Calls for Electoral Reform Grow Louder in Anglo-American Countries

Fourth Quarter 1998

Regular elections are supposed to allow the voters to speak. What happens to democracy when too small a percentage of voters controls the outcome?

The full story of the 1994 congressional elections may surprise you. That was the year of the Republican revolution when Democrats lost their 40-year dominance in the House of Representatives. Yet it came about with considerably less than a massive shift in voter power. As Robert Richie and Steven Hill explain, "fewer than one in four eligible voters voted for a winning House candidate." That meant that majority passage of a bill in the House would be accomplished by representatives elected by just 13 percent of eligible voters. ("The Case for Proportional Representation," Boston Review, February/March, 1998).

The same kind of results can be found in other countries that have winner-take-all, single-member-district electoral systems. David Koyzis reports from Canada, for example, that the Liberal Party won Canada's 1997 federal election—taking control of parliament by itself—with the support of only 38 percent of the voters. As a result, leaders of the other parties met this year to discuss the possibility of changing the Canadian system from a winner-take-all system to one of proportional representation (PR). As strange as it may sound, PR—which makes possible the representation of minority candidates—actually guards against government by a minority. [For more on this, read the seventh issue of the journal Inroads, (or write Inroads, Suite A, 3777 Kent Ave., Montreal, Quebec H3S 1N4).

In Great Britain, changes are already under way even if ever so slightly. Forms of PR have been introduced for elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assemblies, and the European Parliament. Most European countries have PR systems. The question is whether PR will have a chance in England. For more on electoral reform in Great Britain contact the Movement for Christian Democracy.

In the past, we have stressed the value of PR for the adequate representation of minority voices. Richie and Hill emphasize in their article the importance of PR for solidifying majority government, an argument first made by John Stuart Mill in 1861.

"Perhaps Mill's most important contribution to the case for PR was his argument that majority rule itself is improved by full minority representation.... As Mill observed, any particular majority is a collection of minorities, not a monolithic bloc. Once some voters are excluded from representation, policy can be passed without the support of a majority of the electorate. Suppose, for example, that all representatives only 50.1 percent of votes. A law passed with support from only 50.1 percent of the legislators then would have backing from only a quarter of votes cast [in the election]....

"By contrast, legislation in democracies with PR generally requires the support of representatives elected by a far higher percentage of the electorate. In Germany's 1994 elections with PR—with a high turnout and a high percentage of effective votes typical of European PR elections—more than three in four eligible Germans elected candidates. (Four in five eligible Germans participated, and 19 in 20 voters elected a representative). So passage of a bill required the votes of representatives elected by nearly 40 percent of eligible voters [in contrast to the 13 percent in the U.S. House in 1995....

"Finally, PR provides represented minorities with a platform to challenge conventional wisdom. By allowing dissenters to win representation, PR fosters ongoing challenges to majority opinion, and thus complements our First Amendment freedoms."

For more on electoral reform in the United States, contact the Center for Voting and Democracy, PO Box 60037, Washington, DC 20039; phone: 202-828-3062.

—The Editor