Letter to Madam on quotas

// June 1st, 2011 // No Comments » // letters to Madam

Image by Cornell University Library via Flickr

Madam,

I await with eager anticipation the amendment to the new quota system for candidate selection that imposes a limit on family members of politicians being candidates in elections. There is a significant under representation in the candidate line up at general and local election time of people who are not related by blood or marriage to sitting or previous members of our local authorities or the Oireachtas. This much under represented group who are known at times as ‘the people’ or ‘the electorate’ have much to contribute to political life and surely they must have many insights into what it must be like to live as someone without the ability to whisper in the ear of a minister or to have direct input into party policy by virtue of sharing the dinner table with an Oireachtas member.

Modern party political activity affords the ordinary party member no input to nor oversight of party policy. Members do not vote on party policy, they do not get to contribute to what it is and what it is not. So why would someone unaligned to a sitting representative be inclined join a political party in the first place. These people, or ‘citizens’ are they are sometimes called, find much of what passes for party politics a turnoff with its strong allegiance to whoever is the current big cheese in the local organisation. Change that and we might just find many of those men and more so women who currently decide to remain outside of party politics would be more interested in becoming involved.

Yours etc.

Announcement of candidacy for NUI Seanad

// March 6th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011, nuim, Seanad, seanad eireann, seanad reform

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I am running once more for Seanad Éireann on the NUI panel, this post will tell you a bit about me and why I’m running*.

I’m an unmarried** 43 year old engineer. I’m a practical person who believes that politics matters most when it is about how we choose to do things, not simply who does them. I’m the son of parents from Kerry who were forced into emigration to England in the 50s and who had to do similar myself in the 90s, going to Japan. I later had the opportunity to choose to work in the US.

My intention is to make  politics work; for all of us, not simply for some of us. Like 95% of the electorate, I cannot vote in this Seanad election. We need your vote. Who would have thought that 4 years on from the 2007 election, where I attempted and, to be frank about it, failed to get some currency for the topic of electoral and political reform that it would now be so much centre stage. Real Political Reform is not an end in itself rather it is a means to an end, to create a society governed more wisely, more compassionately and more competently.

(more…)

The lunacy of an agreed FG/Lab program for government

// February 2nd, 2011 // 2 Comments » // 2011, GE11

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It has come up repeatedly in press commentary over the last few weeks and was a feature  again last night on Vincent Browne that FG and Labour should published an agreed program for government before the election takes place. We know that Vincent isn’t the greatest with numbers so I’ll be really slow with this.

If FG get 60 seats and Labour 30 then that’s a 2:1 ratio or if FG and Labour both got 50 seats then that’s a 1:1 ratio or a 50/50 split.

The ratio of the parties would affect and reflect more than the simple make up of the cabinet. It would reflect the level of public support that each party’s manifesto had gotten and thus the legitimate negotiating strength for each position. That is why for the parties to negotiate now in advance of the people giving their verdict on the proposals of each party would be sure lunacy, as it presupposes or rather completely ignores what the opinion of the public would be. The election isn’t just about who is Taoiseach or how many bums each party gets to seat around the cabinet table, but it is about whose ideas the public favour more.

Alternatives to lists and quotas to reduce clientelism and offer the electorate more diverse voting options

// December 30th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // 2010, Seanad, seanad eireann, seanad reform

Long form version of a post I have over on Political Reform.

Discussion about political change, and in particular where electoral reform is concerned, tends to start by identifying a problem by examining its symptoms and then seeks to alleviate those same symptoms. Often times through green-field gerrymandering that presupposes we are able to start from scratch at some future election. Such green field efforts aim for defined outcomes rather than simply ensuring the system is correct and allowing the outcomes to be in the hands of the voters. Such new systems and practices as are proposed also tend to ignore any number of real world practicalities. In this piece, I’m going to try to outline two of the problems as I see them in how the electoral system currently functions, coupled with some the practical realities that accompany them, and then suggest two forms of electoral change that would actually address those problems without seeking to ensure some particular outcome. Neither of the suggested systems would perfectly address the core problems I will be addressing but they would do so sufficiently to ensure that we can move on in our discussions to some of the other problems we face.

Two of biggest problems – and from which almost all others stem – are a lack of real diversity being offered to the electorate in our parliamentary and local administrative elections and a surfeit of clientelism. I will start with the latter.

1)      Clientelism

Excessive clientelism across Irish political life is a real problem we have to face up to. However, we need to recognise that clientelism is not simply the result of the PR-STV system but is rather a potentiality that exists in all electoral systems if the electorate are so minded to reward it. Other nations and local governmental units overseas have taken measures to prevent it getting out of control. It is therefore a situation that needs to be controlled and managed, not necessarily eliminated entirely as it originates from the behaviour of the public. In considering what those measures might involve in particular in the context of our local political environment here in Ireland, we need to consider the scale of clientelism and how it works in Ireland. I will confine myself initially with clientelism at the Dail level but the suggested solution outlined later could work with some modifications for local administration elections too.

