Electoral
systems in semi-party systems
Walter Neff
This article
considers the recent changes in the electoral systems for Jersey and Guernsey,
which are the product of over two decades of constitutional debate. It will do
so in the context of an increased experimentation with party politics. It will
be argued that the two systems are not compatible with full-party politics,
although they are compatible with the level currently practised. In any case,
with the exception of one party in Jersey, the experiment does not appear to be
greatly prospering. Of particular issue is an analysis of voter choice in
Guernsey, which was predicted by the Electoral Reform Society as having the
“strangest” system in the world—having a 38-member single
constituency, with voters casting up to 38 votes. It will be argued that the
result has defied predictions that it would be a lottery.
1 A democratic constitution must be understood
in terms of where the exercise of power stands in relation to the people, and
not just in terms of inter-institutional relationships. There is no democratic
“political constitution” without the people at its heart.
This article concerns the electoral systems in Jersey and Guernsey, which is at
the heart of the relationship between the people and the state. It is through
elections that public opinion is systematically linked to those who wield the
power of the state whether through legislative, executive or administrative
decision-making.
2 Last year, this Review published an article by David Marrani entitled the
“The Jersey Voting System”, which considered the principles and
theories that may affect the choice of electoral system.
This is a subject which is worth revisiting now that both Jersey and Guernsey
have held their first general election following each Island’s latest
round of constitutional reform. It is particularly interesting to consider the
subject as both Islands have seen a growth of party politics in what have
historically been strongholds of “consensual” (i.e. non-party) politics. This article will differ in approach from
Dr Marrani’s which concentrated on the theory of democracy and voting.
Although this will not be entirely absent, the concentration in this article is
on analysis of how the new systems in Jersey and Guernsey have arisen and
worked out to date.
3 Both Islands have had over two decades of
constitutional debate in respect of their electoral systems and their machinery
of government. The result has been for them to move from having fairly similar
systems in terms of both electing their legislators and organising them into
executive functions, to zig-zagging as they have headed in different
directions. Both Islands have a local constitutional heritage of a somewhat
oligarchical selection of legislators, with the resulting legislature vesting
the executive role through a system of committees. Both have been wrestling
with the pulls of local tradition and modern conceptions of democratic best
practice, as well as how to organise an executive in the absence of the sort of
party system that is taken for granted through the democratic world, apart from
a few countries in the South Pacific and a handful of sub-federal
jurisdictions.
Elections in a
world of a consensus government
4 It is useful to start with a simple functional
view of legislative elections. Elections are the means of choosing the
legislators. The primary function of legislators, in systems other than
executive presidencies such as the USA or France, is to choose the
government—as Bagehot explained, it is easy to lose sight of this role.
There are therefore two basic ways in which an electoral system can be seen to
fail, one democratic and one functional.
·
A democratic failure is
that the result of the election—the choice of legislators—is
unrepresentative of the votes cast.
·
A functional failure will
be a failure to choose a government, or one with the desired level of
effectiveness.
5 The two aims may be in tension. The Israeli and
German systems are both notable for a very high degree of proportionality between
votes won by parties and representation in the Knesset and the Bundestag
respectively. They are also frequently notable for difficulties in actually
forming a government. The systems of the United Kingdom and Canada are notable
for highly disproportionate outcomes, where third parties lacking a regional
base are badly underrepresented, and governments are elected with a plurality
of support well shy of a majority. However, they are both notable for fairly
stable government.
6 All of these examples are subject to
exceptions, positive and negative. The point for present purposes is that
political systems are typically judged by (1) the question of malapportionment,
i.e. whether parties receive representation appropriate to the votes
received; and (2) by the tendency to form stable single party or reasonably
predictable coalition governments.
7 In the vast majority of the world, both voting
and the formation of government is organised through parties. Bagehot, writing
in the 19th century, argued that the remarkable thing about Parliament was that
it was able to achieve anything notwithstanding the variety of views of its
members, and that this was down to party organisation:
“[T]he principle of Parliament is obedience to
leaders … The penalty for not doing so, is the penalty of impotence. It
is not that you will not be able to do any good, but you will not be able to do
anything at all. If everybody does what he thinks right, there will be 657
amendments to every motion, and none of them will be carried or the motion
either.
The moment, indeed, that we distinctly conceive that the
House of Commons is mainly and above all things an elective assembly, we at
once perceive that party is its essence.”
8 The website of the Venice Commission, the
Council of Europe’s Commission
on Democracy Through Law, says this on the subject of political parties:
“In addition to its electoral activities, the
Venice Commission is also working on the question of political parties and
their funding, which play a fundamental role in democratic life. The key points
of the Commission’s ‘case-law’ in this field are the
following:
As a specific type of ‘free association of persons’,
political parties are central to the functioning of democracy. They are
essential to a pluralist political society, and their role in the formation of
the will of the people is fundamental …”
9 All of which is by way of introduction to the
fact that Jersey and Guernsey historically have not organised either their
elections or their legislatures by way of party politics. This may be changing
to a degree, particularly in Jersey. However, in both Islands a clear majority
of legislators are not from parties, and the choice of Island leader (Chief
Minister in Jersey; President of the Policy and Resources Committee in
Guernsey) has fallen to an independent.
It remains very much the case that the formation of government and policy, and
the passing of legislation in the Islands requires the formation and retention
of consensus within the legislature. The voters choose representatives to form
that consensus—or to sit outside it and hold the majority to account.
What Bagehot said about “the principle of Parliament is obedience to
leaders” cannot be translated to either Jersey’s States Assembly or
Guernsey’s States of Deliberation, but then neither is there a tradition
of an opposition forever probing for a point of governmental weakness to attack
in order to gain political advantage.
The nature of an absence or only limited presence of party politics is that
even if a group of legislators find themselves in constant opposition to those
exercising executive functions, their electoral battles are not necessarily
going to be against those whose executive decisions they are attacking. The
principle of such a system is the formation of consensus within the
legislature, but with an absence of any leaders capable of requiring obedience
to that consensus as events come to pass.
10 This being the case, the ordinary metrics of
measuring the success or appropriateness of a system are unavailable:
·
It is impossible to say
that a system is failing by reason of malapportionment if most of the members
are elected on their own account. There is no winning party or coalition of
parties about whom it can be said that they are unduly favoured by the system.
·
The formation of stable
government does not have quite the same meaning where the executive is meant to
be formed and maintained by consensus, rather than through party discipline. If
a Chief Minister in Jersey faces a “vote of no confidence”, he or
she cannot argue that they won an election and have a mandate to govern,
because such concepts exist neither as a matter of legal form nor political
reality.
11 The above remains largely true of both Jersey
and Guernsey. However, the matter is complicated due to the arrival of
political parties into the mix. Evaluating the success and appropriateness of
the system requires consideration of the fairness to parties—which is
particularly interesting given that, as will be seen, neither Island has an
electoral system appropriate to full blown party politics.
