FairVote Feed: Asia and Oceania

Philippines Holds Elections Using Degree of Proportional Representation

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:23:58 -0700

The results from Monday's midterm elections in the Philippines are in, with President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III's Liberal Party and his ruling coalition "Team PNoy" (named after their leader) coming out on top. Although President Aquino himself was not up for reelection (his 6-year term expires in 2016, after which he may not run again), success in the elections was considered vital for his agenda. In addition to maintaining its control of the House of Representatives, Team PNoy is poised to pick up nine of the 12 contested Senate seats this cycle, making Aquino the first president since the restoration of democracy in 1986 to have majorities in both houses of Congress.

As a former American colony that elects a component of its national legislature using proportional representation, the Philippines' elections are of particular interest. But because of the unusual nature of the proportional seats and the unique characteristics of the politics of the Philippines, few conclusions can be drawn from these elections about how proportional systems could work in other American-style democracies.

The elections in the Philippines come on the heels of a controversial decision by the country's Supreme Court on its party list system, used to elect 20% of the seats in the House of Representatives. Under the terms of the Philippines' 1987 Constitution, 80% of the seats in the House are comprised of single-member geographic districts, with the rest of the seats reserved for at-large party list seats. The party list component of the House does not follow the traditional model of simply giving each party seats in proportion to their nationwide vote share. Instead, the framers of the 1987 Constitution mandated that the party list must represent "labour, peasant, urban poor, indigenous cultural communities, women, youth, and such other sectors as may be provided by law, except the religious sector." The goal of this system, as articulated in a 1995 law, was to "enable Filipino citizens belonging to the marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations and parties... to become members of the House of Representatives."

The results of the party list have been mixed. Because parties running for list seats needed to be independent of the national parties, the system provides the opportunity for marginalized groups to express themselves in government. In reality, however, critics have noted that many of the representatives coming from the PR tier are relatives of the prosperous and well-connected political elite that dominates Philippine society. Nevertheless, the party list has created a small degree of proportional representation and allowed groups representing senior citizens, women, farmers, and others to participate in governance.

The manner in which parties are elected to the PR tier is unique and somewhat complex. All parties that receive 2% or more of the vote receive a seat, although a party receiving 6% or more of the vote is capped at three seats. Since a 2009 Supreme Court ruling, any of the 55 seats in the PR tier that remain are allocated to parties receiving less than 2% of the vote until all seats are filled.

That brings us back to the most recent Supreme Court ruling on April 5^th, 2013, which altered the nature of the PR tier just over a month before the election. The Court ruled that national and regional parties could now run in the party list along with marginalized and underrepresented groups. The Court remanded to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) the petitions of 39 parties that Comelec had previously denied entrance to the party list. Although the major parties, such as Aquino's Liberal Party, may not run directly in the PR tier, the ruling allows for larger parties, potentially affiliated with the major parties, to run in the elections.

Reaction to the ruling has been divided. Unsurprisingly, previously-banned parties that are now allowed to participate, such as the Ako Bicol party, support the ruling, arguing that it provides much-needed reforms and includes safeguards to protect the system from abuse by the rich and powerful. Constitutional scholar and retired justice Vicente Mendoza lauded the decision as well, noting that the intent of the Constitution all along was to open up the party list to non-sectoral groups after a certain amount of time. Criticism of the ruling, however, has been strong as well, with party list groups as well as watchdogs warning that the decision "opened the floodgates for powerful, filthy rich and long-established personalities and groups to infiltrate and dominate the world of real marginalized and underrepresented sectors," as one recent op-ed in the Philippine Daily Inquirer put it.

But a look at the party list winners of Monday's elections shows that the claims of both those supporting and opposing the ruling were likely overstated. The latest vote totals released by Comelec show the Buhay party list in the lead, with a little over a million votes (4.7% of total votes cast). Buhay is a pro-life party founded by the multimillionaire leader of the charismatic Catholic religious group El Shaddai, Mike Velarde, and had been allowed to run and win seats in the 2010 election. Fourth-place finisher Akbayan, meanwhile, has members serving in the executive branch and was explicitly endorsed by President Aquino; it too has been running in the PR tier for years. The Court's ruling did little to affect the underlying fact of the concentration of political power in the elite families of the Philippines, a problem that is by no means unique to the party list. Philippine society on the whole is dominated by celebrities and a handful of political dynasties. The presence of the wealthy elite in the PR tier is less a cause than it is a symptom of deeper problems in the politics of the Philippines.

