Another candidate-centric Iraq proposal

Via POMED comes a call by Scott Carpenter and Michael Rubin for MMP in Iraq’s governorates. A candidate-centric system, they argue, could dampen sectarian tension by weakening the party system.

Reforming Iraq’s election system on the national level will be difficult… At the local level, however, there is real opportunity… Iraqis should have the right to vote for the best individuals to administer governorates and sit on district councils. The country need not abandon parties or proportional representation, but lawmakers could explore an open-list system that would allow citizens to vote for people they know. Even better would be a mixed system, such as the one practiced in Germany, which combines party lists with the ability to elect individuals.

More on the rationale:

“[Adopting list PR for national elections] was a fateful decision. Rather than vote for individuals, Iraqis voted for political parties, whose leaders compiled lists of candidates. In descending order, one candidate would enter parliament for every 31,000 votes the party received. Under this system, aspiring politicians owed their future not to voters but to the party leaders who compiled the lists. Instead of encouraging Iraqi politicians to debate security, sewage and schooling, the party-slate system encouraged them to engage in the most extreme sectarian or ethno-nationalist rhetoric to prove their mettle to party leaders. Those who preached tolerance or voiced more technocratic concerns found themselves at the bottom of lists.

I have been making the same basic argument since April. The parties are the problem. Institutional choices made in 2005 largely caused them. Present institutional design efforts in the governorates are an opportunity to work on the problem. The system implemented must be highly candidate-centric.

To make that system work, federalism has to be strong enough to put a premium on governorate elections. And to keep federalism from ripping the country apart, there must be inter-governorate revenue sharing.

I applaud Carpenter and Rubin’s careful thinking about an important detail that most democracy promoters ignore. At the same time, open-endorsement SNTV remains preferable to their proposals.

Open-list proportional representation only mildly puts the candidate ahead of the party. Even though one votes for an individual entrepreneur, co-partisans depend on his or her performance for their own chances at winning seats. Open-list PR does not adequately dampen the incentive to run as a team.

Mixed-member proportional representation is problematic for theoretical and implementation reasons alike. One, it requires drawing single-member districts. Those presumably need to be of equal population. Even if the census data existed to allow equal population districts – it does not – districting would raise lots of different questions about gerrymandering (Does the way districts are drawn “naturally” advantage certain groups? Are the districts drawn purposely to do so? Et cetera.)

On the theoretical side, the nominal tier would have to be much larger than the list tier. That is, the proportion of seats elected in districts would have to overwhelm those elected from lists. Otherwise the ‘list logic’ of campaigning that the writers identify would again dominate.

Carpenter and Rubin are thinking in the right terms. Their proposal, however, should be more practical and ambitious. SNTV gets around the districting headaches while even more radically “put[ting] the people ahead of the party bosses.”

H/T to POMED’s Andrew Albertson.

Georgia result

Via IFES, the AP reports “a nearly complete vote count from Wednesday’s election indicates Saakashvili’s party will hold about 120 of the Parliament’s 150 seats.”

Last week I wrote that electoral “reforms” in Georgia were not actually reformist. While March legislation lowered the threshold for entering parliament from 7 to 5 percent, simultaneous decreases in the total number of seats and proportion of them elected under PR would be new hurdles for small parties. Reform, in other words, would benefit Saakashvili, not his opponents.

Now the main opposition party is threatening to boycott its mere 14 seats. Coverage of protests keeps pointing at fraud, but the electoral rules appear to have been the main source of opposition squeeze.

Glancing at preliminary results from the nominal tier, the ruling United National Movement is the clear leader in most districts. Yet it frequently has less than a majority, and other parties sometimes have sizable vote shares. In the list tier, the UNM is reported to have won 61 percent of votes.

Recall that one “reform” reduced the share of PR seats from 100 to 75. If one considers that no election was held under original provisions for the 150-member parliament, “reform” actually reduced the PR share from 150 of 235 seats at the 2004 election to 75 of 150 today.

The net effect of “reform” was less proportional representation and more first-past-the-post, regardless of what Saakashvili did to the PR threshold. That’s how he’s winning 80 percent of seats on 61 percent of votes.

Georgia votes: lower threshold but lower magnitude

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.