The Democratic Piece

RFE/RL optimistically reports that Georgian president Saakashvili has reduced the threshold from 7 to 5 percent for the list tier of that country’s parliamentary elections. Of course, today’s elections are for a much smaller parliament with far fewer seats elected under PR rules than in 2004. Despite the optimism, this probably will result in a smaller opposition seat share.

Since winning reelection, a seemingly humbled Saakashvili has taken pains to show that he understands the mood of both the electorate and the opposition, enacting a series of electoral reforms his supporters say are meant to boost confidence in the elections.

What “humbled” Saakashvili was his “close call in [a] snap presidential election four months ago,” according to the news service. Yet he won with over 53 percent, 18 points ahead of the runner-up. Such is his standard for competitiveness.

As usual, the details of the new system depend on the source. The overall picture since 2004 is fewer seats in general and fewer elected proportionally.

According to the electoral law, last updated 17-12-07, 50 members are elected in single-member districts and 100 are elected from party lists (Art. 91). The threshold was 7 percent, and seat allocation is by Hare quota with largest remainder (Art. 105).

IFES’ Election Guide says the 2004 elections proceeded with 75 single-member districts, 150 list seats and 10 seats reserved to “displaced persons.” Via ACE Project, the same organization says this is the system in place. The 2008 Election Guide entry, however, reports a 150-seat parliament with 75 list and 75 district seats. That is consonant with RFE/RL’s report and others.

Angus-Reid has a good description of the politics of the electoral law. Saakashvili’s allies in parliament approved the 75-75 system on March 21, with opposition leaders balking in favor of the 50-100 system, which is the one on the books as published.

Reuters, via the Washington Post, says opposition leaders accuse the president of “rigging” the elections. More problematic than outright fraud, it seems, is a lack of basic agreement (even clarity?) on the details of seat allocation.

It flies in the face of cynical reason to think the president would increase opposition prospects in response to his own electoral “close call.” More important than reducing the threshold to 5 percent, an opposition-inclusive reform, is reducing the PR tier from 150 to 75 seats, which is opposition-exclusive. A glance at the 2004 results-by-region at Electoral Geography shows why. Saakashvili’s National Movement polled an average 69.4 percent. The median share for his party was 71.8 percent. The overall effect of “reform,” I suspect, will be to further weaken opposition. The more small districts, the more seats for Saakashvili. Reducing average district magnitude is what matters here. Lowering the threshold is an empty gesture.

According to her own advisers, Hillary can’t win even by changing the rules:

In a Clinton campaign conference call with reporters on Wednesday, three top advisers acknowledged that even if all the delegates from disputed primaries in Michigan and Florida were seated at the Democratic convention, Mrs. Clinton would still not have enough delegates to claim the nomination.

Phil Singer, a spokesman for the campaign, estimated that in a best-case event, where the Michigan and Florida delegates were apportioned according to each state’s popular vote, Mrs. Clinton would still be about 100 delegates shy of the number needed. Delegates in those states have not been counted, the penalty for holding early primaries.

So it’s difficult to see where she has a case to stay in the race (I’m a rapper) if she can’t even win via a coup d’etat.

Monday’s Supeme Court upholding of Indiana’s voter ID law deserves comment on a blog about comparative democracy.

The short story: you cannot vote in Indiana unless you present valid, state- or federal-issued photo identification. The longer version: there is a fairly narrow list of accepted forms. If you don’t have one, you can fill out a provisional ballot and sign an affidavit as to your identity. If you want that vote to count, you have to go to the county seat within 10 days and sign another affidavit.

I have nothing against voter ID, even if solves a problem that doesn’t really exist. Except for people who don’t want their pictures taken, there nothing intrinsically wrong with voter ID…

…as long as the state accepts responsibility for issuing IDs to all citizens in an equal and accessible manner.

