Welsh Parliament is set to expand

[iain]

Nov 23, 2021 12:44:55 GMT johng said:

Nov 23, 2021 11:38:21 GMT iain said:

1) I misunderstood what you were saying here. Personally though I think a party should have to win a majority to win a majority government. What could be fairer?
2) I said that voters don't have to play guessing games. Which they don't. If a party only gets one candidate elected when they would be 'entitled' to two, that is because their second candidate is not popular enough. I don't have a problem with that. The issue I accepted was that parties 'have' to play guessing games. Apart from they don't 'have' to, they choose to.
3) This is the same under every voting system? Definitely FPTP. At least this way you get to vote for someone you want to first, rather than just voting for someone you dislike to stop the candidate you really dislike as under our current system.
4) Well it depends how rough roughly is and how much 'a bit' over is. I'd rather it was proportional, but I think top-up lists should be regional to allow for regional parties. That shouldn't affect many seats, and is a payoff I'd be willing to make.

[afleitch]

A Senedd with the same proportionality as Holyrood should have an additional 11 regional seats. 2 additional seats per region seems the simplest thing to do.

[Penddu]

Nov 23, 2021 15:35:59 GMT afleitch said:

A Senedd with the same proportionality as Holyrood should have an additional 11 regional seats. 2 additional seats per region seems the simplest thing to do.

That wont work because of the redrawing of boundaries from 40 to 32. Increasing seats from 60 to 80 at the same time would need 28 extra regional seats or around 5-6 per region - which would result in too many fringe party seats.

Needs a complete rethink.

[boogieeck]

How much of a pay cut will be required for this to be cost neutral?

[greenhert]

I believe the Senedd should keep AMS but increase the number of regional seats per region; if they want "80 to 100 members" then 82 sounds like a good number: 32 constituency seats plus 50 list MSs (10 for each region, no threshold needed). This also ensures a reasonable balance between list seats and constituency seats whilst also achieving proper proportionality at list level.

[peterl]

No need for any increase. The last thing the general public want is more politicians. The number in any elected body should be as low as reasonably possible.

[afleitch]

Nov 23, 2021 19:23:22 GMT Penddu said:

Nov 23, 2021 15:35:59 GMT afleitch said:

A Senedd with the same proportionality as Holyrood should have an additional 11 regional seats. 2 additional seats per region seems the simplest thing to do.

That wont work because of the redrawing of boundaries from 40 to 32. Increasing seats from 60 to 80 at the same time would need 28 extra regional seats or around 5-6 per region - which would result in too many fringe party seats.

Needs a complete rethink.

Hasn't the link between Westminster and Senedd constituencies not been broken?

[LDCaerdydd]

Nov 23, 2021 22:32:38 GMT afleitch said:

Nov 23, 2021 19:23:22 GMT Penddu said:

That wont work because of the redrawing of boundaries from 40 to 32. Increasing seats from 60 to 80 at the same time would need 28 extra regional seats or around 5-6 per region - which would result in too many fringe party seats.

Needs a complete rethink.

Hasn't the link between Westminster and Senedd constituencies not been broken?

It has.

I was originally dead against separate boundaries (especially if we have a Cardiff Central or Caerphilly seat in both etc), but I’ve largely accepted that it needs to happen.

[J.G.Harston]

Nov 23, 2021 19:59:31 GMT peterl said:

No need for any increase. The last thing the general public want is more politicians. The number in any elected body should be as low as reasonably possible.

Overlapping with the "90% of people think government is corrupt" thread, people ask why government attacts people who want to corrupt power - it's because that's where the power is. The solution is to remove that power from government. There's a huge industry in lobbying government because government interfers in the lives of those being lobbed, so of course those being interfered with lobby those doing the interfering to stop the interfering. The solution to the problem of a lobbying industry is to remove the ability of government to interfer in the lives of those doing the lobbying.

[European Lefty]

Unfortunately I see no way they don't end up with STV using Westminster boundaries

[Penddu]

Nov 23, 2021 19:31:28 GMT boogieeck said:

How much of a pay cut will be required for this to be cost neutral?

More than covered by reduction of 8 MPs.

