Shopping for an electoral system?
The centre for Bhutan studies advocates adopting a new electoral system
31 May, 2010 – Britain may abandon its current voting system, with the recently elected liberal democratic government announcing a referendum on its continued use.
The system currently used there, and also in Bhutan, first-past-the-post (FPTP), where the candidate with the most votes wins in a constituency, is flawed, say the liberal democrats.
| Advantages of FPTPSimple to understand, faster results
Tends to produce single party governments, which leads to faster legislation Promotes link between representatives and constituents based on a geographical area Criticisms of the FPTP Excludes smaller parties from fair representation Lack of choice encourages tactical voting, when voters vote not for the candidate they most prefer, but against the candidate they most dislike Causes votes to be wasted, when votes cast for a losing candidate do not count anymore Causes complex contradictions, known as the Arrow impossibility theorem and Condorcet paradox |
They point out that seats in parliament should be proportionate to the number of votes cast. By this argument, the people’s democratic party (PDP) should have 33 percent representation or 15 seats in the National Assembly; since 33.96 percent of total votes were cast in the party’s favour during the 2008 general elections. They currently have only two of 47, which critics would say is an under representation.
Kuensel asked the election commission of Bhutan (ECB) whether Bhutan should adopt an alternative voting system.
“For the time being, it’s fine,” said election commissioner, Dasho Kunzang Wangdi. He said other forms, such as the alternative vote system being offered as a replacement in Britain is suited for societies where democracy has reached a “high level of sophistication”, and where the literacy rate is high.
The president of the centre for Bhutan studies (CBS), Dasho Karma Ura, disagrees. The president, who advocates adopting a new system called the majority judgment, which allows you to specify what you think of a candidate, instead of simply saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, said, “This argument is eventually tantamount to thinking that democracy cannot be practised among the illiterate.” Bhutan has an adult literacy of around 65 percent, while Britain’s is 99 percent.
“Within the 80 percent plus turn out last time, most would have been the literate; the proportion of literate within the turnout will thus increase with every election,” he said.
Dasho Karma Ura said Bhutan should consider adopting the majority judgment system. Candidates are graded by voters, using a common language, such as, ‘excellent, very good, good, acceptable, poor, and ‘to reject’. “Then, they (ECB) rank all the competitors, according to a rule of aggregating the marks, to declare the winner,” he said.
Such a mechanism would prevent problems like tactical voting and wasted votes (see box) that result when the electorate is limited to only two candidates to choose from in a constituency.
He said that, while sticking to the two party system, Bhutanese voters should not be limited to choosing from only two candidates. “Majority judgment can allow for each party to field as many candidates as a party likes for the same constituency, thus easing pressure on the party leadership to choose a sole candidate, as well as broadening choices for the electorate.” He added that such a move would eliminate tactical voting.
“The argument applies with equal force for a first round elections for the National Assembly, when there are three or more parties, and the result, based on faulty mechanism, will determine as to which two parties will go to the final round,” he said. On the national council, he said, “Majority judgment will be extremely sound, as the numbers of candidates per constituency becomes multiple.”
Dasho Karma Ura disagreed that this could be too complex for the Bhutanese electorate. “People make complex choices in ordinary decisions that demand more judgment than the way FPTP votes are cast,” he said, “GNH surveys show that any randomly selected villager can cope with multi-scale judgment of 1 to 10 scale on an issue. Villagers can judge things far more finely than we give credit for, in a patronising way.”
“Ensuring free elections is a matter for ECB and they do that very well. But making elections fair is a mathematical issue, concerned with designing a voting system,” said Dasho Karma Ura. “That question is larger than ECB or political parties. It is about soundness of mechanism of democracy.”
The majority judgment method was developed by two French academics, Michel Balinski and Rida Laraki. Balinski presented the method during the democracy conference held in Paro, late last year.
Source: kuenselonline