Update from CV&D - part two.

[New Democracy]

Dear list members,

     Here is part two of the latest update from CV&D.

Don,

Donald E Davison of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald
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(Here is the second part of the update from the Center
for Voting and Democracy to organizers and activists...
It includes information on the United Kingdom, Italy,
France and Albania and quotes from two recent books,
"Cheap Seats" and "The Frozen Republic.")


8. What will Labour do on proportional representation
 in the UK?:  I hope that you saw my message right after
the British elections, reporting on the disproportionality
in the elections and an Economist poll that indicated
that the British favor adoption of a PR system by a
margin of 65%-17%.
       The Labour party, riding high with its 43% of the popular
vote, has announced most of its first-year agenda. This has
not included action on the election system for the House of
Commons, but that's not much of a surprise -- they don't need
to rush on this issue. Labour did pledge a national referendum
on PR, and also likely conversion to PR for any legislative
elections in Scotland and Wales (each of which will be
voting this year on whether to create new legislatures) and
for elections to the European parliament.
       Coverage of the Uk election was interesting in its open
acknowledgement that most districts were not competitive
and that swings of more than 10% to 15% in particular
districts were extraordinary. I would be very interested in
any studies that have been done of such swings in particular
districts in legislatures elected by plurality -- given that the
average margin of victory in US house elections is 30% or
more, it would be revealing to show how rare it is for 15%
of voters to switch their votes.
      Below are four reactions to the elections: a letter by Doug
Amy that was published in the NY Times, an excerpt
from a commentary by John Cassidy in the New Yorker
magazine; my letter in the Wasington Times.; and an article
on a South African observer of the elections.

May 8, 1997, NY Times:
British Vote System Skewed Labor Victory

    Your May 2 front-page article on the British election
described the Labor Party victory as a "landslide," but this
term is misleading. Labor did win an impressive majority
of seats in Parliament, more than 63 percent.
    But this was a result of a malfunctioning election system,
not the support of the British voters. Exit polls indicated
that only about 45 percent of the electorate cast votes for
Labor candidates.
   This result is a product of Britain's single-member-district,
winner-take-all election system, which distorts representation
by giving parties many more or many fewer seats than they
deserve.
   The Conservatives, for example, garnered about 31 percent
of the vote, but won only 23 percent of the seats.
   There may be an end in sight to this injustice.
   Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised to consider a change to
proportional represen-tation elections, where each political party
receives its fair share of seats.
      DOUGLAS J. AMY (The writer is a professor of political science
at Mount Holyoke College.)

5/12/97, New Yorker "Comment"   -- Rosy-Digited Dawn: New
Labour won big. Now what?   - by John Cassidy
      "...And the British electorate as a whole will decide by
referendum whetherfuture parliaments should be chosen
by some form of proportional representation rather than by
the system of winner-take-all, single-member districts -- the
venerable arrangement that the Mother of Parliaments shares
with the national legislatures of a dwindling number of former
colones, including the United States. This would be a truly
momentous change, for it would virtually insure that in the
next century Britain would be ruled by center-left and center-
right coalitions purusing moderate policies and representing
popular majorities......"

Rob Richie's Letter in Washington Times, May 13, 1997

      Before getting too dewy-eyed about British democracy
(Ben Barber's article, May 6), you might want to consider the
following:
       Yes, 71% of voters participated, but this was the
lowest turnout since 1935 and reflected a drop in participation
in 97% of all districts. This turnout is high compared to the
United States' anemic 49%, but low compared to most other
European democracies that have proportional representation
voting systems in which voters have more choices.
       Only 52% of voters elected anyone; barely 40% of
Conservative voters elected anyone. This compares with
countries with proportional representation that regularly result
in over 90% of voters electing someone even while having a
far wide range of choices.
       Over 47% of winners were opposed by a majority of
voters in their constituency -- just as Bill Clinton was opposed
by a majority of Americans in both 1992 and 1996 in our mis-
named "majority" system.
       The Labour Party won its landslide majority with a
lower percentage of the vote than that won by Michael Dukakis
in 1988. The Liberal Democratic Party won a lower percentage
of the vote than in the last election, but saw its number of seats
increase from 20 to 46. Such capricious results would not
happen in a proportional system where voters win their fair
share of seats.
      In light of these statistics, it should be no surprise that a
poll released in the May 3rd Economist magazine revealed that
British voters support replacing their old winner-take-all voting
system with a system of proportional representation by a
whopping margin of 65%-to-17%. That's as big a margin as
Americans' support for term limitations.

InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
  *** 02-May-97 ***

BRITAIN: Foreign Observers Rule Election 'Free and Fair'
By Beverly Andrews

LONDON, May 2 (IPS) - It's official. Foreign observers monitoring
Britain's elections have ruled the vote free and fair.
    But as noted by one observer, veteran South African civil rights
campaigner Albie Sachs, an electoral system that was designed as
free and fair 200 years ago, need not be guaranteed to be so
forever.
    ''The United Kingdom really founded the idea of accountability of
government and worked to create a level playing field,'' Sachs
said. ''It might be what was free and fair two hundred years ago
but I feel it very much needs to change now.''
    Sachs, a highly respected South African constitutional judge and
human rights campaigner, was one of a number of foreign legal-
political experts called in to serve as 'foreign observers' during
the election by a British TV network.
    He left before the voting commenced, but spoke to IPS again after
Labour's crushing success in Thursday's vote. Even with 30 of
Britain's 659 constituencies still not officially counted at noon
Friday, the scale of Labour's triumph was clear; it was the
greatest victory in the party's 97-year history, gaining it at
least 417 seats and a projected House of Commons majority of 179.
    Throughout the long pre-election campaigning Sachs followed the
media and spoke to leading political figures in all the main
parties.
    ''There was nothing to suggest that the conduct was not free and
fair,'' he conceded, ''but in my time here I did find that I had
several queries about the electoral process itself.''
    He was, he said, left with three questions. ''Is it fair to
voters that their votes don't count equally if a party gets 45
percent of the vote but receive 65 percent of the seats? That kind
of situation can make large numbers of voters feel that the
outcome is somehow predetermined and their vote does not really
count.''
     Secondly, he noted, how much real choice in terms of issues do
voters get? ''Instead of invigorating debate and choice the system
encourages convergence and replication of ideas and that again can
make the outcome seem unnatural.''
    Thirdly, the system does not reflect the interest of national
regions like Scotland and Wales, or even English regions of
distinct character, like London or Tyneside, quite apart from the
special situation in Northern Ireland.
    ''To me the system appears to discourage pluralism and diversity
and what I found encouraging was the openness to debate across
party lines the question of constitutional reforms,'' he said.
     On Thursday the electors of Scotland and Wales dismissed all
their sitting Conservative MPs as one, though the pro-independence
Scots Nationalist and Welsh Plaid Cymru parties did not do as well
as Labour in thier respective parts of the United Kingdom.
    Labour have promised a referendum later this year to set the
terms for devolution. But Sachs thinks that Scotland and Northern
Ireland may also become testing grounds for constitutional
experiments that if viable, could be adopted nationwide.
     Britain has no written constitution and thus no codified bill of
rights, though the latter might be tested out in Northern Ireland,
where warring Catholic republicans and Protestant unionists fear
for their civil rights whenever the other side is in control.
     Similarly Scotland might be a testing area for a system of
'proportional representation' in assigning parliamentary seats
based on the share of the popular vote given to parties. ''Through
this people might become encouraged to different ways of doing
things,'' said Sachs.
     Britain's present 'first past the post' system that hits smaller
political parties hard. The third ranked Liberal Democrats
routinely take a far lower proportion in seats than their
proportion of national vote share should, theoretically, entitle
them.
      ''Our experience in South Africa was that constitutional reform
is never adopted simply to get an ideal system -- it is undertaken
to solve real problems,'' said Sachs.
    Pocketbook copies of South Africa's new constitution have become
a touchstone for peoples working to build civil society from the
ruins left by apartheid.
    ''A friend of mine told me of an event he recently witnessed at a
meeting of farm workers when a worker during a dispute with a
farmer pulled out a copy of the constitution from his pocket and
quoted it; stating that everyone was guaranteed the right to
dignity and farm workers did not have dignity.
     ''This is encouraging,'' he added, ''that the debate is not
simply about power but human rights...
     ''Our experience of having a written constitution and a bill of
rights have been quite rewarding in that it enables people to live
together according to shared values which seem to be at the heart
of society.''
    By and large he found the political atmosphere in Britain less
disillusioned than some media had suggested. He believed, speaking
as the last votes were counted Friday morning, that there was
cause for optimism now that Labour is now in a position to make
fundamental changes to British life.
     ''If the 19th century was the century of creating modern
executives and the 20th century of refining parliamentary
democracy the 21st century might yet be the century of developing
systems of political review based around fundamental values.''

