California 2020

We Californians are known for our ballot propositions. Twelve of them in this election. Too many!

I voted last week. Or at least I think I voted. The ballot went into a box that looked legitimate. I’ve never been fond of absentee/mail voting (except for those who have no other choice). In fact, I have never done it, being committed to the idea of going to an actual polling place. But, this year is… different.

I have some thoughts on a few of them. I don’t usually do “endorsements” in part because I wonder why anyone would actually care how I would vote (unless perhaps if it was an electoral system measure). But I want to mention a few of these that I feel somewhat strongly about.

Yes on 18. Back in the year I turned 18, I was of age to vote by the time the general election came around, but I was not able to vote in the primary. I remember at the time, there was talk of a change to allow those who will be 18 before the general election to vote in the primary even if their 18th birthday was between the elections. That is so very sensible. Finally, we get to vote this change into the state constitution.

I am genuinely puzzled that so many newspapers across the state have advised a no vote on 18. I understand why the GOP is against–it is an anti-democratic party (and an anti-republican one), so one of its core principles is: more voters = bad. But I can’t imagine any good argument against this, especially now that we no longer have primaries (except for presidential-nominating delegates). We have a two-round general election. If you are eligible to choose from among the final two, you should be eligible to vote to winnow the initial field. Simple as that.

I voted no on Prop. 22 (re app-based services). At the outset I sort of leaned yes. But the more I learned, the more strongly I was against. Whatever the merits of the policy proposal, the following is a real deal killer: Amendments by the legislature would take a 7/8 vote. I am against super-majority requirements for detailed policy provisions on principle, but usually such requirements are 3/5 or 2/3. But SEVEN EIGHTHS. Absurd! 

I also generally oppose initiatives that are mostly about one interest group trying to convince voters to do what it has already lost in both the legislature and the courts. (Which suggests the proposal is probably not good on the merits, either.) In this case, it is mostly a carve-out for a few specific companies. It’s not about the drivers, despite the slick advertising prominently featuring people of color and single mothers. It is about some companies that are obviously doing quite well if they are able to afford all this advertising. 

Here are some example of their advertising in the form of mailers we have received. See what I mean by their prominent featuring of individuals who are clearly intended to invoke progressive sympathies?

As I said, the measure is not actually about the drivers. It is about some companies trying to bypass the regular policy-making process. (Yes, an initiative is also part of the legitimate policy-making process, but we voters don’t have to go along!)

Also–going out of order here–I decided to vote yes on 15. The advertising from those against has really been over the top.

“Wrong side of history”? And scare tactics are always a nice touch: “homeowners are next.” So if someone comes back with a later proposition that will hurt homeowners, what can we do? Oh, I know. We can vote no on that (highly hypothetical) measure.

In the case of both 15 and 18, these are things I have been waiting to vote for my entire voting life! Prop. 15 creates a split roll for property taxes (a long overdue fix to Prop. 13 of 1978) and Prop. 18, as discussed above, lets 17 year olds vote in the first-round election if they will be 18 by the time of the November second-round election.

For any voters who have not yet made their decisions, I highly recommend the California Choices website. It has links to details of all the propositions, and scorecards of endorsements from newspapers, political parties, non-profits, and unions.

New Zealand to have referendum questions on 2020 ballot, potentially including “tweaks” to MMP

Earlier in December, the Justice Minister of New Zealand, Andrew Little (Labour) announced that there would be a binding referendum on recreational cannabis use concurrent with the 2020 general election. There may also be a question on euthanasia, and–of core interest to this blog–electoral reform.

Earlier, Little had said:

It has been floating around that if we’re going to do a bunch of referenda, why wouldn’t we put this question about whether we want to make those final tweaks to MMP, reduce that 5 per cent threshold to 4 per cent, get rid of the one-seat coat-tailing provision.

These proposals were part of the Electoral Commission’s MMP Review, but the government at the time (National-led) did not act on them.

The multiparty nature of the New Zealand political system that MMP has institutionalized is apparent in these issues being on the table. Having a referendum on cannabis use was a provision of the confidence and supply agreement that Labour signed with the Green Party after the 2017 election. In addition, Labour’s other current governing partner, New Zealand First, has indicated support for a bill on euthanasia sponsored by the leader of ACT, another of the smaller parties (a right-wing partner to opposition National).