Consequently, the success or failure of the Philippines' current party list system cannot be used to predict the results of applying proportional representation to other countries currently using winner-take-all, simply because the system itself and the politics surrounding it are so unusual.

Furthermore, there is not an obvious electoral solution to prescribe for the Philippines to address all the unique challenges its political system faces. However, many of the problems that continue to plague elections in the Philippines, such as uncompetitive elections and distorted outcomes, are common in winner-take-all systems. Shifting away from the current party list system, which comprises a small tier that gives a few representatives to minor interests, to a more broadly proportional system that accurately represents all parties, viewpoints, and interests in the nation would likely benefit the Philippines in the long term.

Japan's Electoral Unfairness Goes Deeper than Malapportionment

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:58:17 -0700

On March 26, Okoyama's High Court ruled that Japan's 2012 lower house elections were invalid. The case followed several other similar decisions by courts throughout Japan, including from the Hiroshima High Court the day before and from Tokyo's High Court on March 6. The issue of contention is the apportionment of representatives to voters - that is, the relative weight that each Japanese voter receives in terms of seats in the legislature. In the 2012 election, some voters - mostly those in rural districts - had as much as 2.34 times as much voting weight as others.

The apportionment crisis is undoubtedly damaging to the legitimacy of Japanese democracy. All votes should, indeed, carry roughly equal weight. But malapportionment is not the source of the most pernicious unfairness in the Japanese electoral system. Japan uses a parallel system for electing its lower house, analogous to the similarly problematic Egyptian system we critiqued last month. While 180 of the Japanese parliament's 480 seats are elected through closed list proportional representation, the remaining 300 representatives are elected in winner-take-all, single member districts. In a parallel system, proportional representation seats do not compensate for distortions caused by winner-take-all seats.

There was plenty of distortion left uncorrected after December 2012. The story of the election was that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had held power almost without interruption since 1955 before finally being defeated by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 2009, bounced back to win the election in an apparent landslide. The LDP and its coalition partner, the New Komeito Party, now control a supermajority of more than two-thirds of seats in the House of Representatives, which would seem to imply broad popular support for their policy proposals. In reality, the LDP actually received about four million fewer votes in 2012 than in their 2009 defeat.

That's partly because voter turnout decreased significantly in 2012 from 2009, but the LDP still received less than 28% of the PR vote and less than 40% when combined with the vote share of New Komeito. That's a higher percentage than any other party or coalition, but far from a majority - much less a supermajority - of nationwide support. The distortion stems from the fact that the LDP won 79% of the winner-take-all seats that comprise the bulk of the House.

LDP leader and current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has translated his party's plurality support into an aggressive policy agenda, confronting China over the Senkaku Islands and implementing a dramatic economic stimulus program. Regardless of the merits of these policies, they were not voted for by most of the Japanese electorate. Yet because the House of Representatives can override any veto by the upper House of Councillors, voters will not even have the power to affect Abe's policies in this July's upper house elections.

Malapportionment may have contributed to the distorted outcome in 2012, but significant distortions can easily occur in single-member district systems regardless of whether there are equal numbers of people in each district. Japanese electoral reformers should be most concerned with eliminating the parallel nature of Japan's voting system. One option that Japan could consider is moving to what FairVote calls a "districts plus" system, where the 180 proportional seats would be allocated to parties to compensate for any distortions caused by the single-member district elections. Similar systems are used in national elections for countries such as Germany and New Zealand, and are typically referred to as "mixed member proportional representation." Incredibly, even allocating all 180 proportional seats to non-LDP parties would not have been enough to give each party the seats they deserved based on their share of the proportional vote, but it would have at least forced the LDP to form a coalition to control a majority of the House.

Districts plus systems not only guarantee more representative governments, but they also greatly simplify the districting process. If every vote counts equally towards the composition of the legislature, the import of where district lines are drawn is significantly lessened. Cases of malapportionment in Japan and partisan gerrymandering in the U.S. would be rendered inconsequential under districts plus. The Japanese courts are right to be taking action to correct the flaws in the Japanese electoral system - but simply redrawing district lines is not enough to ensure fairness.

South Korea Elects Its First Female President

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 11:04:48 -0800

Women world leaders enhanced their numbers this month, as Park Geun-Hye of South Korea joined the current 13 female presidents and premiers on Wednesday, Dec. 19. Park was elected directly with 51.66 percent of the vote, while her party, the New Frontier Party (NFP), took 152 of the 299 seats in the National Assembly.

