[Too see the submission in its original format with endnotes and
works cited, see the linked document below]
Trading One Evil For Another: Electoral Systems and
Justice
In today’s society, citizens of democracies take it
for granted that from time to time they will go to the polls to
elect representatives to act on their behalf when the government
convenes to conduct the business of the country. While
this act may be a given in democracies, what is not so certain in
the manner in which these representatives will be
elected. Schemes of representation include single
member plurality (SMP), a hybrid proportional representation
system, a party list system, to name a few. The method
by which representatives are picked greatly affects the composition
of the government. In the most recent provincial
election, the BC Liberals received slightly less than 60% of the
popular vote and yet they were able to win 77 of 79 seats in the
legislative assembly. Some would say that this is a
“just” way to elect representatives because
it gives equal respect to very populated areas such as Vancouver
and to less populated areas such as Northern British
Columbia. Conversely, others would contend that it is
“unjust” that it is possible for a small
majority of the population would be able to effectively edge out
any opposition in the legislative assembly. The issue
of justice is central to the creation of electoral system;
unfortunately, political theorists have devoted surprisingly little
time to answering this question. It is important to
preserve the idea of majority rule, but it is simultaneously
necessary to control the majority so that it does not develop a
tyrannical element. Deference to minorities is a
hallmark of justice and for an electoral system to be
“just” it must embody this principle.
Before examining the various types of electoral systems, it is
necessary to first define justice. Political theorists
when speaking of distributive justice often use the term justice,
but I am using justice in the context of political
equality. An acceptable theory of justice must include
some notion of majority rule while still seeking to protect the
rights of minority groups. John Rawls deals
with the idea of majority rule and justice in electoral systems in
§54 of A Theory Of Justice. Rawls declares
that majority rule is not bad in and of itself, but that it must
observe his aforementioned principles of justice in order to be
just itself. However, he also states that
There is nothing to the view, then, that what the majority
wills is right. In fact, none of the traditional
conceptions of justice have held this doctrine, maintaining always
that the outcome of the voting is subject to the political
principles. Although in given circumstances it is
justified that the majority (suitably defined and circumscribed)
has the constitutional right to make law, this does not imply that
the laws enacted are just. The dispute of substance
about majority rule concerns how it is best defined and whether
constitutional constraints are effective and reasonable devices for
strengthening the overall balance of justice.
Rawls’ discussion with regard to majority rule
highlights an important aspect of the issue of electoral systems,
justice and majority rule, namely that there are many factors at
work that can contribute to how just the government’s
laws are. Given the lack of adequate space to deal with
all these issues it will be necessary to, for the time being, look
away from the fact that any electoral system can produce an unjust
outcome and focus on the system that, given a strong constitution
to protect minorities, will be more likely to produce a just
outcome.
When speaking of electoral systems and justice, the key aspect
in a limited examination of the subject will hinge upon
considerations of the ability for a group to be marginalized by a
majority. A just electoral system will strive to ensure
that all individuals in the country have a voice that can impact
the course of the elections. The most basic notion in
Rawls’ theory of justice is that majority rule is not
necessarily just simply because the majority agrees with the
policy. Democracy does not mean 50%+1 has
the legitimate authority to do whatever it chooses. Any
consideration of democracy must include a notion of respect for
minority rights.
There is a variety of electoral systems in use throughout the
world with varying degrees of success. Our concern is not with the
effectiveness of each system, but rather how just they are, in a
purely theoretical sense. Thus, in the initial
examination of each electoral system it is of no concern how stable
the government would be that is rendered by the electoral
process.
There are essentially two different types of electoral systems,
with many sub-types of elections. All electoral systems
can be described either as a plurality election system or as a
proportional representation election system. Under the
plurality electoral systems would fall single-member plurality
systems and at-large systems. There are
many more valid types of proportional representation; among them
are a party-list system, additional member system, and the single
transferable vote system.
The first system that we will be dealing with is single-member
plurality (SMP). This system is also sometimes called
“first past the post” because the person
who receives the most votes win (a majority is not needed to
win). SMP is a very simple type of election system
whereby the country is divided into single-member constituencies
and where voters select a single candidate who needs to achieve a
plurality of votes. This simplicity is in
many ways its biggest fault; it attempts to oversimplify the
complex task of electing officials. By playing to the
most basic notions of what it means to be democratic (majority
rule) SMP fails spectacularly. Often it produces
governments that deviate significantly from the political
orientation of the society at-large. This
system is the system that Canadians are most familiar with; Canada,
the United Kingdom and the United States of America are examples of
countries that employ this system.
