Proposed new electoral system passes muster
THE Constitutional Court, in June 2020, declared the current Electoral Act unconstitutional, since it does not allow for independent candidates to stand for election to national and provincial legislatures. It gave Parliament two years to remedy the defect.
To this end, the Inclusive Society Institute designed a proposed new electoral system that would respond to the court’s ruling, but which would also remedy shortcomings under the existing pure proportional model. It needed to:
◆ Accommodate independent candidates.
◆ Reflect, in general, proportionality.
◆ Require no amendments to the Constitution.
◆ Be simple for the Independent Electoral Commission to implement and for voters to understand.
◆ Promote gender parity, demographic and geographic inclusiveness, and representativity and improved accountability to the voter.
In essence, the institute needed to decide between:
◆ A winner-take-all, single-seat constituency approach.
◆ Simplistic proportional representation (PR).
◆ A hybrid model that accommodated constituencies, with a compensatory proportional list allowing for overall proportionality to be established.
The single-seat constituency approach was rejected as it would not make it possible for the outcome to reflect proportionality. It would also not accommodate sufficient diversity.
The simplistic PR model would, in turn, be impractical. Imagine the length of a ballot paper should, say, 100 independent candidates wish to stand nationally in addition to the 48 existing political parties. It would also not advance geographic representation and would do little to improve representativity and accountability to the voters.
Thus, the model proposed is a 400seat National Assembly of which 300 are allocated to multi-member constituencies (MMCs) each comprising three to seven members. MMCs will be supplemented by a proportional list of 100 seats, which will be used to ensure overall proportionality in terms of the total number of votes cast for parties.
There will be two components to the establishment of the legislature. The first would be representatives elected via 66 MMCs. The second component will comprise representatives elected via the compensatory PR list.
It’s necessary to have at least three members per MMC to promote diversity within each MMC. But too large a number would be counterproductive in terms of promoting geographic representativity, or for bringing representatives closer to the electorate.
Accountability is strengthened when representatives are closer to the electorate. Knowing one’s representative, and thereby having greater access to him/her, strengthens the voter/representative nexus. Thus, the maximum number of seats per MMC is suggested as seven.
MMCs will be demarcated along current district and metropolitan municipal lines. Where the number of voters within a district is too few to warrant at least three representatives, two or more districts can be added together. Where the number of voters within a metropolitan council are too many, MMCs can be allocated along sub-council or metropolitan regional lines. Each vote cast should carry equal weight. Therefore, in determining the borders of the MMCs, the total number of registered voters will be divided by 300 (the number of MMC seats), which results in a quota per seat.
There will be one ballot paper in each MMC, comprising the names of the parties, followed by the names of the independent candidates.
Parties will be permitted to nominate a number of candidates equal to the quota size of each MMC plus one. Prior to the election, the parties and the IEC will publicise the names of all candidates so that the electorate will know the incumbents prior to exercising their votes.
The voter will cast a single vote for either the party or the independent candidate. Seats will be allocated proportionally, based on the number of votes received for each party or independent candidate.
Should an independent candidate receive enough votes to be elected, he or she will qualify. Party candidates are allocated in order of their appearance on the list for the party in the particular MMC.
Gender parity is promoted by requiring parties to alternate their candidates based on gender, that is man followed by woman, or vice versa, on the ballot paper. This will, however, be difficult to engineer among independent candidates, since they represent only themselves.
If independent candidates obtain more votes than required for election, the surplus votes are discarded, in that a single individual cannot be more than a single individual.
Thus, only parties will compete for seats on the compensatory PR lists. The combined number of votes received by a party, across all MMCs, determine its proportional share of the 400 parliamentary seats. This implies that parties receive an additional proportion of the excess votes forfeited by the independents. Parties could, therefore, be marginally advantaged. This is justified, in that absolute proportionality is not possible with the introduction of independent candidates, and thus a higher reliance will, by necessity, have to be placed on the notion of general proportionality. Furthermore, it does not come at the expense of the independents, in that it does not diminish the legitimate claim that any one independent candidate may have, that is, him or herself represented in Parliament. Also, alternative remedies are available. Should the independent candidates wish to lay claim to the additional votes cast over and above that required to secure a single seat in the legislature, they could arrange themselves as a group, in reality a party, and register at the IEC as such.
The modelling exercise undertaken by the institute found that the proposed system does not negatively (or positively) impact any party. It shows that the existing power ratios between parties would be maintained. It also shows the geographic spread of seats, continuing to reflect the strongholds of the individual parties.
The model being proposed by the institute, therefore, not only gives effect to the constitutional requirement of accommodating individual candidates, but it also goes some way to address clear voter desires to be able to hold their representatives more accountable. It also does so in a way that the benefits attached to a PR team are not diminished in any way.
The system is fair, it is simple, and it serves the voter. Swanepoel is the CEO of the Inclusive Society Institute. This article is an extract of the institute’s recently published report on a proposed new electoral system for SA. The report can be accessed at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EeTtWcxS4rONnXK2WufHTfArsaoDwkyR/view