Park will be South Korea’s first female president and the first female leader in northern Asia. Her election marks a breakthrough for a country that ranks 108th of 135 nations for gender equality and a region known more for patriarchal succession than gender balance in politics.

Most election analysts place emphasis on Park’s family name over her gender. As the daughter of Korea’s former general and leader Park Chung-Hee, name recognition clearly bolstered Park’s campaign. Park Chung-Hee is a polarizing figure in Korea; he is revered by some as an economic savior and reviled by others as a dictator. Much of his popularity is derived from older Koreans who see his reign as a time of stability and economic growth. Like father, like daughter, Park found significant support among elderly conservative voters who believe she embodies her father’s leadership qualities and sympathize with her due to the assassinations of her mother and father.

Conversely, her gender played a more complicated and ambiguous role in Korea’s presidential election. From the beginning of the campaign, gender was made a central issue. Park promised to help women if elected by boosting financial aid for childcare, offering incentives for firms that hire women and establishing a quota for political parties, requiring them to reserve 40 percent of election candidate nominations for women. Park’s party labeled her the “Prepared Female Candidate”, a slogan rarely absent from her campaign posters and speeches. Opponents critiqued the NFP’s new appreciation of women as opportunistic; the party is routinely admonished for members making sexist comments.

Despite her campaign’s heavy focus on women, controversy arose over whether Park is actually a feminist or utilized her gender as a means to power. Many Korean women’s advocates, such as Kim Eun-Ju, executive director of the Centre for Korean Women and Politics, find Park’s promises inconsistent with her record.

“For the past 15 years, Park has shown little visible effort to help women in politics or anywhere else as a policymaker," Kim told the French Press Agency. Others see her election as a means of breaking the glass ceiling. Even Kim concedes that having a female leader may change the chauvinist attitudes of senior officials in the NFP who are mainly male.

Like many women politicians, Parks was demonized for being too feminine and not feminine enough. One sexist rant by the spokesman of her opponent, presidential candidate Moon Jae-in, took aim at Park for never marrying or having children. He asserted, ''Candidate Park has no femininity. She has never lived a life agonizing over childbirth, childcare, education and grocery prices.'' This statement may have been in response to Parks playing to sexual stereotypes by promising motherly female leadership if she were to win, as opposed to good leadership without the gender connotation.

The Korean election brings to light an unfortunate reality for female candidates; in almost all cases, women candidates must address their gender by mitigating its impact and/or claiming it as an asset. To the contrary, a male candidate is never expected to explain why he is capable, despite his gender. In politics, being male is the standard. If a candidate does not meet that standard, an explanation is needed. With 13 female world leaders, soon to be 14, one must wonder how much ground must be covered before the issue of gender becomes a nonissue?

Major Media Gets it Wrong on Hong Kong Elections

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 07:32:07 -0700

The Legislative Council Building in Hong Kong / Discover Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of the few jurisdictions in China that holds democratic elections. Understandably, its elections draw special scrutiny. We just wish the American media could get the story right.

On September 9, Hong Kong citizens elected their representatives for the Legislative Council (LegCo), the city's unicameral legislative body. Each election in Hong Kong essentially comes down to a referendum on the most basic issue of the city's politics: whether it should move towards full democracy or towards the policies of Beijing. The pro-democracy parties-most notably, the Civic, Democratic, and Labor parties-had high hopes for this election, riding a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment brought on by attempts this summer to introduce mandatory Chinese patriotism into Hong Kong school programs.

Though the pro-democracy parties were able to preserve their veto power by winning just over a third of the seats in LegCo, they did not perform as well as expected. The percentage of popularly elected seats won by the pro-democracy parties dropped precipitously, from over 60% in 2008 to just over 50% this year. Because 30 of the 70 seats in LegCo are "functional constituencies" (FCs), chosen by pro-Beijing committees composed of members of Hong Kong's professional elite, pro-democracy parties now hold just 39% of seats in the legislature.

There are two primary reasons for pro-democracy's current predicament. Firstly, the pro-democracy parties simply did not win as many popular votes as they expected to, perhaps as a result of infighting and a lack of cooperation within the movement. Secondly, and most importantly, the continued existence of a large share of FC seats in LegCo puts pro-democracy parties at a significant structural disadvantage.

American media coverage of the election, however, has chosen to focus on another cause of pro-democracy's failure: the closed list proportional voting system utilized by Hong Kong to elect its 35 district-based "geographical constituency" (GC) seats and its five at-large "District Council" seats. In the New York Times' article on the election, for instance, this structure is described as a "complex system" that the primary pro-Beijing party DAB used "to its advantage," and "as a result, the party won a series of seats for its top-of-the-slate candidates despite a weak overall vote count."

