Democracy?
Today the long-suffering people of Iraq go to the polls for the first time in 50 years. In some areas of the country, to do just that can be a veritable death sentence. But will the resulting "government" justify such a risk? I've read news reports that state that the occupying coalition has arranged the election in such a way, that it guarantees no single party can achieve overall control. The result, I fear, will mean that a weak Iraqi government will need to request coalition troops remain in a peace-keeping role. So no change there, then.British Democracy, by comparison, is robust and usually leads to strong government. This is achieved by the use of the "first past the post" type of election. This means, in theory, that if a candidate receives 1 more vote than any other candidate, then he is declared the winner. The only problem with this system, is that in an election with more than 2 candidates, (the usual British scenario), then the winner can often receive FEWER votes than the total number of votes cast for all the other candidates put together. This means that somebody with, say, 25% of the vote is declared the winner, although 75% of the electorate, OF THOSE WHO COULD BE BOTHERED TO VOTE, did not want him/her as their elected representative. I capitalized the phrase, "of those who could be bothered to vote," because, in Britain, there is no compulsion to vote and the turnout, even in a General Election, (to elect Members of Parliament), rarely rises above 30% of those entitled to vote.
Therefore, let us consider a hypothetical example. In a constituency of, for convenience sake, 100,000 people entitled to vote. There are 4 candidates. The winner receives 30% of the vote, the 3 other candidates sharing the other 70% of the votes cast, in the proportions, 26%, 24% and 20%. However, turnout is only 30%, that is, only 30,000 people actually turn up at the polling stations or send in a postal vote. That means the winner, who is sent off in glory to Westminster, actually only received 9000 votes. Second place got 7800, 3rd place 7200 and the last place got a lowly 6000. A quick calculation shows that the winner, our new M.P. actually polled a measly 9% of the votes of those entitled to vote in that election. In effect 91,000 people out of the100,000 DID NOT vote for the successful candidate.
That folks is called DEMOCRACY.............................................. Am I missing something here?
(Democracy: a form of government, for the people, by the will of the majority of the people, (based on the conception of the equality of man). - Collins English Dictionary.
posted by Eddie @ 1:12 pm
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