Both provisions that the MMP Review recommended changing have had past impacts on current parties. The ACT has depended for its representation in parliament on the so-called coat-tailing provision (a term I do not like for the alternative threshold) in several elections. The New Zealand First once was left out of parliament for having a vote share between 3.5% and 5%, despite other parties (including ACT) being represented, due to winning a single district (electorate) plurality. (Obviously, 4% would not have helped NZF in 2008, as it had only 3.65%. But the point is that the current provisions produce potential anomalies; I have suggested before that the two thresholds should be brought closer to one another.)

Also of note: Little said that the cabinet had discussed, but decided against, having a citizen’s assembly to deliberate issues related to cannabis (and perhaps also euthanasia).

The Brexit cycle

EDIT: the pollster has corrected an error. May’s deal is a Condorcet winner after all (i.e., it would beat either of the other options in one-on-one competition.) The Delta Poll blog post about the poll has been corrected, without any indication of the previous error, although its author did note the error on Twitter. The first pie diagram in the image has the numbers reversed.

_______original post below

Sometimes it just really is awesome to be a political scientist. You see, we have a large literature on the theoretical problem of preference cycles. But they don’t ever happen in real life, right?

Or we could depict it the following way, which makes clearer why it is called a “cycle”:

What could we expect from electoral reform in BC?

This week is the beginning of the mail voting period for the referendum on whether to reform the electoral system for provincial assembly elections in British Columbia. The ballot asks two questions: (1) Do you want to keep the current FPTP system or “a proportional representation voting system”: (2) If BC adopts PR, which of three types of PR do you prefer?

The second question offers three choices, which voter may rank: Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP); Dual-Member Proportional (DMP); Rural-Urban Proportional (RUP).

I have reviewed before what these options entails, and will not repeat in detail here. Besides, the official BC Elections site explains them better than I could. What I want to try to get it here is how we might expect BC’s provincial party system to change, were any of these options adopted. To answer that question, I turn, of course, to the Seat Product Model, including the extended form for two-tier systems developed in Votes from Seats.

The punch line is that the various scenarios I ran on the options all suggest the effective number of parties in the legislative assembly would be, on average, somewhere in the 2.46 to 2.94 range, the effective number of vote-earning parties would tend to be in the 2.83 to 3.32 range, and the size of the largest party would be somewhere between 45% and 51% of the seats. Again, these are all on average. The ranges just provided do not mean elections would not produce a largest party smaller than 45% or larger than 51%. Actual elections will vary around whatever is the point prediction of the Seat Product Model for any given design that is adopted. And fine, yet important, details of whichever system is adopted (if FPTP is not retained) will remain to be fleshed out later.

The ranges I am giving are formula-predicted averages, given the inputs implied by the various scenarios. I explain more below how I arrived at these values. The key point is that all proposals on the ballot are quite moderate forms of PR, and thus the party system would not be expected to inflate dramatically. However, coalition governments, or minority governments with support from other parties, would become common; nonetheless, single-party majority governments would not likely disappear from the province’s future election outcomes. As we shall see, one of the proposals would make single-party governments reman as the default mean expectation.

Before going to the scenarios, it is important to see whether the real BC has been in “compliance” with the Seat Product Model (SPM). If it has tended to deviate from expectations under its actual FPTP system, we might expect it to continue to deviate under a new, proportional one.

Fortunately, deviations have been miniscule. For all elections since 1960, the actual effective number of vote-earning parties has averaged 1.117 times greater than predicted. That is really minor. More important is whether it captures the actual size of the largest party well. This, after all, is what determines whether a single-party majority government can form after any given election. For all elections since 1960, the average ratio of actual largest-party seat share to the SPM prediction is 1.068. So it is even closer. For an assembly the size of BC’s in recent years (mean 80.7 since 1991), the SPM predicts the largest party will have around 57.8% of seats. The mean in actual elections since 1991 has been 62.7%. That is a mean error on the order of 4 seats. So, the SPM captures something real about the current BC electoral system.

Going a little deeper, and looking only at the period starting in 1996, when something like the current party system became established (due to the emergence of the Liberals and the collapse of Social Credit), we find ratios of actual to predicted as follows: 1.07 for effective number of vote-earning parties; 1.07 for largest parliamentary party seat share; 0.905 for effective number of seat-winning parties. If we omit the highly unusual 2001 election, which had an effective number of parties in the assembly of only 1.05 and largest party with 96.2%, we get ratios of 0.98 for effective number of seat-winning party and 0.954 for largest party size. The 2017 election was the first one since some time before 1960 not to result in a majority party, and it is this balanced parliament that is responsible for the current electoral reform process.

As for the proposed new systems, all options call for the assembly to have between 87 seats (its current size) and 95 seats. So I used 91, the mean; such small changes will not matter much to the estimates.

