Democracy for minorities.

December 2018

“There was a recent internal election for 9 places on the . . . committee. There were two or three ‘slates’ seeking those 9 places. The first-placed slate won all 9 available seats, despite getting 56% of the vote. Many of the other 44% of voters were not represented.”

“Did the voters have 9 votes each or one? And was the voting for slates or individual candidates?”

“Each voter had 9 votes, so many would be likely to vote for slates.

Minority voters would probably not have 9 representatives of their minority to vote for, and non-minority voters would be likely to give some of their votes to minority candidates.

So each voter would be likely to be giving most of her votes to candidates who weren’t representing her main interest. So the choice of minority representation would be dominated by non-minority voting.”

“A more appropriate way of choosing representatives for special interest groups would be a first-past-the-post ballot with one vote per voter. If, for example, there were 10 representatives chosen by this ballot, this would actually be a first-TEN-past-the-post ballot, and minorities would have a good chance of being well represented. So it would not be necessary to have representatives for specific identity groups. This would actually be more like proportional representation than first-past-the-post.”

“I don’t quite understand why your ballot idea would be proportional when it’s FPTP and how it would include minorities”

“For success in a first-past-the-post (FPTP) election about 40 percent of the vote is usually necessary.
In mixed-member-proportional systems only 5 percent is needed.
With a Single Transferable Vote, its more than 5 percent but less than 40 percent.

With my first-ten-past-the post idea, less than 10 percent of the vote would be needed. It would elect representatives of major minorities who manage to focus their support on one respected candidate.”

Referendum diary.

May 2011. The Scottish National Party won the Holyrood Scottish Parliament election.

May-June 2012. Yes Scotland and Better Together were launched.

October 2012. The Edinburgh agreement was signed. In the agreed referendum there was to be no third “devo-max” option on the ballot paper.

September 2013. I wrote in an email: If Scotland doesn’t choose independence, it doesn’t seem right that Scotland’s central bank should continue to be called the Bank of England.

January 2014. The Bank of England governor commented that a durable, successful currency union requires some ceding of national sovereignty.

March 2014. The Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury stated that there would not be a formal currency union between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK.

April 2014. I wrote in an email: I haven’t got any strong opinions about Scottish independence and I don’t think its my business. (I’ve only lived here for a few years).

25 August. Alistair Darling’s attempt to explain the currency problem in the second leaders TV debate was swamped by interruptions from Alex Salmond and the audience. The Yes campaign appeared to think that they had won the currency argument.

6 September. In a new YouGov opinion poll, support for Yes had increased, and was now greater than support for No.

8 September. American economist Paul Krugman commented that sharing a currency without sharing a government is dangerous, and if Scottish voters really believe that it’s safe to become a country without a currency, they have been badly misled.

10 September. I emailed the Krugman link to some political friends in England.
( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/opinion/paul-krugman-scots-what-the-heck.html ).

11 September. In a graphic of a new Survation referendum poll, in Metro, the figures were shown the wrong way round. Perhaps someone at Metro had assumed that the popularity of Yes had continued to increase. Actually the trend had reversed.

12 September. Standing up in a bus to get a Metro, I fell over. The driver and other passengers were a bit upset, and I got a big bruise. Metro had reprinted the graphic with the correct figures and an apology for yesterdays mistake. No had got 53 percent and Yes got 47 percent.

16 September. Three new opinion polls were announced, with 52 percent No and 48 percent Yes. The leaders of the three main pro-union parties promised, in “The Vow”, that if independence was rejected further powers would be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, with a fair share of resources.

18 September. Referendum day. In the middle of the afternoon I went for a walk along a cycle path and past the polling place. I knew which way I wanted to vote but still wasn’t sure that it was my business to do so.

Later. The final opinion poll, taken on voting day, was 53 percent No, 47 percent Yes.

Bedtime. There was a rumour on the radio that North Lanarkshire, which was expected to have a No majority, had voted Yes. I went to bed and left the radio turned on.

19 September, early morning. Soon after midnight the first regional result was announced. Clackmannanshire had voted No, with a larger majority than had been expected.

About 3 hours after that, 7 regional results had been declared. The City of Dundee and West Dunbartonshire both had Yes majorities. No had 50.2 percent of the total votes announced.

About an hour later, 21 of the 32 regional results had been declared, and No had 55 percent of the total vote. Orkney had the highest No vote, 67.2 percent, and North Lanarkshire had voted 51 percent Yes.

Next came the Glasgow result, 53 percent Yes. This was only enough to reduce the No share of the total vote to 54 percent. This was the moment when it became almost certain that No had won.

Next time I woke up it was daylight and No had won with a 55 percent majority.

Later I went shopping. The sky was grey, there was light rain, winter is coming on, and I’m still in the UK. I felt quite cheerful.

European election.

For me, in all the thousands of words I saw about the European election campaign, one sentence stood out. It was in the Manchester Friends of the Earth’s list of 10 policies:

” a new EU economic strategy . . . which shifts the tax burden from labour to resource consumption . . . ”
( http://www.manchesterfoe.org.uk/eu-election-survey-response-peter-cranie-green-party/ ).

Environmental taxes on resources and pollution could be better than income taxes, not only for the environment, but also for reducing inequality.

( ” Progressive tax and inequality”, in “Citizens incomes and progressive tax”,
https://ammpol.wordpress.com/ubiprog ).

I think this policy should be a major feature in the 2015 Westminster election campaign.