He should stick to his specialization: figuring out whether his students wear underwear or not, and if not, punishing them in public.

http://www.prachatai.com/05web/th/home/page2.php?mod=mod_ptcms&ContentID=7965&SystemModuleKey=HilightNews&System_Session_Language=Thai

Still, his recalculation of the 2005 result according to the German model seems to be incorrect, meaning that his absolute figures for the votes each party received on the party list is correct, but not the percentages. Since he obviously used them for the calculation of seats, they turn out to be too low, even if one considers that he had counted all parties, not merely including Mahachon. His percentage for all others seem to be 8.44, when in fact it was only 4.63%.

This is a first impression. I will have to read his piece more en detail.

You might be interested in this summary of various electoral systems: http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/RB/2005-06/06rb10.htm#isthere

Personally, I do not like the ‘first past the post’ system and prefer the number of seats each party gets to closely approximate the percentage of votes they received – that just seems fairer to me.

In fact, this piece is mostly a summary of a paper prepared on the German system by Ajarn Prinya of Thammasat University, also one of its vice rectors. He graduated in law from Germany.

Unfortunately, his presentation is not correct and rather confusing, which is why he says at the end that the bad point of the German system is that it is complicated. Not so.

For example, he says that the calculation is done based on the state level, i.e. in Germany’s 16 states. That’s wrong. The first step of calculation is to allot all the seats in the national House to the political parties, based on a) the number of total MPs in the House, b) the total number of party-list votes (after having subtracted all those parties that did not make the 5% threshold or gained at least 3 constituency MPs), and c) the party-list votes every party above 5% and at least 3 seats has received at the national level.

Only the second step concerns the state level. And the distribution of seats is just as simple as in the first step. This time, one will need a) the number of MPs a party was allotted in the first step, b) the number of party-list votes a party got in the respective state, and c) the total number of party-list votes of that party at the national level.

In both cases, the method employed is Hare/Niemeyer. After the party-list MPs of a party in one state have been calculated, the constituency MPs it won in that state are subtracted. If the number is higher, it can keep the seat(s), and won’t get any additional party-list MPs in that state. If the number is lower, the number of MPs is filled up by candidates from the party list.

If Thailand, the procedure would be even simpler, because you could use the national level and, perhaps, only four “regions.”

By starting with the state level, Prinya muddles everything up, and his examples confuse even more.

In that article, it is assumed that the votes cast for Mahachon would have counted — after all, you do not need to apply a 5% threshold or a minimum of 3 constituency MPs.

Under this condition, TRT’s majority would have been reduced to about 321-179 (from the initial 377-123, or 336-166 without Mahachon).

“As with all proportional systems, it most adequately translates the voters’ party preferences into seats”

That sounds good to me.

In the 2005 elections, the distribution of seats according to the Thai system was TRT 377, DEM 96; Chart Thai 25, and Mahachon 2.

If the German system of calculating seats based on the proportional votes had been used, the result would have been as follows (roughly): TRT 336, DEM 128, Chart Thai 36. Mahachon would have remained at 2 MPs, because they did not overcome the 5% hurdle and neither received at least 3 constituency MPs. In the latter case, Mahachon’s 4.34 % on the PL would also have counted for calculating the distribution of MPs.

In short, based on the Thai system, TRT prevailed by 377 to 123 for the opposition altogether, while the German system would have led to 336 to 166, i.e. 502 MPs instead of 500.

The German system encourages the political parties to present themselves to the voters, be it in terms of their policies or their leaders. Under normal circumstances (non-Thaksin), such an electoral arrangement leads to coalition governments. As with all proportional systems, it most adequately translates the voters’ party preferences into seats. Since the voters have two votes–constituency and party list–they can split them, as was the case in Thailand in 2001 and 2005, among a local constituency candidate who belonged to one party and a differrnt political party on the party list ballot. That allows the voters more choice than merely one vote.

Finally, the German system uses single-member constituencies, like in the 2001 and 2005 Thai system, but unlike the proposed multi-member system in Thailand. This is because, among other things, the German constitution stipulates that elections must be equal. That is, all voters must have an equal opportunity to contribute with their vote to the composition of parliament.

Sounds like an improvement to me – I would be interested in Srithanonchai’s opinion as he is familiar with the German system.