Political Economy

The fact that there are so many voting systems in use around the world implies that the choice of system is more likely to rest on cultural values and context rather than on some scientifically developed, or socially accepted, theory.

The referendum today appears to be heading towards a defeat for the proposal to change to the Alternative Vote (AV) system. If that happens it will be a disaster on two levels.

On the level of national democracy we have been subject to an increasing number of parliamentary seats where the winner fails to win a majority of the votes. That means that the MP has failed to get democratic legitimacy for their position and is entitled to act in any way they wish, no matter how inimical that may be to the majority of voters who voted against them, provided they protect the interests of the minority. Currently only around 200 out of 630 seats in the House of Commons enjoys democratic legitimacy and this figure has been falling for decades. Under the current voting system it will continue to fall.

It is a disaster on the level of the English Democrats whose objective is a devolved parliament and government for England, the achievement of which will have been set back by decades by this vote. This is because under AV the winner has to get more than half of the votes (assuming all candidates are ranked by all voters). Since more than 60% of English voters want an English parliament and since more than 60% of seats currently fail to get a majority,  some, perhaps many, of the candidates would have to adopt support of devolution for England as part of their programme. Or if not devolution a referendum on leaving the EU! What’s not to like about that!

An early move to devolution for England will only happen if one of the major parties takes up the policy. Under AV it is reasonable to forecast that we would have an English parliament within 10 – 20 years. Under first-past-the-post system a better forecast is 60 – 80 years, if ever.

In a rational world all English Democrats would support AV but they do not; all those who say they believe in democracy, in the sense of rule by the majority, would support AV, but they do not; all those who want a voting system whose subtlety allows them to express their choices in an increasingly pluralistic world would choose AV, but they do not.

There appear to be two main arguments against AV. One is the principle of “One man One Vote” and the second is that it is “too difficult for people to understand”.

The first principal appears to come first from the USA where the framers of the constitution were keen to ensure that the number of seats in the federal Congress was apportioned on the basis of population so that equal population numbers gave rise to equal numbers of representatives and so, and this is the key issue, an equal chance to gain resources from the federal government http://bit.ly/kRzW4G.

In this sense the people of England have not had “One man, One vote” since the start of the Goschen formula in 1888 which was the start of systems to give more money to the People of Scotland and we are unlikely to ever have it in England. The “One man, One vote” mantra is in fact an argument for the equalisation of government funding on a ‘per head’ basis through the UK.   That Mr Cameron understands this interpretation is shown by his plan to equalise the number of voters in each constituency. In reality he wants to increase the likelihood of more conservative seats and hence more government resources to the Conservative Party money men. That he will not use the principal in its original form to make funding fairer in the UK is axiomatic – to do so would lose any chance of building up a significant number of conservative MPs in Scotland and Wales.

However most people will understand the slogan as meaning that one person has only one vote in an election. What they do not understand is that meaning in England dates only from the post-World War II period when most, but not all, plurality of voting was stopped http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_person,_one_vote. So Cameron’s claim that “One Man, One vote” has served this country well for centuries is false, and as a student of politics at Oxford he knows it is false.

Could you enhance the democratic legitimacy of the current system? Yes and quite easily. You run the elections in a series of rounds, each round separated by perhaps a week or less and with no campaigning between rounds. At each round if no one has more than half the votes one or more candidates is eliminated and the voting goes through to a second round where once again the electors cast their one vote. No one has more than one vote in the voting ‘pool’ at any one time. This goes on until one candidate has more than half the vote. It is tedious but it ensures democratic legitimacy and it is fair. It is called, in the USA, a run-off system of voting.

But AV is merely an ‘instant’ form of the run-off voting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_vote. AV ensures that no one has more than one vote in the voting pool at any one time and, like run-off voting, ensures that everyone has one vote in the voting pool all the time, if they wish. So if you like FPTP and you want democratic legitimacy you should like AV!

The second reason that ‘NO’ people go for is that AV is too difficult for some of us to understand (actually they mean “some of you”). In 1963 I became an apprentice in an explosives factory. One of the weekly rituals was placing a bet on the horses (but not by apprentices!). The work of collecting the bets on behalf of the bookie and calculating the odds of the complex bets that were placed was given to the labourer.

