I guess you have to select some critical point at which N resignations is sufficiently unrepresentitive to justify the cost and hassle of a by-election, at which point you get to decide whether the election is to replace all of the seats or just the missing ones.
Either way seems unfair. If four majority party ministers resigned to join the Cabinet and just those seats were up for grabs then they would be highly unlikely to recapture them all. But on the other hand, if everyone had to run again then a minority party could trigger a by-election whenever they saw an uptick in the polls just by having all of their ministers resign. (Oh, and that's assuming that the by-election was proportional itself -- if it was a direct election then the majority party would be expected to win all of the seats.)
So I'd think that N would have to be pretty darned large. Guess if I ran the show, I'd have the terms be short enough that you wouldn't mind the party leaders appointing replacements (or the seats remaining empty) until the next general election.
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Date: 2005-11-22 04:56 am (UTC)Either way seems unfair. If four majority party ministers resigned to join the Cabinet and just those seats were up for grabs then they would be highly unlikely to recapture them all. But on the other hand, if everyone had to run again then a minority party could trigger a by-election whenever they saw an uptick in the polls just by having all of their ministers resign. (Oh, and that's assuming that the by-election was proportional itself -- if it was a direct election then the majority party would be expected to win all of the seats.)
So I'd think that N would have to be pretty darned large. Guess if I ran the show, I'd have the terms be short enough that you wouldn't mind the party leaders appointing replacements (or the seats remaining empty) until the next general election.