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.

London elections

London, England had local elections on May 1. As far as local elections go, the city has quite an interesting set-up.

The mayor is elected using the supplemental vote, which is a cruddy variant of IRV. Voters get two choices. If no candidate has a majority of first choices, the top two compete in an instant runoff of sorts.

All the other candidates are eliminated but the second choice votes on their ballot papers are reviewed. If they are for either of the top two candidates these votes are added to their totals.

The candidate with the most first and second choice votes wins. If there is a tie then the Greater London Returning Officer draws lots.

The 25-member assembly is elected under MMP: 14 seats in single-member plurality districts, 11 from party lists.

Some are upset that proportional representation let the British National Party win a seat, but that’s no reason to toss out the baby with the bath water. Undesirable causes can prevail under any voting system, and PR also lets forces for good win seats where they might not otherwise. As the Make Votes Count campaign notes:

However, the way the London Assembly elections work has also given anti-racist campaigners the opportunity to organise, campaign and get out the vote in their own areas, in an effort to push up turnout and raise the threshold needed for the BNP to gain seats. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the message that votes in the London Assembly London-wide Members ballot in effect counted twice – once for the party they support, and once against the BNP – motivated numbers of people who otherwise may not have voted to make the trip to their polling station.

Albania goes proportional

Albania this week scrapped its mixed-member system in favor of proportional representation. According to the IHT (above, as well as PressTV and Balkan Insight), the new system looks like some form of list-PR with seats allocated at the regional level. There are 12 administrative regions.

According to ACE Project, the old system was MMP with 100 single-member districts and 40 seats in the proportional tier. The IPU says a two-round system was used in the single-seat districts. PR seats were allocated to parties clearing 2 percent in the first round.

On the other hand, Freedom House says the PR thresholds were 2.5 percent for parties and 4 percent for coalitions.

All reports above cite opposition by small parties who think this reform (among others) is intended to force them out of parliament. Similar reforms in Ukraine had that effect in the 2006 election. Whether the same will happen in Albania depends largely on the magnitude of each district and the formal threshold. No details yet on either.

Nepal elections update

Lots of conflicting news from Nepal lately. Do people agree on MMP or not? If so, what formula? Is there or is there not a date for the next election?

According to the Himalayan Times, the SPA has agreed to hold elections in April. And they’ve agreed to increase the size of the constituent assembly, sticking with a mixed-member format. But the Maoists still don’t agree.

A tight summary of what the SPA most recently agreed on, from the Hindustan Times:

The parties also arrived at a consensus on the voting system for CA election. As per the agreement, in the 601-member constituent assembly, 335 seats would be filled up in a fully proportional system.

The number of seats elected under first-past-the-post will be 240 while the number of CA members to be nominated by the Prime Minister has been increased to 26 from 17.

The parties have also agreed to amend the interim constitution, incorporating ‘democratic republic’, and would be endorsed by the first sitting of the CA.

But the Himalayan Times in a separate article points out disagreement over the sizes of the tiers, the Maoists seemingly willing to accept MMP if the proportional tier is large.

Although the ruling parties agreed in principle to increase seats on the proportional system, they could not reach understanding on its actual strength. The CPN-UML has proposed 60-40 ratio for the PR and the first-past-the-post. Nepali Congress today came up with a fresh proposal of 55-45 ratio, and the Maoists are insisting on 80-20 ratio if all-out PR was not acceptable to other parties.

More demands are emerging on the Maoist side; they want cabinet portfolios:

On the issue of power-sharing in the government, the Maoist and the UML leaders urged PM Girija Prasad Koirala to share some of the powerful ministries such as Home, Defence and Finance among NC, UML and Maoists. The Maoists are learnt to have said that the NC must give up one of the three ministries if the interim government were to run on coalition culture. Maoists are learnt to have insisted on the finance ministry in the to-be restructured government.

