A RE-CAP AND A NIGHT CAP
Perhaps we cannot escape the question often posed at The Political Pub, one that lies at the heart of our political engagement: Who is running our government? On other evenings we have focused on who and government. But last night we looked at our government, us, turning to the subject of Representative Democracy, and the meaning, or lack thereof, of the Vote.
First we asked, Why is the Vote valuable? “People take responsibility for themselves.” “Politicians cannot ignore our votes.” “Voting puts pressure on politicians.” “It is important and fundamental to our representative democracy.” “It stops bad people from taking power.“ “It is our best defense against dictators.”
We also recognized the historical and continued struggles to achieve the Right to Vote. This being by consensus the most basic civic duty, one man even went so far as to suggest that voting be the price of admission for participation in The Political Pub.
These accolades, however, came with a caveat: that the vote as it stands today is perhaps a sham. What could the vote possibly mean, many of us asked, after Gore beat Bush but Bush won the presidency? Or in an era when Presidents claim they have no control over the powerful agencies that actually run our government? Or when ungodly amounts of money are spent on elections, lobbying and political consulting? “Money controls politics, politics money.” “Americans actually believe they make a difference.” “People are dissappointed because they expect things.”
Some put it on our own shoulders: “We don’t know what we want anymore.” Others thought that politics has simply gotten out of control, due to “information overload.“
Amidst this lively back and forth, our guest, Professor Yukio Koriyama, offered a very fresh and concrete view on how to improve political representation. If voting is what is behind our representative form of government, he asked, then are we really offered a system of voting that best represents the multitude of our political voices?
As an economist who specializes in both game theory and voting, Yukio explained that his job was to define the “good system.” For him, a “good system is one that reflects real opinion,” where election results (i.e., “aggregate preferences”) truly reflect the preferences of all voters, and where “honest voting” is encouraged.
Yukio stated his own preference for the principle of “one person, one vote”, contrasting this with others in his field who have called for a sort of “voting market”. However, he warned that while “one person, one vote” is an admirable ideal (and often a constitutional mandate), “we do not have a voting scheme that best achieves this.”
He spoke to us about vote-splitting, using the French 2002 Presidential Election as an example. There, the extreme rightwing candidate, Jean Marie Le Pen, ran against Jacques Chirac in the second round, having beaten Lionel Jospin, the more likely second candidate, in the first round. The problem, or irony, was that, while a large number of people indeed voted for their “real preferences” (for candidates outside the major parities), this ultimately diluted the votes of a more favored candidate, Jospin. While Le Pen ultimately lost by a landslide (82% to 18%), the damage to democracy was already done: voting systems that give voters only one vote (plurality votes) sometimes lead to lesser-approved candidates winning elections.
Yukio then surprised us with the results of an experimental vote conducted during this same 2002 election, in which a select group of French voters were asked to use a different system called Approval Voting. They were given the same list of candidates as in the first round, but they were allowed to express an approval for more than one candidate. The results were astonishing: not only did Le Pen drop far below 2nd place, the approval rating of Chirac and Jospin also fell, and most surprising of all, the winner in the experimental election was the centrist candidate, François Bayrou.
This highlighted, for Yukio, the kind of struggle he and his colleagues face while trying to devise a system in which only “honest votes” control election outcomes. Today, the modern voter is told to not vote his or her preference if it falls outside the major (two) parties. One women confronted this head-on when she spoke of her experience growing up in Russia under one-party rule. Under one-party rule, you vote for two candidates who will nonetheless do the same thing – that which the party dictates. She claimed that America’s two-party rule is no different: Americans are still choosing a puppet of the powerful political parties, who in turn are really running the government, and who do so according to their own self (monied) interests.
We ended by taking a quick look at the subject of proportionality in government. Yukio left us with the story of Luxembourg. For the first twenty years of the European Union, Luxembourg had no meaningful vote because their proportionate vote had no real impact on any outcome. This only came to light thanks to a growing interest in the application of mathematical vigor to voting schemes. Since then, governments have improved on the implementation of proportionality. (Yukio here planted the idea that “concavity” and “square roots” are essential elements of a good system. He claimed that America, with its electoral college and congressional bicameralism, has good concavity, making it more representative than most systems.) Proportionality, especially in Europe, is about controlling majorities and giving more presence to minority parties. But some people remained sceptical about proportionality, arguing that it leads to bad governance, or that extremists will start running the government.
Yukio’s final word on the subject was to strongly suggest that we look into the concept of “digressive proportionality.” This is optional for our political pubbers, but we want to give a big thanks to the Professor, and to all who attended, for making this an enjoyable evening.
– Peter
the political pub 