Tag: voting

An interesting point in The Telegraph (a week or so old, but I just came across it at EU Referendum.)

The EU textile quotas that are causing all this trouble lately were introduced in haste back in June. Viewed in the cold light of day, they were particularly badly implemented (leaving aside the fact that they were a stupid idea in the first place), and it might seem reasonable to try to reverse them.

The interesting issue, however, is Qualified Majority Voting. The regulation was passed under QMV, which requires 232 out of 321 votes, AND a majority of countries, AND countries constituting 62% of EU population. link

To have prevented the measure would, therefore, have required 89 out of 321 votes, or countries constituting 39% of EU population. To reverse the measure now, however needs 232 votes and 62% of population – vastly more than would have served to block it in the first place. The unwise decision, therefore, is practically set in stone.

While I’ve looked at organisational features before, this implication of “supermajority” type voting hadn’t occured to me. In general, since I see legislative productivity as a bad thing, making it more difficult to pass legislation (via things like QMV) would strike me as beneficial. But this “trap” effect of supermajority votes could have nasty side-effects. If it is very much harder to reverse a measure than prevent it, there is greater incentive to use deceit or panic to achieve political aims. In an ordinary-majority system, it is still easier to prevent measures than reverse them, but a body “insulted” by being bamboozled by a minority into passing what it later regards as a bad law is likely to take revenge by reversing it.

But with supermajority voting, even a majority will be unable to do so. When combined with the lack of popular oversight and accountability of the EU institutions, that produces a huge incentive for dishonesty, artificial hysteria and generally bad politics.

About 2.5% of voters believed strongly enough that the UK should be independent that they voted UKIP. (I don’t have final figures yet).

That’s disappointing — I had hoped for something like twice that — but it’s still significant. Look at the seats that the Conservatives could have won with UKIP’s votes:

From Labour:

Battersea
Crawley
Dartford
Gillingham
Harlow
High Peak
Hove
Medway
Portsmouth North
Sittingbourne & Sheppey
Staffordshire Moorlands
Stourbridge
Stroud
Thanet South
Warwick & Leamington
Watford

From the Liberal Democrats:

Carshalton & Wallington
Eastleigh
Hereford
Romsey
Solihull
Somerton & Frome
Taunton
Torbay
Westmorland & Lonsdale

That wouldn’t have changed the overall outcome, but it would have left Tony Blair with a very slim majority, and the Liberal Democrats with practically no gains since 2001. These votes are there for the taking: when are the Conservatives (or Labour) going to pick them up?

Update: Harlow gets added to the list. A pro-independence Conservative party could probably have cut Labour’s majority to 34.

The Talk Politics blog criticises Lib Dem John Hemming’s attempt to bring greater control (at the last moment) to postal votes.

It doesn’t take a political genius to work out the consequences of allowing political parties to scrutinise applications for postal votes. Within a given district or ward, political parties are well aware of the likely levels of support both for themselves and for their opponents and equally that, if denied a postal vote, a proportion of those applicants will ultimately not vote at all. Far from scrutinising applications in the interests of preventing fraud, which is of course in the public interest, its inevitable that political parties will use the scrutiny process in their own interests by seeking, wherever possible, to depress the turnout in areas where they know their opponents are strong. It’s a system that’s intrinsically open to abuse and, frankly, crying out to be ‘worked’ for every political advantage it could possibly yield which mean, inevitably, that that is exactly what will happen.

How does he think parties will be able to depress turnout? The only way would be by pointing out that some postal vote applications are invalid – either the applicant is not entitled to vote, or the application has not been made by the ostensible applicant. In either of these cases identifying the problem would be a good thing.

This is an instance of the general fallacy of the undesirability of “partisanship” or “adversarialism”. If something should be found out, the best person to find it out is the person with an interest in it being found. A neutral party is needed to decide whether the accusation is justified, but the neutral or disinterested cannot be trusted to make proper
investigation.