Clientelism as a major problem manifests itself when it is possible to get elected from simply doing stuff particular to the everyday needs of individual voters or their families (letter writing, form filling, hand holding, funeral attending, and making calls for people) on a purely local level – the direct person to person contact – such that a sufficient number of people will reward you with a vote such that you can be elected on this support base alone. It is, in some senses, a transactional issue; you are buying votes for work done for those specific individuals who will in turn cast their ballots for you. In Irish elections, you are well in the running for a seat in most general elections if you poll over 6,000 first preference votes and are almost guaranteed one if you poll over 8,000. It is actually possible given the nature of Ireland to physically meet that many people and do that many small things and be rewarded by their extended families and communities over the course of the 3/5 year period that occurs between elections. Worse yet, you can be elected with considerably less than that level of support to the local council and with the winning of a council seat becoming more and more a required stepping stone to the Oireachtas (national parliament encompassing both the Dáil and Seanad) then only those who have won at local election level get to be in the running for a Dail  nomination.

What we are presented with is a straight forward problem of scaling; make it sufficiently hard to get in the running for a seat in the Dail simply on clientelism activities alone and you will reduce the impact of clientelism on the governance of the country. Most see the solutions to this as involving some large scale reduction in the numbers of seats so as to ensure higher quotas. This would act as a means to raise the bar sufficiently that you would need too large a number of votes say 20,000 or so or they seek to remove the link between locality and national representation via various list systems. Yet a parliament consisting of only 80 or so members (which is what decreasing the number of seats to increase the quotas to around 20,000 would mean) makes for its own problems in ensuring a deep enough pool from which to draw an executive while leaving enough legislators available. A government of 15/20 members drawn from only 40 or so representatives of the majority party would be a recipe for disaster, almost everyone who had been elected more than once would have to serve in cabinet. Doing less than this by reducing the Dail by much smaller amounts of say only 20 to 30 TDS would do next to nothing to affect clientelism as what is required is to increase the quotas by several orders of magnitude.

List systems of various types  are also suggested as a possible solution to the problem of clientelism but lists too bring with them their own set of new problems. It is unclear just who is going to decide who is on the list, and where they are placed and how people get well enough known nationally to get votes and how exactly that would all be funded. When people say that list systems would be controlled by the political parties it is never made clear who exactly in the parties they mean, the membership, local or national, the party executives, professionals who work for the party, the elected party leadership. People often talk of ‘the political parties’ as if they were sentient entities in their own right which shows up that many of those suggesting we should have national lists controlled by the parties have limited knowledge exactly how political parties operate at the senior level. Because – believe me – it won’t necessarily lead to any broadening of the general diversity of the candidates on offer to have the party hierarchy in charge of who gets on lists and what placement they are given.

So how might we go about requiring that you need considerably more votes than can be delivered through clientelism but not need to dangerously reduce the numbers of parliamentary seats? One solution that would require someone to get considerably more votes to get elected is to have multi-vote overlapping geographical and non-geographically based constituencies. We’re familiar with the concept of panel elections from the Seanad even if they operate on a much too restrictive franchise of local authority members and existing Oireachtas members. The idea is that each voter would have 4 (it could be 3 or 5, I’m not married to 4) votes to cast in 4 overlapping constituencies that would each be electing only a quarter of the number of TD per head as now. However, since there would be 4 of them we’d still end up with the same number of TDs only the quota would be increased by a factor of 4 without incurring the problems associated with having too small a parliament.

So we could have a West of Ireland constituency with 8 seats representing all the counties of the western seaboard with an electorate of 300,000 that also overlaps in places with a Munster constituency that has 10 seats and a 4 seat Southern constituency including part of Kerry, all of Cork and Waterford and a part of Wexford. We could have 3 and 4 seat constituencies for fishing, the Gaeltacht and other non-geographic profession or special interest constituencies based on other criteria. People in Louth could vote in North Leinster, East Leinster and the Border. It would be possible then for the quotas to be three and four times what they are now while retaining roughly same overall number of elected representatives as at present. In such a scenario with non-geographical constituencies (that could be made to dynamically grow as more people chose to exercise their votes for those panels rather than the geographical) we could look to eliminate the Seanad.

With no one being able to get elected just by being the main Killarney candidate or the sole candidate from Dingle, they would have to offer more in the way of a broader policy message for the country and to people spread across such distances that they can’t spend as much time being clientelist agents for. It would not end clientelism forever but it would reduce it considerably.