9.. Australia:  In Australia, there has been some talk
of trying to get rid of proportional representation (the preference
voting, or STV, method)  for the Australian Senate and replace
it with the alternative vote in one-seat districts. It isn't given
much chance of passage, despite support from some
in the majority party in the lower house. At the same time,
there is a more serious proposal to adopt STV for electing
a constitutional convention later this year.

10.. Bad and good advice on Turkey: The Economist magazine,
which has supported proportional representation for the United
Kingdom, recently proposed that Turkey replace its semi-PR
system (lists with a 10% threshold) with French-style run-off
elections. Here was a good response from Tom Lunndberg,
a  PhD Student in political science at the University of British
Columbia:
        "I am puzzled by your electoral reform advice to Turkey's
government (Breaking Turkey's impasse, May 3). In order to "halt the
march of the Islamists," as you put it, you are recommending the
same, French-style double-ballot electoral law which would have
brought Islamic fundamentalists to power in Algeria earlier this
decade if the military-backed Algerian government hadn't prevented
them from taking power. I fail to see how a double-ballot system
would lead to governments which "reflect majority feeling" when
over 80% of the seats in the outgoing French National Assembly
were won by parties which secured less than 40% of first ballot
support. Even the French were shocked at the massive
misrepresentation of partisan support brought about by the
electoral system, as well as the insignificant number of women elected,
so prominent politicians have recently called for electoral reform in
France
(but the upcoming election will take place under double-ballot rules).
       "Turkey has one the highest thresholds to entry for political
parties of any proportional representation system in the world: not only
is 10% of the national vote required for parliamentary seats, but solid
support across the various regions of the country is also needed (a
party with regionally concentrated support, which can often rack up
seats in plurality electoral systems, could conceivably fail to win any
seats under the Turkish law). Perhaps the key to resolving Turkey's
political problems lies with the country's politicians, not with electoral
engineering aimed at depriving still more voters of fair representation.
Your proposal may actually reduce the legitimacy still left in the current
system, with social unrest as a possible consequence.

11. Algeria, Albania, Yemen, Mali: Speaking of Algeria and its disastrous
experience with polarizing run-off elections in 1991, it will use a
proportional representation system in its elections this year. Meanwhile,
another Arab nation moving to democracy is Yemen, where single-member
districts in no small part contributed to polarization that resulted in
civil
war. This year's elections -- also in single-member districts -- were
boycotted by key opposition parties.
        Opposition parties also boycotted elections in Mali -- which
tried to use winner-take-all elections this year -- and are planning to
boycott elections in Albania. Note the following AP story from May 16:

Albania OKs Disputed Election Law
        TIRANA, Albania (AP) -- Despite strong international pressure,
     Albania's parliament today passed a controversial election law --
     for the second time this week -- that is expected to favor the
     ruling Democrats.
          The measure passed after 25 opposition deputies walked out of the
     stormy overnight session. The same law was approved Tuesday by the
     parliament, dominated by President Sali Berisha's party, prompting
     the Socialists to threaten a boycott of national elections set for
     June 29.
          Under pressure from Franz Vranitzky, the former Austrian
chancellor
     who is leading international efforts to end months of unrest, the
     legislature reopened discussion on the election law Thursday night.
          But debate quickly bogged down in arguments over how to amend the
     legislation.
          The law is similar to the one that governed elections last year
--
     overwhelmingly won by the Democrats and viewed as fraudulent by
     Berisha's foes and many international observers.
          It foresees 115 seats in parliament being decided by simple
     majority, and just 40 by proportional representation. The Socialists
     and other opposition parties favor the proportional system because
     it improves the chances for smaller parties.