The MMP proposal calls for 60% of seats to remain in single-seat districts (ridings) and the rest to be in the compensatory tier (which would be itself be regionally based; more on that later). So my scenarios involved a basic tier consisting of 55 seats and a resulting 36 seats for compensation. Those 36/91 seats mean a “tier ratio” of 0.395 (and I used the rounded 0.4). The formula for expected effective number of seat-winning parties (Ns) is:

Ns=2.5^t(MS)^0.167.

With t=.4, M=1 (in the basic tier) and S=91, this results in Ns=2.81. I will show the results for other outputs below.

For the DMP proposal, the calculations depend on how many districts we assume will continue to elect only one member of the legislative assembly (MLA). The proposal says “rural” districts will have just one, to avoid making them too large geographically, while all others will have two seats by combining existing adjacent districts (if the assembly size stays the same; as noted, the proposals all allow for a modest increase). In any case, the first seat in any district goes to the party with the plurality in the district, and the second is assigned based on province-wide proportionality. For my purposes, this is a two-tier PR system, in which the compensatory tier consists of a number of seats equivalent to the total number of districts that elect a second MLA to comprise this compensatory pool. Here is where the scenarios come in.

I did two scenarios, one with minimal districts classified as “rural” and one with more. The minimal scenario has 5 such districts–basically just the existing really large territorial ridings (see map). The other has 11 such districts, encompassing much more of the interior and north coast (including riding #72, which includes most of the northern part of Vancouver Island). I will demonstrate the effect with the minimal-rural scenario, because it turned out to the most substantial move to a more “permissive” (small-party-favoring) system of any that I looked at.

Of our 91 seats, we take out five for “rural” districts, leaving us with 86. These 86 seats are thus split into 43 “dual-member” districts. The same formula as above applies. (Votes from Seats develops it for two-tier PR, of which MMP is a subset.) The total number of basic-tier seats is 48 (the five rural seats plus the 43 DM seats). There are 43 compensation seats, which gives us a tier ratio, t=43/91=0.473. Ah ha! That is why this is the most permissive system of the group: more compensation seats! Anyway, the result is Ns=2.94.

If we do the 11-rural seat scenario, we are down to 80 seats in the DM portion of the system and thus 40+11 basic-tier seats. The tier ratio (40/91) drops to 0.44. The resulting prediction is Ns=2.61. This does not sound like much, and it really is not. But these results imply a difference for largest seat size between the first scenario (45%) and the second (49%) that makes a difference for how close the resulting system would be to making majority parties likely.

Finally, we have RUP. This one is a little complex to calculate because it is really two different systems for different parts of the province: MMP for “rural” areas and STV for the rest. I am going to go with my 11 seats from my second DMP scenario as my “rural” area. Moreover, I understand the spirit of this proposal to be one that avoids making the districts in rural areas larger than they currently are. Yet we need compensation seats for rural areas, and like the full MMP proposal, RUP says that that “No more than 40% of the total seats in an MMP region may be List PR seats”, so this region needs about 18 seats (the 11 districts, plus 7 list seats, allowing 11/18=0.61, thereby keeping the list seats just under 40%.) That leaves us with 91-18=73 seats for the STV districts. The proposal says these will have magnitudes in the 2-7 range. I will take the geometric mean and assume 3.7 seats per district, on average. This gives us a seat product for the STV area of 3.7*73=270.

In Votes from Seats, we show that at least for Ireland, STV has functioned just like any “simple” PR system, and thus the SPM works fine. We expect Ns=(MS)^.167=2.54. However, this is only part of the RUP system. We have to do the MMP part of the province separately. With just 11 basic-tier seats and a tier ratio of 0.39, this region is expected to have Ns=2.13. A weighted average (based on the STV region comprising 80.2% of all seats) yields Ns=2.46.

The key point from the above exercise is that RUP could result in single-party majority governments remaining the norm. Above I focused mainly on Ns expectations. However, all of the predictive formulas link together, such that if we know what we expect Ns to be, we can determine the likely seat-share of the largest party (s1) will be, as well as the effective number of vote-earning parties (Nv). While that means lots of assumptions built in, we already saw that the expectations work pretty well on the existing FPTP system.

Here are the results of the scenarios for all three output variables:

System	Expected Ns	Expected Nv	Expected s1
MMP	2.81	3.19	0.46
DMP1	2.94	3.32	0.45
DMP2	2.61	3.01	0.49
RUP	2.46	2.87	0.51

“DMP1” refers to the minimal (5) seats considered “rural” and DMP2 to the one with 11 such seats. If we went with more such seats, a “DMP3” would have lower Ns and Nv and larger s1 than DMP2, and the same effect would be felt in RUP. I did a further scenario for RUP with the MMP region being 20 districts, and wound up with Ns=2.415, Nv=2.83, s1=.52; obviously these minor tweaks do not matter a lot, but it is clear which way the trend goes.And whether any given election is under or over s1=0.50 obviously makes a very large difference for how the province is governed for the following four years!

