multi-party Parliament, multi-party coalition, governments are more likely to form which are less likely to last their term, and it can be harder for governments to pass legislation.”
The Commission however came to its conclusion somewhat arbitrarily, using what has been called the ‘Goldilocks formula’, suggesting that “5% is too high and 3% is the lowest end of an acceptable range.” 4% they say is just right.
If the strength of the Commission’s rationale for lowering the threshold is weak, and public support for change is lukewarm, sticking with the status quo makes sense. As the Commission has wisely acknowledged, “this is an area in which New Zealand should move cautiously.”
The balance is currently right.
An effective and stable Parliament of parties supported by a significant share of the party vote is critical for our democracy, and unless there are compelling reasons, it should not be sacrificed.
Kieran Madden is a Researcher at Maxim Institute, Auckland