2)      Diversity and Broadening choice at election time.

There is considerable attention given to the lack of diversity in the Oireachtas which derives entirely from the lack of diversity is offered to the electorate. For many reasons, understandable but misguided, most of the attention is on purely the topic of gender diversity with the occasional nod towards the age profile of the parliament.

The truth is that lack of diversity in representative politics is not simply gender specific but encompasses age, income, educational background, and shocking though it might be for some to consider, political opinion. To focus solely on gender is to miss the core problem which is that it is the voters that cause the political parties to tack to the middle and safe, conservative waters in terms of candidate selection. Our parliament should no more have a minimum target for female or male representation any more than it would have a maximum one.

The question is often asked why don’t political parties run more women, more young people, more people who are gay, more openly ideologically opinionated people both left and right leaning, more people who like mountain biking or Aphex Twin (ok that’s probably just me). Yet the question is often asked more as a rhetorical device to castigate political party X or position Y instead of looking at the reality of why parties don’t run broader slates of candidates.

So why do parties cleave to the mainstream with their tickets? The truth is because they are ruled more by fear than adventure, and because most of them have seats that they can lose as much as they are targeting seats that they can win. Political party organisations as campaigning entities exist in the main to win seats, and winning seats is again about numbers and the behaviour of the electorate. You can design new electoral systems all you want but if the public want to vote a certain way or use the system to get a certain outcome then that is what they will do and that is what they will try to get. In part the problem in Ireland is that winning seats, not alone above all but to the exclusion of all else, has been become the sole objective of the party organisations.

So what is stopping parties running much more diverse slates, why not run 7 candidates in a 5 seater? Fundamentally it is down to transfers, you might think that running as broad a range of candidates would be the best option as it would ensure that everyone in an area has a candidate from a party whose policies they like that and who – on a personal leve – they are also comfortable voting for. With our form of geographically based PR-STV that is not what happens, e.g. the Killorglin FFer leaks votes to the FGer from Killorglin costing FF a 2^nd Kerry South seat that they should have won based on their share of the 1st preference vote. Even FF who used to run as many candidates as there were seats learned in the end that with PR-STV you will lose seats you would have won by running too many candidates as the transfers ebb away over the course of the counts.

Quotas that require a gender divide in candidate slates would be more damaging to those larger parties that might be able to think about win more than one seat in a constituency. They are also wholly unnecessary to achieve the aim of broadening access.  Requiring a party that might typically run 3 candidates in a 5 seater because they can win 2 seats to instead run 4 of which half must be of one gender are being targeted compared to the party that is just in the hunt for just one seat that will simply run their usual main candidate along with a token. It would lead to the smaller parties especially running complete token candidates, I’m sure that Joe Higgins and Clare Daly would find compliant running mates of the required gender whose name might be on the ballot but who won’t campaign worth a damn. And it is a measure that doesn’t apply to independent/non party or single issue candidates at all!

If we were to have quotas at all then it would be more reasonable to require all parties contesting the election to offer a panel of candidates equal to double the number of seats with an equal man/female split in others words to have what would be local lists. Some people will not unreasonably say this will hurt the smaller parties more that are in the running for more one seat in a 4 seater or that it would lead to tokenism. Yet so would the notion that we must run 50/50 tickets, but it is a valid criticism of local lists then it is a valid criticism of unequally weighted gender splits.

The suggestion I would make is that we could take one of the positive facets of a national list and say that the total allocation of parliamentary seats for each party is to be based on the national % of the 1^st preference vote the party secures, provided that some minimal threshold of 3/4/5% is reached. We could then proceed to elect 75/80% of the Dail in the manner we are used to with uniformly sized constituencies of 4 seats. Let’s say we have thirty constituencies of 4 seats each giving us 120 TDs in this manner. Yes they will straddle county boundaries and the like but what of it, the county system as a unit of local administration/governance is past its sale by date but that’s a post for another time. We could even have some portion of those 4 seat constituencies be non-geographically based, incorporating the reforms suggested in the first part of this piece to increase the quotas!

The first major change we will see is that parties will run broader slates as every last 1^st preferences counts for the same in getting their national seat totals! Running that smart female lecturer from Milltown who works in Tralee is no longer a problem even if the sitting male FF TD is based 4 miles away in Killorglin, they can run candidates in every town they want if they like (and if they have the money to do so). Her potential value to the party isn’t reduced as the eliminations take place; and the people still get to decide who is best placed to be elected first. Her extra votes are not progressively discounted by the elimination and transfer stages at the count. So imagine an election where the national vote percentages were FG 30% FF 20% Lab 25% SF 15% Green 5% Others 5% And the result when all the four seats are filled in all the constituencies were 120 – FG 40 FF 25 Lab 31 SF 17 Green 3 Others 2

With 30 to be distributed as mop-ups with the aim is to have a proportionate chamber of 150 the target to be aimed for is

150 seats – FG 46 FF 31 Lab 38 SF 22 Green 10 Others 2

The mop up or top up, overhang is performed by deeming those whose parties had sufficient national support to warrant election for more seats but it is not party hierarchies that are picking insider favourites to fill those slots, it is the people.  Very strong independents could continue to be elected by some areas as at present though there would not be an ‘independent’ list or top up element.

