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Submission EMERSON-0093 (Online)
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Submission By | Peter Emerson, Director, The de Borda
Institute |
Address | Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom |
Organization | The de Borda Institute |
Date | 20040216 |
Category | Citizens' Assembly process |
Abstract
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The Citizens' Assembly should have had a mandate which required
it to submit several possible electoral systems to the
voters at a referendum, rather than just one. [2 pages]
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Submission Content
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The UK Jenkins "Independent" Commission on electoral reform made
the mistake of being under terms of reference which stipulated that
it should limit its work to finding just one
recommendation. As a result, it was not very
independent and it failed to encourage a proper debate.
And the fact that the UK government has still failed to hold a
referendum on this issue rather proves the point that the whole
thing was a whitewash, (a rather popular word in these islands at
the moment).
As I'm sure you know, there are over 300 electoral systems to
choose from. None of them is
perfect. So no-one can say that "system A" is the best
system for BC (or anywhere else) and expect the general consensus
to agree with him/her. Some people, after all, think
PR-STV is a pretty good system; many still favour
first-past-the-post; the two-tier AMS system seems to have quite a
lot of support; and so it goes on. That's
democracy. There are bound to be different
opinions. But that is not to say that there is not also
bound to be one opinion which is everyone's best compromise, that
is, in a multi-option preference vote, an option which is the
highest average preference.
In many instances, a two-option majority vote means little if not
nothing: no wonder they have been used by the likes of Saddam
Hussein, Milosevic, Tudjman, Pinochet, Duvalier, Khomeini, Hitler,
Mussolini and Napoleon. They are a very good way of
making what is the will of the dictator appear to be the will of
the people. In more benign societies, they are the way
those who write the question try to dominate the
agenda. As President Theodore Roosevelt once said, "I
simply made up my mind what [the people] ought to think, and then
did my best to get them to think it."
In a referendum on electoral reform, for what does he who supports
PR-STV or she who wants QBS vote, in a ballot between AMS and the
status quo? Why should the democratic process so stifle
the democratic debate? Multi-option voting is not
rocket science! Multi-option decision-making is what
most of us do in our everyday lives, most likely starting from the
age of 3 when there were no more fluffy flakes and we had to go for
a second preference. No wonder the New Zealand
government held a five-option referendum on the
subject. Indeed, some countries have been using
multi-option referendums for over a century, and the first in
Canada, if I remember rightly, was not in Canada at all for it was
in Newfoundland in 1949, when they held a 3-option poll on becoming
part of Canada. Now obviously - back to electoral
reform - you can't have 300 options on the ballot
paper. But there is no reason at all why a Royal
Commission, or yourselves in a Citizens' Assembly, cannot reduce
the debate to a short list of, let us say, 5 options.
If such were to be the policy, then those who are in favour of a
relatively unknown system like QBS would at least feel that they
might be in with a chance. Or even if you, the members
of the Citizens' Assembly, were to say that you would take your
final decision on the basis of a modified Borda count and that, in
announcing your first preference, you would also declare what were
your other preferences and what were their average preference
scores, then again, there might be some point.
But why you, in Canada of all places, where you have already had
two divisive two-option referendums in Quebec (as if there were
only two constitutional ways for a province to be governed), and
why you, in to-day's world, which as a result of holding two-option
referendums has already suffered too many disastrous consequences,
not least in Yugoslavia, should perpetuate the idea that citizens
should, or can only, make decisions on the basis of a two-option
vote, is almost a large a conundrum as why both the British and
Irish governments, in signing the Belfast Agreement, could suddenly
decide that that which had been a cause of so much violence in
Northern Ireland - the question "Are you British or Irish?" - can
suddenly become the harbinger of peace.
I rest my case, and will certainly forward a paper on QBS, if it's
worth it. But is it?
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