Democracy without General Elections
Submitted to the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral
Reform by Peter Rastall
Disadvantages of general elections
The usual practice in democratic countries is to elect all
members of a legislature at the same time, in a general
election. In some countries, these elections are held
every few years on a fixed schedule; in others, there are more
complicated rules. The general-election system has
several disadvantages. –
1. It discourages long term planning. Governments
become focussed on the need to win the next election and therefore
fail to develop longer-term policies. Programs that are
disastrous in the long term may be pursued for the sake of
short-term benefits.
2. It limits voter influence in the periods between
elections. Even if most voters lose confidence in the
government, they can do little about it. This may
result in a build-up of frustration and violent swings from one
party to another – the ‘anyone but
them’ sentiment that we saw, for example, in our last
provincial election.
3. It requires large and expensive election campaigns which do
nothing to advance real political debate or
understanding. Established parties and those with
wealthy backers gain an unfair advantage.
An alternative – cyclical
elections
One could avoid the problems of general elections by simply
abolishing them. This is not to suggest that we do away with
democracy. However, instead of a general election every
few years, there would be a by-election every month or
two. One would work through the list of constituencies,
holding an election in each of them in turn. The time
interval between the individual elections would be chosen so that
whole cycle would be completed in four or five years. Let us call
this the cyclical-election system. The influence of
voters would be stronger and more continuous under this new
system. After a government had lost a few by-elections,
it would realise that it was unpopular and that it would have to
change its ways or face defeat. On the other hand, if
it acted to maintain its popularity, it could expect to remain in
power and would be able to plan for the long term.
Since elections would be held constituency by constituency, local
issues would have some prominence and the merits of the individual
candidates would be more closely scrutinised than under the present
system.
Changing the parliamentary voting rules
The cyclical-election system as described above has an obvious
defect: there would be instability when the numbers of government
and opposition members were almost equal. Successive
by-elections could bring advantage first to one side and then to
the other, so that governments would fall at an unacceptable
rate. The solution is a change in the parliamentary
voting rules. Under the new rules, a government motion
would not be defeated by a simple majority, but by a simple
majority plus a certain number. One would have to think
carefully about what that number should be. If, for example, it
were ten, then a government motion would pass if it received a vote
of forty in favour and forty-nine against; it would fail if the
vote were forty in favour and fifty-one against. If a
government fell, its successor would have the same advantage and,
in this example, would not be likely to fall until it had a net
loss of twenty more by-elections.
A proposal for proportional representation
This proposal for electoral reform is independent of the idea
that some form of proportional representation should be
introduced. It would in fact be easy to
incorporate proportional representation into the cyclical-election
system The simplest way would be to allow losing
candidates in by-elections to assign their votes to some other
losing candidate in a future by-election. If the latter
candidate accumulated more than a specified number of votes by this
means, he or she would be declared elected. An example
will make this clear. Let us suppose that the specified
number of votes is forty thousand and that by-elections are held
every month. Losing candidates in the January,
February, and March elections receive twelve thousand, fourteen
thousand, and ten thousand votes, respectively. A
losing candidate in the July election receives eight thousand
votes. If the candidates in the January, February, and
March elections all assign their votes to her, she accumulates
forty-four thousand votes in all, and is declared
elected. Note that this does not affect the election of
the winning candidate in the July by-election: he is still the
elected MLA from that constituency. The other, who lost
but then accumulated more than forty thousand votes, might be
designated a ‘member at large’, without
constituency responsibilites.
Again, one would have to think carefully about the number of
votes necessary for election (the forty thousand used above is only
for purposes of illustration). One would also have to
specify the period of time during which a losing candidate could
assign his votes – perhaps one or two years would be
appropriate, after which time his votes would cease to
count. The longer this period, of course, the more
marginal would be the candidates that might be elected.
For example, suppose that the Yellow Party runs a candidate in
every by-election. The average number of votes these
candidates receive is only three thousand – but after a
little more than a year their accumulated votes will suffice to
elect an MLA.
There are many other ways of incorporating proportional
representation into the new system. The advantages of
method just described are that
1. It is simple, and requires no further electoral process
beyond the by-elections.
2. Every MLA will have at least run in a by-election
– they will not be faceless figures drawn from some
list of faithful party supporters.
3. All candidates are treated equally, no matter whether they
are independents or members of a party.
4. The proportion of MLA’s elected by proportional
representation (that is, by accumulating votes as above) can easily
be adjusted by changing the required number of votes or by changing
the period during which a losing candidate can assign his
votes. The desired proportion would presumably be fixed
by law, and the detailed adjustments left to a permanent electoral
commision – which would also deal with such matters as
constituency boundaries and the eligibility of candidates.
Referendum question
Before formulating a referendum question, the Assembly would
have to decide on the number of MLA’s to be elected by
proportional representation. Perhaps a fairly small
number should be chosen – the electorate is likely to
be suspicious at first of any kind of proportional
representation. The number could be increased at some
later date if the system was found to work
satisfactorily. If the number was chosen to be one
third of the total, for example, the referendum question might
be:
“Are you in favour of a cyclical-election system
with approximately one third of the MLA’s elected by
proportional representation.”
Before holding the referendum, it would of course be necessary
to explain to the voters what is meant by the cyclical-election
system.