With the first allocations to be made to the smaller parties and a gap of 7 seats for the Greens they would get their 7 candidates who had ended up unelected in the order of those who had gotten the most votes around the country. So the constituency with the highest polling Green candidate at the end of the count process would have that Green candidate being deemed to be elected as a top/mop up overhang representative. They would still have to have run candidates who were from somewhere and the choice still remains with the electorate not the party hierarchy as to who is elected. And the parties have been given an incentive to run broad slates.

A counter argument might be advanced that party X might still not pick enough women but if that were the case and if the electorate (who are 50% female after all) care enough about gender alone and party Y runs more women then it is party Y not party X would benefit. The aim of this system is to break down barriers, to encourage more diversity – what happens after that is in the hands of the prospective candidates and the electorate.

In summary, we have real problems in our politics as a result of excessive clientelism and a lack of diversity at election time but we need to consider how any systemic changes being suggested would work in the actual environment that exists in Ireland. Too much discussion is based on laboratory conditions or what happens elsewhere under entirely different electoral systems. We need to recognise that encouraging much more choice is better in the long run than seeking to restrict choice and that our ties to purely geographically based representation is blinding us to inventive but practical options that might assist us to combating clientelism.

Why not have a FG Lab budget before the election?

// November 24th, 2010 // No Comments » // 2010

Why is the government persisting with this idea that it has to be their budget or nothing? Why don’t FF and the Greens announce they are delaying the vote on the Budget by 2 weeks, allow FG and Labour free access to the full figures that the department of Finance are working with, and let FG and Labour  introduce a slimmed down budget that they can agree on, and FF and the Greens simply  abstain on this budget vote. If the government has a majority as they keep saying they do then they should introduce their own budget and live or die by it. This notion, being peddled by the media in particular some RTe presenters, that FG or Labour should support measures that they had no hand, act or in deciding on in a like it or lump vote is a joke. We never saw the great mass of the media, in RTe or elsewhere, suggesting in 1987 or 1982 that FF must vote for the FG/Labour budgets or else.

We would get a budget that was in the national interest and didn’t have all sorts of ridiculous commitments that neither FG nor Labour could live with for the next 5 years. And tell the ECB if they want to save the Euro then the major European banks that lent to Irish banks need to realise their losses on their loans ASAP.

The next election is too good to waste

// November 22nd, 2010 // 2 Comments » // 2010

I’m going to take issue with Jason’s reasons for his view that the next election is too good to waste on Fine Gael but then I’m going to end up agreeing with him for quite different reasons.

Jason has a lot to say in his post (read it, it’s good stuff as is usual) but I’m going to use as my jumping off point this particular paragraph.

“I’m sorry, but this is not good enough. We can’t have the most important election in the history of the state since 1948, an election that is a pivotal turn in our national story, and end up electing a crowd of guys who were Fianna Fail and would still be if Dev had had any bottle and said “You know Mick, you’re right. We can do something with this treaty.” We can’t hand over the country to fellas who have only ever excelled at losing. We can’t put in power people that all of us who aren’t in the Cult of Fine Gael know would have done little different in the last ten years.”

Let’s be honest here, even Fianna Fail aren’t the same as Fianna Fail in 1922 and nor were or are Fine Gael. Hell, even FF in 1927 were not the FF of 1937. The FG party that emerged in the early 30s was much changed from the people who formed the first government and who founded CnG as an afterthought when it came to fighting the election after the treaty. They were tempered by having to run a country while it was in motion, and made some stuff up on the hoff. FF were defined by their opposition to what CnG did, not be some principles other than the difference over the Treaty. For example, if CnG had engaged in a policy of larger scale land redistribution then FF would now be the party of the big farmer not FG.

So the idea that FG and FF must be one in the same cos at the time prior to the treaty negotiations they were all in the one political grouping is rather ridiculous. It’s matched only as a myth of the state’s origin as the one so ably but incorrectly presented in “The Wind that shake the barley” that all the lads of 1916 and the war of independence were in the main all lefties looking for the coming of the great socialist republic, they weren’t. They were mostly interested in national self determination with vague ideas after that of what form it would take, some were avowedly left leaning but not most of them. That both of the main parties that grew out of their efforts ended up being quite anti-left shows that there never was this ground swell for the left at the time the state was founded. The real reason FF and FG don’t differ radically in their aims is down to the inherent conservativism and paternalistic view of politics that much of the Irish electorate have. That’s the real problem. Paraphrasing from US policies, it’s the parent problem not the mammy problem. Too large a portion of the Irish electorate want the government to be their parent not their partner or support in getting on with their lives.

