As with so many elections these days, it brings out the electoral reform fetishists, and they get self-righteous and say dumb things all over social media, and this week’s general election in the UK is no different. And lo, those fetishists are again making pronouncements about things like “voters’ wishes” because they’re trying to find a grand narrative that confirms their priors, and I fear I may lose my gods damned mind over this.
I swear to Zeus, takes like this are going to push me over the edge today. https://t.co/w82wWEdsyQ
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) July 5, 2024
Once again, let us remember what this election is—650 separate and simultaneous elections, each one for a specific seat. So yes, the voters’ wishes are reflected because they chose who filled each seat. As well, I will once again remind you that the so-called “popular vote” is a logical fallacy because there is too much variation between each electoral contest to make any kind of grand aggregate that is meaningful—particularly in the UK, where the smaller countries have regional parties that England doesn’t, and yes, that does distort the “national picture” (as what happens in Canada with the Bloc). And no, every vote that is cast does not deserve their own seat. That’s not democracy, and it’s actually sore loserism if you believe that your vote doesn’t count if the person or party you prefer doesn’t win.
On talking about mandates with 34% of the popular vote.
Confidence is what matters. Leave aside the questionable claims about representing the General Will. https://t.co/KFNowG9IeV
— Philippe Lagassé (@LagasseSubstack) July 5, 2024
Even if you prefer purely proportional representation, it doesn't make sense to say that Labour "should" have won only 35% of the seats. There's negative reason to assume that people will play a game the same way when you change the rules.
— Moebius Stripper (@moebius_strip) July 5, 2024
This is the other aspect of these fetishists spouting off and producing their own graphs of how they claim that Parliament “should” look if they had a PR system, erm, except they seem to always insist that it would be pure-PR (which is almost entirely unlikely), and it discounts that voting behaviour would change, but so would party formation under a system that no longer rewards big-tent brokerage in favour of post-election negotiation for coalitions. In no possible way can you extrapolate a vote like Thursday’s and come up with what a Parliament “should” look like, but that won’t stop the fetishists from trying.
Oh, and if one of these fetishists also tries to bring up lines about how the current single-member plurality system is “bad for democracy,” I’m not sure that PR is having a great run right now, as it legitimizes far-right and extremist parties that is almost impossible under SMP, and that legitimacy afforded to them is allowing them to grow across Europe. The situation in the Netherlands is also cause for concern, given that the far-right parties there have taken months to try to cobble together some sort of working coalition and may prove completely unworkable or ungovernable, and that’s not good for anyone.
Ukraine Dispatch
The Russian advance toward Toretsk in the Donetsk region means that time is running out for any Ukrainian citizens that want to flee. While Ukraine managed to destroy all 32 Russian drones launched Friday night, early Saturday morning was another story—drones hit an energy facility in Sumy, and hits on Selydove and Komar killed eight combined. Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s navy says that Russia has nearly re-based all of its combat-read warships from occupied Crimea, because of the number of successful Ukrainian strikes on the region.
Over the past day of July 4, the Russian army attacked the #Zaporizhzhia Oblast 272 times.
Source: Ivan Fedorov, the head of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast Military Administration pic.twitter.com/eCMzMFpb4c
— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) July 5, 2024
⚡️Partisans claim sabotage of Russian railway transporting North Korean ammo.
Ukrainian partisans claimed on July 5 to have successfully sabotaged a railway line near the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, halting trains being used to transport North Korean ammunition. In a post on…
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) July 5, 2024