[Penddu]

Nov 23, 2021 22:32:38 GMT afleitch said:

Nov 23, 2021 19:23:22 GMT Penddu said:

That wont work because of the redrawing of boundaries from 40 to 32. Increasing seats from 60 to 80 at the same time would need 28 extra regional seats or around 5-6 per region - which would result in too many fringe party seats.

Needs a complete rethink.

Hasn't the link between Westminster and Senedd constituencies not been broken?

It has been broken but the political parties are not happy to do it, hence expect the compromise to retain it in some form...

[Penddu]

Nov 24, 2021 0:21:49 GMT European Lefty said:

Unfortunately I see no way they don't end up with STV using Westminster boundaries

Or at least pairs of Westminster seats.

There are 8 seats in north Wales so starting with Ynys Môn, this would either join with Gwynedd, which would result in a Montgomeryshire & Wrexham pair; or Ynys Môn joins with Aberconwy resulting in a Montgomeryshire & Gwynedd pair.

Neither option is pretty but only other alternative is to keep Powys together which would neccesitate a huge Gwynedd & Ceredigion pair which is even uglier.

Dyfed would include 2 pairs and Glamorgan and Gwent pair up quite easily - but this would result in another awkward pair of Brecon and Monmouthshire.

[LDCaerdydd]

“Pairing up” Wrexham and Montgomeryshire would be absolute madness by every stretch of the imagination.

[johng]

Nov 23, 2021 19:31:28 GMT boogieeck said:

How much of a pay cut will be required for this to be cost neutral?

Typical narrow thinking on your part.

The government makes up a quarter of the chamber.

How much extra cost is incurred due to lack of scrutiny in the Senedd? 

The cost of an MS is lower than an MP so the eight seat cut in Westminster seats makes up for some of it and provides a public relations diversionary excuse.

[𝖭𝖾𝖺𝗍𝗁 𝖶𝖾𝗌𝗍]

Nov 22, 2021 20:39:59 GMT jollyroger93 said:

I honestly don't see why they don't add 4 seats to the regional list regions, quick and simple.

Because the boundaries are so horribly out of date that a vote in Arfon is worth significantly more than one in Cardiff South and Penarth. Okay, there's a workaround of mainly keeping the old boundaries, but redrawing South Glamorgan and Gwent with extra constituencies, but that wouldn't be pretty (it'd either end up with splitting Barry or some weird Rural Vale and bits of Cardiff thing).

[johng]

Nov 24, 2021 18:16:42 GMT 𝖭𝖾𝖺𝗍𝗁 𝖶𝖾𝗌𝗍 said:

Nov 22, 2021 20:39:59 GMT jollyroger93 said:

I honestly don't see why they don't add 4 seats to the regional list regions, quick and simple.

Because the boundaries are so horribly out of date that a vote in Arfon is worth significantly more than one in Cardiff South and Penarth. Okay, there's a workaround of mainly keeping the old boundaries, but redrawing South Glamorgan and Gwent with extra constituencies, but that wouldn't be pretty (it'd either end up with splitting Barry or some weird Rural Vale and bits of Cardiff thing).

It's the same issue with some of the suggestions above with the new boundaries as Ynys Mon is around 25k smaller than other seats.

You can just pair up seats as any pairs with Ynys Mon will either have to be overrepresented or underrepresented. Obviously it's like that now, but any new seats should be based on all seats being fairly comparably represented.

With STV this works well if each new seat gets 3 STV members whilst Ynys Mon gets 2.

[ilerda]

Just merging existing constituencies is as flawed as creating new local authorities by just merging existing ones. The communities on the edge will often end up in inappropriate mergers, and better alternatives could usually be arrived at by starting from scratch with the new constituency electorate as the target.

[johng]

Nov 24, 2021 20:03:50 GMT ilerda said:

Just merging existing constituencies is as flawed as creating new local authorities by just merging existing ones. The communities on the edge will often end up in inappropriate mergers, and better alternatives could usually be arrived at by starting from scratch with the new constituency electorate as the target.

I believe the person's suggestion above was that each FPTP seat be paired and they elect their 2 FPTP members and 3 AMS members.

Otherwise, I am not sure anyone has suggested it.

Though I have to say looking at some of the BCW's initial proposals for the new Westminster seats, I am not sure starting from scratch helped much.

[boogieeck]

The best system would be 13 STV constituencies based on the historic counties.

At a push, Glamorgan could be two, Cardiff and Not Cardiff