Moving on I had to agree that had FG and Labour/DL formed the government over the last 13 years that they “would have done little different in the last ten years.” but here the rub they needn’t actually have done radically different things in order to have a radically different outcome. As any student of speculative counter factuals will tell ya a very minor change have lead to very different outcomes. We didn’t need radically different policies in order to arrive at a radically different outcome.

Imagine for a moment that FG and Lab/DL had managed to win enough seats to govern as a minority administration and then a maj0rity just as FF did from ’97 to ’07. We’d have a number of key differences that I’m listing below

• Considerably fewer tax breaks for development resulting less development overall and less dependency on the construction industry for taxes and employment – that probably means a higher level of unemployment but also
• a lower level of immigration as there were fewer opportunities for unskilled migrants.
• a higher rate of social housing being built (this is a government with Labour in it) and most likely more concentration in medium density developments in the large population centres – that means less ghost estates in the midlands.
• less cuts in income taxes over all
• the cuts in capitial gains tax would have been less leaving the tax base wider than now
• changes in the funding model for the health service with the principle of money following the patients – what would that mean? An end to the 2nd tier system almost overnight. Why? Because at the moment a public consultant gets paid the same money week in week out whether they see 10 patients or 30 patients but they get paid each time they see a private patient meaning there is an incentive to see private patients that there isn’t for public patients. Remove that and the two tier system ceases to exist.
• I doubt that the runaway public procurement process with considerable cost overruns would have been as bad as it was under FF.
• I do think that the public pay bill might actually have been worse as I can imagine Labour would have tended to hire people left right and centre. That said I suspect that at least some elements in FG would have sought to ensure that benchmarking lead to some reforms in the public service, in particular they would have been aided in this by the pressure from the PDs in opposition that bench marking must deliver results. So we would have a larger public service but with more reforms in place than we have now. And with the reforms a greater ability to change more quickly.
• A lower initial minimum wage, cos Labour while wanting a high one would have been more conscious of the attacks it would bring the government under and which might have undermined the principle that they would have felt was more important than the rate itself plus or minus 50c.
• The lax mentality and culture around regulation and enforcement that Seanie Fitz and Fingers were aware of and took advantage of simply wouldn’t have existed, they would have to have been more cautious and less devil may care in their actions. In that instance, the loans Anglo and Nationwide would have made to developers would have been considerably less than they were, if they were less then their profits would have been less and the pressure on AIB and Bank of Ireland to follow would have been less to. We would still have most likely faced a property downturn eventually and even a decent sized bubble but it would be smaller one than the one we face and I think bailout of Anglo might have been closer to the order of 10billion (of course that’s pure guess work on my part) and the losses at AIB and Bank Of Ireland might have been manageable in the course of normal business so they weren’t chasing the Anglo way of doing business.
• SSIA’s would probably never have happened
• The National Pension Reserve Fund would exist and would be considerably bigger than it is now.
• There is the potential that a trade off of further reductions in income tax for a local tax might have occurred but I’m realistic enough to see that given the chance to avoid it no Irish government is going to bring in new taxes. That goes for property taxes and water charges too. Sad but true.
• We might have seen what they do on occasion in the US, tax refunds from the surpluses rather than permanent tax cuts.

I do tend to the view that given the situation we’re now in that we do need to make radical changes across almost all areas of public life but I also believe that relatively minor changes over the last 13 years might have spared us much of the current scale of the problems we face and obviated the need for that radical change. That might not have been in the long run by the best thing for the country. As the saying goes never waste a good crisis.

I agree with the point that voting for Fine Gael because they’re the largest opposition party at the moment and that some people view it as being the party’s turn is simply not good enough. If that’s what you think then don’t vote for Fine Gael. Vote for Fine Gael because the candidate(s) standing for election has made a case for what Fine Gael would do in government after the election and what their personal aims and principles are. And if the candidate fails to make that case then don’t vote for them but don’t vote for anyone else either who fails that test. Don’t apply a test to Fine Gael that other parties get a free pass on. Voting for Labour because they’ve never had a real go is no more an argument than voting for FG because it’s their go now. It’s no one’s go. Being in government is too important for it to be someone’s go. And I agree that Fine Gael have excelled at not winning elections but they’ve also excelled at changing the country by changing the political weather.  It was people in Fine Gael that brought the entire political establishment and the public in the south including FF around to the idea that the north was something that we couldn’t just dig in our heels over but that we had to accept the principle that the consent of the people was needed and that we need to find some way to work with unionists. John Hume did the more dangerous running  on this and if anyone deserves the bulk of the credit it is him but if he was depending on FF to be listened to then nothing would have happened. It was Fine Gael that made the case long before the PDs arrived on the scene that we need to be fiscally responsible. People in Fine Gael who were of a progressive bent have worked to change attitudes on a great many problems in part because so much of the party (as was even more of the country) was conservative, people in FG choose to face that conservatism head on and change minds.