The social inequality of the policy as-is will be clear to anyone with SES columns in his spreadsheet. To vote without ID, you need a car and/or public transportation and considerable free time to dance with bureaucracy. To get a free ID, you need a car and/or public transportation and a valid birth certificate, which, if you don’t have one, means you need a car and/or public transportation and the free time to go get all this stuff.

This certainly will not increase turnout in the world’s most low-turnout established democracy. Especially among the poor and elderly - those without cars, mobility, free time, money or jobs that give them time to vote.

But these old arguments will be familiar to TDP’s Americanist audience. Rather than rehash the projected effects and underlying methodologies, I want to make three comparative points.

One. If the US constitution contained an equal and affirmative right to vote, no amount of judicial balancing would have produced this outcome. Unlike in the world’s other, established democracies, no such right exists. As such, SCOTUS has opened the door to similar policies in states itching to promulgate them.

Two. Even right-to-vote countries risk social inequality spilling over into political inequality. That’s why Canada’s electoral management body goes to people’s houses registering voters. With its policy of compulsory voting, Australia is similarly proactive about filling its rolls.

Three. Some say voting is a right, not a responsibility. If you want to vote, get off your lazy duff and make the preparations. That argument is a mask - one that secures buy-in among libertarian-oriented masses - for systemic efforts to steal elections where technology and learning make overt fraud obsolete. Around the world, parallel vote counts and international pressure have forced authoritarian leaders to “upgrade” their methods. By squeezing participation, restrictive electoral laws let dictators steal elections long before election day. As the number of competitive federal jurisdictions in America drops, state-level entry barriers make electoral conclusions more foregone in all but the most competitive years.

American democracy will survive voter ID, but it’s a step in the authoritarian direction. The short-term solution is affirmative state action to issue those IDs. In the long term, we need a federally guaranteed, equal right to vote.

A quick thought on the Italian election.

There is reason to believe we are witnessing a seismic shift in the Italian party system. The next time a center-left coalition comes to power, it has a good shot at finishing its term.

Division on the Italian left has been persistent. While more extreme factions were not the most proximate cause of Prodi’s most recent fallen government, the outgoing PM had been governing by confidence votes in order to squelch ideological polarization in his coalition. Indeed it was the Communist Refoundation Party that brought down Prodi’s last government in 1998. Speaking at the Brookings Institution on April 10, La Stampa’s Maurizio Molinari noted moderate/extreme leftist compromise had been a staple since 1921 and perhaps as far back as 150 years. Many locals during my trip to Italy last month told me the electoral law, which centers on a “majoritarian prize,” was una truffa [a scam] designed by Berlusconi to exploit the left’s internal division.

Berlusconi’s anticipated victory in both houses may belie growing unity on the left. MSS in the comments of his blog suggests this second election under majoritarian rules has reduced the number of parties in Italy. And Tom Round in the same notes no Communist was elected to either house for the first time in a very long time. Where did the hard left go?

Walter Veltroni’s decision to shut the hard left out of his apparentement was telling. At Brookings, Molinari pressed the historical significance of the decision to stop accommodating this faction. While doing so hurt Veltroni’s (not very good) chance of winning in the short term, it may mean more cohesive leftist governments in the long term, under two conditions:

1) Voters did and will continue to strategically desert hard left factions for the center-left;

2) Veltroni’s decision to marginalize the hard left sticks.

Berlusconi has long stressed how his “majority prize” electoral system is meant to bring Italy closer to a two-party system. Scam or not, maybe it will.

The Washington Post recently posted a story detailing what appears to be the beginnings of Mugabe’s post-election crackdown. The money quotes from the lede:

President Robert Mugabe’s government raided the offices of the main opposition movement and rounded up foreign journalists Thursday in an ominous indication that he may use intimidation and violence to keep his grip on power.

Police raided a hotel used by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and ransacked some of the rooms. Riot police also surrounded another hotel housing foreign journalists, and took away several of them, according to a man who answered the phone there.