The second type of plurality voting is the at-large
system. This method of voting is very rarely used on a
large scale, though it is sometimes employed at the local
level. In this method, a voter can vote for
multiple people on the same ballot. For example, six
people may be running for three positions; whichever three people
get the most number of votes is elected to the
position. This system of electing representatives is
very rarely used, though it will typically produce results similar
to a SMP election. As such, it is subject
to the same criticisms that are levelled against the SMP system as
listed above.
Majoritarian systems are not really a type of plurality system,
but they are also not a proportional system. There are
two types of Majoritarian systems, a second ballot system and an
alternative vote system. The second ballot system is
often used at lower levels of government, but not usually at a
national level. The central feature of this
system is, as its name implies, the use of two ballots; David
Farrell states, “the principal objective is to increase
the likelihood that the candidate elected will have an overall
majority of support in the constituency, i.e. more than 50 per cent
of the votes cast.” On the
first ballot if an individual receives more than 50 percent of the
votes cast then they win and there is no need for a second
ballot. However, if a majority of voters do not cast
ballots for a given individual then it is necessary to move onto
the second ballot. There are two different versions of
the second ballot system, in the first variation all candidates who
reached a given threshold (often set at about 12%-15% of votes
cast) are put on the second ballot. This variation does
not ensure that there will be a Majoritarian result. In
the second variation of this system, only the top two candidates
are put onto the second ballot. This second version
guarantees that there will be a majority of voters who elect the
representative.
The alternative vote system is very close to the second ballot
system in principle but it has a slightly different
application. All candidates are listed on a
ballot, voters are then asked to rank all candidates in the order
of their preference. All the ballots are then counted
using all the first ordinal choices of the voters. If a
given candidate receives at least 50 per cent of the votes cast
then the winner is declared and the counting process is
over. However, if no candidate receives 50 per cent of
the votes cast then the candidate who received the least number of
first ordinal votes is dropped from the list and all the second
ordinal choices are counted on those ballots. This
system continues until a candidate receives at least 50 per cent of
the votes cast.
All Proportional Representation (PR) systems share a number of
common characteristics. First, they all
have multimember districts: multiple members seeking multiple seats
in given electoral districts. Second, candidates do not
need to get a plurality of votes to be elected. Third,
all proportional representation systems endeavour for
proportionality in distributing contested
seats. Proportional representation systems
have many variations, though they all attempt to reach the same
goal, a more even share of electoral seats to the political parties
of a given country. The aforementioned
criteria allow us to categorize these numerous variations of the
proportional representation so that we can distinguish these
systems from other types of electoral systems that attempt to
fulfill different goals. It is possible to
accomplish the goal of proportional representation through a
variety of forms that still adhere to the principles of PR.
The most common method of PR used in Western democracies is the
party-list system. Voters typically cast
their ballots for a particular party, rather than a certain
candidate. For example, in a ten-person district if
party A gets 50% of the vote then 5 of their members are elected to
the assembly. There are two types of party-list
systems; similarly if parties B and C get 30% and 20% of the vote
respectively, then party B would receive 3 seats and party C would
receive 2 seats. In order to keep fringe parties out of
the legislature there is often a threshold which must be breached
in order for a party to receive any seats, this threshold is often
set at somewhere between 3%-5% of the popular vote.
There are two variations of the party list system. The
first is called a closed list system whereby the party ranks
candidates from one to X (X being the number of seats in the
assembly). The second system is called an open list
system. In this system voters can change the order of
candidates on the party list system. This gives voters
greater control over who is elected to the assembly,
“votes for individual party candidates are totalled,
and the ones with the most votes are moved toward the top of the
list, where they are more likely to be
elected.” In this second system
votes count for the party, but they also serve to rearrange the
list of candidates.
The additional member system is a hybrid system that attempts to
combine SMP system with a party-list system. In these
systems, voters are often given two ballots, on the first ballot
the voter selects who they want to represent their constituency, on
this ballot whoever receives the most votes wins, similar to
SMP. On the second ballot they select the party of
their choice. This ballot is used to guarantee that all
parties get their proportional share of the legislative
seats. Half the seats are reserved for the district
winners, while the second half is used to “top
off” the legislature and ensure that the parties
receive a number of seats proportional to the number of votes they
received on the second ballot. Usually in these
systems, as in the party list system, there is a minimum reserve
that must be met. This system is
advantageous in that it ensures that a given constituency will have
a certain representative to speak for them, while still being
“sufficient in preventing disproportional results at
the nation level.”
The final, and most complicated, type of proportional
representation is the single transferable vote (STV).
While not used very often in national elections, political parties
often use this system of voting when conventions are used to select
the leader of the party. Essentially, the
candidates are listed on the ballot in randomized order and the
voter is asked to rank the candidates from one to X. If
on the first count a candidate breaches the threshold then they are
elected to the assembly and “any surplus ballots beyond
that threshold are redistributed to the next available preferred
candidate indicated on the ballot. However,
if no one breaches the threshold then the person who got the least
number of first ordinal rankings is dropped from the ballot, and
the second choice is counted on the ballots where the dropped
candidate is listed as the first choice. This goes on
until all the seats are filled. Similar to the party
list system, “officials in the single transferable vote
system are elected in multimember districts, and parties put up a
number of candidates for these seats.”