I think that Fine Gael have articulated over the last few years a reasonable set of policies in respect of the public finances and Irish life and has made efforts to address the problems associated with unemployment. I also think that some of those policies are inconsistent, some areas are lacking and I personally disagree with party policy in a number of areas in the short and longer term. Yet unless there is the ME party out there made up of clones of mine that subscribes only to policies that I agree with then I’m never going to find a party that I share 100% congruence with. And the difference between me and many others is that I’m prepared to continue to make the case within the party to try and change those positions where we disagree. It’s a long slog and very dispiriting at times but that’s how our system of democracy works, you achieve the change you believe in by convincing others to do so, slowly and life sappingly so. You don’t as has been true in the past achieve real change by saying one thing to get elected and then doing something else that you never said you were going to do.

Change won’t come about by backing a party who can’t say what they will do in detail, who can’t tell anyone how (the great unanswered question in Irish politics, where the announcement of targets is often mistaken by the media for a detailed plan) the change will be achieved and who aren’t able to be upfront about what needs to be done.

Voting – what’s with all the secrecy?

// November 21st, 2010 // No Comments » // 2010

When tens of thousands of citizens from the elderly to public sector workers march in protest against government policies that they had voted for, alongside colleagues who did not, is it time to reconsider the primacy of the secret ballot? We live in a society where all are made feel the consequences of choices made at election time but not all voters’ bear equal responsibility for those choices. When people can vote without any expectation of commiserate responsibility for their actions, why would we expect more from our politicians who are drawn from such an electorate?

Twice in a single generation, Irish governments have pursued policies, endorsed by the electorate, that have driven the country onto the economic rocks. While the policies of 1977 and those of 1997 through to 2007 might differ in substance the degree of denial amongst voters is markedly the same. Unlike other forms of public choice, in politics when a majority or large minority choose brand X we are all compelled to live with the consequences.

The government Ireland elected in 19977 proceeded to spend public money in manner likely to cause acute embarrassment to the most intoxicated of seafarers, leaving the bill to the entire adult population 1980s for those decisions. Those who judged it a good idea to reduce or abolish council rates and car tax with no visible means of replacing the lost revenue while increasing the numbers in state employment compelled others to bear the cost. Yet Ireland’s direction in the aftermath might have been changed if those who had supported those policies had to contribute even that bit more towards the clean-up bill.

Our practice, in Ireland, of the secret ballot owes much to events in the mid 1800s; the British Ballot Act of 1872, the advocacy role of the Chartists and events across the Empire such as the Eureka Stockade. Yet even now the secret ballot is not the sole means of making decisions in public life. The cabinet votes may be hidden from the public but not from one another, in the Oireachtas members vote on the public record but parliamentary parties vote in private and only occasionally by secret ballot.

As universal suffrage was extended throughout the world there was considerable legitimate concern that votes would be bought or that people coerced or intimidated into voting a particular way. The concerns that individuals might be coerced are considerably less even though the buying of the votes of sectional interests is now deemed to be perfectly reasonable. Entire groups are bought off with political promises at a cost to the wider population.

If we’re going to preserve the secret ballot as a core element of the political process then we need to ensure that it is not a single event to be forgotten once the count is completed but rather part of a process of longer term engagement and participation. Efforts such as theyworkforyou.co.uk serve as one example of what is possible in making available information about those who represent us and what they actually do. But does anyone have an incentive to access such information. Many people are familiar with the concept of ‘studying form’ when it comes to betting on horse racing but what studying of form do the public do when it comes to politics.

In Alastair Reynolds’ novel “Prefect” a system is devised whereby people’s voting strength is increased based on a collective review of the quality of the outcome of their votes. If one votes for a proposal that is viewed over time as a beneficial then they are credited with more influence at subsequent votes, if the impact was negative their influence is reduced. This provides for feedback into people’s decision making.

Encouragement to vote should come in the form of restructuring a portion of the current tax credits into a Voter’s Tax Credit. Don’t vote and if they can’t provide a very good reason why not they get hit in the pocket. We should also provide a “None of the Above” option on ballots to facilitate genuine abstentions. This should increase voter turnout substantially.

