Preference voting for El Sal?

The other day I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Juan Carlos Sanchez from the Foundation for the Study and Application of Law (FESPAD), a civil society organization that seeks to reform El Salvador’s electoral system.

He opened by arguing, quite bluntly, that El Salvador has “one of the worst electoral systems in Latin America.” To demonstrate this, he pointed to a number of specific facets of the system, such as the lack of absentee voting, the politicization of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the laissez-faire approach to parties and campaign regulation, and feckless mechanisms for enforcing the rules of the game.

What struck me most about Mr. Sanchez’s talk was what he did not address: the actual processes by which voter preferences are translated into political representation.

El Salvador utilizes a system of closed-list proportional representation (CLPR), a system known for encouraging strong, platform-oriented, but sometimes also deeply ideological and polarized parties, not unlike those found in El Salvador. Briefly, a closed list allows the party leadership to select candidates with little or no input from the electorate, while proportionality provides opportunities for parties to garner substantial representation without necessarily having to reach across the political aisle or even into the center aisle in order to acquire district-wide majorities/pluralities. While it must be recognized that the two main parties – Arena and FMLN - have made considerable strides in moderating themselves since the days of the civil war, they nevertheless remain deeply divided, so much so that many question whether they will uniformly recognize the legitimacy of a loss in the upcoming presidential election.

Of course, in a country where civil war wounds have not yet fully healed, and where substantial socioeconomic disparities remain a potent political reality, it would be silly to attribute full blame for the country’s polarized politics to its electoral institutions. Yet, it seems reasonable to begin to question the degree to which this system may be exacerbating, or at least failing to ameliorate, the nature and dynamics of existing political divisions.

To be sure, PR has its virtues and it has been proposed as a means to alleviate the effects of deeply divided societies in a number of contexts. However, such proposals are almost always tied to the caveat of parliamentarianism and the assumption of several relevant political parties - two additional factors that would presumably contribute a more conciliatory executive, legislative coalition building and, by extension, a more consociational political dynamic overall.

This model, however, does not reflect the political realities of El Salvador, where holdover Cold War manichaeism and deep class divisions have encouraged the emergence of two dominant parties, which are currently involved in a bitter, winner-take-all struggle for the powerful presidency.*

With this background in mind, I asked Mr. Sanchez whether anyone has ever recommended a move away from CLPR, towards a system that provides incentives for existing parties to moderate the selection of their candidates, and for individual candidates to soften their rhetoric, such as the Alternative Vote (AV) or the Single Transferable Vote (STV) (the latter would seem a more likely option for a country already accustomed to proportionality and multi-member districts). The virtue of these systems is that they allow voters to select not only their first choice, but their second, third, or however many candidates decide to run. If their first choice does not receive enough votes to win a seat, their second choice candidate then receives their vote. For this reason, AV and STV systems are both referred to as forms of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). This can create strong incentives for parties and candidates to attract votes outside their traditional base by moderating their platforms, campaigns, and rhetoric, as they begin to recognize the value of being voters’ “next-best choice.” Given that upwards of 14 percent of the electorate remains undecided going into tomorrow’s presidential election, it seems plausible that there is a substantial underrepresented “center,” whose voice could serve as a force of moderation if amplified through one of these preferential systems.  

To Mr. Sanchez’s knowledge, despite the near-universal recognition of the need for a less polarized political dynamic, no one has made such a recommendation. In fact, he confessed that he - ostensibly one of the foremost domestic experts on reforming the Salvadoran electoral system – was unaware of any electoral alternatives for diminishing polarization.

This response surprised me, and I was thus wondering if anyone out there on the “www” with knowledge of El Salvador or electoral systems has any insight with respect to this issue, especially since our computer time at the hotel is rationed, and opportunities for even basic research are extremely limited. Has anyone proposed a preferential model for El Salvador? Might it help temper the country’s polarized politics? Is it even a plausible option? To what degree are current power holders’ interests tied to existing procedures? Are there potential unintended consequences that one should consider? Might a simple shift from CLPR to open-list PR offer a less drastic means of achieving greater moderation, or might this have the opposite effect? Perhaps what is really needed is a focus on reforming the executive branch vis-a-vis other organs of the state, whether this means a move toward parliamentarianism or simply a curtailment of executive authority.

So many questions. With any hope, the conduct of the parties and their supporters during and after tomorrow’s election will make them all seem a little less relevant.

*Although the president of El Salvador is selected through a two-round system, which in other contexts has been credited for the success of more moderate candidates (according to the same logic of the aforementioned IRV systems). However, in tomorrow’s election, because none of the smaller parties have put forth candidates, it is understood that there will be no opportunity for a second round of voting.