It looks like it is on. Although it seemed that there may have been some small hope about Mugabe walking away given the latest reports, that hope was always fleeting. It isn’t in Mugabe’s character to be strong armed out of a country. To stay and fight, he must be fairly confident that he has enough of the security apparatus behind him to force the result he wants.

At this point, there is little the U.S. or many countries besides those that surround Zimbabwe can do. If there is hope for a transition, moves must come from either South Africa and part of the Zimbabwean security services. If there is not a split in the regime, there is almost no hope for a peaceful end to this. Good luck to everyone inside Zimbabwe - may this struggle soon be over and your country cleansed of Mugabe.

Following Danielle’s piece yesterday on the early unofficial returns from the Presidential election, I just saw a post on Foreign Policy about Mugabe’s potential resignation. As FP mentions, the NYTimes article seems to be sourced well; however, any potential deal could fall apart in moments.

As an interesting side note, I work for an international NGO that supports civil society groups in Zimbabwe. My coworker who focuses on Africa informed me that she had heard from sources within Zimbabwe that Robert Mugabe had left Zimbabwe for Malaysia as a safety precaution. However, I have not seen this mentioned outside opposition newspapers and news sources (take with a grain of salt).

On February 1, the National Republican Congressional Committee revealed “irregularities” in its accounting practices. Wachovia Bank, which had made a $9 million loan to the NRCC in 2006, was notified and the FBI called in to investigate. Over the past four years, it was discovered, the NRCC treasurer Christopher J. Ward had funneled as much as $1 million of the NRCC’s funds to other political committees and, perhaps, campaign accounts; “dozens” of which he oversaw as treasurer. How was this permitted to happen?

According to the Federal Elections Commission’s rules, summarized in this Post article, “Campaign committees are not required by law to perform an internal audit each year… But most corporations and large campaign committees do perform regular reviews to ensure their numbers match the reports they file with the FEC.” Reporting inaccurate numbers to the FEC is, indeed, a violation of FEC rules and so punishable by fine.

Recognizing that under these rules organizations with sound accounting practices could be penalized due to the illegal actions of an individual staff member, the FEC issued a “Statement of Policy” in May 2007 entitled: “Safe Harbor for Misreporting Due to Embezzlement.” This document proposes a set of guidelines that, if followed, could absolve organizations of liability for inaccurate reporting. The guidelines are mostly commonsensical in nature, suggesting for example that bank accounts be opened in the organization’s name and that no single individual both “[receive] incoming checks and [monitor] all other incoming receipts.”

Bresnahan and O’Conner write at Politico that Rob Kelner, a lawyer hired by the NRCC to oversee its internal investigation, “admitted that the NRCC — which had not done a legitimate financial audit since 2001 — lacked some of the basic internal financial controls laid out by the FEC. Instead, he said, Ward was solely responsible for tracking much of the money that flowed through the committee.” Under Representatives Tom Davis and Thomas Reynolds, the NRCC relaxed other regulations, including a requirement that the executive committee sign off on expenditures exceeding $10,000.

The decision to reduce regulatory oversight was undoubtedly driven by the desire to increase electoral competiveness. With financial controls resting in the hands of a single individual, money could be rapidly disbursed to needy campaigns. Of course, this advantage comes with disadvantages that Christopher J. Ward, buoyed by his penchant for creative art (i.e. forging audit documents), was able to exploit.

New NRCC Chairman Tom Cole, claiming “we were the victims here,” hopes that the FEC will be swayed by the NRCC’s efforts to come clean and refrain from slapping the NRCC with a harsh fine. I beg to differ, not because I’m not a Republican, but because regulation – enforcement of the rules of the game – is what makes the U.S. political system function as well as it does (or as poorly, if you want to be negative about it). The NRCC tried to gain an electoral advantage – against the FEC’s recommendations – and got burned by one of their own good ole’ boys, resulting in the NRCC’s violation of FEC rules. “I told you so” should be the refrain of the FEC.

