Abstract
For some inexplicable reason, while thinking that most decision-making should be based on a choice of just two options, many democrats digress from this notion and insist that elections must involve not just two but lots of candidates. In which case, of course, there are lots of ways of voting and lots of ways of counting the electorate’s preferences. Nearly every country discussed in this book has, if not a different electoral theme, then at least a variation; (but they nearly all believe in and use only binary voting in decision-making—all very odd). The differences of these various electoral systems and their effects can be significant; yet almost without exception, all of these systems are regarded as democratic. This Chapter describes the said countries’ electoral systems; compares their many effects and defects, the biggest of the former is the subsequent party structure; and then suggests a voting methodology which is both more inclusive and more accurate.
If a form of election is to be just, the voters must be able to rank each candidate according to [his/her] merits, compared successively to the merits of each of the others.
Jean-Charles de Borda, quoted in McLean and Urken (1995 : 84).
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Notes
- 1.
One wit described FPTP as ‘fake, post-truth polling.’
- 2.
In the FPTP elections held in Ethiopia in 2015, the ruling party increased its dominance by gaining all 100% of the seats. At the previous election, they had to settle for a mere 499 of the 500 total.
Singapore was even more one-sided: in every election from its independence in 1965 to 1980, one party won all of the seats, every time. In 1980, for example, the ruling party was 100% successful on just 74.1% support.
- 3.
As in 2016, so too in 2000, the losing candidate actually won the popular vote.
- 4.
The PR-list system in Switzerland is even more pluralist, for Swiss voters may cast their votes, not only across the gender gap, but also across the party divide.
- 5.
The author was an election observer in the 1997 elections in Bosnia, and spent lots of time on election night recording the zero totals of literally countless candidates.
- 6.
Some PR systems work on quotas, others on divisors. In the latter case, party totals are divided by these ‘divisors’—for example, the set of 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. are the d’Hondt divisors ; 1, 3, 5, 7 etc. are those of the St. Laguë version—and seats are awarded in accordance with the resulting totals.
- 7.
US Constitution 1787: Art II, Section 1, para 3.
- 8.
If x voters cast a 1st preference for candidate D and a 2nd for B, if y candidates cast a 1st preference for B and a 2nd for D; and if x + y ≥ one quota, the B/D pair is said to have a quota.
- 9.
Different groups in Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia are often referred to as ethnic or, at best, ethno-religious. But there are no ethnic differences in Bosnia, Croatia, the northern half of Serbia or Slovenia : except for the likes of a few Vlachs perhaps, the people are nearly all Slavs. Granted, in the south of the former Federation, the mainly Albanian speakers of Kosova are of a distinct and separate ethnicity. But the main difference in the northern part is one of religion: the Serb is often Orthodox, the Croat is usually Catholic, and many Bosniaks are Muslim. There is of course one other fairly big difference: 1000 years of history.
- 10.
Horowitz is not here talking about QBS, but his words still apply.
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Emerson, P. (2020). Parliamentary and Presidential Elections. In: Majority Voting as a Catalyst of Populism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20219-4_2
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