I would not really try to offer the above as a voter guide, because the differences across systems in the predicted outputs are not very large. However, if I wanted to maximize the chances that the leading party would need partners to govern the province, I’d probably be inclined to rank MMP first and RUP third. The latter proposal simply makes it harder to fit all the parameters together in a more than very marginally proportional system.

By the way, we might want to compare to the BC-STV proposal that was approved by 57% of voters in 2005 (but needed 60%, and came up for a second referendum in 2009, when no prevailed). That proposal could have been expected to yield averages of Ns=2.61, Nv=3.0, and s1=.49. By total coincidence, exactly the same as my DMP2 scenario.

Edit: The following paragraph is based on my own misreading of the proposal, which contrary to what I say here, calls for province-wide proportionality if MMP is chosen. What it says about Scotland still applies, so I will leave it here. [Then again, maybe not?]

A final note concerns the regional compensation in the MMP proposal vs. province-wide in DMP. In an on-line appendix to Votes from Seats, I explored whether regional compensation in the case of Scotland produces a less permissive system than if compensation were across all of Scotland. I concluded it made no difference to Ns or s1. (It did, however, result in lower proportionality.) Of course, if it made a difference, province-wide would have to be more favorable to small parties. Thus if this were a BC voter’s most important criterion, DMP might pull ahead of MMP. However, the benefit on this score of DMP is greater under a “low-rural” design. The benefit of DMP vanishes, relative to MMP, if the system adopted were to be one with a higher share of seats marked as rural. I certainly am unable to predict how the design details would play out, as this will be left up to Elections BC.

The bottom line is that all proposals are for very moderately proportional systems, with MMP likely the most permissive/proportional on offer.

Turkey referendum: Latin Americanization on the road to autocracy

Turkey will go to the polls on April 16^th, to vote on a set of constitutional amendments which would change the country’s system of government to presidentialism. Though it seems that in Turkey, the current system is generally referred to as ‘parliamentary’, Turkey has actually been semi-presidential (specifically, premier-presidential) since the country’s first direct presidential election was held in 2014.

The amendments passed the three-fifths legislative majority necessary to put them to referendum with support from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Introducing presidentialism has long been president Erdogan’s express wish. The idea has apparently been around in Turkish politics for a while before it was adopted by the Erdogan and his party, AKP. Full presidentialism seems to have been ‘plan A’, so introducing semi-presidentialism (passed in 2007, entering operation in 2014) was perhaps only ever meant as a way-station toward this goal.

The main details of the amendments are as follows:

1. Establishing presidentialism:

As stated above the president is already elected directly, specifically using a two-round system. The president is to become both head of state and head of government, with the power to appoint and fire ministers and the vice president. There is no requirement for the Grand National Assembly to confirm appointments. Executive office is incompatible with assembly membership. Interpolation of ministers is to be removed from the constitution, leaving MPs with written questions.

2. Legislative powers:

The president is to have veto power over legislation, subject to absolute majority override in the assembly. He is to have the power to issue decrees in “matters concerning the executive power” and regulations “to provide for the enforcement of the laws, provided they are not contrary to them”. These cannot affect fundamental rights, except under a state of emergency; an emergency can be declared by the president without confirmation by the assembly, but the latter must be notified immediately and can shorten or end it at any time. These decree powers are essentially the same as those currently held by the cabinet. The president would also dominate the budgetary process: the complete budget is to be proposed by the president and put to a straight up-or-down vote in the assembly without possibility of amendment, with failure to adopt a budget within a timeframe leading to continuation of previous arrangements.

3. Term lengths and dissolution power:

The assembly’s term in extended to five years (from the current four) and legislative and presidential elections are to be held concurrently. If the presidency becomes vacant, fresh presidential elections must be held. If parliamentary elections are due within less than a year, then they too are held on the same day as early presidential elections; if the parliament has over a year left before its term expires, the newly elected president serves until the end of the parliamentary term, after which presidential and parliamentary election cycles are held concurrently again.

The president is to be limited to being elected twice, but there are some exceptions, the first of which is that a mid-term vacancy-filling election doesn’t count towards the total. The current presidential power to dissolve the assembly is retained, in addition to a new clause which enables the assembly to dissolve itself, by three-fifths majority vote – in either case, fresh elections are held for both president and assembly, who serve new five-year terms. Early concurrent elections triggered by the assembly can always be contested by the president.