Each of these electoral systems has positive aspects as well as
negative consequences. It is not possible to look at
any of these systems and declare that it is the most just system of
electing representatives, as there are many factors that can
influence this claim which are outside the scope of electoral
systems. No electoral system will work the same in each
country because there are so many dependent variables present so as
to skew the outcome in one direction or
another. In order to examine the relative
justice of each system it will be necessary to look at a variety of
circumstances so as to judge when a system will produce just
results, and when a system will produce unjust results.
In Canada, we are most familiar with the SMP system, even though
it is not a system that is utilized globally to a great
degree. The biggest impediments to justice with regard
to the SMP system is that a party can have a small majority of
support spread evenly among the constituencies and can win all or
many of the seats. This is most clearly
seen in the last British Columbia provincial election where the
Liberal government won 77 of 79 seats despite only winning a small
majority of the popular vote. If we consider justice to
be simply a majority voting in a particular way is just no matter
what the outcome then this would be an acceptable electoral
system. But, given out earlier conception of justice we
must conclude that the SMP can produce very unjust results.
Edmund Burke’s support for the SMP system stemmed
from his desire to have a legislature that was an
“image of the feelings of the
nation’. However, it is
undeniable that “the ‘image’ is
usually like that seen in a distorting mirror: it is true that
every feature of the reflection corresponds to something in the
original, but one feature may be exaggerated out of all proportion,
while another… becomes scarcely
perceptible.” The fact that one
portion of society, the voters who voted for the loser, are not
represented in parliament in anyway is a disservice to democracy
and an example of the injustice in the SMP
system. However, according to our earlier
definition of justice, it is not necessarily unjust to not have all
of society represented; it is the fact that it is possible for the
government to ignore the wishes of a significant minority, because
those citizens will not form a significant voting bloc so as to
ensure that the government could not be
re-elected. Moreover, the high
disproportionality of the SMP system indicates that small parties
are under-represented.
It is of no concern that SMP does not uphold the
‘one member, one vote’ principle because
our concern is not with the justice of the system per se, but
rather the potential outcomes of the system. As a
result of not having to be accountable to all members of society
SMP fails the justice test, but this is because there is a
potential for unjust outcomes, not because the system does seems to
be unjust in its composition.
The greatest virtue of the SMP system is its stability and its
ability to produce governments that can really change things in
government. SMP systems usually have the
effect of producing majority governments, these are the type of
governments can produce the greatest amount of change in a
country. The positive outcome of this, that being the
ability to produce a government which is not impotent due to the
fact that it is a coalition government, is a positive, just aspect
of the SMP system. The outcome can produce more just
results than a Proportional Representation system.
The main critique of the party-list system, which does not also
apply to other types of PR, is that it removes the
constituent-representative relationship from
representation. This means that areas with
little population density could have no advocates in the assembly
for them. This could effectively cause sparsely
populated areas to be written off by government, as they would have
little chance of impacting elections. For example, in
Canada it would be strategically important to have many candidates
from areas that have a high population density, such as Ontario,
Quebec and British Columbia. It would likewise be
unimportant for political parties to focus on less populated areas,
such as the Maritimes and the Prairies (Manitoba, Saskatchewan and
Alberta) as these voters would not have much of an influence on the
distribution of seats in a party list system due to the fact that
the geographical distribution of the population would allow for the
minority of voters in these areas to be marginalized.
Moreover, this system has the potential to create some very
unpopular governments. It is possible to imagine a
scenario whereby if there are two strong, popular parties that
dislike each other a great deal, and there is a third party which
is not offensive to either group, but has little support, the third
party could be elected because of they would be the first choice of
the people who supported them, and the second choice for everyone
else as they are regarded as they are regarded as a lesser evil by
each of the strong, popular parties. Little is done to
advance the cause of justice by putting in a party that is
preferable to very few people. The same criticisms
apply to this system, that could be applied to the party list
system, namely that there is no relationship between the
constituent and the representative. This
system effectively renders areas that are sparsely populated to be
ignored by the system, as they are politically irrelevant when
dealing with elections.
Kent Weaver asserts that any sort of proportional representation
system would be a resounding failure if implemented in
Canada. It is a fact that in any system
that utilizes proportional representation to any degree will ensure
that medium sized parties get an adequate, though not altogether
large allowance of seats. Due to the sheer geographical
size of the state, there are regional specific parties, such as the
Bloc Quebecois that would have a disproportionate amount of power
in a proportional representation system.