12.  Italy:  Italy uses run-off elections for most of its mayoral elections
now. On May 11, the Olive Tree coalition won 994 mayor posts,
the Liberty Pole coalition 900 and the Northern League 33. Turn-out
dropped from 75% in the first round to 61% in the second round --
another demonstration of the value of the alternative vote (e.g.,
"instant run-off").
       A task force in Italy is looking at changes in its electoral law
for parliamentary elections, with some strong forces wanting to go
to a completely winner-take-all system. A fun fact: more parties won
seats in the winner-take-all portion of the 1996 parliamentary elections
(9 parties) than in the proportional representation part (7 parties).

13. France: France will holds the first round of its run-off elections --
in which any candidate getting over about 16% (12.5% of registered
voteres in the district) advances to the second round -- on Sunday,
May 25. The second round is Sunday, June 1. This could be a
wild election -- and wildly disproportional, as in 1994 when the
current coalition won four-fifths of seats with two-fifths of the
first-round votes.
        It would not surprise me too much if some modifications
were made to the French electoral law to allow for more proportionality
before the next elections in France no matter which side wins next
week..

14. Here are excerpts from two recent books that discuss proportional
representation in the United States -- with the authors coming at
the subject from very different political perspectives, but reaching
a common conclusion, as is so often possible with advocacy of PR:

* From Daniel Lazare's "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution
is Paralyzing Democracy"  [Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995]

"The creation of a more flexible kind of government would result
in a different kind of politics, one that was more free-ranging and
less constrained by deference to the past. Instead of suffering
under the terrible Republican-Democratic duopoly as they have
since the mid-nineteenth centruy -- a record of political stagnation
without parallel in virtually any other country -- Americans would
almost surely want to organize new parties, many of which would
likely have a realistic shot at wielding real power in a newly
reconstituted House of Representatives. If the House were to
move to proportional representaiton, it would open the door
even further -- to perhaps five or six major parties as in Germany
or maybe even a dozen as in Israel."

* From James Campbell's "Cheap Seats: The Democratic Party's
Advantage in US House Elections", Ohio State University Press
[1996]

     " The legitimacy of a representative democracy depends to a
great extent on the fairness of its electoral system. If the system
for obtaining public consent for the government is flawed, the
popular basis for the government is called into question.....
The preceding analysis calls into question the fairness the
electoral system for the House of Representatives, its fairness
to the political parties, and its fairness to voters. In the aggregate,
the system has been biased in favor of the Democrats.....
     "... [U]unlike the presidential and Senate electoral
systems, the effective malapportionment of the House electoral
system was not explicitly intended by the Constitution and has
significant extraconstitutional sources. The drawing of congressional
district boundaries within the states by state governments allows
turnout disparities among districts. First, the Constitution does
not require single-member congressional districts within the
states. As noted in chapter 6, many states in the 19th century
and some states up through midway through the 20th century
had at-large or multimember districts. Second, under the
single-member election system, the Constitution is silent
with respect to how the states should draw congressional
districts, except that they should be drawn in such a way that
no person within a state is denied his or her 'equal protection
of the laws.'
    ".... [Jump of a page] In pursuing the second strategy [of
fewer districts], there are a number of proposals that would
reduce the number of districts and, therefore, the number
of turnout discrepancies in the House electoral system.
The most extreme reform along these lines would require
national elections for the House. This would require both
the repeal of the constituitonal provisions designating
House seats to the states and the establishment of some
sort of proportional representation system of election. Short
of such a radical proposal, the system could reduce cheap
seats by moving from single-member districts to multi-
member districts in states having more than a single
seats. Multimember districts, with or without proportional
representation, would make it more difficult to draw
districts with such large turnout discrepancies....."

                     End of CV&D update.