The election date needed to be postponed by constitutional amendment tonight if PM Koirala’s government didn’t want to operate illegally:

The parties are also staring at a possible constitutional crisis if they do not find a compromise by Saturday evening. The interim constitution states that the CA election will be held by December 15. The parties need to amend that provision in the constitution through the parliament, which is sitting in the afternoon at around 4 pm on Saturday.

Nepal redux

I’m following news on Nepal for a project. The country is divided – politically and administratively – between Maoists and an alliance of seven parties led by the Nepali Congress.

Radio Australia has a concise summary of what’s going on:

The impoverished Himalayan nation has twice been scheduled to hold elections on its political future, but these polls have been postponed due to Maoist demands that the electoral system be reformed and the monarchy abolished.

The Maoists have threatened to take up arms again if their demands are not met.

The EU has threatened to cut off foreign aid, according to the above.

Nepal’s Interim Constitution is a Declaration of Independence from the monarchy, and it specifies how the “elections on its political future” are to be run:

(3) The Constituent Assembly shall consist of the following four hundred twenty five members, out of which four hundred and nine members shall be elected through Mixed Electoral System and sixteen members shall be nominated, as provided for in the law:-

(a) two hundred and five members shall be elected from among the candidates elected on the basis of First-Past-the-Post system from each of the Election Constituencies existed in accordance with the prevailing law before the commencement of this Constitution.

(b) two hundred and four members shall be elected under the proportional electoral system on the basis of the votes to be given to the political parties, considering the whole country as one election constituency.

(c) sixteen members to be nominated by the interim Council of Ministers, on the basis of consensus, from amongst the prominent persons of national life.

Now there is discussion of using MMP. Women of the Dalit community want 13% of seats reserved to them.

Looking at a survey by IDEA, uncertainty about their seat share drives Maoists’ desire to maximize proportionality using list PR. How much could MMP mitigate those fears? It depends on the distribution of voters across districts, which is hard to determine.

The survey indicates that the CPN (Maoist) is an emerging force but it is also a the most significant misfit among the political forces of Nepal. Out of 4,089 respondents, 934 identified themselves as being ‘close to a political party’. However 15 per cent of those who were close to a party said they were closer to the CPN (Maoist). 34 and 32 per cent associated themselves with the NC and the UML respectively.

It is too early to predict election results as 52 per cent respondents said either ‘I will decide later’ or ‘I will not tell right now’ to the question ‘Which party will you vote in the upcoming CA elections?’ Some had however already decided who they wanted to vote for. 13 per cent said they would vote for the NC while 11 per cent said that they would vote for the UML and CPN (Maoist) each.

The Carter Center’s mission in Nepal urges elections sooner than later.

Progress in Nepal?

Tomorrow was supposed to see Nepal elect a constituent assembly. But the Maoist arm of the Communist Party of Nepal has refused to participate unless Prime Minister Koirala and the Seven Party Alliance (or six, or eight, depending on whom you ask) agree to (1) abolish the monarchy and (2) use closed-list proportional representation in one district. There seems to be consensus on the first point. Now there are stirrings in the SPA of a compromise on the electoral system: mixed-member proportional.

At an interaction held in the capital on Friday, Maoist chairman Prachanda had called for reviewing their agreements with the seven (now six) parties and the government. “We are also in favour of reviewing the agreements as there are still problems in their implementation,” KC said.

President of the Janamorcha Nepal Amik Sherchan said directives of the special session of the House could be given a constitutional status by incorporating a provision in the interim constitution that “Nepal is federal democratic republic state” to be implemented by the first meeting of the constituent assembly.

Sherchan said the Maoists could be convinced on MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) system provided that the government agreed to fully implement all the agreements reached in the past.

The Maoists’ obsession with proportionality is counterintuitive given their rural base of support. One would expect them to benefit from a large nominal tier of small districts. (Indeed, that’s what we were blogging earlier this year.) Maybe they know something we don’t – that they don’t have pluralities in those districts, or that they have significant bases of support in the major towns and cities (they’re “packed” in Congress-speak). Or maybe nobody knows anything, and nobody wants to bank on the disproportionality that comes with districts any smaller than the whole country. That would make sense given the Maoists and one or two other groups have not yet faced an electoral contest.