Repairing Iraq’s party system

As I write, democracy assistance groups are helping lawmakers develop an electoral system for Iraq’s 18 governorate councils. Some creative electoral engineering could take the sectarian sting out of Iraq’s party system. One proposal worth serious thought is using the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) with open endorsements in governorate-wide districts.

Reuters last week claimed that “Iraq’s local elections could reshape power structure.”

Major players — such as the movement of populist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Sunni Arab tribal groups — will be competing for the first time and are expected to make gains at the expense of those now in power.

“New alliances will form, old ones will fall. Everything will change. It will redraw the political map of Iraq,” said a senior Shi’ite government official on condition of anonymity.

Really, Reuters means reshaping a balance of power, not an underlying power structure. A party system that continues to revolve around sects will not help consolidate Iraqi democracy. Luminaries from Lipset to Lijphart have taught that stable democratic politics are about more than race, religion or language.¹ The challenge is to get Iraqi elites talking about more than sectarian interest. What candidates need are incentives to cultivate a personal vote. Campaigns need to be about what’s-in-it-for-me: jobs, schools, roads and, as a colleague quipped, a shawarma machine in every kitchen.

Thankfully, beltway rumor has it that the chosen system will be candidate-centric. This is a major step away from the closed-list PR systems that blew open Pandora’s box in 2005.

That leaves us with a few basic options:²

First-past-the-post: As long as parties don’t control who gets on the ballot, this system might work. Yet the number of votes needed to win is fairly high, meaning current parties likely would fare best, unless there were numerous candidates in each district, in which case outcomes would be wildly unpredictable. Ultimately, the lack of reliable census data would make fair apportionment virtually impossible.

Open-list PR: Basically, the system modifies list PR so that voters control who ends up being a party’s most popular parliamentarian. While it gets around the apportionment problem, it is unlikely to change much. The list logic would preserve current parties, the logic of party discipline would remain the same, and we would expect the most popular person under such circumstances to be a sectarian leader.

STV: For all its virtues, this is not appropriate for the context. Illiteracy and innumeracy are likely to cause widespread voter error. The only way to get around the apportionment problem is to use one big district in each governorate. Can we really ask Iraqis to rank up to, say, 200 candidates?

Bloc vote: Two words. Palestine 2006.³

SNTV: With open endorsements, of course. If the parties controlled who got on the ballot, there would be little chance for a shawarma machine in every kitchen. The system would stimulate hyper-personalistic campaigns, party fragmentation and pork-barrel politics at its finest. On one hand, these are ugly dynamics. On the other, they’re just what are needed to break the grip of sect on Iraq’s party system.

Using SNTV in governorate-wide districts would obviate the apportionment problem. If each council were the cube root of its respective governorate’s population, council sizes (and district magnitudes) would hover around 100, meaning each candidate would need about only one percent of votes to win.⁴

Open endorsement SNTV is not a magic bullet. Its efficacy depends on federal-governorate linkages, ballot access rules and the (in)abilities of current parties to coordinate in local contests, to name just a few variables. Iraq nonetheless faces a tradeoff. As long as its electoral rules stimulate disciplined, programmatic parties, sect is likely to be the dominant cleavage. Legislative politics will remain zero-sum with negative implications for the country’s future. On one hand, electoral engineers can reinforce the nasty equilibrium that is Iraq’s party system. On the other, they can try to force it open by stimulating fragmentation and clientelism.

1. ADDENDUM 4/17: Some have read this sentence as my suggestion that the “luminaries” advocate pork-inducing systems in order to activate non-sectarian cleavages. That is not my intention. I drew on the “luminaries” for their emphasis on the importance of such cleavages.
2. Of course, varying factors like endorsement control, pooling, ballot access restrictions, and less feasibly, district magnitude give us far more permutations.
3. For two interpretations of this disaster, see F&V and FairVote.
4. Using data from FairVote.

Toward a more stable Italian left?

A quick thought on the Italian election¹.

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 division².

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 Communist³ 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.

1. Subject to revision based on exit polls to be consulted and a spreadsheet to be built.
2. Short description: the apparentement winning a plurality of votes is topped up to about 55% of seats in the Chamber. In the Senate, this “prize” is allocated at the level of the multi-member district corresponding to each region.
3. Capital “C” intended; PD’s Veltroni is a former Communist, at least nominally.

Russia’s wasted votes

By “wasted” I mean votes that do not elect. In the US, your vote is wasted if you cast it for a loser. In list PR systems, votes are wasted if cast for parties that don’t meet threshold.

From an extensive quantitative analysis of potential fraud in Russia’s recent election comes this tidbit:

And everybody not voting for the main line was discouraged to attend – there’s no reason to go if your vote will end up counted against your will because of the 7% barrier (if you voted for a party that didn’t pass it, your vote will go to the top contenders proportionally). Ballot stuffing is still there, but it probably plays a minor role here.

