Consent of the Undead versus Living Democracy

The basis of how we are governed is expressed in laws in the form of legislation and constitutions (for the purposes of this discussion common law and the relationship it has with democracy is not being considered).

Constitutions are generally entrenched, meaning that they are hard to change, having a threshold for change higher than a simple majority, possibly having multiple thresholds that need to be met to achieve change.

This has generally been construed to reflect that the laws expressed in constitutions are fundamentally more important, more basic, than other laws, and thus need to be protected from the hurly-burly of day-to-day politics and considered somewhat sacrosanct.

In practice this has proven innately extremely conservative and required workarounds like the concepts of a living constitution where the interpretation of the document can be stretched and changed and read into due to the inability to actually change the text. Often anything construed as requiring constitutional change is abandoned as being inherently too difficult.

In a sense all laws are entrenched to an extent as generally the status quo is difficult to change even if theoretically only a majority is required to vote for change, because various hurdles will exist to mitigate against moving to a vote, if nothing else just the innate inertia of the status quo, the time it takes to change one law in the context of the number of laws.

Then of course there is the inherent defense of the status quo where laws are often protected by concentrated vested interests versus a more disperse group who would stand to gain from any change. Laws are further protected by the lack of representation in representative democracy. So laws passed at a particular point in the past are to some extent or another hard to change, that is are entrenched.

On reflection however it should become clear that entrenchment is innately in conflict with the democratic principle of consent of the governed in that it is means laws, constitutions especially, are reflective of a point in time, often a point significantly in the past, and therefore often don't represent the current constituency, but possibly a generation long since passed on.

Ideally to satisfy the principle of consent of the governed laws should be required to constantly prove they have the support of the current constituency. In practical terms this has not historically been possible though it is possible though generally not done to require periodic renewal of laws.

Times have changed and Liquid democracy has now been developed as a way to spread the practice of democracy to all with a mix of direct and representative democracy, but as generally construed it is still constrained by entrenchment. However liquid democracy is ideal to incorporate the concept of living democracy where decisions only remain in force for so long as they retain majority support.

The direct democracy and transferable proxies of Liquid democracy mean that support for decisions can be tracked on an ongoing basis. We are perhaps not ready to use such a system at the level of the state but we could introduce it in our civil society associations.

New members can take position on previous decisions directly or by proxy, former member's positions are removed, current members as always can change position. Therefore all decisions could be constantly subject to a de facto motion of confidence, an ongoing mechanism testing consent of the governed.

The foundations of our democracies cannot themselves be fundamentally undemocratic. We should not be bound by those who have gone before, or conversely bind those yet to come, and we now have a way to make rules prove that they have our continuous consent.

Advantages of Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMP) over an upper house

Advantages of Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMP) over other more well-known options like Hare-Clarke as in Tasmania or the ACT, or a Single Transferable Vote Upper house like the most Australian states or the Australian Senate:-