Now in the industrial triad of Journeyman-apprentice-labourer the latter was definitely bottom of the heap. Yet the labourer could do more complex calculations of odds than I could then, and probably even now. That was when I learnt that anyone can learn just about anything provided they are motivated to do so and have the time, means and persistence. That was also the time when I realised how arrogant I had been. If you want to see how simple AV is then review the ‘choice of crisps’ analogy in this leaflet

Attending the lectures of Prof. Hans Morgenthau at the University of Chicago I learnt that in a democracy, when the people realise that they no longer have the means to control their state, violence becomes ‘existential’. If violence does occur then the people to blame are the political elites who allowed this situation to arise.

How we vote is one of the many means we have to preserve out control, but only if the mechanism works. FPTP does not work in today’s England because it cannot deliver democratic legitimacy.

That is why, if the referendum vote today goes against AV, the issue will come back. The fight is not over!

For democracy to be seen to done in an election the candidate chosen must get more than 50% of the vote. If this does not happen you get the situation that we in the UK are familiar with. Candidates and governments are elected with less, sometimes much less than half of the votes cast. To get around this the French use the “run-off” system in their Presidential elections. In this, if the leading candidate does not have more than 50% of the vote, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and the voters are called back to vote again. This continues until one candidate gets more than half the votes. Such a system ensures that a minority President, or government, cannot be elected. It is democratic and it is fair. But, with its multiple rounds of voting, it is arduous and time consuming.

The Alternative Vote system is nothing more nor less than a run-off voting system where you have to make you choices in how you would vote in subsequent voting rounds at the time you cast your first vote. It gives all the advantages of run-off voting such as fairness and democratic governments whilst avoiding the time and arduousness of the original version. (For more on the technicalities see the Note at the end of this blog.)

The already low standards of the “NO” to the Alternative Vote (AV) Referendum continue to drop.

Listening to BBC radio 4 on Saturday (19/3/2011) it transpires that a reason to vote “No” is that the AV will give someone who votes for the British Nationalist Party (BNP) a second vote. Notice that the speaker did not say that a reason to vote “No” was that it gave a Labour (or a Conservative, or a Liberal Democrat) voter a second vote! I do not like the BNP, but then I do not like the Conservatives, Labour or the Liberal Democrats either. However I do not make my dislike a reason to deprive a fellow citizen of their democratic voting rights.

The implication is clear. If you vote BNP, a legally registered political party, then you are not worth giving an alternate choice to. How fascist can you get?

I have said it before. The “No” campaign have used lies, deceit, anti-democratic and now fascist arguments to support their views.

A vote for the “No” campaign is a vote for a continuation of the status quo in our already creaking democracy. The speaker for the “Yes” campaign pointed out that the high point in the two-party system in England was in the 1951 election and that this was also the high point for the “first past the post” voting system. Now in a pluralistic political era we, the voter, desperately need a voting system that reflects the political realities and allows us the flexibility to vote in a way that reflects these multiple choices whilst giving us only candidates, and government, who have a majority of the votes.

Those who believe that the way to democracy is to cut voting costs should remember that this is what dictators believe. The fact that the “No” campaign believes this is no accident.

In reality what is not to like about the Alternative Vote system, the efficient, fair and democratic replacement for the run-off voting system?

Note for Readers.

Some voting systems require the voters to vote again if no candidate has more than 50% of the vote. At subsequent voting the bottom candidate of the previous round is eliminated.

The Alternative Vote System is an example of “Instant Run-off Voting. You have the choice to rank candidates – 1, 2, 3 and so on. When the votes are counted the candidate with most votes, provided this is more than 50% of the votes cast,  is elected. If no candidate has more than 50% then the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and their votes are given to their second choice. ALL the votes are now counted again and if no one has more than half the votes the new ‘last’ candidate is eliminated. This continues until a candidate has a majority. See Wikipedia

On the 5th May we in England will have our first opportunity, ever, to vote on the voting system that is used to elect MPs.

