We need a fair electoral college

Last night, you very possibly, like me, took part in the most important expression of European, if not global, democracy. Across time zones and across borders of nationhood and identity, all eyes were turned towards a single purpose: voting for the greatest song in Europe. It was an amazing spectacle, certainly, and managed to involve citizens in an active discussion and debate about their future (or at least about the costumes worn by many of the participants). 

Even so, I cannot have been alone in worrying about the distorting nature of the voting system. Can I?

Eurovision uses a simple electoral college. Each country has 58 points to allocate and they allocate these on the basis of a popular vote combined with a jury system. The jury system is an unusual democratic innovation but one that I will gloss over in this post. What I want to focus my attention on is the electoral college and how it can be reformed. 

The problem with the electoral college is that every country has the same number of points irrespective of their population. So Andora (population 67,000) carries the same clout as Russia (population 142,000,000). This is a massive disenfranchisement of the population of Russia at a time when we should be encouraging democratic values in that state.

The simplest solution is to award points in the electoral college on the basis of population size. There are 2,436 votes available. If these are allocated to countries based on population size (relative to the whole Eurovision population of 758,000,000) then Andorra receives 0.22 points in the electoral college and Russia 417. Had the votes been weighted in this way last night, then Norway would still have won but Azerbaijan would have gained second place, Turkey third, UK fourth, pushing Iceland (last night's runners up) into fifth. 

There would still be an unfairness in this system because countries cannot vote for themselves. This would disadvantage larger nations because they could award more points than they could receive. 

I have modelled a simple correction for this bias. Take the largest nation (Russia) and the next largest (Germany) and identify how many points each would award in place of today's 12 points (94.44 for Russia and 54.7 for Germany). The difference is the bias against Russia, so this amount is deleted from Russia's electoral college points and distributed equally between the remaining 41 countries. Then the next two countries are considered (Germany and Turkey) and the difference distributed between the remaining 40 countries and so on. 

Once this correction has been established, Andorra now has 3.22 votes in the Electoral College compared to Russia's 416.7 votes. If these corrected votes are applied to last nights scoring then, sadly, it makes no difference at all to the top five places.

Of course this is really an imperfect way to correct for population biases. A more satisfactory model is provided by the Qualified Majority Voting once widely used in the European Council (though being edged out because of the power of veto it can provide to smaller countries). Under QMV each country has a vote as a country, and a number of votes proportional to its population. To win a majority a vote has to have the support of more then 50% of the countries and more than 50% of the population. Eurovision does not lend itself to this system but I have adapted the model into what I choose to call Modified Single Transferable Qualified Majority Vote.

Under this system each country votes as at present, awarding 1,2 3, 4,5 ,6 ,7 8, 10 or 12 points. However, these points are not totalled, they are treated as a ranking system and considered in stages. 

First we look at all the countries awarded 12 points and award votes for these countries based on the population of the country awarding them 12 points. Then we add all of these points up and see if any country has the support of 50% of the voting public of Europe.

In last night's contest, Greece was awarded 12 points by only one country: Albania. In stage one Greece would be awarded 3,751,000, which is the population of Albania (adjusted using the method detailed above to correct for bias against large populations). 

Once all the 12 point votes were added, no country had passed the 50% mark, so the 10 point votes were considered. Once these are totalled and added to the 12 point results it is clear that Norway has the support of over 50% of the viewing public. 

That's not the end of the story of course. We also have to look at how many countries awarded them 12 points, because they need a majority of countries voting as well. Well 16 countries awarded them 12 points and nine countries awarded them 10 points.

So, even with a fairer voting system, Norway would still have won and the UK would still have come fourth. 

Sorry Jade, I did my best.