1. The big one is of course Proportionality. With MMP the number of seats each party gets in parliament very closely reflects the percent of the vote they got from the electorate, depending on the number of seats it could be basically a seat per percent of vote. In Tasmania the threshold for a party to get a seat is 16.5%, the ACT either 14.2% or 16.5% depending on the seat, and in the Senate 14.2%.
2. The second main advantage of MMP is that is addresses issues in the house that forms government, in contrast to adding an upper house that leaves the more powerful lower house untouched. A unicameral system allows for progressive changes to be passed, whereas introduction of an upper house only potentially allows for regressive changes to be blocked.
3. MMP addresses government being formed with less than majority support of the electorate, instead of 100% of the power going to the party with about a third of the support of the electorate. An upper house doesn’t effect the formation of government.
4. MMP almost certainly requires coalitions of more than one party to form government. This is more representative, but also makes parliament more relevant as decisions not made within one party. With an upper house this level of co-operation is not required and not on equal terms as the generally one party government always controls the lower house so continues to set the agenda.
5. MMP retains local electorate parliamentarians which many people think is important to the functioning of a representative democracy.
6. MMP addresses the neglect of safe seats, with elections focused on the lower house currently only about swinging voters in swinging seats, because every vote counts towards determining how many seats a party gets in parliament. The high thresholds in upper houses still translate to relatively safe seats and the election will remain focused on the lower house. There is just one election rather than two with everyone only focusing on the first one and ignoring the upper house.
7. MMP leading to minority government forces political parties to try to work together issue by issue rather than being in a constant adversarial political theatre. Parliament at present is largely a complete waste of time being a rubber stamp for the one party government. With an upper house the focus is still on the lower house where government is formed, and again the one party government sets the agenda and a majority in the upper house can’t pass anything without government support.
8. In MMP there is a greater incentive for parties to engage with those currently disengaged from politics to increase turnout to get the largest proportion of votes possible. Every vote counts towards how many seats the party ends up with, including those not currently voting, or voting informal.
9. MMP ensures that there will be a viable Opposition, unlike in Queensland after the 2012 election.
10. MMP with its lower bar for entry for political parties, means greater representativeness, and allowing for entry of new parties into parliament allowing rejuvenation of politics.
11. Due to its greater proportionality MMP is largely immune to disproportionate changes in results form small changes in votes that upper houses are. A small decrease in vote saw the ALP’s representation halved in the Senate in Queensland last election.
12. In MMP there is an advantage to parties being able to have an actual presence on the ground to campaign across the state, so works against public relations fronts like Clive Palmer’s party United Australia, but also even the ALP and LNP would have an incentive to really engage with their memberships and thus improve internal democracy in political parties. Upper houses tend to mean parties still neglect large areas of the electorate because the next threshold is out of reach.
13. MMP facilitates the break up of old parties kept together despite internal differences due to the demands of the electoral system. This is important to address institutional problems inherent in long established parties, and for the rejuvenation of politics.
14. MMP can be introduced without any increase in the number of parliamentarians which is an issue for many people (though it shouldn’t be as we have too few representatives per voter). While an upper house could be introduced without any increase in parliamentarians that would likely mean very high thresholds for entry making it less proportional and possibly dominated by the ALP or LNP.
15. In MMP the voting system from the perspective of the voter could in theory stay the same with the one vote variation, that is the ballot and how voters vote could be identical, so the transition would be very smooth. Even with the more common two vote system the change would be relatively straight forward in contrast to an upper house vote which requires `tablecloth’ ballot papers as we see with the Senate.
16. It is easier to introduce other affirmative action targets for parliament via the list MPs.
17. MMP doesn’t duplicate parliamentary processes as an upper house would.
18. In a one vote variation of MMP where the list is automatically generated the power of behind the scenes party hacks can be limited and parliamentarians given an incentive to better represent their electorates.

Mixed Member Proportional Representation: A very brief history and news

The basic concept of levelling seats that underpins Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representation, that is seats added to a parliament to make it representative of the party votes received in elections, was introduced in Denmark in 1915 and is still used throughout Scandinavia.

Germany introduced MMP in particular after WWII when they were clearly desperately in need of a new, more democratic electoral system, and they have retained MMP since then and their system is generally considered among the most democratic, stable and effective in the world.

New Zealand voted to introduce MMP in a referendum in 1993, and first used it in 1996, and of course they now have the government led by Labour’s Jacinda Ardern in coalition with the NZ Greens and NZ First.

In the United Kingdom MMP is known as Alternative Vote Plus. It is already used for the Scottish parliament and Welsh and London assemblies, and there is a strong campaign to introduce it at the national level gaining ground in the context of the Brexit chaos.

Thailand introduced MMP for the 2019 elections.

South Korea is moving towards introducing MMP with support from governing party and minor parties, though opposition from the main conservative party.

Canada has had a number of referendums in provinces on introducing MMP narrowly defeated, sometimes due to high thresholds. There will be a referendum in Quebec in 2022. It is one of the more popular alternatives being explored at the national level though reform was undermined by Justin Trudeau after the last election but the campaign is still active as they head into their current election. Recently the NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said that he would introduce MMP “without a referendum” if elected prime minister.

In Queensland MMP could be introduced without constitutional change as it reforms the existing house of parliament, in contrast to its main competition in terms of electoral reform, reintroducing an upper house. MMP is part of the Queensland Greens Democracy Policy.

MMP would bring us much closer to the democratic ideal that underlies the principle of one vote, one value, as almost every vote would actually count towards determining the composition of parliament. At present while electorates might be roughly the same in size votes in marginal electorates are worth much more, as are the votes of swinging voters.