The strength of our voting system is not that it is in the hands of the disinterested, but that it is visible to every interested party, who can verify that they are being treated fairly. The problem with postal voting is not that there are fewer “official” checks, but that it takes the whole process out of public view, where interested parties can no longer exert oversight. Whatever his
motives or faults, Hemming is right to attempt to repair that.

Related:
Voting Fraud

I’m well used to spin and deceit from politicians, and I tolerate it.
When I read in 2002 that “Saddam Hussein could be months away from developing a nuclear bomb if he can find a source of weapons-grade material, according to Western intelligence estimates.” I knew an attempt was being made to mislead me. This is normal.

Some misleading statements are lies which are difficult to prove wrong. Some (like the above) are true, but give a false impression. (The trick there is, as I wrote at the time, that just about anyone could produce a nuclear bomb in a few months if given the weapons-grade material). Some are things that could be true in rare and unlikely circumstances.

But how can anyone say “Overall, the postal voting system is no more prone to fraud than other electoral systems.” That is a simple claim of fact that is obviously and provably wrong. I consider it far more a disqualification for office than any of the usual “Blair lied” episodes.

Just seen make my vote count, a campaign for PR, via the General Election blog

I was about to sign myself up to its petition, but I saw a (random) quote at the top of the page referring admiringly to the Jenkins Report.

The Jenkins Report was the stitch-up that came up with the absurd “AV Plus” voting system, one carefully tailored to change a two-party system into a three-party system while minimising the danger of allowing voters real choice. (This is the system that is used for the London Assembly).

That puts supporters of democracy in the age-old bind: support a measure (AV+), which, while an improvement on the status quo, falls short of what is needed, or persist with the indefensible in the hope that it improves the chances that the “right” answer will become available.

In most cases, a step in the right direction makes further steps easier (see this paper by Eugene Volokh). On this basis, I support incremental tax cuts, deregulation, “civil libertarian” freedoms, even if they fall far short of what I would like to see. But in this case there seems to me a danger that the adoption of AV+ would mark “end of debate” of our voting system. The chief enemy in the struggle is boredom: most people are not interested. To go through a campaign, a referendum, and a major electoral change, and then tell the bored masses “actually, this still isn’t what we want, now let’s change it again to STV”, is to invite scorn and stubbornness.

I think I will probably have to support MMVC anyway. If it gets any momentum it will bore people whether it succeeds or fails, so it might as well succeed. There’s still the chance of getting a better system than AV+ into the debate, and most importantly, I don’t see any other realistic strategy for getting to STV.

Related previous articles:

Protest Votes and Fringe Parties
Bypassing Grassroots
Electoral Metaphysics

The Register reports a survey of attitudes to voting fraud.

The good news: a majority express concern about voting by SMS or email. It’s actually worrying that only 66% would be concerned about email-voting, but at least it’s a clear majority.

The bad news: “nearly 60%” believe that identity cards would be a solution for electoral fraud.

Now, it is possible for me to vote fraudulently by turning up at polling station and claiming to be someone else. But for that one fraudulent vote, I’m taking the risk of being noticed by someone who recognises me, or by someone who would recognise the person I’m claiming to be, or that the person I’m claiming to be has already voted, or that the person will try to vote later, which I might get away with, but which would at least raise suspicion. If I’m an eligible voter myself, I would be well advised to make my legitimate vote in a different polling station, which would entail some travelling. That’s a lot of work and risk for one crooked vote. I’m sure it happens, but not on any scale.

In the traditional UK system, every single step of the process is open to the public and visible, except for the voter marking the paper.

That’s actually really surprising. I can watch in my local polling stations as voters ask for ballot papers, are given them, hide in a booth to mark them, come out and put them in a box. I can watch the box all day. I can see the box carried to the counting room, and stand on the balcony as counters take the papers out of the boxes and sort them into piles. I don’t have to trust anyone else to oversee the process, it’s all there for me (or any other voter or candidate) to check.

