Nigel Hen­ry

This Q&A was de­vel­oped by Nigel Hen­ry of So­lu­tion by Sim­u­la­tion fol­low­ing the par­lia­men­tary de­bate on pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, which con­clud­ed in the Sen­ate last Wednes­day. Lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions will take place on Oc­to­ber 21. So­lu­tion by Sim­u­la­tion ac­cu­rate­ly pre­dict­ed the out­come of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion, pub­lished in our Jan­u­ary 14 edi­tion.

Q: So, let's start with the ba­sics. What ex­act­ly is pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and what's the big deal about it?

A: Pro­por­tion­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tion (PR) de­scribes a method of de­cid­ing the win­ners of elec­tions in which mul­ti­ple mem­bers from one dis­trict are elect­ed in pro­por­tion to the votes record­ed for each par­ty or can­di­date. It con­trasts with the "first past the post" sys­tem (FPTP) in which a sin­gle mem­ber is elect­ed from each dis­trict.

As of Sep­tem­ber 11, Trinidad and To­ba­go will now use PR to elect al­der­men to the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, with ex­act­ly four al­der­men elect­ed in each cor­po­ra­tion by PR. The re­sult­ing sys­tem is more prop­er­ly called a Par­al­lel Vot­ing sys­tem, since FPTP and PR-elect­ed mem­bers will sit in the same cham­ber (the city, bor­ough or re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion coun­cil).

So ex­act­ly how does PR work?

Our ver­sion of PR will be im­ple­ment­ed us­ing what is called a closed-list sys­tem in which an elec­tor's vote will count in favour of a par­ty's list of can­di­dates for al­der­men. The list is "closed" be­cause elec­tors choose the list on the whole, and can­not in­flu­ence which can­di­date on a giv­en list is elect­ed first.

We will use the so-called "largest re­main­ders" (LR) method of cal­cu­la­tion, and more specif­i­cal­ly, the Hare ver­sion. In for­mal terms, the LR method is cal­cu­lat­ed by di­vid­ing the num­ber of votes each par­ty gets by a "quo­ta." But I find it eas­i­est to think of LR as award­ing a par­ty an elect­ed can­di­date for each time its vote tal­ly sur­pass­es a fixed bench­mark, in our case 25 per cent. Any re­main­ing seats are then filled by the par­ty or par­ties that are clos­est to their next bench­mark.

In oth­er words: If Par­ty A cap­tures at least 25 per cent of the vote, it is award­ed at least one al­der­man, if it cap­tures at least 50 per cent of the vote, it is award­ed at least two al­der­men, and so on. Once these first-round al­der­men are award­ed, the par­ty that is clos­est to its next 25 per cent bench­mark will re­ceive one of any re­main­ing al­der­men po­si­tions.

Can you use re­al num­bers to il­lus­trate?

Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing ex­am­ple: Par­ty A gets 49 per cent, Par­ty B 35 per cent and Par­ty C, the re­main­ing 16 per cent. Par­ty A and Par­ty B will be award­ed one al­der­man each for cross­ing 25 per cent. Then Par­ty A is award­ed a sec­ond al­der­man for be­ing clos­est to the next bench­mark; hav­ing one per cent less than 50 per cent. Par­ty C will be award­ed the fi­nal al­der­man with its 16 per cent be­ing count­ed as its "re­main­der."

The LR-Hare for­mu­la is the eas­i­est of all the PR sys­tems to un­der­stand, and is the most "fair" since its re­sults most close­ly ap­prox­i­mate the un­der­ly­ing vote dis­tri­b­u­tion.

So who will be the win­ners and losers in this new sys­tem?

Well, like any PR sys­tem, small­er par­ties will re­ceive larg­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion com­pared to in a FPTP sys­tem. How­ev­er, since on­ly four al­der­men will be elect­ed to each re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion, a "small" par­ty will there­fore be re­quired to earn a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of votes across the en­tire cor­po­ra­tion to elect an al­der­man. In prac­tice, there­fore, the "win­ners" will be the run­ner-up par­ties in each cor­po­ra­tion. In prac­tice, there will al­most al­ways be at least one mi­nor­i­ty or "op­po­si­tion" voice in each cor­po­ra­tion.