Ascribing the poor performance of pro-democracy to the proportional representation system is simply a mischaracterization of the important factors at play. The amount of distortion in the election-the difference between the popular vote and the percentage of seats won-was minimal. The percentage of GC seats won by pro-democracy parties was just 5% less than their popular vote percentage, and in a small legislature like Hong Kong's that means they only underperformed by about 1-2 seats. Meanwhile, the closed list system actually benefited pro-democracy parties in the District Council seats, of which they won 60% despite only receiving 51% of the popular vote for those seats.

Furthermore, in the history of Hong Kong's legislative elections dating back to 2000, closed list PR has not consistently benefitted either party, and has never caused a major distortion. The chart below shows the performance of pro-democracy parties over this time span, and the distortion caused by the PR system in geographic constituency seats compared to the overall distortion as a result of the functional constituency seats.

Pro-Democracy Parties
Year	GC Vote %	GC Seats	GC Seat %	GC Distortion %	Total Seats*	Total Seat %	Total Seat Distortion %
2000	60.6	16	66.7	+6.1	21	35.0	-25.6
2004	61.9	18	60.0	-1.9	25	41.7	-20.2
2008	59.5	19	63.3	+3.8	23	38.3	-21.2
2012	56.2	18	51.4	-4.8	27	38.6	-17.6

*"Total seats" includes geographic constituencies and functional constituencies. The 2012 election tally includes five "District Council" FC seats, elected by a de facto at large proportional vote, of which pro-democracy parties won three. In the 2000 election, six "Elections Committee" seats are included.

Hong Kong's closed list PR system is not perfect, and there are legitimate concerns to be raised. Its five districts have relatively few seats, with two districts having as few as five seats. This structure can make it difficult for any party to win more than one seat in a district. To win the first seat in a district, a party's slate has to get 100,000 votes, or more votes than any other party. The second seat of the district is given to the list with the second most votes, though the first list can still contend for the second seat with any ballots that exceed the 100,000 threshold. If the Civic party wins 165,000 votes, for instance, it gets the first seat, and will run with 65,000 votes for the second seat. But if DAB only received 70,000 votes it would get the second seat ahead of Civic, giving them each party the same number of seats.

The system allows for some strategic gaming by the parties. Running with two slates in a district appears to be the optimal strategy, as it is more likely that two slates will both win more votes than other slates than that one slate will win enough in excess of the 100,000 threshold to win a second seat. The strategy is expensive, however, and some (including the New York Times article) have strongly implied that the Pro-Beijing parties were able to employ it because of their substantial financial support from the Chinese mainland.

These flaws are minor compared to the huge effect of the functional constituencies on the makeup of LegCo. Even if the 5% distortion did result from structural factors inherent in the closed list system that gave pro-Beijing parties increased benefit from their Chinese funding, that difference pales in comparison to the overall 17.6% distortion in this election. Even that figure declined substantially this year from previous elections (from 21.2 in 2008 to 17.6 this year) as a result of the 2010 agreement that expanded the number of popularly elected LegCo seats from 30 to 40.

Two simple reforms would help produce a legislature that is much more reflective of the views of Hong Kong's citizens. First, the entirely undemocratic functional constituency seats should be done away with, and replaced with more popularly elected seats. In order to make popular vote elections result in even more accurate proportional representation, however, those seats should not simply be added to the geographic constituencies.

A better option would be to implement a mixed member proportional representation system in Hong Kong. Under an MMP method, those remaining 30 seats would be allocated to the parties in such a way as to ensure that the final legislature would be fully representative of Hong Kong's voters. The existing geographic multimember districts could be kept, so that the people of Hong Kong would be represented in LegCo by someone from their geographic area, but the disproportionality created by parties exploiting the system would be removed.

Hong Kong's closed list system is simply not to blame for the disappointing showing of pro-democracy parties in the September 9 election, and the New York Times' implication to that effect is reflective of an ongoing bias in the U.S. media against proportional representation systems. Closed list PR is not a "complex" system, as its method for allocating seats is actually quite straightforward. The concerns raised b the New York Times and others are legitimate, but obscure the larger problems at hand in Hong Kong politics.

As Hong Kong continues its slow progress to full democracy, it is critical that the city implement an electoral system that will accurately reflect the will of its people. Proportional representation is not the problem-it is a critical component of the solution.