12 Robert Dahl, the great American theorist of
democracy, argued that for a democratic system to function:
“[A]ll full citizens must have unimpaired
opportunities:
1. To formulate their preferences
2. To signify their preferences to their fellow citizens and the
government by individual and collective action
3. To have their preferences weighed equally in the conduct of the
government, that is, weighted with no discrimination because of the content or
source of the preference.”
13 A system must thus be capable of housing the
participatory choices of its citizens. If those citizens choose to participate
through political parties, then this should be possible. If parties are formed
and voted for, but the system preserves power elsewhere, then it will be acting
as a “closed hegemony”.
Such a system must change, although participation might override the intentions
of design. The Irish electoral system was designed to discourage party
politics, but ended up with decades of two-party politics—had
it been unable to adapt to the participatory choices of voters to vote largely
for Fianna Fail or Fine Gael, the system would have created institutionalised
privilege to minority parties.
14 For Guernsey and Jersey, the question is how
well the systems work in a world where consensus politics nominates, but party
politics has arrived to a degree.
Historical
background
15 It is useful, particularly for those less
familiar with the Islands, to set out the basics of the constitutional position
and constitutional history of Jersey and Guernsey.
16 We can for present purposes skip over the
Islands’ constitutional relationships with the United Kingdom. Although,
historically, the two Bailiwicks have seen decisive constitutional and legal
interventions from London, any power on the part of the Crown to impose
legislation on the Bailiwicks on its own authority fell into disuse in the 19th
century at the latest. Whilst we find Orders in Council issued from London
imposing a semi-codification of Guernsey’s customary law in 1583, and
bringing in important constitutional reforms to Jersey in 1771, the internal
constitutions of Jersey and Guernsey have been determined locally since then.
This is not quite true of the smaller jurisdictions within the Bailiwick of
Guernsey. Sark (particularly its feudal system) created problems with the
European Convention of Human Rights, and thus issues that necessarily attracted
London’s attention. Other than this, the
determination of constitutional reforms has been a local matter. There was an
influential Privy Council report on the local constitutions in 1947,
but the decisions have been local.
17 Similarly, we can skip over the internal
organisation of the Bailiwick of Guernsey comprising as it does the island
jurisdictions of Guernsey, Alderney and Sark. This is despite the fact that
Alderney sends two Deputies to Guernsey’s legislature as part of the
“transfer functions” arrangement with Guernsey.
What concerns us here is the system by which Guernsey (i.e. the Island of Guernsey itself) elects the other thirty-eight
Deputies.
A short history
18 Both Islands have their own legislatures with
roots lost in recorded history. Jersey has its States of Jersey, and Guernsey
has its States of Deliberation. They have always been unicameral. Originally,
their membership represented the different powers within the Island: the
Rectors for the Church; the jurats (lay judges of the respective Royal Courts)
for the Crown; and representatives of the secular Parish authorities. This
feature of multiple types of member of the legislatures endured until recently
in Guernsey, and still endures in Jersey.
19 Over time the membership became less oligarchical
and more democratic. Parishes elected deputies on a franchise that steadily
became universal. When in both Islands the jurats were removed from their
respective legislatures following World War II, both Islands replaced them with
a new class of all-Island representative. In Jersey these were called senators,
and elected by voters with the Island as a single constituency. In Guernsey,
these were called conseillers,
and they were originally chosen by an electoral college known as the States of
Election.
20 As of 2000, putting to one side the small
Alderney delegation in Guernsey’s States of Deliberation, both
Islands’ legislatures were made up of:
·
Deputies elected on the
basis of Parish constituencies (known as People’s Deputies in Guernsey).
·
All-Island representatives
(senators in Jersey, conseillers in
Guernsey) elected on an “Island-wide” basis, which means that the
Island is a single multi-member constituency.
·
Parish
representatives—in Jersey this would be the Constable elected to be in
charge of Parish administration, whereas in Guernsey it would be representatives
of the Douzaines (i.e. the parish
councils).
21 This convergence was not just in terms of the
basics of their electoral systems. The States Assembly and the States of
Deliberation both organised their executive functions not through an
identifiable government. Instead, both legislatures would delegate
administration to committees of the States,
meaning that there was no identifiable executive in the sense that would be
understood by students of the British constitution nor that of most other
countries. This had been the case in both Islands for centuries.
22 Since this point of general convergence around
2000, both Jersey and Guernsey have embarked on constitutional reform on two
separate, but interrelated areas, (a) “the machinery of government”,
and (b) the electoral system.
23 Although this article is interested in the
election of legislators not the organisation of legislators into an executive,
we are nevertheless interested in at least an overview of the machinery of government
of the two Islands for the purposes of context. As noted above, in most
electoral systems the purpose is to find a winner who will have a right to
govern. In Jersey and Guernsey, the question of who will form the government is
not clear from the election due to the absence of parties, but it is in both
Islands the first business of a newly elected legislature.
Machinery of Government
reforms
1. Jersey
24 In March 1999, the States of Jersey
commissioned Sir Cecil Clothier, QC to report on the Machinery of Government
for Jersey, the appropriateness of the current model, and any recommendations
for change.
Supported by a committee drawn from Jersey and elsewhere, the Clothier Report
was published the following year.
25 The recommendation was for the Committees to
be replaced Ministers in charge of the civil service departments, which the
Report hoped would be reduced to no more than seven.
The Ministers would form a Council of Ministers chaired by a Chief Minister,
who would be appointed by the States Assembly. The Ministers would be appointed
and dismissed by the Chief Minister, subject to the approval of the States
Assembly. This is essentially the system that exists today.
26 It is worth noting that the Clothier Report
touched on the absence of political parties in Jersey, but believed that these
were not necessary for government accountability.
2. Guernsey
27 Also reporting on Guernsey’s machinery
of government in 2000 was the Harwood Panel. This was chaired by a Guernsey advocate,
Peter Harwood. As well as representatives of Guernsey’s civil society,
the Panel drew on expertise from the other Crown Dependencies, and also the
former Labour MP and renowned political broadcaster, Brian Walden, who had
retired to Guernsey.
28 The Harwood Report similarly recommended
Ministerial government. However, in this case the recommendation was not
followed. There were many reasons why Guernsey’s States of Deliberation
ultimately decided against the move. High on the list of reasons to retain the
Committee system was the absence of political parties. When the matter was
considered again in 2012 by the States’ Review Committee, a lack of party
politics was first on the list of reasons for unanimously rejecting the move.
The other reasons given were fairly generalised, but amounted to the point that
whilst they risked a committee system that had “disadvantages and challenges”,
the same would most likely be true of Ministerial government. There are now six
“Principal Committees” in charge of particular policy areas, with a
senior “Policy and Resources Committee” to provide leadership and
co-ordination.
Plurality-at-large
29 Before exploring the approaches in Jersey and
Guernsey to electoral reform, it is useful to note that both Islands use a plurality-at-large
basis for all relevant elections—a type of “first-past-the-post”,
although where multi-member constituencies are more in evidence. The system is
also known as “multiple non-transferrable vote” or “block
vote”.