Let me say that again. “we in England will have our first opportunity, ever, to vote on the voting system that is used to elect MPs.”

Notice that I am not including the Scots or Welsh in this since they have already had a choice to vote in matters like this. It is only the English that will have this opportunity for the first time. The English who, remember, invented the parliamentary system and representative democracy are, at last, being allowed to vote on something that is of reasonable constitutional importance.

Perish the thought that we might actually vote ‘Yes’. Were we to do so we might get ideas above our station, ideas that we can actually change things, dangerous ideas that there are perhaps other things that we should change!

It is interesting therefore to review the ‘No’ vote campaign’s leaflet to see how they intend to steer us away from this dangerous action.

First off they claim that AV is not fair because some people will have their vote counted five or six times. Well I have some news  for the ‘No’ campaign. My vote hasn’t counted for 20 years. There are some people whose vote has never counted over 50 or 60 years – assuming that they still bother to vote. The fact is that the current system is undemocratic and broken. The ‘No’ campaign state that  the ‘First Past the Post’ system has served us well for hundreds of years whereas in reality the system has been failing increasingly since the introduction of universal suffrage in the last century.

The ‘No’ campaign have an equally dodgy approach to finance and budgets. They claim that machines will have to be used and that these will be very costly. Well so they might, in the first year. The next time and the time after that and after that, they will cost nothing because the machines will already have been purchased! And of course the greater speed of machines could mean that there will be savings in manpower, not just at the count, but also in the broadcasting organisations. It might be that the cost of a general election would actually go down.

But not only do the ‘No’ campaign begrudge the cost of machines to bring our vote counting practices into the 21st century, they also begrudge the cost of democracy, and hence democracy itself. Apparently the cost of holding referendums, and hence referendums themselves, is something we should not be countenancing.

I will not go into the advertising campaign claiming that the referendum is causing the deaths of babies and soldiers. Such deceit is a hallmark of the abysmal level to which public standards have fallen and which we the people must battle to raise.

All-in-all the ‘no’ campaign is hostile to democracy, solidly behind the hold that the two major parties have over parliamentary seats, indulges in deceitful financial analysis and is an example of the appallingly low standards which pass for good practice in public life today.

Vote ‘No’ if you must, but do not complain over what it will cost you in the future.

Got you! Now I wouldn’t want you to think that this is some form of political protest on my part. No! The reason why I can’t vote is they won’t let me.

I have lived in England for nearly 36 years and I am married to an Englishman. I have worked and paid tax for nearly 25 years. My big problem is that I am not an English subject. In order to become one I need to take a ‘Test of Britishness” (I took at cost of £35- and fortunately passed 1st time) and then pay nearly £700 and complete a massive form to allow me to participate in a citizenship ceremony thus allowing me to apply for a passport, (£140) and then I can vote.

England has a special relationship with America but it is not that special. When I came to live in England as a young bride I was making my home and future here. I am ethnically English and can trace my ancestry to well before the Act of Union in 1707. Living in England felt right. I loved tea and cricket.

I didn’t really give it much more thought than that. I was busy bringing up three sons and working as a teacher; first in leafy suburbs and then in a tough ‘inner city’ school. I even did voluntary work when I was a young Mum working in Community Health as a Chair and then moving on to Chairing a Strategic Health Authority Ethics Committee. I did my bit to contribute. (and still do)

As I became interested in local issues I was sure that as a tax-paying resident I would be allowed to vote. No way! However if I had been Irish then it would have been no problem. Explain that to me please?

The irony is that if I had married a Frenchman and/or lived in France I could have had my passport immediately. I could even have had my identity altered to make me completely French. And of course as a taxpayer and resident I would have been eligible for a vote. (even if I was not French!) Great to see that our Gallic neighbours understand the rights of people living in a democracy.

So although I won’t be voting at the General Election in May it won’t be because I don’t want to but because narrow minded politicians give citizenship to anyone who can pay and fail to understand the maxim: No Taxation Without Representation! Seems to me that was an issue before; haven’t they learned anything in 200+ years?

So I feel very upset that