4. Impeachment

The president or any member of the executive is indicted by two-thirds majority in the assembly (upon which many powers, including dissolution, are suspended), which takes the decision on removal to the Supreme Court. A president which has thus been removed is ineligible for re-election.

5. Judiciary

The acts of the president, previously protected, are now to be subject to judicial review. The structure of the judiciary will not change much – with the role of the president in appointments remaining quite strong. Of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors, the president is to appoint 6 and the assembly is to appoint 7 (4 of whom must be judges from the highest courts) – for renewable four-year terms. The Council appoints most (two-thirds to three-quarters) of the judges of each of the highest courts, with the rest being appointed by the president directly.

According to the BBC, Erdogan claims that the new system will ‘resemble those in France and the US’. There is clearly little truth to this. First of all, France is semi-presidential, specifically the premier-presidential variant. This means that the prime minister, while appointed by the president, can formally only be removed by the assembly – in other words, what Turkey has now. These amendments would outright abolish the prime ministership and parliamentary responsibility, granting the president (already in a position to play a dominant role in the country’s government) absolute control over the executive branch.

Does that mean that the new system will essentially be the same as the US? Not really. Presidential or not, the proposed system includes numerous features bearing little resemblance the American model of checks and balances. The amendments would invest the Turkish president with extensive constitutional decree powers, allow him to all but dictate the budget, but on the other hand leave him with a substantially weaker veto than the US. The absence of assembly confirmation vote for ministers, not to mention presidential dissolution power, are also alien to the US constitution. Overall, the proposed institutional framework is to bear far greater resemblance to past and present constitutions of Latin America, where assembly confirmation is non-existent, emergency and decree powers are common, while some of the other institutions in question have featured occasionally, e.g. presidential dissolution power (Ecuador, formerly Chile and Argentina) and weaker veto (Brazil, formerly Venezuela).

In any case, the proposed amendments represent an immense consolidation of power in the hands of president Erdogan. It would probably allow him to serve beyond the supposed limit of two five-year terms. Judicial appointments involve a somewhat greater degree of presidential influence over a judiciary that has already lost a great deal of independence in recent years. Judicial review, needless to say, will not amount to much. Furthermore, the requirement for judicial ratification may leave impeachment ultimately toothless even in the unlikely event that the requisite majority were achieved in the assembly. Meanwhile, the weak veto and the assembly’s own (weaker) power to call early elections is unlikely to provide much balance in practice. Though dissolution would entail new elections for both president and assembly, a president armed with the power to dissolve the assembly still seems more likely to have the upper hand in the exceptional situation his party ever lacks a majority there – exceptional because of the country’s majoritarian system, and because the president’s very power of calling early elections enables him to do so opportunistically, as Erdogan did in 2015^[1].

The Venice Commission’s report characterises the proposed changes as “a dangerous step backwards” for democracy in Turkey. It certainly feels hard to disagree.

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[1] One might add (as the Venice Commission does) the fact that elections will be concurrent, which is certainly true, though, as we have recently seen, it’s certainly possible (though still uncommon) for countries to elect a president in the second round that was not of the legislative majority elected concurrently with the first round (e.g. Argentina, Peru), while more generally, two-round systems cause vote fragmentation in the first round. If elections in Turkey remain competitive, it may be that the two round system will, in the long run, cause fragmentation which will spread to the assembly. Perhaps more likely is that once in a while, the concurrent elections could result in divided government as in the first scenario I mention here. A situation like that might provoke Linzian scenarios, but is probably most likely to simply result in early elections at some point, whose outcome would most likely be a reversion to the regular unified control.

Italy’s referendum

In case anyone wants to discuss Italy’s constitutional referendum, space is hereby provided…

Canadian electoral reform process: NDP now says there could be a referendum

Canada’s New Democrats are now willing to support a referendum on electoral-system change, “if it means consensus among parties” on the parliamentary committee, which is to report on Dec. 1.

Previously, the NDP and the Liberals and other advocates of reform have been opposed to a referendum, either because they consider the Liberals’ platform pledge (and that of the NDP and Greens) a sufficient mandate for change, or because they fear a referendum can’t be won . Or both. The Conservatives, on the other hand, have consistently said such a big change must not happen without a referendum. Presumably they think they can defeat it.