I take this to mean that the wasted votes were redistributed to effective parties in proportion to their pre-redistribution vote shares.

The effect of that would be to make effective parties look more popular than they actually were (depending on how results are reported).

Relying on Wikipedia’s English version of these official results, 7.2% of valid ballots were cast for parties under threshold. Not a huge boost for anyone – if redistribution is in fact what happens. It’s also possible that I’m misinterpreting the quotation.

Allawi: Take my district magnitude, please!

Former Iraqi PM Ayad Allawi has an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times calling for smaller electoral districts. Echoing others, Allawi argues the rushed use of closed-list proportional representation exacerbated Iraqi sectarianism.

Yet due largely to political pressure from the international community, the elections went ahead in January 2005, under a misguided “closed party list” system. Rather than choosing a specific candidate, voters across the country chose from among rival lists of candidates backed and organized by political parties. This system was entirely unsuitable given the security situation, the lack of accurate census figures, heavy intimidation from ethnic and religious militias, gross interventions by Iran, dismantled state institutions, and the use of religious symbols by parties to influence voters.

Accordingly, the vast majority of the electorate based their choices on sectarian and ethnic affiliations, not on genuine political platforms. Because many electoral lists weren’t made public until just before the voting, the competing candidates were simply unknown to ordinary Iraqis. This gave rise to our sectarian Parliament, controlled by party leaders rather than by the genuine representatives of the people. They have assembled a government unaccountable and unanswerable to its people.

The December 2005 elections went ahead with a slightly different system: closed lists in each of 19 governorates with a share of seats reserved for parties that could not muster enough support in any single governorate. The basic logic was the same, however: relatively large districts in which voters voted for party labels.

Adeed Dawisha and Larry Diamond argue in last year’s Electoral Systems and Democracy that both rounds entrenched “the logic of electoral politics as an identity referendum.” Closed-list PR was the rushed result of preoccupation with proportionality and fairness of apportionment in the absence of reliable census data. (Incidentally, the United States didn’t respect “one person, one vote” until the 1960s.) The December 2005 shift to governorates-as-districts was a so-so improvement essentially driven by the same concerns.

In the op-ed, Allawi calls for single-member districts or MMP. The key here is fostering crossover support among groups along other issue dimensions. STV might have been helpful, but as Dawisha and Diamond note, planners thought it would confuse voters. And it would have required planners to grapple with the need for census data – if equal population were that big a deal. After all, if the planners didn’t know how many of who lived where, how could anti-system critics have known?

Kyrgyz Power Play

The President of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced today that following the referendum approving a new constitution, he would dissolve parliament and call for new elections under the new electoral code.

Jack posted some thoughts on Sunday regarding the constitutional referendum in Kyrgyzstan. Bonnie Boyd over at the Foreign Policy Association’s Central Asia blog also provides some good commentary (Note: Anyone interested in Central Asia should regularly read Bonnie’s blog. She provides great coverage and analysis of all things Central Asia – economics, culture, foreign policy, politics, environment, etc. She’s much more than the one-trick pony than I am.)

I am a bit more skeptical about this power play by Bakiev than Jack. I think this is a pretty blatant move by Bakiev to reconsolidate power within the presidency. Bonnie notes that perhaps attempts to increase transparency may be more beneficial for increasing both political stability and economic growth. I think that is the wrong approach because the lack of transparency is rooted in the political structures of Kyrgyzstan. Unfortunately, the changes in the new constitution do little to address this fact. Instead, the new constitution will probably result in the consolidation of power by Bakiev and a more authoritarian-style of government. An argument could be made that a more authoritarian government that is more stable will provide better growth, but I will not be the one making it and I doubt it will do much for transparency either (not that Bonnie is arguing this either).

I think that three important points have been underplayed in the coverage of this story: the sitting parliament was corrupt / illegitimate, the weakness of parties is one of the major impediments to further democratization in Kyrgyzstan, and the institutions and rules established by the new constitution could be used by Bakiev to establish his own single-party dominant pseudo-democracy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kyrgyzstan votes in centralizing referendum

Kyrgyz voters today are considering a referendum to strengthen the executive and centralize legislative elections. President Bakiev aims to break gridlock by gaining control over the ousted Askar Akayev’s residuals in parliament.
Read the rest of this entry »

Backslide by the rule of law?

As Russia gears up for Duma elections on December 2, the opposition squeeze continues. What’s interesting: Putin’s use of institutional change to entrench a power grab. Term-limited, he cannot legally seek the presidency again. Rather than breaking the law, it seems, Putin plans to keep power by changing it.
Read the rest of this entry »