But it doesn’t make sense for the Seven Party Alliance who’s refused to meet the Maoists’ demand – unless their refusal is grounded in something less tangible than a seat outcome (credible commitment to make the institutions work, respecting the electoral commission’s hard work to date).

Regionally disaggregated data is proving hard to find. IDEA has a helpful and recent survey of public opinion in Nepal. Here’s a summary of findings from the Nepali Times.

Here is Election Guide’s page on Nepal, but it doesn’t seem right. From what I can tell, a unicameral interim parliament is running the country according to an interim constitution. King Gyanendra and the upper house are sitting on the sidelines, and the military (generally supporting the monarchy) is quiet for now.

Here is the new electoral commission. Note how miffed they are at the Maoists’ intransigence; they’ve been laying the groundwork for an election, after all, with the help of IFES. Here’s the old EC website.

If anyone knows where to find regional data on party ID and public opinion, please leave a comment or drop an e-mail.

TDP redux: US reform, Russian backslide and some neat elections

Sorry we’ve been so quiet. The end of semester looms, and it’s been a week for catching up, especially after last weekend’s Claim Democracy conference. I attended some sessions, reconnected with old colleagues, met a reader and had dinner with one of Election Day’s IRV victors.

Russia meanwhile has refused visas to OSCE election monitors. Not that being able to announce fraud would matter much. The electoral system – from party registration to seat allocation – is basically rigged.

Denmark last week held an election combining list PR with SMD-style nominations.

Slightly dated but no less important, a report out of York University asks why Ontarians rejected MMP last month. The so-called “bads” (evil list tier, bigger legislature) outweighed the goods (especially the citizens’ assembly process). A model predicts MMP would have won with 63% (well above the mandated threshold) had information been more full.

Did MMP exacerbate Bolivian anti-system politics?

If so, the news is not necessarily good for proponents of winner-take-all systems. The direction of Bolivian electoral reform was from more to less proportionality – in particular, the addition of single-member districts.

A new study by Miguel Centellas finds evidence that Bolivia’s move from regional list PR to a mixed member system has destabilized the country’s party system. Destabilization has manifested most significantly in Andean voters’ migration to anti-system parties.

Why? One explanation is that the use of plurality SMD districts tended to tie parties closer to specific constituent, rather than national, interests. In a multiparty system, most SMD legislators were elected by small pluralities, not majorities. This seems to have encouraged parties to target their electoral message to a narrow base in order to better win SMD seats. The evidence also suggests that Bolivian politics (prior to 2002) had a centripetal tendency, pulling parties closer to the political center. In contrast, politics since 2002 has tended towards powerful centrifugal tendencies and a high degree of polarization (particularly regional polarization). Such a shift has negative consequences for political stability, as well as for future democratic prospects.

If this is the case, could implementing a majority requirement (and some form of runoff) in the nominal tier dampen the centrifugal tendency of the new system? Or would single-member districts trump?

The fate of Ontario MMP 2007

Having followed developments there, I should report that the referendum failed with 37 percent voting in favor.

Fruits & Votes has a good analysis of the vote in the wider contexts of the concomitant provincial election and other, past referenda in Canada. (The provincial Liberals won 66 percent of seats on 42 percent of votes.)

In other words, the systemic factors predicting a reform process in Ontario were always weak. But there was some partisan-interest factor at work for the Liberals. The problems with partisan-interest factors, of course, are that they (1) may make it harder to convince voters who favor other parties to think reform is also good for them, and (2) the very interest-based factors may shift if the party starts doing better…

MMP results trickling in

If anyone’s following, 4,588 of 27,669 polls have reported their results, and MMP is losing 37% to 63%. Here are the unofficial results in real time.

Needless to say, it doesn’t look good.

Thanks to Scott M. for the tip-off at Fruits & Votes. Incidentally, there’s an interesting discussion in the same thread as to whether STV would have fared better with voters. STV came within a point of winning in British Columbia’s 2005 referendum.