Electoral reform
Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results.
Reforms can include changes to:
Electoral reforms can contribute to democratic backsliding or may be advances toward wider and deeper democracy.
Nation-building[edit]
In less democratic countries, elections are often demanded by dissidents; therefore the most basic electoral-reform project in such countries is to achieve a transfer of power to a democratically elected government with a minimum of bloodshed, e.g. in South Africa in 1994. This case highlights the complexity of such reform: such projects tend to require changes to national or other constitutions, and to alter balances of power. Electoral reforms are often politically painful and authorities may try to postpone them as long as possible, but at risk of rising unrest with potential of rebellion, political violence and/or civil war.
Role of United Nations[edit]
The United Nations Fair Elections Commission provides international observers to national elections that are likely to face challenges by the international community of nations, e.g., in 2001 in Yugoslavia, in 2002 in Zimbabwe.
The United Nations standards address safety of citizens, coercion, scrutiny, and eligibility to vote. They do not impose ballot styles, party diversity, or borders on electoral constituencies. Various global political movements, e.g., labour movements, the Green party, Islamism, Zionism, advocate various cultural, social, ecological means of setting borders that they consider "objective" or "blessed" in some other way. Contention over electoral constituency borders within or between nations and definitions of "refugee", "citizen", and "right of return" mark various global conflicts, including those in Israel/Palestine, the Congo, and Rwanda.
Electoral boundaries[edit]
Boundaries between electoral constituencies (or "ridings" or "districts") should be redrawn at regular intervals, or by statutory rules and definitions, to eliminate malapportionment due to population movements. Some electoral reforms seek to fix these boundaries according to pre-existing jurisdictions or cultural or ecological criteria. Bioregional democracy sets boundaries to fit exactly with ecoregions to seek to improve the management of commonly-owned property and natural resources. Some electoral reforms seek to fix districts to avoid gerrymandering, in which constituency boundaries are set deliberately to favor one party over another.
Electoral boundaries and their manipulation have been a major issue in the United States, in particular. Due to political or legal obstacles preventing deeper electoral reform, such as multiple-member districts or proportional representation, "affirmative gerrymandering" has been used to create a district in which the targeted minority group, such as blacks, is in the majority and thus elects a representative of that group.
The lack of ability to respect "natural" boundaries (those between municipal or community or infrastructure or natural areas) appears in some criticisms of particular reforms, such as the alternative vote plus system proposed for the United Kingdom by the Jenkins Commission, because of its use of artificial single-member districts. The use of districts of different district magnitudes, with varying numbers of seats in each district perhaps ranging from one to ten or more, allows representation of electoral districts to be changed to be broadly proportional to the number of voters while retaining pre-existing district boundaries, such as city corporate limits, counties or even small provinces.[1] Also, multi-member districts are a component of many proportional representation systems.
By country[edit]
Australia[edit]
The Proportional Representation Society of Australia advocates the single transferable vote and proportional representation.
STV is currently used to elect the upper house at the national level and in four states, and the lower house in two states. [4]
Canada[edit]
Several national and provincial organizations promote electoral reform, especially by advocating more party-proportional representation, as most regions of Canada have at least three competitive political parties (some four or five) and the traditional first-past-the-post election system operates best where just two parties are competing.
Furthermore, Election Districts Voting advocates proportional representation electoral reforms that enable large majorities of voters to directly elect party candidates of choice, not just parties of choice.[5]
Also, a large non-party organization advocating electoral reform nationally is Fair Vote Canada but there are other advocacy groups. One such group is The Equal Vote Coalition who has organized a multi-year research campaign involving many of the world experts on electoral reform.
Several referendums to decide whether or not to adopt such reform have been held at the provincial level in the last two decades; none has thus far resulted in a change from the plurality system currently in force. (In the past and as recently as the 1990s, all provinces and even the federal government have reformed their electoral systems but so far none of those changes have followed a referendum, with the sole exception being extension of the franchise to (some) women in British Columbia in 1916).[6] Reforms of the past without referendums initiated the partial use of proportional representation (single transferable voting) in the provinces of Manitoba and Alberta. Controversially, the referendum threshold for adoption of a new voting system has regularly been set at a "supermajority": for example, 60 percent of ballots cast approving the proposed system in order for the change to be implemented. In most provincial referendums the change side was roundly defeated, gaining less than 40 percent support in most cases. But in two cases, a majority of voters voted for change.
In 2005, a majority of votes cast in an electoral reform referendum held in British Columbia were cast in favour of change to STV.[7]
In the November 7, 2016, electoral reform plebiscite on Prince Edward Island, the government declined to specify in advance how it would use the results. Mixed member proportional Representation won the five-option instant-runoff voting contest, taking 52 percent of the final vote versus 42 percent for first-past-the-post, but the PEI government did not commit to implementing a proportional voting system, citing the turnout of 36 percent as making it "doubtful whether these results can be said to constitute a clear expression of the will of Prince Edward Islanders". PEI regularly sees turnout above 80 percent in most elections.[8]
Seven provincial level referendums on electoral reform have been held to date: