A Democratic Political System
John Marple
A truly democratic political system is one where the people come
as close as practical to actually directly governing themselves on
an ongoing basis. Our present system of government in B.C. and
Canada is representative democracy, where we delegate governing
power to a political party to rule over us for a given time. During
their term in office the party forming the government comes very
close to holding dictatorial power over the people. And the nature
of the party system concentrates this power in the hands of that
party’s leader. This arrangement makes it so that the
average person has very little say in how they are governed.
In our present system voters do have the opportunity, every four
years, to cast a vote for their choice of the candidates running in
their riding. This voting method, indirectly, gives them some
control of how they are governed. On close examination, this
control is not as effective as it appears to be. The average voter
hasn’t the time, inclination, or skill to effectively
participate in the formation of a political party, its platform, or
the choice of which candidates it runs in elections. So in reality,
most voters are choosing from candidates and party platforms that
are offered to them by a political elite. Another factor eroding
the average voter’s influence on how they are governed,
is that when a party forms the government they often disregard the
promises they made during the election campaign.
The occasional use of referendums to decide certain key public
issues is another process that potentially gives the average voter
a direct say in some of society’s policies.
Unfortunately, here again their control of the political agenda
through this function is largely illusionary. The piecemeal choice
of what issues are presented to voters and how the questions are
worded is almost completely out of the hands of the average voter.
The use of referendums to decide public policy has potential inside
the right kind of overall structure, but is largely meaningless
under our present system.
Another factor that interferes with voter’s
political power is that various elite groups, such as the wealthy
corporate business sector, are able to directly influence
government policy between elections. They do this through such
things as generous campaign donations to political parties,
constant government lobbying and economic blackmail. On the other
hand, average voters seldom have any real influence on government
policy between elections. The ineffective methods they are forced
to use to try and gain the governments ear are such things as
letter writing and taking part in demonstrations of various kinds.
All these factors make it so that most Canadians are largely left
out of the governing power loop.
Still another factor that dilutes voter’s power is
the system we employ for electing our representatives. Our system
of “First Past the Post”, often results in
far less than fifty percent of the actual voters who vote electing
members. And when we consider that many voters are so frustrated
they don’t even bother to vote, it becomes apparent
that an even smaller percentage of the eligible voters often elect
our government members. There are other systems being used around
the world that overcome some of the shortcomings of our system;
Proportional Representation and Single Transferable Vote are two of
these. The real problem with all of these voting methods is that
voters do not directly govern themselves, but give this power over
to a political party between elections.
In reality, our system is only a primitive form of democracy in
which the average person has very little influence on the governing
process. I have a relatively simple suggestion of how to short
circuit many of these failings and bring in real democracy in
British Columbia. I hope the system I’m suggesting will
spread throughout Canada and eventually throughout the world and be
a giant step forward in the development of real democracy for
humankind.
My suggestion for changing our political system in B.C. is as
follows: I propose we leave our present governing system
essentially as it is, but add a new controlling level of government
at the constituency level. Even though the present structure of our
governmental, judicial and other systems would remain basically the
same as they are now, my suggestion would completely change many of
their functions. This new level of government would add voter
assemblies in every constituency. These assemblies would have legal
authority to direct their elected member on what policies he or she
should support in the legislature. These voter groups would be
called Constituency Assemblies. These Constituency Assemblies would
be established by legislation passed by members of the legislature
and would have legal authority to carry out their designated
function.
In actual practice, each elected member of the government would
be required to appear before their assembly to get instructions on
what policies to follow in drafting and voting on legislation
during sessions. These instructions would be in the form of a
policy paper drawn up by all the voters in each constituency
assembly. After each session of the legislature, members would be
required to appear before their constituency assembly to account
for their actions during the session, and to receive instructions
of what policies to support in the next session. If a member's
voters were dissatisfied with their performance they could recall
him/her at any time they wished, by a fair but simple majority vote
of voters who participated in a recall procedure. This procedure
would work like this: if a majority of the members attending the
member’s reporting meeting wanted to start a recall
procedure they could do that by a simple majority vote. The next
step would be to send an official notice of a recall procedure to
all eligible voters in that constituency, to be held in a few
weeks. All eligible voters could vote in this by voting at a
designated place, or by Internet or phone. A recall would occur if
a simple majority of those actually casting votes wanted it. The
object of this easy recall vote is to keep the elected members
accountable to voter's wishes at all times. The voters would be the
bosses who could fire the help (their member) if they
didn’t do as he or she was told.