What this means in practice is that the highest scoring candidates will fill
the required number of posts that are up for election. There is no distribution
of second-preference votes for those who fail to reach a majority, run-off
elections, or any other such device.
30 Another feature of how plurality voting has
been organised in Jersey and Guernsey is that the voters are able to cast as
many votes as there are places to fill. If, for example, there were four places
to fill, then the top four candidates would be elected. This need not always be
the case with such systems. For example, in Gibraltar, the number of votes that
electors can cast is lower than the number of seats to be filled, i.e. 10 votes per voter in order to
elect 17 Members of the Gibraltar Parliament.
31 We will return at paras 56–70 to
describing in greater detail the particular issues thrown up the use of this
system. The reason for the split is that for the next sections it is necessary
to know what the system is as a matter of background. It is only later that the
issues around the system become directly relevant.
Approaches to
electoral reform in Jersey and Guernsey
1. Developments in Jersey
32 Until recently, Jersey retained essentially
the same system as at the turn of the 21st century and described above.
33 The system was not entirely static. There were
some changes in respect of the all-Island representatives. The number of
senators was reduced from twelve to eight in 2011. The terms of office were
reformed, so that all elected members served for four years, and there would be
a general election where all members would be elected at the same time.
34 The principal driver for this change is
recorded in the proposition to the States Assembly brought by the Privileges
and Procedures Committee that led to the change.
There was a desire to have a “true single general election”,
something which had very strong support in an opinion poll carried out earlier.
This necessitated equal terms for all members. Previously, the twelve senators
were elected for six years, with six senators coming up for election every
three years. However, were all twelve senators to be elected at the same time,
there would be a risk that some senators would be elected with a very low
percentage of the vote.
35 This reform took place on the backdrop of a
wider debate on electoral reform. An electoral commission was established,
which reported on 11 January 2013. This proposed that the States Assembly
should comprise of forty-two members. The senators would be abolished. There
would be a referendum on retaining the constables as States Members. The Island
would be divided into six multi-member constituencies, with either seven or
five members depending on whether the vote was to retain the constables.
36 The Electoral Commission’s principal
driver was the concern that the number of voters per Deputy varied greatly
between Parishes. In St Mary, 1,340 voters elected a single Deputy; in St Peter
there were 4,010 voters again electing just one Deputy. The Commission
emphasised that international standards set
out by the Venice Commission recommended that the variation in the power
of votes should be kept to a minimum:
“The permissible departure from the norm should not
be more than 10% and should certainly not exceed 15% except in special
circumstances (protection of a concentrated minority, sparsely populated
administrative entity).”
37 A referendum was held on these proposals in
2013. Three options were in fact placed:
(a) Removing both senators and
constables;
(b) Eliminating the senators only;
(c) Retaining the status quo.
38 No option won a majority, leading to a
redistribution of second choices for the least popular option (the status quo).
The final result saw a victory for option
“b”, the recommendation of the electoral commission.
39 The turnout was 26%. Partly as a result of
this low turnout, the States Assembly ultimately did not approve any change.
39 The following year, 2014, a referendum was
held at the same time as the General Election on the single question of whether
Constables should be retained in the States Assembly. The results were as
follows:
|
Parish
|
2014 % for Connétables
|
|
St Brelade
|
61%
|
|
St Peter
|
66%
|
|
St Clement
|
63%
|
|
Grouville
|
69%
|
|
St Martin
|
72%
|
|
St Helier
|
49.8%
|
|
St John
|
71%
|
|
St Lawrence
|
64%
|
|
St Mary
|
78%
|
|
St Ouen
|
71%
|
|
St Saviour
|
57%
|
|
Trinity
|
77%
|
40 Retaining the Constables in the States
Assembly won by 62%–38%, and carried a majority in all Parishes except St
Helier, where there was a narrow majority the other way.
41 There
matters may have rested, except for a report by the Commonwealth
Parliamentary Association, Election Observation Mission.
The 2018 report was strongly critical of Jersey’s electoral system on
what the Privileges and Procedures Committee of the States Assembly summarised
as:
“[1] an electoral system which remains overly
complicated and cumbersome
[2] constituency boundaries not drawn in line with
international standards
[3] areas of concern including the number of uncontested
elections
[4] disparity in the equality of the vote across
districts and parishes
[5] low voter turn out.”
42 This led to the States Assembly’s
Privileges and Procedures Committee (“PPC”) to propose drastic
reform in Proposition P.46/ 2019.
PPC concentrated primarily on the inequality of voting power, setting out the
point starkly in the following table:
|
Parish
|
Population
|
Deputies
& Connétables
|
Senators
|
Population
per rep
|
Deviation
|
|
St Brelade
|
11,400
|
4
|
8
|
2,850
|
24%
|
|
St Peter
|
5,390
|
2
|
|
2,695
|
17%
|
|
St Clement
|
9,940
|
3
|
|
3,313
|
44%
|
|
Grouville
|
5,280
|
2
|
|
2,640
|
15%
|
|
St Martin
|
4,050
|
2
|
|
2,025
|
–12%
|
|
St Helier
|
36,140
|
11
|
|
3,285
|
43%
|
|
St John
|
3,140
|
2
|
|
1,570
|
–32%
|
|
St Lawrence
|
5,840
|
3
|
|
1,947
|
–15%
|
|
St Mary
|
1,890
|
2
|
|
945
|
–59%
|
|
St Ouen
|
4,420
|
2
|
|
2,210
|
–4%
|
|
St Saviour
|
14,640
|
6
|
|
2,440
|
6%
|
|
Trinity
|
3,410
|
2
|
|
1,705
|
–26%
|
|
Total
|
105,540
|
41
|
8
|
2,302
|
28%
|
43 The Venice Commission recommends that there
should be equal voting power for citizens. As noted earlier, where there are
different constituencies, they should ideally be of equal size. As also noted
earlier, the Venice Commission recommended that any variation in size between
constituencies should be no more than +/–15%.
44 Although the goal of simplification of the
system was taken into account, it was the issue of equality of voting power
that dominated the eventual proposals for reform.
45 PPC’s original proposal was to end the
position of senator and remove the Constables from the States Assembly.
There would be nine multi-member constituencies of roughly equal sizes each
electing five members (except St Saviour,
which would elect six). Some Parishes would be grouped together to form
constituencies of the required size; and St
Helier would continue to be broken down into three constituencies. The
result would have meant a slight over-representation for the Parishes of
Grouville and St Martin by reference to the +/–15% recommended by the
Venice Commission, but PPC thought that this was acceptable “given the
positive outcome achieved overall”.
46 Ultimately, the States adopted a system fairly
similar to that which had won the 2013 referendum.
PPC’s proposals on multi-member constituencies were largely adopted.