Australia to Hold National Instant Runoff Voting Elections on August 21

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:32:24 -0700

Just three weeks after becoming Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard announced national elections would be held on August 21, 2010. Rather than establish her legitimacy in the Prime Minister role, Gillard hopes to capitalize on early positive election polls. According to the poll on The Australian taken July 25, the vote would be distributed: Liberal-National Coalition 42%, Australian Labor Party 40%, and Australian Greens 12%. But after pollsters’ factor in the preferences for backers of minor parties that play a big role in Australia’s voting methods—instant runoff voting in its House of Representatives and the choice voting form of proportional representation in its senate elections, Gillard’s Labor Party is ahead by 4% of the vote over the Coalition.

FairVote takes a special interest in Australian elections because they have relied on instant runoff voting or Australia’s term, preferential voting for nearly a century and have been extremely successful in encouraging and accommodating increased voter choice. So, to help you follow the Australian Election, here is some background on Australia’s electoral system.

There is no fixed term. The Prime Minister holds the power to dissolve Parliament and hold new elections, as long as the date falls within their three-year term. The Prime Minister is not directly elected from the people, but is the Leader of the Party who gains the most seats in the House of Representatives. All 150 seats in the House of Representatives are up for re-election and seats are won through preferential voting. While the House is the more powerful chamber, half of the Senate’s seats are also up for re-election by means of proportional representation—with a form of choice voting that operates more like a traditional party list voting systems used in most of Europe. Turnout is high, in the range of 95 percent of eligible voters, due in large part to Australia’s compulsory voting for everyone 18 and over.

With Australia’s form of IRV, voters are required to rank all candidates from first to last. Australians vote for their preferred candidate and then indicate the rest in order they would like to see them elected—meaning you can give your favorite candidate the very best chance to win, bus also make it hard as possible for your least favorite candidate to win.

First choices are tallied on election night. If no one receives a majority of votes in the first round, the ballot count simulates a serious of runoff elections, with the last place candidate eliminated after each round of counting. So in the second count, the candidate with the fewest first choice is eliminated. Supporters of that candidate then have their ballot count for their second ranked candidate. The elimination and distribution process in each round continues until a candidate garners at least a 50%+1 vote majority.

Regardless of the number of candidates running for an office, IRV ensures the winner earns a majority vote, unlike in plurality systems as used in most American and British elections. In plurality voting, whenever there are more than two candidates, vote-splitting can occur among like-minded candidates that can result in selecting a victor who would have lost to his or her top opponent if matched against them in a runoff.

Preferential voting was introduced in Australia during the Hughes government in 1918 to solve the “spoiler” problem created by the rise of the Country Party. Prime Minister Hughes feared the Country Party, a right-center group, would steal votes from his conservative party, giving the election to the Labor Party. While preferential voting achieved the intended electoral impact in the initial elections, the party it has helped over the years has changed depending on where is most third party energy. Bottom-line, it has allowed Australians to have real choices without worrying about the “spoiler” effect.

FairVote’s study of the 2007 election found that the Labor Party came out victorious with the help of Greens’ 7.79% of voters, whose 2nd-place votes were distributed to the Labor Party, and hence was able to surpass the 50%+1 majority barrier with 52.7% of the overall vote over the Liberal’s 47.3%. Under a plurality system such as first past the post, Labor would only have 44% and vote-splitting among the Labor, Greens, and other smaller parties would give the control of government to the Liberal Party with only a minority of the vote. The original intention behind Australia’s preferential voting to prevent the “spoiler” effect prevails.

Every House race had at least four candidates, and the average number of candidates was seven—yet every race was still won with a majority of the vote in the final instant runoff. The number of candidates who depended on preferences to win was 76 – more than half of the 150 winners. This means that they did not win in the first around, being unable to obtain a majority of first-choice rankings. They won through additional rounds of ballot counting, getting votes from ballots that ranked them second, third, and so on during the elimination and redistribution process in each round and were the first candidate to get a majority. According to Antony Green’s table indicating the impact of preferences in the past elections, the number of electorates where preferences were required to determine a winner has increased significantly and has gone high up as 98 in 1998. This is mainly due to the increased voting for minority parties. IRV creates far more competitive seats as more candidates have to rely on preferences due to voters being allowed to indicate their choices among parties.