The manual system is vulnerable to small human errors and small opportunistic fraud. It is totally immune to large systematic fraud, because that is bound to attract attention. In Bruce Schneier’s terminology, the system is resilient, despite being imperfect. The security protecting postal or electronic voting, conversely, is brittle: when it breaks, it breaks badly.

Related Links:

Schneier on voting
Schneier describes resilient and brittle security
No2ID

A few ideas to bring together on dealing with a first-past-the-post electoral system.

Assuming you’re not one of the few lucky people who have a major party that
shares your policies, you have several choices:

• Ignore politics (most popular option by a long, long way)
• Vote for the party nearest your views and count that as enough
• Vote tactically against the party furthest from your views and count that as enough
• Spoil your ballot in an attempt to show disaffection
• Vote for the major party most likely to change the voting system
• Join the party nearest your views and try to move it in your direction
• Support a minor party in the hope it will become a major party
• Support a minor party in the hope it will affect the policies of the major party.

I would have thought the above list was exhaustive, but a new tactic has been introduced:

• Vote tactically against the major party you’re closest to in the hope of affecting its policies

The first five are working with the parties as they are — either making the best of what’s
offered or attempting to change the voting system.

The next three attempt to change the political shape within the same system.

The only recent UK example of a minor party getting anywhere near becoming major is the SDP, which was formed by disaffected Labour MPs in the 1980s, won a few seats and eventually merged with the Liberal Party to form the current Liberal Democratic Party. The last new major party before that was the Labour Party.

click here for the rest of the article…

Fascinating interview with Oona King MP in the Evening Standard.

See her last comment, referring to the threat to her seat from Respect candidate George Galloway:

“He can bluff and bluster as much as he wants,” she says. “At the end of the day [if he is voted in] he will never persuade the Treasury to spend an extra ten pence in Tower Hamlets because he has no influence at all. And that worries many local people.”

We are familiar with the idea — “pork-barrel politics” as they call it in the States — that the role of an elected representative is to bring government money to their constituency (although a different term would be more suitable to King’s 55,000 Bangladeshi constituents).

This goes beyond that. She is implying that a Labour Government would punish the voters of Bethnal Green for not voting Labour.

This is not a particular criticsim of Oona King, who is gaining a reputation for saying things better left unsaid. There are, after all, better reasons for voting against George Galloway than the government’s blackmail. The blackmail is the effect of a centralised state controlling 40% of the economy. (In this country, even money spent by local authorities is mainly effectively controlled by Westminster).

We have only one vote for the government of this country. If we use up our vote in an attempt to influence the redistribution of wealth, we have no vote left with which to express our views about war, freedom, security, or the ever-vexed issue of school dress codes. That itself is a reason for separation of economy and state.

Labour elite join pre-election rush for safe seats — Guardian

41 sitting Labour MPs are standing down at the next election. No big deal. 14 of the 41 have made the announcements too late for their constituency Labour parties to carry out their own selection procedures — with the result that the national party gets to pick the shortlist. The implication is that most of the 14 have delayed their announcement deliberately to move this power from local parties to the national party.

I can’t see how this would not be resented by Labour party branch members. For the Labour Party to repeatedly pull this stunt on them, either they must put up with it, or the national Party doesn’t care whether they put up with it or not. Either way, the situation indicates a great decrease in the significance of the Labour Party’s rank and file membership.

There is an inevitable, and universal, tension between party leadership and part grass-roots. The leadership want to get elected, and are willing to compromise their platform in order to gain power. The activists are also in favour of winning elections, but are likely to be much less willing to move to the political centre. A strong grass-roots organisation forcing the party away from the centre is an electoral liability.

Historically, the importance of the party membership has been in campaigning and fundraising. These tasks have been diminished by the rise of television and corporatism — if the party leadership can talk directly to the electorate, with money taken from industry (or, one day, state funds), the grass roots lose their traditional role.

The mass party is still essential in another role — one that used to be done so well that it wasn’t noticed, but is becoming difficult for modern diminished parties to fulfill. The party leadership is drawn from the rank and file. The Labour Party is still just about able to lay hands on sufficient high-calibre individuals to fill the front bench, and this is now proving one of its key advantages over the Opposition. Blair, Brown, Straw, Blunkett — whatever their faults, these are intelligent people, capable of managing underlings and gaining respect.