However, the Constables remained in the States Assembly. The number of Deputies
per constituency was adjusted to achieve the best possible overall equality of
voters per representative. Hence, St Helier is now over-represented viewed in
terms of Deputies, but it has only one Constable for a population almost twenty
times the size of St Mary, the smallest Parish. By balancing these factors, the
number of representatives per voter is kept within the acceptable limits.
|
Constituency
|
Number of Deputies
|
|
St Helier South
|
4
|
|
St Helier Central
|
5
|
|
St Helier North
|
4
|
|
St Saviour
|
5
|
|
St Clement
|
4
|
|
St Brelade
|
4
|
|
St Mary, St Ouen and St Peter
|
4
|
|
St
John, St Lawrence and Trinity
|
4
|
|
Grouville and St Martin
|
3
|
2. Developments in Guernsey
47 Under reforms in 2002, Guernsey abolished the
role of conseiller (i.e. the members elected on an
Island-wide basis), and abolished representation of the Parish authorities.
What remained were the “People’s Deputies”, who were elected
by multi-member constituencies on a plurality-at-large basis. The
representation was as follows:
|
St. Peter Port South
|
5
|
(includes Herm and
Jethou)
|
|
St. Peter Port
North
|
6
|
|
|
St. Sampson
|
6
|
|
|
The Vale
|
6
|
|
|
The Castel
|
5
|
|
|
The West
|
5
|
(comprises St Saviour, St Pierre du Bois, Torteval, Forest)
|
|
The South-East
|
5
|
(comprises St
Martins and St Andrew)
|
48 It will be immediately apparent that this
system is essentially the same as that proposed in Jersey by PPC in 2019. The
Islands could have re-converged on equivalent voting systems, except Jersey
would retain Parish representation and Guernsey would back an even more radical
change.
49 The idea of Guernsey electing all its
People’s Deputies on an all-Island basis had been recommended by the
States Assembly and Constitution Committee in 2010. The crucial step towards
this was taken in 2015. A Requête
(i.e. the procedure in the States of
Deliberation for members to make policy proposals) was presented to
Guernsey’s State of Deliberation proposing a referendum on the
introduction of a degree of all-Island voting.
The driver for this was to a considerable extent a response to perceived public
opinion. As noted in the Requête:
“Public consultation during 2010 conducted by the
States Assembly and Constitution Committee indicated that many members of the
general public believed that island wide voting should be introduced. During
the consultation 3,676 forms were returned showing the views of 6,837
individuals, which equates to 14% of the population aged 16 and over. This
still is the largest ever response to a States of Guernsey consultation.”
Such a means of polling opinion is not respectable in
the psephological world,
but, as we shall see, in this case the faith in this method was vindicated.
50 The proposal that was originally made in the
2015 Requȇte was not the same as the 2010 recommendation. Instead,
the idea was that seven or twelve should be elected on an all-Island basis,
with the number of People’s Deputies reduced accordingly.
Essentially, a return for the position of conseiller.
51 What was adopted on 19 February 2016 by the
States of Deliberation was considerably more radical, and a reversion to the
2010 proposals:
“That for the 2020 General Election and thereafter
all deputies shall be elected on an island-wide basis and all voters shall have
the same number of votes as there are deputies’ seats provided that such
a system shall first have been approved in an island wide referendum.[]
To direct the States Assembly and Constitution Committee
to report to the States as expeditiously as possible detailing the proposals to
give effect to Proposition 1 including the methodology of the election and the
holding of a referendum.”
52 As a result, Guernsey held a referendum with
five options:
(a)
Option A: One Island-wide constituency with thirty-eight members elected every
four years.
(b)
Option B: Seven constituencies with five or six members each elected every four
years.
(c)
Option C: Two constituencies, with nine or ten members, with a four-year cycle
of elections, half elected every two years.
(d)
Option D: Four electoral constituencies, with nine or eleven members elected
every four years.
(e)
Option E: One Island-wide constituency with a six-year electoral cycle, and a
third of members elected every two years.
Each system would involve plurality-at-large, with
voters having the same number of votes as there were places to fill.
53 The least popular system would be eliminated
at each round. Of the proposals, only A, B and C had significant support. A had
the plurality (5,304 in the first round, against 3,486 for the status quo, and
3,760 for two constituencies). Ultimately, the status quo was eliminated in
round three of the voting, and Option A was a reasonably clear winner.
54 At this point it is worth noting that the
system adopted went against the expert, external advice that Guernsey had
received. As is recorded in the policy letter of 19 May 2017 setting out the
thinking behind the referendum options, the Electoral Reform Society had in
2007 cautioned strongly against having a single-constituency system:
“There are possible models for all-island voting,
but unfortunately they all present significant practical difficulties because
of the size of the States of Deliberation and the lack of political parties in
Guernsey … a nationwide constituency system could only feasibly operate
in Guernsey if … candidates coalesced into political parties or (at the
very least) electoral blocs [or] there were fewer seats to be filled …”
55 There was no reply to this concern recorded in
the policy letter, although at appendix 4 there is a note on the general
subject of political parties. Also, a theme of the opinions recorded in the policy
letter is that a single-constituency system would allow all voters to have a
say in the election of all members. It was suggested that this might in fact
compensate for the lack of party politics.
Plurality-at-large—multi-member
constituencies
56 We have set out the basic nature of “plurality-at-large”
as an electoral system. We shall soon be moving onto the detail of how it has
been used in the latest reforms in Jersey and Guernsey, and so we shall now
deal with the issues thrown up by the system in detail.
57 Dr Marrani points out, where there are
multi-member constituencies, voters may vote en bloc for particular
parties:
“[W]e may see unpredictable and sometimes
undesirable impacts on election results. For instance, voters may cast all
their votes for the candidates of a single party, pushing the most disastrous
disadvantage of the first past the post system of disproportionality. This
might effect a serious distortion of a parliamentary system …”
58 Although the result of voting en bloc may
distort the outcome of an election viewed in terms of votes per successful
candidate, such a block-voting dynamic is natural. Where there is an
established party system, the general rule is as the great Ivor Jennings
pointed out in respect of the British system: the legal form may be that voters
elect candidates rather than parties, but voters are usually more interested in
which party Smith or Jones represents than they are in anything particular to
those candidates.
Consider the following hypothetical scenario:
·
Lilliputia operates a
single-constituency plurality-at-large system with 20 members of the
legislature.
·
Both the Big-endian Party
and the Little-endian Party put up 20 candidates.
·
Each voter has 20 votes.
·
There are 10,000 Big-endian
supporters, but they tend to be particular about who they vote for. As such, they
only use 18 of their votes, meaning that the average Big-endian candidate gets
9,000 votes.
·
There are 9,500
Little-endian supporters, who are not so particular. They use all 20 of their
votes for party candidates, so each receives 9,500.
59 In one sense, block voting distorts the result
in that the party with the plurality can expect to receive 100% of the seats in
a constituency. However, for a voter not to vote en bloc for their
favoured party is to give only partial support. In that sense, the dynamic of
voting en bloc is not so much a distortion of plurality-at-large but the
natural state of affairs which must be priced into the choice of electoral
system.