On a final note, Cleta Mitchell, a campaign finance lawyer for a number of Republican campaign committees, remarked of the people at the NRCC: “They’re not businesspeople… They won’t spend a dime on management.” Does Ms. Mitchell know that she’s working for the party of “small government?”

Tensions are rising in Zimbabwe ahead of Saturday’s presidential elections. For those of us who have not been following (and I wasn’t until Tom Melia gave each member of our class ZWD$10,000,000 - for use before June 30th only), Zimbabweans will go to the polls to choose between three candidates in what will hopefully be the country’s most free and fair elections to date. The favorite, of course, still has to be Robert Mugabe, who has led the governing party, Zanu-PF, since the 1980s. Per Freedom House, 2006 was a bad year for opponents of Mugabe, who faced increasing repression, and Zimbabweans altogether, whose economy has rendered my ZWD$10,000,000 worth little more than 30 cents - and that only temporarily.

But the Zimbabwean political terrain has undergone some interesting changes over the past few weeks. Simba Makoni, a former finance minister and member of the Zanu-PF politburo, recently announced that he will run against Mugabe in the presidential election. Makoni has the support of a sizable faction within Zanu-PF, and it remains to be seen how this very public split in the party will impact not only the elections, but the future capacity of the party to maintain a united facade.

Meanwhile, as Mugabe remains preoccupied with Makoni, Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC have found more room to manuever. Tsvangirai supporters have been wearing campaign t-shirts, illegal in the past, and have been carrying neat little flyers that fold into little red cards that symbolize the ejection of Mugabe from the political pitch. As the BBC profile link above clearly suggests, Tsvangirai is no George Washington. However, the hope is that he’s no Robert Mugabe either and that the balance of competition between MDC and Zanu-PF will compel Zimbabwean politicians to be more accountable for their actions.

Whether or not the elections will be allowed to run their course is another unknown. Events over the past week suggest that Mugabe may be preparing to save his presidency the old-fashioned way. Yesterday, the MDC accused the government of printing 3 million excess ballots and over 600,000 mail-in ballots for just a few thousand soldiers and police officers who work away from home. Today, an MDC candidate and his adviser were arrested while picking up campaign materials.

The likelihood of a candidate gaining a majority in Saturday’s vote appear slim, so we could be headed for a runoff. It’s going to be a long next week in Zimbabwe and it could be a very long election season.

I have some photos online. They are from a recent trip to Italy. It happily coincided with local elections and national campaigns leading up to April 13, 2008.

Some highlights: prominent graffiti, social and ideological cleavages, localism, relative messaging strategies and the adoption of themes like “security” and “yes, we can.” Berlusconi’s characterization of “the left” is especially interesting in light of how Prodi’s government fell. (Good photos of that at Spiegel Online.)

Thanks to Nick S. for the camera work.

Update: To see the captions, don’t view in slide show mode.

I am leaving Pakistan in a few hours and I can honestly say that I am glad came. The election was a clear success and exceeded nearly everyone’s expectations. This may seem like a bold statement so let me justify it. First, President Musharraf mobilized the military and the police to allow for a peaceful election even though he knew it was likely to spell the end of his political career. Indeed, voters soundly rejected Musharraf’s regime. Second, voters broadly accepted the results. Thus, by and large, Pakistanis view the election to be a legitimate one. For those of you who are still skeptical, the Karachi Stock Exchange gained 3% today and the Rupee appreciated slightly against the Dollar. This is a clear vote of confidence from investors. Yesterday was a good day for Pakistan and a good day for democracy. The Pakistanis deserve a break and it seems as if they have received one.

On a personal note, the folks at Democracy International did an outstanding job and I would like to sincerely thank them for their efforts. The tight time line and the security situation made this an incredibly difficult election to monitor credibly. Nevertheless, they did their best to ensure this could happen and they succeeded. I am proud to have been a member of the delegation.

Finally, I must stress that these are my thoughts, not the position of Democracy International.