For ex­am­ple, in the 2010 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, the PNM was com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ed from four of the 14 cor­po­ra­tions en­tire­ly. How­ev­er, un­der the LR for­mu­la they would have re­tained a pres­ence in the form of an al­der­man–on the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro, Princess Town and Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions.If the 2010 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions were re­run us­ing the fol­low­ing sys­tem, the com­po­si­tion of the cor­po­ra­tions would have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly more bal­anced than at present.

What oth­er in­ter­est­ing changes can we look for­ward to?

Un­der the new rules, the FPTP coun­cil­lors and PR al­der­men may be in vast­ly dif­fer­ent pro­por­tions. Take 2010 again: in Ari­ma and San Fer­nan­do, the Part­ner­ship won the coun­cil­lor seats 6-1 and 7-2 re­spec­tive­ly. But un­der the new rule, the al­der­men in each case would be even­ly split at 2-2. Point Fortin shows the same ef­fect in re­verse: The PNM won the coun­cil­lor seats by a 5-1 mar­gin, but again the al­der­men elect­ed would have been 2-2.

The me­chan­ics of coali­tion pol­i­tics will al­so be af­fect­ed since two par­ties can­not "pool" their sup­port or share a com­mon list. In the last San­gre Grande Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion elec­tion, the UNC re­ceived 53 per cent of the vote share, and the COP re­ceived ten per cent.

To­geth­er, the 63 per cent of the vote share would have re­sult­ed in three Part­ner­ship al­der­men elect­ed. But since each par­ty must earn its own al­der­men, the PNM would have been able to split the al­lo­ca­tion 2-2. We may there­fore see can­di­dates run­ning un­der the ban­ner of a coali­tion part­ner to al­low a sin­gle coali­tion par­ty to con­test all the seats in a giv­en cor­po­ra­tion.Post-elec­tion coali­tions fare even worse: if the votes were split 17-17-2, the "2" would have no say in who con­trolled the cor­po­ra­tion.

Seems like a lot of change com­ing our way?

Not re­al­ly, at least not yet. With just four al­der­men per cor­po­ra­tion, the new rules would rarely change the ma­jor­i­ty par­ty in any cor­po­ra­tion. In fact, in the 2010 counter-fac­tu­al, the ab­solute num­ber of rep­re­sen­ta­tives on each side would change very lit­tle. In most cas­es, the re­sult is that two al­der­men would be added–one from each ma­jor par­ty.

But again, the bal­ance will still be ac­tu­al­ly clos­er to the nu­mer­i­cal "will" of the elec­torate, es­pe­cial­ly for the five City and Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tions. For ex­am­ple, in Point Fortin, which went 43-57 in favour of the PNM in 2010, the PP's 43 per cent round­ed down to 13 per cent rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and the PNM's 57 per cent round­ed up to 88 per cent rep­re­sen­ta­tion. In the new sys­tem, this will be more bal­anced at 30-70.

The sys­tem does in fact low­er the nu­mer­i­cal bar to gain rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Once a par­ty hits the "mag­ic num­ber" of 12� per cent of the cor­po­ra­tion-wide vote, even if it does not win any dis­trict, it can se­cure the elec­tion of an al­der­man, in a two-par­ty con­test.

Any­thing else?

The pro­posed PR sys­tem will in­crease the pres­ence of mi­nor­i­ty voic­es who have earned a siz­able share of the vote. How­ev­er, in most cas­es, an oth­er­wise dis­en­fran­chised par­ty will mere­ly re­ceive one al­der­man, and at most two al­der­men, out of a to­tal of ten to nine­teen elect­ed of­fi­cials in the cor­po­ra­tion.

The LR-Hare for­mu­la will al­low for an eas­i­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble in­tro­duc­tion to PR for Trinidad and To­ba­go, and may be a low risk tri­al for more ex­pand­ed PR, since it will make on­ly very mi­nor changes to the com­po­si­tion of each cor­po­ra­tion, and will have lit­tle or no bear­ing on who con­trols which cor­po­ra­tion.