The above-linked National Post story refers to this as not “the first time the NDP appeared to have out-maneuvered the Liberals on the electoral reform file.” This remark refers to the NDP having successfully forced the Liberals to make the composition of the committee reflect the parties’ shares of the popular vote instead of their shares of seats. The Liberals have a (manufactured) majority of seats, and the norm for committees is generally proportional representation according to seats.

At the time, I thought the Liberals’ concession to their not having a majority was a clear case of “act-contingency”–not wanting to appear opposed to a potentially popular concept of reform, whatever their sincere preferences on their platform commitment once they (surprisingly) won a majority of seats.

However, in recent weeks, I have thought that the non-majority on the committee was opening up a “perfect” opportunity for the Liberals to declare, “sorry, we tried, but could not get cross-party consensus”, and let the status quo remain. The NDP move may be an effort to head off that outcome and take their chances with a referendum. They might need to get a deal with the Conservatives to make it work.

That may not be quite as far-fetched as it seems. Both parties actually could benefit from a moderate PR system. For the NDP, usually the third-largest party nationally, the appeal of PR is obvious. For the Conservatives, the benefit would be from allowing the party’s disparate wings to appeal separately, either as factions competing within small multi-seat districts* or eventually as separate parties, as they were not so long ago.

The next several weeks may determine whether electoral reform can advance, at least to a referendum, against what remain pretty formidable hurdles.

 

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* I am assuming it would have to be STV or open lists. Closed lists are probably out of the question, even as part of an MMP system. And while the NDP and Greens logically prefer MMP (more highly proportional, even with only province-level compensation), the Conservatives and Liberals would like small-magnitude PR, if keeping the status quo looks uncertain. (And if, for the Liberals, AV is not achievable.)

Try, try again

Prince Edward Island could vote on electoral reform. Again.

(It just had a non-binding vote less than two weeks ago.)

PEI 2016: Referendum favors MMP

The Canadian province of Prince Edward Island (PEI) held a referendum (“plebiscite”) on electoral reform. The voting, which could be done online or by phone, took place from 27 October to 7 November, Results have now been announced, and the majority preference is mixed-member proportional (MMP).

Interestingly, it was a vote among multiple options, conducted by alternative vote (instant runoff). The initial plurality choice was the status quo, first past the post (FPTP). But this was the first choice of only 31.2%. The runner up in first preferences was MMP, with 29%.

Through elimination of lower-ranking choices and transfer of preferences, MMP came out with a majority on the fourth round of counting, 55% to 45% over FPTP (leaving out exhausted ballots, which were just under 5%).

Other options were “FPTP with leaders” (status quo, except that party leaders who did not win a riding would get a seat if the party cleared 10%), “Preferential Voting” (i.e., alternative vote), and something new called “Dual-Member Proportional“.

Perhaps it is not at all surprising that the transfer patterns reveal a “change as little as possible if we must change” coalition and a “more change” coalition. FPTP took a bigger lead on the count following elimination of FPTP+, by far the most timid of the reform proposals. After the elimination of AV, which would be the next most-similar proposal to the status quo, MMP actually got more of these voters (43.9% to 36.7% for FPTP). Given that DMPR got 19.5%, the pro-AV voters had a clear majority for some sort of PR over keeping majoritarianism. On the final count, MMP got 82.6% of the eliminated votes for DMPR. This adds up to quite a clear consensus for a move away from the majoritarian model. (Note that STV was not an option.)

PEI had a referendum on an official proposal for MMP in 2005, which went down to a big defeat. Since that time, the province has continued to have some of the odd results (e.g. 2007) that are inherent to FPTP, especially given such a small assembly. In the most recent provincial election (2015) there was another large manufactured majority, although the Green Party managed to win a seat despite just 11% of the provincewide vote.

The timing of the vote is interesting, given that the federal parliamentary committee studying electoral reform is due to report in just a few weeks.

The PEI referendum result is non-binding.

JD’s Switzerland trip (with photos!)

In February I spent a weekend in Switzerland with a friend. We toured Basel and Bern, visiting the Federal Assembly and the legislatures of two cantons, and also witnessed campaigning for a number referendums (and more!) that would be held the next week.

On electronic displays this poster showed up as a gif, with the trucks rushing through

On the federal level (and in similar terms in most Cantons and municipalities), Switzerland has two types of citizen-initiated referendum:

• Votes on ‘popular initiatives’, which amend the constitution. These require the gathering of 100,000 signatures in no more than 18 months. To be approved in the referendum, they require both an overall majority of those voting and a majority of Cantonal votes.
• ‘Optional’ or ‘facultative’ referendums, which concern recently-enacted federal laws (I like to call these veto-referendums). These require the gathering of 50,000 signatures (or 8 Cantons – though I don’t think this happens in practice) in no more than 100 days from the publication of the act in question. For the act to be vetoed it merely requires to be rejected by a majority of those voting.
  

