Drawbacks of MMP

No electoral system is perfect, and MMP has its problems. Notably, it requires political parties be part of the electoral system (though it doesn’t establish any specific parties). Nominally, our current FPTP system doesn’t require that.

However, that’s not the fact on the ground. The reality is that political parties have been essential since the establishment of modern democracy, both in terms of getting things done and also in terms of getting elected. Also, Rhode Island state law also pretty much accepts political parties as a reality, establishing rules for their recognition and operating their primaries. If parties were merely an optional part of the political system, there would be little need to regulate them or control their functions.

This also means that political independents could never hold more than 50% of the seats in the General Assembly. Perhaps it might be possible to somehow create an “independents’ list” to run alongside the political parties, but the very nature of political independents argues against mass politics like that. Independents also contribute to so-called “overhang” seats, seats which a party won in excess of the preference of the voters.

Ballot confusion is also a possibility; but this is not unique to any specific electoral system. Proper placement of the party preference vote combined with voter education should mostly mitigate these problems. We should remember that even though we are born into a democracy, we do not innately grasp how it works. Education (and the will to pay for education) is always a key part of creation an empowered citizenry.

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