A Lesson In How An Election Should Be Run

One may have legitimate cause to disagree with the system under which the British govern themselves.

Certainly, the idea that if out of a voting population of say, 50,000 in a constituency, one candidate obtains 1 or 2 votes more than any other candidate, then he has won - even if the total votes of all the other candidates, added together, come up to say, 35,000 - is quite lunatic.

Surely, a majority in such a situation should mean 25,000-plus 1? But in Britain’s first-past-the-post system, which has been bequeathed to so many countries, including Ghana, the electorate is often represented by a candidate who did not win a majority of their votes, but only more votes than any other candidate.

In some countries, the proportion of votes obtained in a constituency counts more than the mere fact that one won win more votes than anyone else. Proportional representation in one form or another, ensures that unless you obtain, say 50% of all the votes cast, you cannot be elected, even though you might have got more votes than anyone else.

Other countries have transferable votes, which means that the voter can vote for two or more people on a list of candidates, but with one preferred as his first choice. If the person one marks as one’s first choice does not win outright, then second choice votes are taken into account, until someone emerges as the person backed by more people in the constituency as a whole than anyone else.

The idea behind electoral systems that are different from first-past-the-post is that the winner(s) of elections should feel obliged to represent an entire constituency, not a section of it. In Britain for example, if you are in Party A and your agents can establish for you that more of your constituents are likely to vote Party A than any other party, you can basically ignore the interests of the other sections of the population of that constituency.

And if your constituency is regarded by your party as 'a safe seat', you can act arrogantly towards the other members of the electorate who are not in your party - because you know the party machine will not allow you to be defeated. Sometimes, a Member of the British Parliament can become what is called an 'absentee candidate', who only shows up in the constituency during elections, to take advantage of 'photo opportunities'.

First-past-the-post is practised in the British Parliament too. A simple majority usually carries the day. So, a single vote can mean the difference between Britain saddling itself with the huge expense of operating a defence system that was evolved to defend Britain during 'the Cold War', and scrapping the system to use the money to improve the health service, or provide better care for the elderly people whose valiant efforts saved Britain from Hitler’s Germany during the Second World War (that ended exactly 70 years ago on 8 May 1945.)

Should it not be the rule that certain laws - regarding the nation’s finances, for example; or the nation going to war; or altering the educational system - should only be allowed to be passed by say, a two-thirds majority of all MPS? If democracy means fulfilling the wishes of the majority of the people, how can a slim majority in Parliament - one or two MPs, sometimes the sick being carried into the House to vote (!) - be allowed to take decisions that affect the lives of the greater majority of the people, as represented by their MPs?

It is because the majority in Parliament is able to use a simple majority to ride roughshod over everyone else that Ghana’s Parliament, for instance, has become a mere talking shop. The President of the country says he is a 'dead goat' who does not care what people say about his actions (or better still, his inaction.) The President is theleader of the party that has a majority of the Members of our Parliament. If the head of the fish is rotten, in what state can the rest of the fish be? How can 'dead-goatism' fail to affect the party’s MPs? The party’s chosen Speaker of Parliament? The party’s Deputy Speaker? Majority Leader? Chairmen of Committees of the House?

But although the British system of democracy, and the ancillary provisions that go with it are far from perfect, and can produce bizarre results when copied blindly by people who have no regard for parliamentary 'conventions' (or probably think that Erskine May is the name of a wine merchant) the system of carrying out a general election itself is extremely efficient. Every official who is given a task to perform does it to the best of his/her ability. In a race to become the first constituency to declare a result in the 2015 general election, one constituency’s electoral officials could be seen running a fast 'relay-race' to ferry ballot papers from motor vehicles to the counting station. No nonsense about 'missing' ballot boxes. No nonsense about results not being tallied on the appropriate tally sheets (pink sheets to you and me!)

Every candidate could demand a recount if he felt that the result about to be declared was not accurate - no need for blows, or a court injunction. And finally, the Returning Officer announcing the results over a public address system, linked to national TV and radio.

Everything was transparent. The losers congratulated the winner. No disputes to be taken to the courts to be dragged out in boring detail over the better part of a whole year. Everything sorted in 24 hours.

Simply beautiful. We have learnt many bad things from the British. Can’t we learn some of the good things too?

By CAMERON DUODU
www.cameronduodu.com