Weaver asserts that these parties will tend to receive a moderate
share of seats, and as such, will become prime candidates to join a
coalition government. This would become a very
problematical because specific regions would still be asserting
greater influence in governing policy. For this reason,
the system would again become unrepresentative of the population,
though in a way that is different, although not any better or
worse, from the SMP system. Again, we see that a
proportional representation can produce unjust results, in a manner
similar to a SMP system. While the example made here
relates to Canada federally, it is possible to imagine similar
scenarios coming to fruition in British Columbia.
There are a number of other critiques that are made of the
proportional representation system, the largest dealing with the
claim that SMP systems encourage moderate parties, while PR
promotes extremism. The reasoning behind
this view is two part. The first part deals with the
issue of moderation in Single-Member Plurality systems, it is
contended that
In a two-party system the parties will tend to concentrate
their efforts on recruiting uncommitted voters from the middle of
the political spectrum, hoping to gain enough supporters to build
an electoral majority. In order to appeal to such
voters, both parties will tend to converge on the political center,
offering moderate policies to woo centrist voters. The
tendency toward moderate, centrist politics is seen as a
characteristic that enhances stability and quality of democratic
regimes.
The second part of the equation has to deal with the extremism
of the Proportional Representation system. Ferdinand
Hermens contends that because Proportional Representation allows
the representation of small parties, extremist political groups are
able to gain a political foothold in the legislature that they can
build upon. It is through this foothold in
the legislature that they are able to use the forum to increase
their appeal and legitimacy. If fringe parties are
allowed to grow from within the system it is possible that they
could produce unjust results as they pursue policies which are
damaging to certain groups, extremist fringe parties often have
politicise which will be detrimental to certain groups in society
and as such must be not be allowed to make great gains in the
democratic arena, lest justice be thrown out the window.
The discussion of election systems and their relative pros and
cons is very confusing for good reason. When such
complex systems are being examined it is difficult to investigate
the different systems are produce one system which is better than
the rest. Each system is good and bad in
its own right and could produce just results in certain
circumstances; conversely, it is also possible for each system to
produce unjust results. Furthermore, it is
impossible to examine electoral systems in a vacuum and it could be
beneficial to look at the broader picture. For example,
in Canada’s Parliament if there was both an equal,
effective and elected Senate as well as an elected House of Commons
the geographical problems that are created with elections to the
House of Commons by way of a SMP system would be
alleviated. In this sense, it seems logical that the
best we can hope for is the implementation of two systems that are
equally just and unjust, but in opposite ways, to counterbalance
each other.
Further, each electoral system can produce unjust results
certain circumstances and as such must be tailored to the country
in which it needs to be used. Countries
such as Canada that have specific regions that have a very uneven
population distribution among a small number of regions face the
greatest difficulties when analyzing electoral systems.
Often by changing systems, we are only substituting one type of
injustice for another. This is because if
something like a Triple-E is implemented it would ensure
representation for all the provinces. However it would
also be unjust to give more power to these regions because then
bloc voting could occur that could marginalize the majority of the
population in Ontario and Quebec, and thus once again unjust
results would be produced by a different electoral
system. A country that has many distinct regions, or
state-like entities (such as the United States), or a country that
has equal population density among a few regions would have an
easier time designing an electoral system that would
work. Each electoral system has the potential to be
just; the difficult issue at hand is under what circumstances they
will be just. Often there are too many unknown
variables present to be able to properly identify what the outcome
of a particular electoral system will be until it is in use in a
country.
British Columbia suffers from much of the same problems as
Canada, some areas of the province have a significant population,
but are small relative to the population of the lower
mainland. Consequently it would be imagined that these
regions would receive less attention in a PR electoral system as
they do not have the same power they once did. When
these regions once had a MLA to a rather small population (compared
to the residents to MLA ratio in many lower mainland ridings) they
will now have to fight with the whole of British Columbia for
political attention. In PR systems, regions with
concentrated populations receive disproportionate political
attention.
As we have seen, there is a great deal of controversy about what
would occur if a given electoral system were implemented in any
country. It is for this reason that we cannot, as
earlier stated, examine these systems in a vacuum absent other
factors that could influence the just or unjust outcomes of the
system. Given that there is this controversy, and often
conflicting views not only about what is good and bad, but also
what would occur or not occur, it is necessary to look at what
other factors encourage the just or unjust results that can be a
product of electoral systems. It would be ignorant to
only look at half the equation. The only certainty is
that no electoral system is just or unjust in and of
itself. Thus, while it may seem like a good idea to
change our electoral system we must be reminded of the idiom
“a bird in hand is worth two in the
bush.” Most certainly, the devil we know is
better than the devil we don’t.
[See the linked document below for endnotes and works cited]
levelCMS