MANY KINDS OF ELECTION MADNESS

It is election season - recent general election in Netherlands, Thursday past local elections in UK, tomorrow presidential election in France, and a general election campaign under way in Britain. Germany goes to the polls in the autumn. And we are still reflecting upon the arrival of a new US president, elected on a minority vote.

The British system is full of paradoxes. In the local elections the Liberal Democrat Party increased its share of the vote by 7% and ended up about 40 seats worse off while the Conservatives increased their share by a smaller amount and gained some 550 seats thereby. The combined vote total of the left leaning parties was slightly larger than that of the right leaning ones and this resulted in a massive victory for the right. On other occasions the whole thing has gone the opther way on equally illogical bases. This is all because of the "first-past-the-post" system which means that if you split the vote you lose - if there are five pink parties that get 15% each and one black party that gets the other 25% the blacks win.

The French and Dutch have tried to avoid this, but their systems also lead to some difficulties. The Dutch have proportional representation. As a result, even though the election happens a while back, they still do not really have a government yet. In the 144 seat parliament the largest party has 33 seats and needs to find several partners with whom to make what will probably be an unstable coalition.

The French have settled for a half way house between the British and Dutch systems. In the presidential election there are two stages. If no candidate in the first round get 50% or more of the vote, there is a run-off two weeks later between the two with the largest votes in the first round. This does at least give a decisive result in the end, but it means that th first round suffers from some of the problems of the British system with people voting negatively rather than positively. This time, a lot of people were voting for whoever they thought had the best chance of beating the person they most disliked.

This all seem to go to show that there is no perfect system. The French is perhaps the best compromise, but nothing works perfectly. This is the bombu nature of human beings reflected in their institutions.

The great advantage of democracy over most other available systems is not that it necessarily produces the best or wisest government, but rather that, once its traditions are well established, it permits changes of government without bloodshed or imprisoning of the outgoing regime, but, as we see in many parts of the world, this is not always the case.

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