If the result is unacceptably distorted, then the jurisdiction should consider
choosing a different system.
60 Another way of viewing the Big-endian vs
Little-endian example above is that systems normally punish parties whose
voters are less committed. This is usually felt through turn-out. Voting has a
“time and effort” cost for voters, and it has been troublingly
demonstrated that taking the time to go to a polling station and vote is an
irrational use of an individual’s time on a cost-benefit analysis.
Hence, any party whose supporters are less committed will be punished as
greater numbers will simply find something better to do in the time they had
notionally allotted. In a plurality-at-large system, this can take the form of
having supporters who are sufficiently uncommitted that they allow their
objections to individual candidates to override their concern for the overall
election result.
61 Understood in those terms, the extent of
voting en bloc performs a function in measuring intensity of party
support. Whether the overall national result is skewed unacceptability is a
matter for how the system tends to work out in practice when the results are
tallied across the jurisdiction.
62 This leads to a fundamental point to be made
of “plurality” systems including the United Kingdom’s “first-past-the-post”
system where there are a large number of single member constituencies. Whether
they work acceptably or not depends to a large degree on how things work out in
practice. There is no attempt to provide anything like fair representation of
parties at a constituency or regional level—the aspiration is that they
deliver acceptable results overall.
63 It is easy to demonstrate theoretical
scenarios in which first-past-the-past/plurality-at-large give rise to bizarre
results—indeed there are good practical ones even without considering
gerrymandering.
The question is how they work in real life in terms of delivering what is
desired. In most systems this means that the outcome of the election should
seem fair considering how the votes were cast; which in turn implies that there
should be a winner. A system where winners persistently lack at least a
plurality of votes, or win with comparatively small percentages, are likely to
be seen as failing.
However, a system where voting en bloc leads to skewed results in
particular regions, may see an acceptable balance when votes are tallied at a
national level.
Defining constituencies
64 We can see from the above the sense of the
Venice Commission demand for equality in constituency sizes. It is most easily
seen when viewed from party political perspective. If Big-endian leaning
constituencies are significantly smaller than Little-endian leaning
constituencies, then the Big-endian party can win a national general election
with a significantly smaller vote. The same can be true in consensus
politics—if areas disposed to a centre-right outlook have smaller
constituencies than those disposed to be more centre-left, centre-right
thinking has an in-built advantage. To return to what was quoted from Robert
Dahl at the start of the article: there should be equal opportunity to
participate politically, and this is impaired if the system creates an in-built
handicap for one or other opinion group.
65 The Venice Commission’s recommendations
do not stop at recommending constituency size. Because use of “first-past-the-past”
voting systems in countries divided into constituencies produces disproportionate
results—and to many it is a positive advantage that a plurality of
national votes will frequently be enough to produce a single winning
party—the vagaries of constituency definition have obvious risks. This is
not just in terms of constituency size, but how borders are drawn between
constituencies. The practice of “gerrymandering” can be used so
that, even if constituencies are identically sized, they are drawn to ensure
that opposition votes are unnaturally concentrated in a small number of
constituencies. Alternatively, a minority group might be deliberately spread
between constituencies so that it loses any representation.
66 If we pull out the Venice Commission’s
recommendations on this issue of voter equality, we see:
“ii. It entails a clear and balanced distribution
of seats among constituencies on the basis of one of the following allocation
criteria: population, number of resident nationals (including minors), number
of registered voters, and possibly the number of people actually voting. An
appropriate combination of these criteria may be envisaged.
iii. The geographical criterion and administrative, or
possibly even historical, boundaries may be taken into consideration.
iv. [The rule on constituency sizes set out above,]
v. To guarantee equal voting power, the distribution of
seats must be reviewed at least every ten years, preferably outside election
periods.
vi. With multi-member constituencies, seats should
preferably be redistributed without redefining constituency boundaries, which
should, where possible, coincide with administrative boundaries.
vii. When constituency boundaries are
redefined—which they must be in a single-member system—it must be
done:
-
impartially;
-
without detriment to national minorities;
-
taking account of the opinion of a committee, the majority of whose members are
independent; this committee should preferably include a geographer, a
sociologist and a balanced representation of the parties and, if necessary,
representatives of national minorities.”
67 The fundamental ideas are those of (a)
equality, and (b) any inequality should not be the result of manipulation by
winners. This does not mean equality in terms of every vote being cast in a
competitive constituency, but rather that the risks of casting a fairly
meaningless vote in a safe constituency should fall according to impartial
criteria such as long-standing administrative boundaries. There is, for
example, no obligation for the USA to break up the electoral college
voting-blocks states of California or Indiana because the Democrat and
Republican parties uselessly pile up votes in those areas in Presidential
elections.
68 The reference to
“possibly” taking account of “the number of people actually
voting” is an example of how ostensible unfairness may be rendered purely
theoretical by the facts. Consider:
|
Party
|
Seats won
|
Average
constituency size
|
Average
turn out
|
Average
margin of victory
|
|
Big-endian
|
10
|
10,000
|
50%
|
10%
|
|
Little-endian
|
12
|
8,000
|
70%
|
10%
|
69 The Big-endians might well complain that they
are unfairly disadvantaged by differences in constituency size. The
Little-endians may well reply that they rightly win the election as they
actually receive more votes on a national level. An apparently objective and
principled move to constituency size equality may in fact have unprincipled
results.
70 All of this is really to say that any
plurality-based system may be acceptable in its homeland depending on how
things work out in practice. However, it is easier to measure the vagaries of
the system and how well things turn out in practice if there is an objective
metric—and the most obvious metric is to look at how national party
representation works out as against votes cast nationally.
The elections
71 Before setting out what can be learnt from the
recent elections in Guernsey and Jersey under the reformed system, it may be
useful to set out the sources used. This is because when it comes to explaining
the results of the elections and analysing, the same sources will be used
repetitiously:
(a)
In respect of the Guernsey elections, it is the Guernsey Election 2020 website,
the precise citation being given below at fn 58.
(b)
In respect of the Jersey elections, the results are on the vote.je website.
That website also gives party affiliations, but for the results in a format
which gives affiliations directly, the BBC Online coverage will suffice.
72 As the Jersey system benefits from a more
detailed analysis than the simpler Guernsey system, an appendix to this article
contains three tables which may be of use.
1. Guernsey
73 It is important to restate the key features of
Guernsey’s electoral system.
74 First, there are thirty-eight members to be
elected from a single constituency.
75 Secondly, a plurality-at-large system has been
adopted, meaning that the top thirty-eight scoring candidates are elected.
76 Thirdly, there is no difference in voting
power in the States of Deliberation between different Members no matter how
great a difference there is in terms of votes won. (It is impossible to think
of a legislature where such a distinction is made but given the wide disparity
between the votes received by different members, it is worth noting for present
purposes.)
77 Fourthly, each voter has thirty-eight votes
that they can cast. As explained above it is possible to have a system where
the number of votes is more limited, as is the case in Gibraltar.