  A striking multilingual poster near the Basel docks

When we visited there were four federal referendums about to be held, of which three were popular initiatives and one was an optional referendum. As it happened, all four votes would follow the government’s official recommendation: rejection of all the initiatives and approval of the federal law.

Central Bern, a protest against the popular initiative for the deportation of criminal migrants

The campaigns were very visible and there were posters were everywhere, both in public places alongside regular commercial advertising and on apartment balconies and small shops’ doors. We also saw many different leaflets, including some published by political parties. Far more visible than in the UK, which I also visited during the recent referendum – in London, the only sign I saw of the campaign were some flyerers at a tube station at rush hour on the day of the referendum.

Cantonal referendum posters in Basel. Note the middle one, sponsored by the Liberal Democratic Party

(As a side note, Switzerland has virtually no regulation of campaign finance, either on the federal or cantonal level. I wonder if that had anything to do with it.)

A number of Cantonal referendums were held on the same day as the federal ones, and we saw posters for these in both Basel and Bern.

We visited three legislative buildings:

Basel-City’s Canton/City hall

Basel-City’s late mediaeval rathaus (city hall), home to the cantonal legislature which also serves (with the exception of a handful of members) as city council. Unfortunately, we were not able to see the chamber, as the tour clashed with our visit of the Federal Assembly in Bern.
Secondly, Bern’s legislature, the Grosser Rat/Grand Conseil. As far as we could tell there were no regular tours; we were let in by the janitor.

The Bernese legislature, the Grand Council

Switzerland generally has relatively large legislative chambers. Basel-City, with a population of just under 200,000, has 100 seats, almost double what it should have per cube root; Bern, with a population of  just over a million, has 160, 60% over cube root. The Confederation as a whole is just right with 200 in the lower house for a population of 8.3 million.

The Federal Assembly’s National Council 

The federal legislature is spectacular. The picture here is of the lower house, the National Council. The upper house, the Council of States, was more difficult to get a good photo of so here’s a link; the wall painting is of a traditional ‘landsgemeinde’ or popular assembly that used to be common in rural areas. Today the practice persists as the form of government of two cantons, where the citizens meet once a year, while the agenda for that meeting, and most details of legislation, are prepared by an elected assembly. One of the members of the Council of States is still elected by their canton’s popular assembly every four years.

Poster with the candidates of the Socialist/Social-Democratic (depending on whether you translate from French or German) Party in the executive by-election of February 28th (and ultimately also April 3rd for the second round)

Lastly, in Bern, we saw a poster for another campaign – we weren’t sure when we saw it, but it turned out to be for a by-election over two positions in the cantonal executive. Unlike the federal government, the cantonal executive councils are directly elected, mostly (as in Bern) through a two-round system, though proportionally in some cantons. The unusual thing in Bern is that there is one seat reserved for the French-speaking minority of the Bernese Jura – and this seat was one of the two up in the by-election. But, even more interestingly, it turns out this seat is not just reserved to candidates from that region, but the winner is the candidate with the higher geometric mean between the vote total in Bernese Jura and the canton as a whole – a fascinating and likely unique arrangement!

 

 

Brexit vs. BC-STV: Help with my principles!

As I noted earlier, I happened to be in British Columbia while the British were voting to leave the EU.

[Note: If you want to make general comments on Brexit and what happens next, please comment at the earlier thread. I’d like to keep this one on the narrower topic raised here.]

I never liked the BC-STV vote having been “defeated” in 2005 despite a clear majority (57%), due to a threshold of 60% having been set. But I do not like the UK “mandate” to leave the EU by a vote of 51.9%.

Is there a principle that reconciles my two positions? Or do I just have no principles regarding referendums*, and assess the rules for passage by whether I like what is being proposed? Help, please!

(I have written about referendum approval thresholds before.)

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* Other than that, in general, I’d rather not have them. I rather like representative democracy and deliberative institutions.

Brexit (open planting hole)

I was in British Columbia during the Brexit vote (for both a vacation, and a public forum on Canadian federal electoral-system reform). So no time for a full post. But by popular demand**, here’s a discussion opportunity for F&V readers. Clearly, the outcome raises a whole host of F&V-relevant issues…

________

* About which, more later
** I might note that Brexit reminds one that following the popular demand can be risky sometimes.

