Co-Opted Alliance Cllr Quits Party

[AdminSTB]

Interesting given the recent debate about the two SNP list MSPs who defected up in the Highlands.

Cllr Adam Harbinson (North Down, Bangor West) was co-opted to the council just in March to replace the late Cllr Tony Hill. He has now quit the party and is apparently mulling DUP membership, due to opposition to Alliance's support for equal marriage.

He has never actually been elected, he was essentially gifted his seat by the party, but there is no mechanism to allow the party to remove his seat. It does seem rather unfair.

stephensliberaljournal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/co-opted-councillor-resigns-from-party.html

[innocentabroad]

Perhaps we should borrow the Indian system. There, if you change Party, your seat is automatically declared vacant.

[Harry Hayfield]

Nov 24, 2012 11:57:21 GMT AdminSTB said:

Interesting given the recent debate about the two SNP list MSPs who defected up in the Highlands.

Cllr Adam Harbinson (North Down, Bangor West) was co-opted to the council just in March to replace the late Cllr Tony Hill. He has now quit the party and is apparently mulling DUP membership, due to opposition to Alliance's support for equal marriage.

He has never actually been elected, he was essentially gifted his seat by the party, but there is no mechanism to allow the party to remove his seat. It does seem rather unfair.

stephensliberaljournal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/co-opted-councillor-resigns-from-party.html

Or they adopt a system where if a councillor resigns or dies in a ward then the whole allocation is scrapped and all of the ward's councillors are up for election

[Davıd Boothroyd]

The Speaker's Conference of 1929-30 carried (by 8 votes to nil, with 9 abstaining) a resolution that "Provision should be made where P.R. is used for byelections to be held in subdivisions of a multi-membered constituency".

By "P.R." they meant the single transferable vote. Guessing at how this was supposed to work, presumably an STV constituency would be notionally divided into as many divisions as it had members, and the members would choose which of them they represented, and in the event of a byelection only this division would vote.

[johnloony]

Nov 24, 2012 19:37:24 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

The Speaker's Conference of 1929-30 carried (by 8 votes to nil, with 9 abstaining) a resolution that "Provision should be made where P.R. is used for byelections to be held in subdivisions of a multi-membered constituency".

By "P.R." they meant the single transferable vote. Guessing at how this was supposed to work, presumably an STV constituency would be notionally divided into as many divisions as it had members, and the members would choose which of them they represented, and in the event of a byelection only this division would vote.

That is a silly idea (obviously), but it could be done. If a 5-member constituency were divided geographically into 5 sub-units, the votes could be counted separately in each area - and an algorithm could be devised to ascertain which of the five MPs is most suited to each area, subject to constraints of needing to allocate a different MP to each area. There are enough anoraks in the membership of ERS who like inventing different varieties of electoral systems, and who would enjoy the idea of arranging such a system.

In other words, it would not be necessary for the 5 MPs simply to choose which area they want.

[timrollpickering]

ISTR there was a students' union who elected their officer team en bloc like this with the winners in order (yes I know!) picking their preferred posts. It got a bit messy one year when the first elected cared more about welfare than the presidency.

[greatkingrat]

There are 5! (120) ways to allocate the MPs. One simple algorithm would be to use whichever of the 120 possibilities that would result in the maximum number of voters being represented by their first preference.