Then in parallel to the existing secret ballot, we allow members of the public to choose to publicly invest the value of their VTC in the specifics of manifesto promises of parties or individual candidates. At the next election, the citizenry are again asked to rate negatively or positively the manifesto promises whether they were implemented or not. The value of your VTC increases and decreases based on the collective opinion of the quality of your decisions.

If the decisions turn out to be poor you pay more tax if they viewed as being to the broader benefit you pay less. The associated impact could fade over the course of each successive election so that citizens are not scarred forever by their youthful choices. When faced so starkly with the prospect of their cold hard cash being on the line might the quality of public decision making improve? That’s my 2c worth. What will you wager?

ENDS

ED’s Note

This is a step by step time timeline of how such a system might possibly work.

Create a new Voters/Citizens Tax Credit reducing the PAYE tax credit by the same amount, so this is revenue neutral

1) Once a general election campaign has started publish all the various manifestos on-line.

2) The public rate the top 20 promises per party over the course of the campaign

3) 2/3 days before polling this top 20 list is published

4) On polling day a voter may cast up to 27 votes on-line for the 27 manifesto promises they most support across party lines

5) At the time of the next general election, the public again cast their votes on which of those 20 policies from each party they believe in retrospect were the best and worst.

6) The policies as rated by the voters as above average result in increases to your VTC with matching decreases for more poorly rated decisions

7) Adjustments are made in your Voters/Citizens Tax Credit accordingly

Repeat the process for the new political promises

I Wrote this for the Sunday Times a few years back – not sure if I have posted it here in this form already.

How might you run an election over Christmas?

// July 19th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // elections

The date of  budget 2010 was Dec 9th 2009 which would imply that budget day 2011 is scheduled for Dec 8th 2010, if the governmwent were to fall on the budget vote we would have an election campaign taking place over the Christmas holiday period with polling perhaps falling on Jan 13th?

The 2007 election was held on 24 May 2007 after Bertie called for the dissolution on 29th April  - a Sunday. The election campaign took place over a gap of 21 working days or so. Bank holidays and Sundays are not included in the minimum/maximum period that a campaign must take place over. Christmas has 3 bank holidays but many people take considerably more time off over that period. Would it in fact suit the government better to have the election campaign over a 4 week period almost 2 of which would could not be campaigned during for practical reasons? Or if it is looking like the budget will not pass is it better to campaign for as long as possible in advance of polling day or to have the campaigning time as truncated as possible so that the opposition can’t convince the public which way to jump?

A new political party

// July 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // elections

Another in a series of letters to the IT, in part this was a contributory reason for starting the polly blog in the first place.

Madam, – This recent talk of a new political party is all very interesting until you listen to what different people say they want from one, and it turns out they all want entirely different things. More liberal, more traditional, less taxes, more spending, both more right wing and more left wing.

The dull grown-up reality is that political parties are implicit coalitions of many different interests that work to find common cause with one another. In Irish politics, our so-called Independents are really people who can’t bring themselves to find sufficient common cause with anyone else for long enough to agree a party name and a date for their next meeting. So how could they bring the electorate together in a common cause? They can’t and never will.

What is needed is not new parties, but a renewed focus on the part of the electorate on what it is they really want from politics. Do they want to ensure there is a bed just for them in the hospital or sufficient beds for all who need them? Do they want lower taxes just for themselves or a fair tax system for everyone? Do they want public spending restraint in all areas except the ones that directly affect them, or do they want real reform of public services so that the service exists to do what it is tasked with but with no hiding places for waste and personal empire building?

Only when the people genuinely change what they want will it change what they get from politics. That’s only the first – but necessary – step. – Yours, etc,

Of gender, jobs and quotas

// July 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // elections

Over on political reform one of the most commented pieces in recent times concerns the description of the new Fine Gael front bench as ‘Male, stale and pale’. This description is in itself ironic given the complete absence of any women in the self described progressive parties like the current SF line up or even the Green party in the last Dail. Labour do better it’s true as a portion of their Dáil representation but that has as much to do with their small size as anything one or two more TDs less than they have now and their portion drops in double digit percentages.

In the comments and cited in evidence of the experience of female candidates is a survey from the National Women’s Council of Ireland, which to be honest reads like a whine  list or litany of awful things from the campaign trail that anyone who has stood in an election could offer up, whether male or female. I had a canvasser of mine who was hunted from a doorstep in a urban Dublin area by someone brandishing what they thought was a shotgun!

I would contend that an alternative view to the notion of quotas might be that we should have an electoral system that did not serve to penalise political parties for taking chances on candidates, whether male or female, who the parties fear the electorate might potentially decide to be wrong for them. This would allow the parties to be run as many candidates as were interested in offering themselves for consideration and it would be up to the public to decide who they wanted.

