More feedback on my piece on European election candidates, this time on behalf of Jim Naisbitt, about whom I was able to find out no information. Mr. Naisbitt now has a web site setting out his policies; thanks to Linda Holder (who I'm guessing designed the site?) for drawing it to my attention.
Mr. Naisbitt is a 65-year-old civil engineer originally from Gateshead. (Among other things it appears that he spent part of the early '70s designing bits of Iraq's water supply system; probably the Americans have since bombed them, which is sad.) He, like me, appears to be fairly disillusioned with the governance of the European Union, and he's also noticed that the electoral system itself is bloody stupid:
Furthermore, I have put up a Deposit of £5,000 [to stand in the election] and, to save this, I must win 2.5% of the vote. A Party List of SEVEN Candidates needs also to win only 2.5% (not 17.5%) and also puts up a total of only £5,000 (NOT £35,000 as one might expect!). The tradition of the Individual in British Society is being trampled by the Herd.
As for policies, well, he has a bulletin which isn't very specific, but mentions that he is in agreement with the Westminster Declaration of the Movement for Christian Democracy. That site seems to be down right now, but you can read the text of the Declaration at web.archive.org. It seems -- as I had suspected -- that Jim's statment that, ``The Declaration is concerned with the Sanctity of Life'' is code for ``I oppose abortion''.
So on this basis I'm afraid that I can't vote for him (although in every other respect he seems a decent bloke and I wish him well). Please do go and look at his website and decide for yourself.
However -- and here I again return to the very edge of eye-popping rage -- imagine that I felt that Mr. Naisbitt, like Martin Bell, were worthy of my vote. Because of the fucking idiotic electoral system, I would have to choose only one of them -- whereas were they part of a party, even one they'd made up for the purpose, for instance the `This Electoral System Is Bloody Stupid Party', I could vote for both. In any case I've been disenfranchised. The only reasons that this hasn't provoked full-blown eye-popping rage are that (a) this election doesn't really matter anyway; and (b) I've had my morning coffee and am therefore feeling less cranky than I otherwise might.
(I will also point out that the behaviour of Ms. Holder, who sent me a polite and informative email entirely bereft of threats of litigation, should serve as a lesson to Steven Uncles of the English Democrats in how civilised people hold discourse on the web. Not that that'd be of interest to him, I suppose. In the unlikely event that anyone is planning to vote for the English Democrats, I'd strongly advise them to vote for Mr. Naisbitt -- or anyone else, apart from the BNP, Respect Coalition or UKIP -- instead.)
Comments
Posted by Francis Irving, Tuesday, 1 June 2004 13:55 (link):
I'm going to vote for Martin Bell, although I would much prefer to vote for a list with him first and Jim Naisbitt second. Next time, I suggest they start a party called "Independent Candidates". A few months before the election, they hold their own poll of the electorate. This poll is used to select the order of the "Independent Candidates" party list.
Roughly speaking this would be like the open party list system, or at least slightly closer than the current terrible system. Amazing how much I like First Past the Post now...
Posted by Roy Badami, Tuesday, 1 June 2004 22:45 (link):
You're no more disenfranchised than you would be under first-past-the-post.
And if the two independents joined forces to form their own party, then they'd have to decide which order they'd appear on the list, and in that case supporters of the independent candidate who appeared second on the list would run quite a severe risk of being disenfranchised.
-roy
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 04:07 (link):
Ah, but I should be allowed to vote for as many candidates as there are seats to be elected (as in council elections, and in the Belgian open list system).
(As an aside, I have a strong memory of having such a ballot paper in a previous European election. But it looks like it wasn't the 1999 one, which was on the same system as this one -- see this sample ballot paper from the London Region -- and I didn't vote in the 1994 European election. So I must be misremembering, or perhaps confusing it with a local election, or perhaps I inadvertently spoiled my ballot. There's more on the history of UK European Parliament elections in this House of Commons research paper; as others may recall, but I had forgotten, the enabling legislation was forced through under the Parliament Act, in yet another case of the House of Lords trying to preserve a patina of sanity under assault by our Dear Leader.)