Members of the legislature would be elected much as they are
now, except for a slight change in the voting system. If there were
more than two candidates running in a riding, voters would be
required to indicate their preference of the candidates in numbered
order, one for the voter’s first choice, two for second
and so on. The counting procedure would go as follows: if a
candidate received fifty per cent of the votes on the first count
he or she would be elected. If no candidate received a majority of
the votes, the one with the lowest number of first choice votes
would be dropped off the list and the second, or if necessary
succeeding, choices of his or her voters would be added to the
remaining candidates. This would be done until a candidate received
fifty one percent of the votes indicating he or she was the voters
preferred candidate.
The structure of the legislature would change completely under
this direct voter controlled system. Party politics, as it now
exists, would come to an end. There wouldn't be a government and an
opposition. There would just be a continuous government made up of
elected members carrying out the wishes of the voters. It would
democratize the legislature. The power would rest with all the
elected members rather than in a chosen party leader and his /her
cabinet. Legislation would rise out of the wishes of the majority
of the legislature rather than from the leadership of the political
party with the most seats. The elected members would elect (by
secret ballot) the premier and cabinet ministers out of their
number. These members of the executive wouldn’t be in
control of their department as they are now, but rather they would
just act as chairperson of it. They wouldn’t form
policy; they would just facilitate the forming of policy by the
legislature as a whole.
Because it would be unwieldy to translate general policy into
specific legislation from the legislature as a whole, committees
would have to be formed for this function. Committee chairpersons
would generally be cabinet ministers, but if it was necessary to
choose other chairpersons they would be elected by secret ballot.
This would mean a lot of the work of the government would be done
in committees. These committees would be given a specific job to do
by the legislature as a whole and once that work was done the
committee would bring it back to the whole legislature. The
legislature would then use the committee’s work as the
basis for legislation, or for whatever purpose they saw fit.
Without going into too much detail, it would become a
non-partisan government carrying out the wishes of the electorate.
Policy would come from the voters through their constituency
assemblies to their elected member, who would bring it to the
legislature. Once at the legislature the elected members would
develop legislation to enact the wishes of the voters. Issues would
be dealt with on an individual basis, not lumped together in party
policies as they are now.
The structure and function of these new constituency assemblies
would be organized in line with the general principals outlined in
our Societies Act and Roberts’s Rules of Order. Their
officers would consist of a president, secretary, etc. and what
ever other officers or committees were necessary to carry out their
legally delegated mandate. These officers would be elected to their
office in a democratic way and would be required to carry out the
wishes of the voters. These assemblies would be required to
function very democratically with all main policy decisions being
made by open meetings of all eligible voters. Elections of the
executive would be carried out on a regular basis and officers
would never be allowed to serve more than two terms. All
constituency assembly officials could be removed at any time by a
fair simple majority vote of voters. This would be done to keep
these officials under the complete control of the voters.
Voters would require comprehensive sources of
information to fulfill their new governing roll. To accomplish
this, constituency assemblies, working together province wide,
would set up a research body to compile information that they felt
was necessary to allow voters to make wise governing decisions. A
whole network of print and electronic information sources would be
set up to inform the voters of current issues. This network would
include access to a radio station, a TV channel, an Internet web
site and print in the form of such things as newsletters, magazines
etc. This system would make sure all the relevant sessions of the
legislature were covered. It would have information programs
covering the results of research asked for by the constituency
assemblies as well as other relevant information. It would also act
as a form for the expression of various points of view about
government policy as well as hosting an ongoing series of debates,
in which all sides of issues were given fair hearing. Colleges and
universities would offer night courses to help voters develop the
skills required to make wise policy decisions in the best long term
interests of our province. They would also offer degrees in
political science specializing in how the new governing system
worked and how to improve it. The school system would have special
courses to prepare students for the responsibility of controlling
the system as a coming voter. Whenever possible, these information
outlets and research facilities would be combined and coordinated
with present facilities, such as the CBC, to save money. To some
extent the present system already meets some of these needs.
The government should pay for this new system out of tax
revenues. The whole system would be set up in as economically a way
as possible. Constituency assemblies would, wherever possible, use
existing facilities such as community halls and school auditoriums
for their meetings. Officials of constituency assemblies would be
paid a reasonable wage for their services. Most of the work of
running the new system should be done by publicly spirited
volunteers. Seeing the political parties would disappear, as they
are at presently constituted, income tax breaks for contributions
given to them would be discontinued. Instead, these tax breaks
would be given to anyone making a direct contribution to cover the
expenses of the new democratic system. Tax breaks would be generous
enough that it would pay people and organizations to donate money
in this way.
Obviously, this is just a brief outline of how this system would
work. It would take a lot of thought and planning to get it up and
running and much ongoing adjustment to iron out all the kinks that
would surely develop. However, once this new system was established
and operating, it would be almost as simple as our present system
to operate. And the big advantage is that it would actually put the
voters in control of the governing process and eliminate a lot of
the abuses of our present method of government.
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