[pp.int.general] Social r-evolution in Spain - #spanishrevolution (Rok Andr?e)

[Philip Hunt]

On 21 May 2011 11:59, David Arcos <david.arcos at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Philip Hunt <cabalamat at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>> On 21 May 2011 11:40, Jordi Soucheiron <jordi at soucheiron.cat> wrote:
>> > A "voto en blanco" is a vote without anything inside of the envelope (I
>> > guess that is what a blank vote is).
>>
>> So what does that mean -- a vote for no-one? I'm not familiar with
>> mechanics of voting in Spain, so what is the envelope used for?
>
> Blanco = white
> It's a white vote. Empty envelope. It's a way to say that you don't mind who
> wins.
> In fact, it hurts little parties because it increases the participation.

If it's an abstention, then surely it helps and hurts no-one, it's the
same as not voting at all? Or have I misunderstood?

> The problem is that in small regions (a few seats), a lot of votes get
> wasted. If it has 4 seats, and your party gets less than 25%, those votes
> are wasted.

That's wrong: under d'Hondt, in a 4 seat region, you need to exceed
20% of the vote.

quota = int(votes/(seats+1))+1

> The obvious fix is "one big circunscription". One person, one vote. Not
> perfects, but way better than right now.

That sounds good to me. I'd like the system in Scotland to change to
something like that (at the moment, Scotland has 8 electoral regions,
each of which elects 16 members, so you need about 5.88% of the vote
to win a seat).

> Why do we have such a system? Because of the Spanish Transition. When the
> dictator Franco died, they made a bipartidist-friendly system, so the power
>  would remain at the same few hands.

Ah, I understand the history behind this now. We have the same problem
in Britain, but even worse, with 2 big parties, and the rest (36% of
the voters) get almost nowhere.

-- 
Philip Hunt, <cabalamat at gmail.com>