Here are a few points about how IRV works in practice:

Australia has a long history of doing its preferential vote counts well. On election night, poll workers call in their first choice totals, and then, in the precinct, unofficial preferential vote counts are done based on communication about which candidates should be eliminated between rounds. The official count is done after all have been collected from a particular constituency.
The candidate who earns the most first choice rankings but not enough to obtain a majority, does not always win the election. In 2007, 9 of the 150 races were won by a candidate who did not have the most first choice. That means that in those districts, plurality voting would have elected a candidate who would have lost to his or her top opponent in the one-on-one election.
Voters who have mastered preferential voting vote just like those who do know much about it.
According to Antony Green’s Guide to 2010 Australian Election, the best strategy is simply to indicate your sincere preferences for an office. Unless you can predict how more than 90,000 voters vote in a particular manner in order to engineer a particular outcome. The goal of IRV is not gain a plurality of first place support, but a majority rule with fair representation for all.
Australian senate election use choice voting also called the single transferable vote. But because Australia requires a valid ballot to rank every eligible candidate and because so many candidates run for senate seats—New South Wales had 78 candidates running in their 2007 election—election authorities give voters the option to tick the box of their preferred party. Doing so accepts that party’s full preference schedule that has been released before the election—not only among its own candidates, but the rest of the candidates as well. Many advocates of choice voting suggest that Australian allow voters the option to rank as many or as few candidates as they want, which would give voters a greater impact to challenge the decisions of party leaders.

For more information:

Get a detailed background on the Australian Electoral Process
Aurelie Marfort’s report on Australia’s 2007 National IRV elections
Antony Green's Election Blog on Preferential Voting in Australia and Past Preference Results
Ben Reilly’s paper “The Global Spread of Preferential Voting: Australian Institutional Imperialism”

International Snapshot: Japan 2009

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:17:52 -0800

2009 Japanese Election

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:59:29 -0700

As Japan heads into election season, prognosticators assert the inevitability of dramatic defeat for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). If the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) manages to gain power, it would represent a sea change in Japanese politics; save for a brief nine-month period in the early 1990s, the LDP has ruled Japan since the post-WWII restoration of civilian government. Following the 2006 resignation of popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, The LDP suffered stagnation, internal strife, and a series of scandals. Unsurprisingly, the DPJ is taking advantage of these dynamics by running on a change platform.

Hopefully, change will not stop with new policies and personalities but will also include thorough systematic reform. Japan's outdated electoral system, called the parallel vote or mixed-member-majoritarian, has aided and abetted the insular bureaucratic politics of the post-war years. FairVote's analysis of the 2005 Japanese election thoroughly illustrates the distorted outcomes this parallel voting system produces (pdf). Simply put, this system fuses a first-past-the-post election with a list election, with the list seats elected proportionally according to each party's raw vote total. To be truly proportional, the list seats would need to be allocated in a manner that 'fixes' the disproportionate result in the first-past-the-post seats (this is called mixed-member-proportional or MMP). This system is used in many nations, including Germany and New Zealand. Japan's electoral problem is compounded by having too many first-past-the-post seats (300) to list seats (180). While the list seats are won by a diverse group of candidates and are equitably distributed between the parties, the total result still bears little relation to the seat percentage. According to the latest polls, the DPJ will benefit from these systemic flaws in the same way the LDP has in the past; earning a plurality of the vote and a majority of seats. With any luck, the expected change in government will encourage a second look at the basic instruments of Japanese democracy, or inevitably, the same neuroanaesthesia that doomed the present government will return and stunt the democratic potential of this prosperous island nation.

Instant runoff voting in Australia: Guest blogger Ben Raue

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:49:01 -0700

Recently I was in correspondence with Ben Raue, a former candidate with the Australian Greens who maintains The Tally Room, a valuable blog about international politics. I had an exchange with him about the role of instant runoff voting and choice voting in his country's politics, and he sent me this note, with permission to post it.

For those of you who don't know, Australia uses instant runoff voting -- what we call "preferential voting" -- to elect the lower houses of the state parliaments for five of the six Australian states as well as the federal House of Representatives. A system of proportional representation known as Single Transferable Vote (STV, also known in the United States as choice voting) is used to elect the federal Senate and the upper houses in four of those Australian states. Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory elect their lower house through multi-member proportional representation.

As an active member of the Australian Greens political party, a former candidate for office and blogger tracking electoral news around the world, I definitely think the Greens have benefited from our system of instant runoff voting. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Greens have performed much better in Australia than our counterparts in other single-member electorate English-speaking democracies like the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and pre-1996 New Zealand.

