Don't blame PR for the polarised result of the Northern Ireland elections, argues Eoin O'Malley. Alternative systems would not do better.
Dr Sydney Elliot ended his interesting analysis of transfer patterns in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections by asking whether "an electoral system which maximises communal choice and ensures so little dependence on the other community fits the current needs in Northern Ireland?"
He is right to raise the question, but is wrong if he blames the mechanics of proportional representation by the single transferable vote (PR-STV).
PR-STV operates in Northern Ireland using 18 six-seat constituencies. The relatively large constituencies give an opportunity for relatively small parties which achieve 15 per cent of first-preference votes to be almost guaranteed a seat. Parties with half that support can win a seat. Diane Dodds won a seat for the DUP in West Belfast with less than 8 per cent of first preferences.
The fact that the DUP can win a seat in a predominantly nationalist constituency should not be surprising because the constituency contains a significant minority of Protestants. Indeed, West Belfast elected three unionist/loyalist Assembly members from the six-seat constituency in 1973.
The difficulty, as Dr Elliot points out, is the system gives no incentive for parties on one side of the divide to attract support from the other side. The SDLP, which has traditionally performed this role in West Belfast, was annihilated there.
That the electoral system chosen for the Belfast Agreement does not create an electoral mechanism to build cross-community links should not surprise us. The whole basis of the agreement was to institutionalise the divisions between the two communities. The unique parliamentary system works against those centre parties which regard themselves as neither British nationalist nor Irish nationalist.
So is there a solution? It took many years for the UUP to accept STV, and they might now be questioning the wisdom of using it for elections in Northern Ireland.
Some in the UUP and SDLP might point out that the first-past-the-post or plurality system used in UK parliamentary elections would give incentives for moderate parties to attract support from both communities. They might point to the success of Dr Joe Hendron in Westminster elections 10 years ago. Dr Hendron managed to unseat Mr Gerry Adams by attracting unionist support.
However, the difficulty with the plurality system is that in many constituencies voters must be aware of who is likely to win in order to vote in this way. This means that voters must act strategically, perhaps making opinion polls self-fulfilling prophecies.
In constituencies where there are high rates of segregation, attracting support from the other side of the divide may mean losing support to extremists within one's own community. This would increase the potential for a return to unionist domination.
What system would work? There is nothing wrong with the present system. STV allows voters to give their first vote to their preferred candidate without risking wasting it on a no-hoper. The system of transferring preferences also means it might pay to attract support from both sides of the divide. The Alliance candidate, Ms Naomi Long, was elected in East Belfast with the aid of Sinn Féin and SDLP transfers.
The problem with the present system is what political scientists call the district magnitude (DM). This is the number of seats in each constituency. Where it is high, proportionality is high. With high proportionality, in divided societies we often see small extremist parties. In Israel the electoral system is extremely proportional - the country is a single constituency with 120 seats - and small parties have acted to restrict governments' ability to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinians.
Northern Ireland's DM of six is large enough to allow small parties within a constituency to work to earn a seat on the basis of their first-preference support. Sinn Féin won a seat in Antrim North, Ian Paisley's constituency, despite having received just 301 votes from over 9,000 that were transferred in all stages of the count.
The Alternative Vote (AV) system would maintain the attractive aspects of PR-STV, but work in favour of moderate candidates who can attract support from both communities, making parliamentary democracy more stable.
Nor is it a strange new system requiring costly reports from expert consultants. It's already used in the Republic. AV is used for by-elections and the presidential election. It is simply STV with single-seat constituencies.
It eventually worked to overturn Fianna Fáil's plurality that it had used to dominate presidential elections up to 1990. Mrs Mary Robinson received fewer votes than Mr Brian Lenihan, but she was able to attract more support from across the political spectrum. This led Fianna Fáil to change the type of candidate it puts up in presidential elections.
Changing the electoral system alone would not "get rid" of Sinn Féin and the DUP. They are popular, not just because of the views they hold on the constitutional question, but because they are well organised constituency representatives.
But if AV operated in Northern Ireland it should lead to parties trying to attract support from both sides, and either an increase in support for moderate parties, or having a moderating influence on the currently powerful extreme parties.
However, there is a problem with this analysis. Given the highly segregated nature of Northern Ireland's demography, it would be the case that constituencies would be so small and homogenous that the extreme parties would still dominate elections. Mr Adams would get elected to the Ballymurphy constituency, and Ms Diane Dodds to South Shankill constituency.
This would be a real possibility. Coupled with changing the electoral system, there would need to be a review of the constituencies. In order to create mixed constituencies, one would need to make them larger. In order to keep the necessary single-seat constituencies, there would have to be fewer constituencies, and hence fewer politicians.
Fewer politicians? That might be just another of the attractions of the system!