That generation, however, joined the Labour Party in the 1970s, when selecting candidates and electing the NEC made the party membership more important, and presumably made membership of the party more fulfilling.

It may be that the old route — party member to councillor (or trade union official) to MP to senior figure — might be replaced by a career path that winds through the party headquarters: researcher, media advisor, policy advisor, whatever. It seems unlikely that this could provide as large a pool of potential candidates to draw on as did the constituency committees of old. What is the Labour leader of 2020 doing today?

The main political news at the moment is the Government’s attempt to pass a controversial Anti-Terrorism bill through both houses of Parliament. It’s in a bit of a hurry — Blair wants the new law in force by Monday.

I’ve already stated my position on the law itself, but the spectacle of legislative process at full throttle raises other issues.

Parliament has a certain amount of time available to debate laws. It uses all of it. Also, at the end of every legislative session, there are usually laws that haven’t been passed because there wasn’t time.

Now, how many laws should be passed? Given that we get as many laws as possible, to the very limit of the time available, there is no reason to believe that the level of legislative production is exactly the ideal level. The behaviour of Parliament suggests that they think we need many, many more laws, but there just isn’t time.

If this is what they think, and they are right, we should surely be looking at some constitutional reform to allow more laws to be passed than is possible currently. To some extent, the addition of extra layers of government — regional and European — provides this opportunity, but I’ve never heard them advocated in these terms.

I suspect this is because no-one really believes that what this country needs is higher legislative production. But that leads to the question: if we don’t need more laws than Parliament has time for, why does Parliament pack as many as possible into the time it has?

I believe that it does so because it is in the interest of politicians and bureaucrats to personally pass as much legislation as they can, independent of the interests of the public.

What are the effects of this conflict of interest?

First, obviously, that we get more laws than we really need. We could manage without a law to make it illegal to tidy up the countryside without a license.

Second, less obviously, there is less scrutiny than there should be of laws. This gives enormous power to the government and Civil Service, as they can “scale up” their resources without limit to the level of legislative production, and Parliament can not increase its “quality control” function to match.

What applies to Parliament, applies even more strongly to the public as a whole. If Parliament considered one bill per month, we could all hear about it and form an opinion. At the rate of legislation actually in force, only a specialist can even know what laws are being considered at a given time. If you are affected by a proposed bill, it takes time to gather a grass-roots campaign to influence it. At the present hectic rate of legislation, you do not have time to do this.

The legislative sprint is anti-democratic in another way. Because Parliament as a whole is trying to pass as many laws as it can, any attempt to modify a bill is resisted, not just by those who actively support the particular bill, but by the others who have no strong opinion, but do not want to “waste time” on your objections because of the knock-on effect on the schedules of other bills.

I think this is one of the problems we are seeing in the EU legislature with the software patent situation.

But this effect reaches a whole new level in the European Parliament, because of the rules governing it. Where, as in this case, the Council adopts a proposal different from that adopted by the Parliament on first reading, Parliament is assumed to approve the changes, unless it finds time within a three-month period to disagree! This truly is a revolution in legislative productivity. Imagine if, say, the US Senate worked under this rule. Rather than have to find time to pass the laws you want to pass, all laws will automatically pass except the ones you find time to oppose.

This obviously gives even more power to whoever arranges the Parliament’s business.

One other obsolete obstacle to legislative productivity is the “quorum”. In most debating chambers, a minimum number of members are needed to approve a measure. Once again, the EU throws off these shackles, with another innovative rule. In the EU Parliament, a minimum number of members are needed to stop a measure! If less than half the members oppose the bill, it passes, even if nobody supports it, and even if the Parliament has already rejected it once on first reading.

Oh, and all this will stay exactly the same if the proposed constitution is passed.

(p. 117 of this document)

Update: Matthew Yglesias makes a very similar point about the US legislative process.