The primary benefit of having instant runoff voting is that the entire concept of a 'wasted vote' is largely demolished. That means that small political parties do not need to worry about targetting seats where they either will not do any damage to their preferred major party or seats that they can win. We are now close to winning a number of single-member electorates in both federal and state Parliaments. The problem for Greens parties is bridging the divide between polling 2-3% and reaching a point where you are a credible alternative to the incumbent party.

However it's worth noting that while there is no rational reason to worry about wasting your vote in a preferential system, that does not mean that people understand that. Australians absorb an enormous amount of our culture from the US and to a lesser extent the UK, both of which are countries where wasting votes and tactical voting are real issues due to their first-past-the-post electoral system.

At the 2007 federal election progressive people were desperate to kick out the conservative Liberal Party government, even though most Greens voters had little illusions about Labor leader Kevin Rudd. He certainly didn't have the appeal of an Obama-like figure. However a lot of very politically aware people told me that they would be voting Labor '1' because they didn't want to risk helping the Liberals by splitting the vote. This is despite the fact that a '1' vote for the Greens and a '2' vote for Labor would have been just as valuable in defeating a Liberal candidate. This confusion is often encouraged by the major parties who do not want people to give a first preference to a minor party. In left-wing inner-city seats around Sydney and Melbourne, where the Greens are now challenging the hold of the Labor Party, Labor campaigners often will claim that a vote for the Greens would help the Liberal Party, sowing confusion about our electoral system, in order to bring progressive voters back to Labor.

Of course, having instant runoff voting does not put every voter into a competitive election. There are still safe seats and marginal seats, and those who live in safe seats or are reliable voters for either major party are largely ignored. Most of the success of the Greens has been closely linked to getting members of Parliament elected to houses elected by proportional representation. The upper houses in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, along with the the lower houses in Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory and the Senate, are all elected using STV. All but two of the Greens who have been elected in Australia were elected in these seats.

While there is theoretically no barrier to people voting for us in the lower house without a proportional upper house, having elected parliamentarians has given us media attention, resources and relevance, without which we would be much weaker. We have also performed best in local government where choice voting (STV) is used to elect councils. We now have 75 local councillors in New South Wales, all elected by STV, while they are gradually replacing single-member wards with multi-member wards in Victoria, which is leading to growing number of councillors being elected.

The Queensland Greens have suffered from the fact that they have no proportional representation in state or local government, meaning the only proportional seat they can win is in the Senate. They are the only state Greens party which has no capacity to get state MPs elected, which has made it very difficult for the party, in comparison to other states.

The other area in which instant runoff voting has particularly affected the Greens is in the direction of preferences. In Australia we have a long tradition of political parties organizing to hand out 'how-to-vote cards' out at polling booths on election day. All parties do it and ultimately try to cover nearly every voter in every booth, particularly in marginal seats. Every party hands out a piece of paper with a replica of the ballot paper with the numbers filled in to indicate how they want their voters to preference.

Every election campaign there is a media frenzy over how minor parties like the Greens direct our preferences. In the past the Greens have tried to negotiate policy outcomes for preferences, however these have largely been unsuccessful, with major parties promising things before elections then breaking their promises. It has also caused difficulty for the Greens in that we don't want to be seen to be merely channeling preferences to the Labor Praty but we find it difficult to ever direct preferences to the conservative Coalition on policy grounds, and we have found on the few occasions we have preferenced Coalition candidates we have been punished by our voter base (who are mostly former ALP voters).

I sometimes wonder how the Greens would look in Australia if we had proportional representation in the upper houses but first-past-the-post in the lower houses. I tend to think we would still exist but would find it much harder to get out of the niche of being considered to be a 'balance of power' party limited to a role in the house of review. If you want to argue that you are aiming to actually govern the country and defeat the existing major parties, rather than simply act in a balance of power role in the Senate, you need to be competing in House of Representatives elections. In the 2007 election, Greens contested every single seat and won 7.8% of the national vote in the House of Representatives election and 9% of the vote in the Senate election.

Instant runoff voting gives us independence in that we do not need to engage in tactical voting or coalitions in order to compete. I also think it enhances our vote and gives us legitimacy in certain inner city seats where we have been pushed into second place (or have come close). I don't think it will be long before we start winning those seats at general elections and hold them, and when that happens I believe that will be due to the fact that preference voting allowed us to build up in those areas.

Pro-democracy movements in Zimbabwe endorsing PR

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:48:03 -0700

In May, two pro-democracy NGOs, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) and the Electoral Institute of Southern African (EISA), released a report that , emphasized the need "for a paradigm shift and for Zimbabwe to embrace more inclusive and participatory electoral systems." These should result," the report said, "in a win-win situation that minimises the occurrence of electoral conflict and maximises the participation of women and minority groups, such as the Proportional Representation and the Mixed Electoral Systems."