Posted by Nick, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 15:45 (link):
I think that must be faulty memory, Chris. Before 1999 the previous Euro-elections (79, 84, 89 and 94) were all FPTP in single-member constituencies. IIRC, each Euro-consitutency was made up of 6 or 7 Westminster constituencies and then given a name. I voted in South Wales West, for instance, in 94.
The exception within the UK, of course, is Northern Ireland, where three MEPs are elected by Single Transferable Vote, which I personally believe should be the system used throughout the UK anyway.
Posted by Anthony, Tuesday, 1 June 2004 22:58 (link):
Personally I'm not sure why anyone stands as an Independent at Euro-Elections. It seems willfully perverse. If you do want to stand as an independent, register yourself as a political party - the "Martin Bell - Independent" party for example (assuming you are Martin Bell. Then put up a list of just one person - yourself. The desposit is still £5,000 - the only difference is that should you win enough votes you can win extra seats.
If someone wins more seats than they have candidates I assume (and I could be wrong) the same thing happens as when an MEP dies and there is no one else on the party list to fill the vacancy, i.e. the nominating officer for the party just picks someone else.
Posted by Roy Badami, Tuesday, 1 June 2004 23:25 (link):
I don't think so. I think if you run out of candidates then you stop being considered in subsequent rounds of de Hondt. ie a party of one is treated exactly the same as an independent.
Or to put it another way, if a party would naturally win more seats than they have candidates, then supporters of that party are (to a greater or lesser degree) disenfranshised.
-roy
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 04:16 (link):
Yep -- see section 1 of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999:
Basically it's completely and deliberately broken and there's nothing we can do about it, because nobody really cares enough about it whereas the Government obviously believed so strongly in the bloody thing that there's no way they'll change it now. And even if they did see the error of their ways, chances are they'll get such a drubbing in this election that any further attempts to tamper with the electoral system would be spun as an attempt to garner political advantage. I'm guessing that even if the Tories form the next government, they're unlikely to prioritise fixing this (and if they did they'd probably put it back to the FPTP one-member-per-constituency system, which is just as bad in different ways). Grrr.
Posted by Roy Badami, Saturday, 5 June 2004 12:12 (link):
basically it's completely and deliberately broken and there's nothing we can do about it
I can't really bring myself to worry about it whilst we still have first-past-the-post in general elections. At least the list system does bring a fairly significant degree of proportionality, which can't be a bad thing... Elections systems are hard; you won't find one that doesn't have faults (Arrow's impossibility theorem).
Whatever happened to that referendum we were promised on the Jenkins report?
-roy
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Saturday, 5 June 2004 12:17 (link):
But the problem here is that it breaks the one good thing about FPTP, which is that you can choose to vote for individuals, not parties. And it would have been trivial to fix that in the European elections, too -- just use an open list. But they fucked that up, too.
I don't know what happened to the Jenkins referendum, but didn't he recommend AV+? Which is even worse (if it's the system I'm thinking of...).
(And, yes, electoral systems are hard. But not so hard that there's an excuse for getting one this badly wrong.)
Posted by Roy Badami, Saturday, 5 June 2004 12:40 (link):
And it would have been trivial to fix that in the European elections, too -- just use an open list. But they fucked that up, too.
I agree that there's no justification for using closed lists...
I don't know what happened to the Jenkins referendum, but didn't he recommend AV+? Which is even worse (if it's the system I'm thinking of...).
Yes, it was AV+ (aka AV top-up). Why is it so bad? Granted AV isn't perfect, but it's much better than FPTP. And Jenkins recommended that the top-up votes should be based on an open list system.
-roy
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Saturday, 5 June 2004 17:29 (link):
Sorry, I think I was thinking of AV, not AV+. In either case I can't remember the detailed criticism, so I think we should assume I'm wrong on that one. (The hypothetical AV+ election results from the Charter88 site seem fairly sensible, for instance.)
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