Polish electoral system referendum

Poland held three referendums on September 7th, one of which concerned a proposal of changing the Sejm (the country’s lower house) electoral system to one of single-seat districts. The proposals were submitted to referendum by outgoing president Bronislaw Komorowski. Under the Polish Constitution either the president, with consent of the Senate, or the Sejm, may submit proposals to referendum (article 125), the result of which is binding if turnout is over 50%.

Turnout in the referendum was extremely low: only 7.8% of Polish voters bothered to vote. Almost 79% voted in favour of changing to FPTP, which was very much in line with the polls, which had consistently shown large majorities in favour.

However, it is doubtful if the electoral system proposal could have been implemented even if the turnout threshold had been reached, considering that the constitution mandates proportionality in Sejm elections. Moreover, the procedure used was a ‘regular’ referendum rather than the procedure necessary for a constitutional amendment, which requires a two-thirds majority in the Sejm.

What led to this referendum? The issue was basically put on the agenda by Pawel Kukiz, a rockstar, social activist and presidential candidate, who came third in the first round of the presidential election in May with just under 21% of the vote. Electoral reform, in the shape of adoption of single-seat districts, was one of his few main issues in his grass-roots, anti-system campaign, with the stated aim of breaking up the ‘partocracy’ and making politicians more individually accountable. In response, after the first round Komorowski ordered the referendum on the issue.

This is not the first popular movement in favour of a move in the direction of more majoritarian electoral systems. Romania and Italy have had comparable movements, successful in Italy, almost successful in Romania. Personally I’m a little puzzled by Poland’s movement, or at least the supposed aim as I would expect that individual MP accountability would be a relatively strong side of Poland’s open-list system (which allows a high degree of voter influence over which candidates are elected from each list), while local representation wouldn’t be too big an issue under its moderate district magnitude (7 to 19, mean is about 11). Are they indeed grasping at straws, or am I missing something?

Luxembourg term limit referendum

On June 7th, the same day as the Turkish and Mexican elections, Luxembourg held three referenda: one proposal would have reduced the voting age to 16, another would have extended voting rights to foreigners living in the country for more than 10 years and the last one would have imposed a ten-year term limit on serving as member of the government. All three proposals were resoundingly defeated, though the term limit measure came closer to being approved than the others (30% in favour).

The background for the term limit proposal is the premiership of Jean-Claude Juncker, who served lasted for no less than 18 years before resigning in 2013 amidst a corruption and spying scandal (he went on to become EU Commission President). Following early elections, a new government formed which excluded Juncker’s party, CSV, from government for the first time since 1979. It is this government that initiated these constitutional amendment proposals.

Though being very common among (semi-)presidential countries, term limits are exceedingly rare among parliamentary systems; the only examples I know of are Thailand and South Africa.

[MSS adds: Perhaps also Botswana among parliamentary systems. In semi-presidential systems, there certainly are cases of term limits on the president, but I do not think there are any such limits on membership in the cabinet. We might also add here that, as far as I know, the only cases with term limits on legislators are all pure presidential systems–some Latin American countries, including Mexico, as well as the Philippines and some US states, including California.]

Vexing vexillological questions

New Zealand will go ahead with a referendum on its flag. In fact, two referenda, following a similar process to the electoral-system referenda that the country has held in 1992-93 and again in 2011: an initial selection from several choices, followed by a later binary choice between the status quo and the proposed change.* Both would be held in 2016. From ABC:

The first, at the end of next year, would ask the public to choose a preferred design from those selected by a panel of notable New Zealanders.

The second referendum would pit the winning new design against the current flag in 2016.

Stuff NZ has an image of one possible alternative, which retains the Southern Cross in addition to a fern. Another that is a silver fern on black has been widely discussed.**

The political parties will recommend members of “a cross-party panel”, and public consultations will follow, to select the options to be put to voters.

Questions for readers: Aside from the obvious (and, by all accounts, wildly successful) Canadian case, are there other democratic countries that have undertaken a major flag re-design?

There are, of course, numerous cases of authoritarian governments that have changed their country’s flag unilaterally. And, new democratic states have needed to adopt a flag (India, Israel, etc.). But ongoing democracies do not change their flags often. I can’t think of another case aside from Canada, but maybe someone else can.

An aside: is there any notable debate about the flag in Australia? Or other long-term democracies that anyone can report?

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* But apparently without the first referendum having a simple “keep or change” option in addition to a set of “change” possibilities. In the 2011 electoral-system referendum, the “keep MMP” option passed, rendering the choice among alternatives moot. Thus the second-stage referendum was not held, unlike 1992-93.

** Which, to me, looks too much like the national rugby team’s banner. Or that of ISIS.