Small political parties, such as the Federal Democratic Union (FDU), and women groups also endorsed the idea of proportional representation. Zimbabwean women are indeed feeling excluded from the new, male-dominated unity government. According to Luta Shaba, director of the Women's Trust, "Women want a new constitution that abolishes the first-past-the-post electoral system to enshrine proportional representation," Ms Shaba said. "Only through proportional representation can women, together with other previously marginalised groups,rise.The present electoral system encourages viciousness, and when you have a dog-eat-dog scenario to attaining political office, even political parties feel constrained in accommodating women," she explained to The National.

This growing chorus in favor of proportional representation may lead to actual electoral system changes quite quickly, since Zimbabwe is currently considering writing a new Constitution. A 25-member select parliamentary committee comprising legislators from the three parties in the coalition government has been named and initial targets set (even though the committee lacks funds to kick-start the constitution-making process).

A new constitution, leading to the holding of fresh polls, is largely viewed as key to full democratization of Zimbabwe. It is also supposed to bring solutions to the political stalemate in which the country has been deadlocked since the 2008 elections, when violence rose between President Mugabe's Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC. In this regard, proportional representation would help in avoiding such violence, since it often naturally results in coalition governments.

Philippines to extend use of proportional representation

Tue, 05 May 2009 09:23:47 -0700

The Philippines Supreme Court issued a landmark decision last Thursday, paving the way for important changes in the voting system used to elect House representatives.

Of a possible 250 members of the House of Representatives, 206 are elected with winner-take-all in single member districts, the remainder of the House seats being allocated through at-large party list elections. The law mandates that only party-list organizations garnering at least 2 percent of the total votes cast nationwide for the party-list system shall be entitled to one seat each. It also says that each party shall be entitled to a maximum of three seats, and that the allocation of seats will be proportional to the total number of votes.

It is worth noticing that the mainstream political parties (the ones that win the winner-take-all seats) are not allowed to participate in the party-list elections. The Filipinno system is indeed designed to allow for clear and solid political majorities (through winner-take-all seats) as well as for the full representation of "Filipino citizens belonging to the marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organization and parties,", as the 1995 Electoral law puts it. Labor, fisher folk, peasant, women, urban poor, youth, indigenous cultural communities, veterans, professionals, handicapped and the elderly are examples of groups that have benefited from this mechanism. Established right after the People Power Revolution and the end of the dictatorship, this system was also designed to free the party system from the domination of the political elites and dynasties.

The unanimous direction-setting decision handed down by the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional this 2% threshold, breaking fresh ground for the deepening and enlargement of the party-list system. The judges noted that under the 2% threshold rule for the distribution of additional seats, the maximum number of seats in the House that may be occupied by the party-list representatives could never, mathematically, exceed 50. Thus, the 2-percent threshold, the Court ruled, "prevents the attainment of the broadest representation of party, sectoral or group interests in the House of Representatives." The immediate consequence of this decision is an actual increase in the size of the House (from 238 members to 270), from the current 22 proportionally elected representatives (from 16 political parties) to 55 representatives, from 36 political groups. The ruling was swiftly implemented, and 33 new party-list members entered the House of Representatives on Monday.

The political significance of the decision is huge. The Supreme Court, choosing to deepen the party-list system, endorsed and validated the party-list system as a means to broaden the base of Philippine parliamentary democracy with the diversification of the political tendencies, but also as a strategy to attract insurgent and marginalized groups to join the system. Full representation mechanisms have proven to be an efficient incentive for communists and leftists (the Philippine communist revolution is one of the few surviving communist insurgencies in the world today) to enter the parliamentary stream, while abandoning their revolutionary struggle. By allowing for the entry of Right-wing groups coming from the historically anti-communist military sector, the Supreme Court decision marks a new step for the movement toward ideological reconciliation. The United States should follow the example of its former colony and consider the benefits of that type of mixed electoral system. The Filipino example reveals that the accurate representation of marginalized and extremists group in the Parliament � as opposed as their presence on the streets as radical and populist movements- does not necessarily hinder the parliamentary process. In contrary, it can promote inclusiveness and dialogue, while actually enhancing the stability of the system. In addition, creative solutions such as increasing the size of the House to increase its representativeness could easily be implemented in the U.S. context, as a recent study by FairVote demonstrates.