Electoral systems are a human invention. It is inevitable that any specific electoral system, having been invented under certain conditions, to achieve certain ends and encourage certain values, is now having an influence on the political system within which citizens live. It has not dropped from heaven, although it may be protected within a constitution. Therefore it is itself a matter for public debate and, if necessary, political reform.
A civic education programme will provide citizens with some of the arguments in favour of particular systems and the strengths and weaknesses of their own system. This will have been done without undue proselytising for one or other system in case this severely undermines citizens' faith in their own electoral system or unduly disadvantages and stereotypes those who promote the merits of one or the other.
Without this more general education, public debates about electoral systems can become irrationally heated, and very rapidly move from consideration of the context within which elections must take place and the appropriate system for the time to a factionalism reminiscent of the ‘bigendians’ and ‘littleendians’ of Gulliver’s Travels.
Once an electoral system has been selected, new voters will need an explanation of how it works. When a system is reformed, educators will have a particular challenge in explaining the new system, given the deep attachment which people develop towards their own systems and their imperviousness to change. Electoral systems seem to have the same visceral attachments as currency and weights and measures – generational change seems more efficacious than education.
Educators are often fascinated by politics and elections – It is a vocation and a hobby, and the arcane of electoral systems seem particular seductive. There is a temptation to turn opportunities for educating people about a particular electoral system into jargon-full journeys through increasingly detailed minutiae. The needs of the audience fall away in discussions of quota formulae, intricate constituency mapping information, negotiations between parties and election management bodies over list construction during vacancies and so on. While certain groups of people need to know these things, educators must first establish the needs and level of the audience.
The educators’ trap
Below are some essential basics:
- Why has the present system been chosen?
Of course the reason why a country has a proportional representation system, a first past the post system or a single transferable vote system – to mention the most popular parliamentary systems - may be shrouded in the mists of time. A country may have an electoral college rather than a direct election for President for reasons more related to lack of certain technological advances such as telephones, safe and fast cross-continental transport systems such as motor cars and airplanes, reliable postal services and other later forms of communication than any immediate compulsions. Nevertheless, there are social conditions and values which keep the present system in place if it has existed before, or reasons why it has recently been adopted. These are worth explaining because they will address important political concepts of fairness, the history and struggle for expansion of suffrage, representivity and accountability.
- What choice will people confront in the voting booth?
Different electoral systems have different consequences for what will confront people in the voting booth. Will they see a list of political parties or a list of names of candidates? Will they get the opportunity (as in Sweden) to select a political party by choice of ballot paper and then see the list of candidates for that party so they can make some preferential choices amongst those candidates?
Voters should not be surprised when they get into a voting booth. They should know what choice they are being asked to make, especially if they are required to make multiple choices, whether on one complex ballot paper or a series of ballot papers as might happen in mixed systems, or in multiple elections taking place on the same day.
Knowing what choices they will be making on voting day provides the voter with guidance as to what they should attend to during the campaign. Are they going to have to make a binary choice – this party or that, this candidate or that – or will they be expressing a range of preferences. In the first case they may develop some decision criteria based on exclusion, in the latter they may attend to different aspects of party manifestos which interest them. Irrespective of the ways in which voters come to their preferences, they will adopt strategies based on the manner in which the electoral system confronts them with choices.
- How will their vote get turned into seats?
Once educators have mastered the conversion mechanisms, which are more complicated for PR and STV systems but which can also have complexities in FPTP systems in regard to tied votes, or in direct presidential elections in regard to run-off elections, they should find ways of explaining these through a combination of metaphors and scenarios. PR systems are often explained in terms of individual sports where participants receive prizes for coming first, second or third and so on. Educators talk about winners and losers in FPTP systems. In developing appropriate metaphors, care should be taken not to heap too much praise on those who succeed - after all they will have to represent even those who choose not to vote for them - and to work out ways in which election losers can retain respect and realise that all is not lost, otherwise the possibility of spoiling can increase.
Scenarios take examples either from the real situation or from dummy situations – normally safer – and show how different numbers of votes turn into different numbers of seats. PR systems particulary benefit from such examples. But mixed systems, which are becoming increasingly popular, are also often explained best in this way – where topping up to obtain proportionality can have different consequences depending on the number of FPTP seats won.
- What can voters expect from parties during campaigning and who are they likely to meet?
Political parties are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their management of campaigns. They are using survey and demographic data to plan their interactions with potential voters. However, FPTP systems are more likely to be characterised by local campaigning in which the candidates are introduced and profiled, and in which their merits are considered as well as their platforms. At the end of an election, the voter is going to recognise one or other of these candidates achieving elected office. They may see differences in the coverage of local media – focusing on their candidate, and the national media – focusing on party leaders and party manifestos or ‘marginal seats’ where a difference is possible or likely. PR systems brand the party and, in countries where ballot papers include the face of the party leader, that person as well. Profiling the party is everything. But while the lists of candidates can and should be evaluated, it often takes a back seat.
Voters will want to know whether it is really worth spending time interrogating a candidate about their personal politics, if the party caucus is going to be all powerful. On the other hand they may well want to find a maverick candidate if they feel that his or her success, whether as an independent or within a party is going to shake up the establishment.
- What will the parliament look like after the election?
Too little attention is given in voter education to the outcome of an election, not in the balance of power alone but also to the governing implications. In PR systems choices for many small parties can make it difficult to establish stable governments. In FPTP systems, the role of the successful candidate in continuing to represent the constituency in its relations with the state may be key to how a voter chooses. Voters need to know how the parliament will function, what powers it and individual representatives have, and its relationship to any separately elected executive.