The fact is that PR-STV can work as a form of instant primary but parties do not do so as the issues of the potential of low transfers between party candidates might ultimately cost them seats. If total national seat allocation was based on the portion of the national vote received with the constituency election being a means to choose which specific individuals got the seat we might see more people take a chance along with parties being more willing to take that chance with them. The national seat distribution could be topped with those party or even non-party candidates who had the highest vote without being elected at the constituency level.

The other issues being raised about the nature of politics that is supposedly off putting to women, clubbishness and so on strikes me as missing the point. Convincing people to vote for you and support a course of action you advocate requires things like building alliances,  being somewhat thick skinned about personal comments etc. All of this effort against what is human behaviour is a bit like suggesting that sport X should change its rules so that more people who are currently unsuited to it could play it. But it would cease to be the sport it was. If you think soccer players should be able to catch the ball go play rugby or football, if you think people shouldn’t be able to make such rough tackles in football then play soccer. If you think that people shouldn’t club together to achieve their collective aims then electoral politics isn’t for you.

I hate to be citing Big Brother as empirical evidence of much of anything but the fact that the female contestants picked one another off while the males tended to club together until such time as they absolutely had to fight amongst themselves says something even if it’s hard to be 100% sure what it is.

Those negative comments from the NWCI Survey could be as easy found by asking male candidates of their experiences too, as I was a candidate at one time below are a few responses to the comments I’d add. The ‘quoted’ remarks are from the NCWI post on the survey

‘Negative comments from women [like] ‘politics is no place for a woman’ and ‘isn’t your husband great to be allowing you to do this’, to ‘don’t forget to make time for your children and don’t neglect you family’ really annoyed me. At the first council meeting, I was referred to as the ‘new girl’.

DK – I was in my 30s and even then most members of the party thought of me as a lad barely out of short trousers. Older people in Ireland are incredibly patronising of younger people, it’s not about gender.

‘And one elderly man on the doorstep said he would vote for me because ‘you would be handy for cooking them dinner in the council’ – he didn’t intend to be rude, but that was his truth”

DK – If people are put off by every negative comment and experience on a door step then they’ve no place contesting an election. Ask anyone who has contested an election and they will regale you with horror stories of craziness and abuse they’ve experienced. It will be a minority of people that behaviour like this but out of 100,000 people even 0.1% is a 100 people. The fact that I’d worked in IT lead some voters to think I’d be great for fixing the PCs in the council.

‘As I was on the ticket with a male, I was mostly ignored at the doors, unless I happened to be on my own – even when male party members were canvassing with me, the public tended to speak to them, not me.’

DK – It is your job as the candidate to make an impression on the voters, it is not the voter’s job to single you out. Be pushy, assert yourself. Why would someone choose to vote for someone to speak up for them when they don’t even spoke up for themselves? Remember you’ve come to their home, you have to convince them to chose you above all others.

‘Some women commented that as a young woman, I should be happy to be married and have children, not get into politics’

DK – I recall research from Liam Weeks at UCC on the 2004 local elections that showed that the worst for voting for young women were older women. But it is ironic that, if in part the under representation of women in politics is due to the behaviour of women voters that, the solution is to reward this behaviour by having a quota for those same women! Believe me a quota system won’t be seeing loads of 20 something women getting elected.

‘I stay in it (politics) because I want to continue making a difference in my area and to influence policy within a larger party, but it is frustrating!’

DK – Politics is incredible frustrating, if you can’t cope with frustration then knocking on thousands of doors isn’t for you. This like people complaining that they’d be Olympic distance champions only that they found the hours and hours of training to be really boring. If you can’t do the work involved in the training then don’t expect to get the medals. And political change takes place over decades, not a few months or years.

‘Women found it encouraging seeing a young female candidate seeking re-election’

‘Intimidation and bully tactics are still a very prevalent part of party politics. While existing female councillors are tolerated, obstacles and barriers are put in place to prevent further new female candidates from entering politics’

DK – Bullying or overbearing behaviour is common in lots of jobs, but  let’s face you have to have some sort of ego to stand in front of the public and ask that they vote for you not someone else. If you can’t cope with encountering overbearing egos then representative politics isn’t for you.

‘[There is a] Paternalistic attitude within the political party. Assumptions made that I am in more need of advice because I am a woman. Mostly among older men. Men in their 20s and 30s treat women equally on the whole’

DK – anyone who is on the younger side in any organisation will have any number of older people trying to bend their ear to provide them with the benefit of their advice and experience. Even if much of it is useless and repetitive. You will get the same from the voters. Learn listen and if it’s of any use then great but mostly you’re humouring people.