A Single Comment on the American Election

The two-year electoral horse race is enough to make even the most zealous political supporter want to smash their TV when the news comes on, so I'm loathe to even mention it, but I feel I have an important comment to make. I promise this is the only post I will write on the American elections until 2012. I was talking to Sherwood on the bus one day that I was blown away by McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. To me, it seems absolutely insane to make an inexperienced religious nut your choice for one of the most powerful positions in the world. But the fact that even though I and all of my friends are bewildered by this decision, the American electorate is supportive, shows something very important about politics in the U.S: the Republican almost-half of the country is very different to us.

From a liberal perspective, Sarah Palin is barely an improvement over Dick Cheney, which is saying a lot. Sarah Palin is pro-life, corrupt, inexperienced, and her church is closely affiliated with a movement that believes that they must train a spiritual army of God to combat the supernatural forces of evil present on the planet. This is a movement so crazy, even other American evangelical churches call them nuts. Ideologically, Sarah Palin is crazier than Dick Cheney, only she wouldn't wield the same power as Vice-President.

However, I think that it's fair to say that the liberal opinion of Sarah Palin isn't as important to this race as the republican opinion is. What confused me for so long is how she appeals to conservatives. Obviously, she wasn't a disastrous choice, or McCain would no longer be tied with Obama in the polls. Sherwood and I were specifically discussing Palin's pregnant teenage daughter: not because we consider teenage pregnancy a crime, but because Republicans seem to with their emphasis on family values. But values are really where the split between Republicans and Democrats becomes most evident.

There's a kind of continuum of reasoning among Republican voters, from those who are from religious to moral to economic conservatives. McCain has no trouble winning over economic conservatives because he talks the small-government, low-spending talk, even if Bush said the same things and it was bullshit. He might win over some moral conservatives, but Obama is a candidate of considerable integrity and charisma, and I think moral conservatives are most likely to be independent. Among the religious, McCain has very little support because he seems to be evangelical only because he has to. Until recently, McCain was in favour of Roe v. Wade. Although Bush had great success in mobilizing the religious to come out and vote, the religious are lukewarm about McCain.

Enter Palin. As an economic conservative, you'd really have to believe the bullshit to support her, as she was one of the worst offendors when it came to pork-bill projects, such as the infamous bridge to nowhere, and questionable spending of public funds. As a moral conservative, however, she really helps McCain, because she's a small-town, pro-life woman who is seen to have strong family values. But her real appeal lies with the religious, where as a true evangelical with strong beliefs and values, she may help to mobilize this important section of the base.

It seemed odd at first, but the fact that she has a pregnant daughter hasn't harmed McCain's candidacy. In a stunning depressingly normal act of hypocrisy, Bill O'Reilly defended Palin, saying that teenage pregnancy was normal and acceptable, and that the parents were blameless, even though he'd called the Spears family 'pinheads' and strongly criticized them for Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy (cf. The Daily Show.) Although Republicans believe in family values, they accept Palin's daughter's pregnancy because by keeping the baby, she is demonstrating her family's cohesion, as well as their pro-life beliefs. Who knows whether her daughter actually had a choice: so far as I'm concerned, it really is a private matter, and Sarah Palin is the real issue.

It's not hard to understand economic conservatives. As the noted economist J.K. Galbraith once said, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." The Conservative Party of Canada is mostly economically conservative, and although they are morally conservative, emphasising family values and tradition, they are far more liberal than an American moral conservative. To a certain extent, Liberals ignore the importance of values to Canadian conservatives, but it's when we look at Republicans where we really miss the point. Democrats generally value experience and policy, and reason plays an important role, although Democrats can be stupid and irrational as well. Although Republicans look at experience and policy, they also look at values and religion, and are thus considerably more irrational. It's the irrationality of half of the American electorate that makes it so difficult to understand, but to ignore religion and value in American politics is to ignore the elephant in the room.

Sinful Indulgence

This is the tastiest breakfast meal I know. It's calorific!

Croissant French Toast: serves two, or one really hungry person

For three croissants
Beat 2 eggs.
Stir in:
1 cup milk
pinch of salt
(1 tablespoon sugar, optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or ground cinnamon

Heat tablespoon of butter or oil in pan on medium-low heat.
Cut croissants in half.
Dip or soak croissant half in batter, depending on desired softness.
Fry halves with batter side down.
Flatten slightly with spatula.
Once well-browned on one side, flip, flatten again, and fry briefly.

Serve with sugar and ground cinnamon or maple syrup.

Warning: this recipe may contribute to heart disease if eaten too regularly. Seriously, it's pastry soaked in milk and fried in oil. I think you'd have to deep fry it to make it less healthy.

Frustration!

You see why this blog doesn't work? I write something good about a topic I know well, and it's a 800 word wall of text on electoral reform. In fact, the entire post is actually 1200 words because I threw in some bonus paragraphs. I can easily write 400 words of rant, and I can write 1000 words of interesting, but I can't write anything short and interesting that I'll be proud of and that people will read. Sigh.

The Fascinating World of Electoral Reform

I'm not crazy enough to think that people actually find electoral systems fascinating, but I promised Vlad I'd summarize my term paper in my blog. Unfortunately, my summary is 1/3 the size of my original paper. The term paper actually ends 2/3 of the way through the post, because there are related claims that people make that really bother me, so I wrote about them as well. The post turned out well, since I know quite a bit about the topic and I've written about it before...

In 2005, B.C., the province I now call home, held a referendum on whether the electoral system for choosing provincial legislators should switch from a "First-past-the-post" system to a "single transferable vote" system, BC STV. To pass, the referendum had to have support from 60% of the total population, as well as more than 50% support in 48 of the 79 electoral districts. Although the proposal passed in 77 of 79 districts, it failed the 60% total requirement, with 57% of votes in favor. As the vote was narrowly lost, the referendum will be proposed in the next provincial elections in 2005. I'll be voting in those elections, and I had a term paper to write for poli sci, so I decided I would write about the proposal.

