Electoral Thresholds

[angus]

funny low in the case of the Netherlands at 1/150th of the vote

Not at all, it's logical.  And to the poster who said that they are inherently arbitrary, here is an example of one that is not.  The Tweede Kamer of the Staten-Generaal has precisely 150 seats.  (I just looked all this up, so now I'm an expert.)  This is exactly how it should be it if they insist on creating a threshold system.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's a delightful little irony in that this democratic problem was in part caused by the electoral collapse of a party that can be seen as representing a different democratic problem: the FDP have almost always been in government despite having never polled more than 15% of the vote.

[Lief 🗽]

There's a delightful little irony in that this democratic problem was in part caused by the electoral collapse of a party that can be seen as representing a different democratic problem: the FDP have almost always been in government despite having never polled more than 15% of the vote.

Which just underscores that no matter what you do you're going to have problems of democratic representation. A low threshold does not necessarily lead to more democratic or representative outcomes than a high threshold.

[Hatman 🍁]

I imagine they took it on to avoid their pre-war problems and keep to to keep out the NDP.

NPD

Anyways, I of course support no threshold at all (thresholds are arbitrary). BUT my ideal system would be based on a bicameral system where the upper house is elected by PR (with divisions of 10 Senators elected by PR in each division) and a lower house elected by AV like in Australia.

The only time I would use a threshold is where there are uneven PR divisions (one region electing 10 PR Members and another . I would make a threshold on the larger division so that it isn't easier to get elected in the 10 seat division than the 8.

I'm kind of surprised that you support AV? How come?

Only for one house.

I know that. It just seems surprising. Most of your rhetoric about electoral reform is about having proportional representation, yet AV seems to promote 2-party rule even more than FPTP. What am I missing in your logic?

As long as one house is proportional it's fine. The upper house would act on behalf of the various regions, while the lower house would act on behalf of the various constituencies. The lower house representatives would be someone to voice a community's interest in parliament. The way I theorize it would be parties in the upper house would be whipped more, like in a parliamentary system, while parties in the lower house would be free to vote the way their constituencies want like in the US. The best of both worlds.

[YL]

There are two (at least) countries which do use national list PR with no threshold: Israel and the Netherlands.

Just noticed this - it's factually incorrect. Their thresholds are low - funny low in the case of the Netherlands at 1/150th of the vote - but they do have thresholds. Israel's is 2%.

Roughly speaking, these thresholds eliminate those who'd win only a single seat. (The countries and their parliaments being a lot smaller than Germany.)

Oops, should have looked them up before posting.  The results do tend to look rather like I imagine no threshold ones would; presumably you would get a handful of parties winning a single seat each if there were no threshold at all.