Who does your vote help?

There are three systems to consider if we ask this question.

First, the first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all system the Old Man took from the hated Brits and Madam Thatcher (his favourite politician, after Adolf Hitler). That always favours the biggest party (Madam Thatcher would never have been British Prime Minister under either of the other systems).

we saw its disastrous effect on minorities when we changed from proportional representation in each province to first-past-the-post in 1985. That election wiped out ZANU in Matebeleland and ZAPU in the other provinces. In all provinces, supporters of the majority party were encouraged to demonise members of the other – as if Gukurahundi hadn’t done enough damage.

That doesn’t mean proportional representation is ideal. It does give a party which wins x% of the votes x% of the seats, but pure PR leaves the choice of MPs to the party bosses. They can give their x% of seats to whoever they like, and their choice often differs from that of the voters.

In Germany they give half the seats to MPs elected on first-past-the-post, then the other half are given to the parties so that they eventually get their x%. The mathematics of that were too complex for the writers of the draft constitution we rejected in 2000. That was neither one thing nor the other and we were right to reject it. We need to take the voters’ choice seriously and make party leaders respect it.

The third system aims to do that. The simple form demands a second stage in voting for president if no candidate gets an absolute majority first time. When it is used to elect MPs, each constituency usually has more than one MP: voters are given a list of all the candidates for their constituency and are asked to list them in order of preference. If anyone gets 50% plus one vote, s/he is elected. Then the second choices of those whose first choice ended at the bottom of the list are counted, any candidate who now has 50% + 1 vote is declared elected, and so on until the allocated seats are filled.

Madam Thatcher could never have won an election under this system. She was first choice for 40% and bottom of the list for the other 60%. Think how different our parliament would be if we could vote against really bad candidates that way! And if your party includes a donkey in its list, you don’t have to vote for the donkey; you are even allowed to prefer someone from another party.

Voters like this system. Professional politicians don’t, so although Ireland has used it for nearly 90 years, it has only spread to Malta and to elections for the Australian senate. If we think this is the best system (and I certainly do) we will need to shout that message very loud. The Fat People’s Party get very deaf when anyone suggests giving real power to their voters.