Simplicity, transparency, and representation are the basic properties an electoral system. For Canadians, at least, representation can be either partisan or regional. Some people will demand that representatives vote according to the desires of their constituents, while others will demand that representatives adhere to party politics. This difference can cause problems: in 2006, a Vancouver Member of Parliament (MP) caused considerable controversy when he switched from the Liberal to the Conservative party in order to serve in government, betraying the people that had voted for him as a Liberal candidate, rather than a representative of the district.

The extent of representation is as disputed as its nature. Generally, major-party supporters prefer majority government, which has a clear mandate to rule and can govern efficiently, while small-party supporters would prefer more political representation, so that there parties are better represented in government.

Single-member plurality, the technical term for "first-past-the-post", tends to deliver majorities, even if the majority of the people did not vote for the governing party (called a majority government.) This is because under SMP, the candidate with the most votes wins, and because candidates don't need a majority to win, parties can win the majority of the seats (or every seat, which has happened) without winning the majority of the total votes. Besides making majority government more likely, SMP is also simple and transparent.

Mixed-member plurality elects representatives in two ways. Most representatives are elected directly, just like SMP. The rest are chosen from party lists in order to make the legislature representative. Although the candidates on the party lists are not chosen democratically, people generally prefer the resulting political representation to the democratic penalty. MMP is as simple and transparent as SMP, as the main difference is in representation. However, MMP requires either that seats are added to the legislature, or that districts are redrawn so that there are fewer candidates chosen directly.

The theory behind electoral districts is that members of the legislature will represent the people who chose them. The distance between voters and Cabinet, who are in practice the governors of Canada, is such that strong political parties are necessary to hold Cabinet to account. Party discipline, the powers a party has to ensure its members vote in unison, is necessary for a party to be held accountable to other parties and to the public. Unlike the federal government, the existence of the provincial government is derived from a need for local control over local issues. Therefore, although parties are important structures provincially, political concerns cannot take precedence over local ones.

BC STV was designed as a fair, representative electoral system that could replace the current system without increasing the number of representatives. In an STV system, voters rank candidates in multiple-member districts, and candidates are selected if they reach a certain quota. If no candidate reaches the quota, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, and their votes are transferred to their next choices. If a candidate reaches the quota, their votes are transferred (at a modified value) to their second preferences as well. If you're confused, don't worry: the important aspect is that valid votes are always transferred, and always used in the selection of the candidates. (If you want to understand the mechanism, search for "BC STV animation" and you'll get a good explanation.) Representation is ensured through the transfer of votes, because every vote counts. Multiple member districts allow people to vote along party as well as regional lines. Also, unlike SMP, where certain districts have a plurality of loyal party voters, ensuring that said party will almost always win a "safe seat," larger districts and an emphasis on candidates reduces "safe seats", ensuring that parties cannot be complacent.

STV's advantages at a local level make it optimal for electing provincial governments, while a focus on local issues is unsuitable for the federal government. Whether MMP is better than SMP for selecting federal governments depends on whether you prefer majority governments or coalitions, but judging from the experience of most other countries, MMP is preferable to SMP. MMP provides better political representation, and although I may be biased, as a progressive who supports small parties, I would prefer a more proportional government.

Side-Arguments:

This is outside the scope of my term paper's argument, but I don't view coalition governments as inefficient. Democratic governments rule for the benefit of the people, and therefore should generally follow public opinion. (It takes both elitism and cynicism to believe that policy following public opinion goes against the public good, and as this is a marginal opinion I won't address it in this post.) Public opinion tends to become more progressive as time goes on, and changes in policy tend to lag changes in public opinion. This leads to a sea change at election time, when the governments suddenly snaps in line with public opinion. Coalition governments cannot resist changes in public opinion as effectively as a majority government can, so although both forms follow public opinion, there is less deviation under a coalition. An excellent example is the United States. Its two party system, resulting from SMP, ensures that although there is strong opposition to the war in Iraq, ending the war is essentially impossible until the executive changes.

While I'm at it, I might as well argue against the claim that a powerful executive is necessary to respond to emergencies, and majority governments are therefore also necessary because they lead to a more powerful executive. Canada's executive, the Prime Minister and Cabinet, is one of the most powerful in the democratic world because the executive is fused with the legislature, and the Prime Minister has considerable control over their party. In a majority government, Cabinet is held accountable by public opinion, the Judiciary, and independent parliamentary agents, but never* by the legislature. Ensuring that the executive's power over the legislature is not absolute hardly makes it feeble. Besides, as much as I'd love for there to be a full policy debate over responses to crises, I don't recall the executive ever finding it difficult to seize the reins of power when a crisis hits.

*- I try not to use the word "never" lightly. Caucus revolts, where the government's own party rebels against its leader, have occurred in similar parliamentary democracies, but to my knowledge this has never happened in Canada.

For Your Intellectual Fix

In my rant below, I mentioned that I would put effort into the serious issues I care about and develop them fully, if not quite to academic standards. Well, I have a research paper to write for poli sci this month, so I'll be devoting my academic brain to that until it's done, and then in April I have exams, so I won't be writing anything serious until I get to Berlin. I'm currently planning to write a reasonably comprehensive description of Western government.

However, I'll only be starting in a month and a half, so if you desire intelligent commentary on current events I suggest you check out Crooked Timber. It's a blog run by a variety of academics, and I've really been enjoying it. I learn a lot from their insight, especially on subjects I knew very little about, and their posts are often funny, or sarcastic. Go check it out.