78 With this in mind, the Electoral Reform
Society, which had recommended very much against this system a decade before,
published a piece declaring that, “The election is likely to be a
difficult and overwhelming experience for voters.”
The principal reason was summed up in the following table:
|
|
Total
Standing
|
New
Candidates
|
Current
Deputies
|
Previous Deputies
|
|
Non-affiliated
|
78
|
55
|
18
|
5
|
|
Alliance Party
|
11
|
11
|
-
|
|
|
Guernsey Partnership of Independents
|
21
|
6
|
11
|
4
|
|
Guernsey Party
|
9
|
9
|
-
|
-
|
|
Totals
|
119
|
81
|
29
|
9
|
79 The Electoral Reform
Society thought that the existence of 119 candidate statements would make the
election unmanageable from the perspective of the voters. The Society noted:
“Dr
Alan Renwick of the UCL Constitution United commented that election would be a
‘lottery for who gets voted in’ given that the low number of voters
relative to candidates makes it impossible to make meaningful choices. While
simply giving voters more votes might appear to enhance democratic
choice, a single nationwide constituency, combined with a lack of political
parties and an unrepresentative electoral system, is unlikely to help generate
meaningful engagement among the population.
A fairer electoral system, such as the Single
Transferable Vote, based on smaller, multi-member constituencies and which
allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, would give real power
to voters. How successful Guernsey’s new system, and their experiment in
mass multiple non-transferable vote remains to be seen.”
80 It should be noted that the principal
criticism is not the lack of a single transferable vote system—though Dr
Renwick is very much a supporter of the use of such a system in the Channel
Islands, having given such advice to the States of Jersey in 2013.
The key point being made here is not the fairness of the system, but that the
task of selecting one’s favourite 38 candidates in single constituency
would be too complex to be intelligently performed, particularly given that the
choice is not greatly organised into established parties.
The results in
Guernsey
81 The 2020 Guernsey general election may have
seen the start of party politics, although it is unclear how far it has been
embraced. The basic points are:
(a)
Of the 119 candidates for 38 seats, 41 belonged to political parties:
·
21 from the Guernsey Partnership
of Independents, of whom 10 were elected.
·
9 from the Guernsey Party,
of whom 6 were elected.
·
11 from the Alliance Party,
of whom none was elected.
(b)
There was a considerable spread of votes for the party candidates:
·
The Guernsey Partnership of
Independents candidates polled between 13,927 and 3,579 votes (including the
two highest placed candidates).
·
The Guernsey Party
candidates polled between 11,398 and 3,404 votes (including the fourth highest
placed candidate).
·
The Alliance Party candidates
polled between 3,385 and 1,397 votes, although eight were bunched between 1,397
and 1,895 votes.
(c)
The Guernsey Partnership of Independents was the only party to field enough
candidates to win a majority, but might be better described as a loose association
of candidates rather than a political party in the traditional sense. It has
since dissolved.
(d)
The highest number of votes for a successful candidate was 13,927.
(e)
The lowest number of votes for a successful candidate was 6,477.
(f)
The eighteenth and nineteenth most successful candidates secured 8,812 and
8,699 respectively, whereas the most successful gained 13,927. This is
interesting in that a party that fielded twenty candidates that secured a block
vote of 8,700 would have won the election despite having secured fewer votes
than seventeen other candidates, and gained the support of 35.3% of the 24,627
voters who cast ballots.
(g)
In terms of the fate of new candidates, sitting deputies and previous deputies,
it was as follows:
|
|
New candidates
elected/total new candidates standing
|
Sitting
Deputies re-elected/total sitting Deputies standing
|
Previous
Deputies re-elected/total previous Deputies elected
|
|
Non-affiliated
|
10/55
|
12/18
|
0/5
|
|
Alliance Party
|
0/11
|
-
|
-
|
|
Guernsey Partnership of Independents
|
3/6
|
6/11
|
1/4
|
|
Guernsey Party
|
6/9
|
-
|
-
|
|
Totals
|
19/81
|
18/29
|
1/9
|
82 There are two important things to stress. First,
there is the lack of partisan voting. Voters did not follow party slates of
candidates. In Gibraltar, which has a similar system, except that voters have
ten votes to elect seventeen members of their Parliament, the top ten
candidates all came from the same “alliance” in the 2019 election.
This suggests voting was largely for individuals rather than parties. Secondly,
the parties themselves were not fielding enough candidates to be seeking a
majority—even the Partnership of Independents only just fielded enough
candidates to theoretically achieve that goal.
83 Perhaps the most startling statistic in
respect of the election, given that the most respectable of British electoral
commentators had predicted the “strangest election in the world”
was the turn out:
Eligible
voters: 30,899
Ballots
cast: 24,627
Turnout:
79.7%
Votes
cast: 637,567
Average
votes cast per voter: 25.9
84 Despite the reservations of the Electoral
Reform Society, voters did turn out in considerable numbers—higher than
in any British general elections since 1918 other than those in 1950 and 1951.
85 Whilst it is doubtful
if many voters read all personal statements, a lack of personal attention to
politics by much of the electorate is a general feature of democracy.
It is not as if the average voter reads the manifestos of all major parties in
British general elections. It is as Downs argued out in the 1950s, voters
typically rely on ideological shortcuts when deciding how to participate.
In small Islands, there may well be different short-cuts for reaching opinions
on candidates, and some candidates may fail to elicit even an opinion on their
merits, but the principle is the same. Not considering the merits of all
candidates does not mean that voters are not reaching preferences and voting
accordingly. A high-level analysis of the results suggests that, far from being
a lottery, clear choices were being made. There was a distinct advantage to
incumbency, with 18 out 29 incumbent People’s Deputies being re-elected.
However, that means that 11 were voted out, with the lowest receiving 2,788
votes. Furthermore, former People’s Deputies were the most unsuccessful grouping,
with only one out of nine being successful. Some politicians had achieved
popularity and were re-elected; others had not, and suffered at the polls.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of these choices, they are choices, and not a
lottery. The following features in the voting can readily be seen:
·
Considerable differences in
support between parties.
·
Considerable differences in
support within the Guernsey Partnership of Independents and the Guernsey Party
groupings.
·
Incumbent People’s
Deputies were considerably the most successful (62%), followed by new
candidates (23%), and finally former People’s Deputies (11%).
·
There was a considerable
spread in votes:
|
Votes
|
0–1999
|
2000–3999
|
4000–5999
|
6000–7999
|
8000–9999
|
10,000–11,999
|
12,000–13,999
|
|
Number of candidates
|
16
|
32
|
28
|
17
|
18
|
5
|
3
|
86 The results on their
face appear very much to owe themselves to human choice rather than to a
lottery.
Jersey 2022 election
87 The Jersey system for
electing deputies has the same theoretical objections as attach to plurality-at-large
and need not be repeated.
Parties in the Jersey election 2022
88 In the Jersey 2022
election, 76 candidates stood overall in the nine-constituencies for Deputy. A
further fifteen candidates stood for the position of Constable, meaning that
three of the twelve Parish elections for that position were contested.
89 Four parties
registered under the Political Parties (Registration) (Jersey) Law 2008 fielded
candidates in the 2022 election.
Of these the Jersey Liberal Conservatives and the Progress Party allied and
will be treated here for convenience as if a single party (“JLC/Progress”).
The number of party candidates were as follows:
(a) The Alliance Party stood thirteen candidates
for Deputy (with at least one standing in each constituency), and one unopposed
candidate for Constable.
(b) JLC/Progress stood nine candidates for Deputy
across seven constituencies.
(c) Reform stood fourteen candidates for Deputy
across seven constituencies.
90 Writing as a guest contributor to the Electoral
Reform Society website, Dylan Difford summarised the results as follows,
arguing that the new system had led to a distorted result:
|
|
Percentage
vote (calculated by Deputy votes)
|
Seats
|
Percentage
of seats
|
|
Independents
|
62
|
35
|
71
|
|
Reform
|
16
|
10
|
20
|
|
Alliance
|
11
|
1
|
2
|
|
Progress/JLC
|
11
|
3
|
6
|
91 It should be noted that Difford includes the Constables
in terms of “seats won” and “percentage of seats won”.
The 11% of Deputy votes cast for the Alliance in fact won no seats—their
only successful candidate was in the uncontested Constable election for Trinity
Parish.
92 If we remove the
Constables from the analysis, we see:
|
|
Percentage
vote (calculated by Deputy votes)
|
Deputies elected
|
Percentage
of Deputies elected
|
|
Independents
|
62
|
24
|
65
|
|
Reform
|
16
|
10
|
27
|
|
Alliance
|
11
|
0
|
0
|
|
Progress/JLC
|
11
|
3
|
6
|
93 However, it is unclear if such an analysis
paints that useful a picture. Difford follows the conventional way of
considering the total votes cast for a party divided by the total votes cast.
Such an approach—which is undoubtedly the best available—does not
work perfectly when the parties do not field a complete slate of candidates.
For example, Alliance and Progress/JLC have the same percentage of votes
because the former fielded more candidates. Reform received 16% of the votes
cast, but if we look at the analysis in table A of the appendix to this article,
we can see that every Reform candidate received votes from at least 28% of the
constituency’s voters. Also, only the Alliance Party stood candidates in
all constituencies. However, as the aim is to consider whether a party is under
or overrepresented in the legislature, parties are logically limited to the
number of candidates it presented, and whether it ought to have won had it
contested all the seats.
94 Perhaps, then, the peculiarity of
Jersey’s 2022 election is that the electorate seldom had the opportunity
for voting en bloc as the parties simply did not field enough
candidates:
·
In St Helier Central, the
Reform Party fielded five candidates and duly won all five seats. This is
effectively a repeat of the 2018 result when the party won three out of three
of the seats of the then St Helier 1 Constituency.
·
In St Helier South, the
Reform Party fielded three candidates for the four seats. They topped the poll,
and most probably would have won four out of four had they fielded a fourth
candidate. In 2018, Reform had run three candidates for the three seats in the
then St Helier 2 Constituency, but none had been elected.
·
In St John, St Lawrence and
Trinity, the Alliance ran three candidates for the four seats, and won between
11 and 31% of the vote.
·
In other seats, no party
ran more than two candidates for the seats, and in all cases bar one there was
a 10%+ difference in terms of percentage of voters who supported them.
Governmental
accountability
95 As will be appreciated from the description of
Jersey’s ministerial system, there is something far more like a
“government” than in Guernsey that may be held to account in an
election, i.e. the members of the
Council of Ministers. Of the twelve members of Jersey’s Council of
Ministers as of the date of the 2022 election:
·
Four did not stand for
election.
·
Two stood for re-election
for the Jersey Alliance (including the outgoing Chief Minister), but neither
was re-elected.
·
Five stood for election as
independent candidates for Deputies, of whom three were successful. The two who
were not re-elected were both Deputies for St Helier South, and saw their votes
reduce as the bloc vote for Reform increased.
·
One stood unopposed as an
independent for Constable and was elected.
96 The voting patterns showed that government was
not treated as a single group. However, half did lose their seats, as did all but
one candidate who joined the same party (the Alliance) as the sitting Chief
Minister. One columnist for the local newspaper, admittedly a former candidate
for the Reform Party, declared herself baffled by the overall highly variable
pattern of the fate of government members.
Contested
elections
97 One of the key criticisms of earlier Jersey
elections was that many elections were uncompetitive. In 2022, there were more
contested elections. This included more contested Constable elections (three),
although we shall leave this to one side as there were no relevant changes to
this part of the electoral system.
98 In 2018, there were seventeen constituencies
for Deputy, of which four constituencies saw unopposed elections. No Deputy
standing for re-election in their constituency lost their seat. In several
constituencies, the election was barely competitive, e.g. Trinity and St Ouen, where the sitting candidate received over
80% of the vote. In fact, it should be noted that in the 2018, only two sitting
members of the States Assembly who fought the election lost their membership.
In one case, this was due to the sole contested Constable election (St
Mary’s); in the other it came from a St Clement’s Deputy vacating
his seat in order to stand, albeit unsuccessfully, to be a Senator. Incumbency
appeared to rule in 2018.
99 In 2022, all the Deputy elections were subject
to a real contest. Eleven States Members who stood for re-election as Deputies
lost, of which the following can be seen:
·
Five were members of the
Alliance
·
One was a member of
JLC/Progress
·
Two were Independents but
members of the previous Council of Ministers—the ones, as noted earlier,
who lost to increase in the Reform bloc vote in St Helier South
·
One was Reform, but had
moved constituencies
·
Two were Independents and
not in the previous Council of Ministers, but had been subject to personal
controversy
100 Fifteen States Members were re-elected as
Deputies:
·
Six could be described as
pure Independents, not having been members of the previous Council of
Ministers.
·
Three were Independents but
had been members of the previous Council of Ministers.
·
Six were members of
parties: five for Reform, one for JLC/Progress.
101 The reason for this dry grind through the
results is that it helps consider the extent to which the logic of party
politics has played its part in Jersey’s election. The question is,
perhaps, how far Jersey voters have acted like British voters, being more
interested in the party label than the candidate? Also, how far the Parties
have themselves followed the logic of the electoral system?
102 First, the voting en bloc for Reform
Party candidates in St Helier Central and in St Helier South is a clear example
of voters participating by voting for party. We obviously cannot discount the
possibility that each would have been elected as an Independent, but it is hard
to ignore that Reform Party candidates in these constituencies were the clear
victors.
103 Secondly, Reform itself acted rationally in
respect to the logic of the electoral system. It had fourteen candidates, and
eight stood in the two seats where they (correctly) judged itself strongest.
Had it behaved otherwise, it could have lined itself up for a series of near
misses in other seats.
104 Thirdly, if we look at table A in the appendix,
it is true that most Reform members were elected with a number of votes that
would have seen them lose in other seats. But it is also true that they
received a percentage of votes that would have seen them elected in most other
seats. Also, the hope for any “first-past-the-post” style system is
to achieve an acceptable degree of fairness across the election.
105 Fourthly, the electorate showed itself able
to turn against a party, as they did with the Alliance.
106 Fifthly, there is a stark contrast with
countries such as the United Kingdom with established party systems. It is
notoriously difficult to stand as an independent in the United Kingdom given
that people overwhelmingly vote (whether positively or negatively) according to
party labels. Voters may genuinely take the view of “plague on all your
houses” but must still make their choice knowing that either Labour or
Conservative will almost definitely lead the next government. In Jersey, there
may be an equal and opposite difficulty for anyone wishing to establish a
party: viable independent candidates may occupy similar political space. A
voter does not have a binary choice between Alliance and Reform, or even a
three-way choice between Alliance, JLC/ Progress and Reform. If a voter does
not like any of the parties standing in their constituency, they are not faced
with the knowledge that one of them must win—they are much freer to
exercise their participation by voting Independent. And this is what was seen
in the results.
107 Finally, as in Guernsey, there is evidence in
the voting figures of electors not voting by party label even when voting for
party candidates. There is a breakdown in columns four and five of table A of
the appendix, which shows that voting numbers and percentages for Alliance and
JLC/Progress candidates varied massively. For example, the three successful
JLC/Progress candidates received support from a very respectable 50%, 49% and
40% of electors, whereas the support for the unsuccessful candidates was (with
one exception) much lower. In contrast, the Reform candidates outside of St
Helier South and St Helier Central poll tended to poll around 30%.
108 However, as with the analysis of Guernsey, it
is important to end with consideration of turnout. This is particularly
important in the case of Jersey as one of the longstanding goals of the
electoral reform debates has been to improve election participation. Turn out
went down from 43.4% in 2018 to 41.6% in 2022.
Electoral
changes—success or failure
109 Having considered the nature of the changes
in electoral systems, and the outcomes of the subsequent elections, it is
necessary to wrap up the argument by asking whether the changes have been
successful in their aims and are likely to endure.
110 The Guernsey system was described by the
Electoral Reform Society as creating the “strangest election” in
the world. Certainly, requiring electors to choose their between 119 candidates
was an above average burden on the Guernsey
electorate which required greater participatory costs in terms of time
and effort from voters than most national elections, but there is every sign
that they rose to the challenge. The position is perhaps summed up by a writer
from ITN, James Webster.
He argued that the electorate had chosen the system in a referendum, and thrown
themselves into the spirit of it. Whether or not they had read all 119
candidate statements, they had taken the election and the choices seriously.
Almost 80% of the electorate turned out, and they cast their votes in a way
that was far from the lottery predicted.
111 Guernsey had notably ignored their own
experts, the Electoral Reform Society, and adopted a system which they were
advised was unworkable. There is nothing in the 2020 result to suggest that it
is unworkable, but whether it works depends on the appropriate participation of
citizens. This is true of all systems, of course. There is a cautionary tale
from Sark, whose first democratic general election in 2008 (which adopted the
same single-constituency plurality-at-large system) saw 57 candidates and a
turnout of 87%, to elect 28 conseillers of the Chief Pleas.
To understand the level of interest, there were only 474 eligible voters, so
over 10% of these were candidates. In later Sark elections, not only have
candidates been elected unopposed, but at times there have been by-elections
due to an insufficiency of candidates.
112 This article cannot speculate as to whether
Guernsey’s system will suffer from the same trend. The point is that
success and failure is ultimately about the participatory choices of the
voters, not any abstract quality of the system. For the moment, there are no
proposals for further electoral reform, so it is to be expected that the system
will be tested in practice at least one more time.
113 In Jersey, by contrast, there is much to
note.
114 In the negative, and a significant negative,
is that the change of system did nothing to increase voter turnout. This cannot
be attributed to the complexity of the system—if Guernsey voters can rise
to the challenge of choosing between 119 candidates, keeping track of different
types of elected-member ought to be comparatively simple. Voters did not
participate in greater numbers, and any surveys as to what voters agree might
make them more likely to vote are unfortunately worthless.
115 It may or may not be that party politics will
lead to greater interest as voters will choose winning parties to govern, but
there is little in the results to encourage this prospect. In the political space
occupied by Reform, there is probably little incentive for aspiring candidates
to participate other than through Reform. The party did very well in two of the
St Helier constituencies and was competitive in most other places where they
stood candidates. But there was little in voting patterns to incentivise other
opinion groups to form parties. Perhaps the greatest hurdle for future party
politics is more prosaic. The purpose of a political party is to compete for
power. Of the six party/party groups standing across the Island, only the
Guernsey Partnership of Independents put forward enough candidates potentially to
achieve that. The other parties fell far short of this aim. There will be no
full party politics until at least two parties put forward a slate
theoretically capable of taking a majority.
116 In truth, there was more than enough party
politics to potentially inspire higher turnout. In the parish of St Clement,
the leader of the Alliance Party and the leader of JLC/Progress stood against
each other: the turnout was a below average 40.1%. In St Helier South, two
long-standing Independent Deputies who were serving members of the Council of
Ministers stood against the block of three Reform candidates including the
party leader: turnout was 34.6%.
117 From an objective perspective, the move to
multi-seat constituencies for Deputies eliminated dead or uncompetitive
elections. It also created a phenomenon where there is perhaps no such things
as a safe seat. In Guernsey, a top politician would have to sink far to fall
below 38th in the listings—although some sitting Deputies did this, and
by considerable distance. This may or may not in the long-term inspire
increased interest in voting on the part of Jersey’s electorate, but it
should concentrate the minds of those who hold or stand for office.
118 Perhaps most important is that neither has
designed a system that will work for full party politics. The Guernsey system
could lead to one party holding all seats, or gaining power by hoovering up the
lower voting seats. The Jersey system may or may not lead to a reasonably fair
outcome in respect of Deputies if future elections involve a competition of
votes between the Reform Party and equivalents to its right. However, twelve of
the forty-nine members are elected as Constables to be heads of their Parish
administration. It is one thing to have Constables as States Members where
their role is to participate in consensus politics—it is another thing if
the general election is meant to be an exercise in counting public votes to
find a winning party or party coalition. Either the election of Constables
would have to be politicised—and only one candidate for Constable stood
on a party label—or their position in the States Assembly would quickly
become untenable.
119 For the time being, however, both Jersey and
Guernsey have achieved sufficient equality of voting power to fall within the
Venice Commission guidelines. What happens next will depend on the realities of
public participation. Will Guernsey’s electorate continue to rise to the
challenge of their “strange” system? Will both Islands take more
interest in parties? Will prospective politicians in Jersey be deterred from
forming parties?
Walter Neff is the nom de
plume of an advocate of the Royal Court of Jersey.