Electoral Reform And The Political System: The Helen Suzman’s Points Of Departure

Introduction

The first three briefs in this series make it clear that there are political choices to be made about electoral reform. That said, one should make a distinction between two levels of politics. The first level is that of the clash of interests of parties and individuals at particular times and particular places – what an erstwhile editor of the Sunday Times called the ‘close-in knife work’. The second level concerns the rules of the game – here, the way in which electoral reform affects incentives and behaviour and therefore political culture, particularly as reform influences the course of a parliamentary career. As a non-partisan non-governmental organization, we have nothing to say about the first level. And we would point out that the legitimacy of electoral reform will require a step back from the first level by all, or at least most, parties and individuals to focus on the second level.

The two fundamental choices

The first fundamental choice is whether electoral reform requires a constitutional change or not. The Minister of Home Affairs is on record as taking the view that it does[1], although he has not stated his reasons for his opinion. Some change may turn out to be necessary. But, for reasons pointed out in a 2016 brief[2], we are opposed to a change in Section 46 of the Constitution, particularly Section 46 (1)(d) which requires that the electoral system must result, in general, in proportional representation.

The second fundamental choice is whether or not the electoral system moves towards a system in which the majority of members of the National Assembly are elected by geographically defined constituencies. Not all MPs can be so elected if proportionality of result is to be maintained. We take the view that it should, in the interests of strengthening the direct ties between parliamentarians and the electorate, deepening our democracy.

The Annexure presents a table of electoral systems around the world. The two choices imply that what should be under consideration here and now

is a movement between our present closed party list system to a mixed member proportional (“MMP”) system. In this respect, we are aligned to the majority view in the report of the Electoral Task Team (“ETT”)[3] of 2002/2003, commissioned by the Cabinet, but not acted upon. The report needs updating in the light of changed circumstances and to deal with issues which it might have dealt with at the time, but didn’t.

We take the view that while some electoral systems are better than others, none is perfect[4]. The issues associated with a change are non-trivial, and there are options for coping with some of them. There are trade-offs to be made between the core values discussed in the third brief in these series, and the best choices will minimize the cost in terms of one value for the benefit of another. Particular attention will need to be paid to simplicity, the requirement that the electoral system is easy for voters to understand and participate in.

A second important issue is that constituencies require demarcation and demarcation creates the potential for conflict. This potential needs to be reduced as far as possible. The Municipal Demarcation Board (”MDB”) has a careful procedure for doing this. It publishes its proposals for demarcation and invites submissions for changes which it then considers and makes adjustments where good cases have been made for them. It then publishes its intentions, to which objections can be made. Any individual or institution may make submissions or objections. The process of constituency demarcation can build on the existing work of the MDB. Here it is important to note that the proportionality feature of an MMP system much reduces the incentive for conflict compared with a plurality system.

Finally, a couple of points about representation. Some electoral systems specify a threshold of support below which a party is not represented in parliament. The best known case of this is the German system in which seats in the German parliament are only given to parties passing a five percent electoral threshold of the party votes. To date, there has been no such threshold in the South African electoral system. Any party with sufficient votes to obtain a single seat in the National Assembly is represented there. The New Nation judgment permitting individuals not affiliated to a party to stand for the National Assembly effectively requires this situation to continue, since otherwise the prospects for such individuals to enter parliament would be removed.

The second point is more subtle. A key issue in any democracy is how supporters of different comprehensive normative doctrines—that entail apparently inconsistent conceptions of justice—can agree on particular principles of justice that underwrite a political community's basic social institutions. It has been considered in detail by the philosopher, John Rawls, who developed the idea of an overlapping consensus to deal with it. The overlapping consensus is possible if there is a significant core of commitments common to the ‘reasonable’ fragment of each of the main comprehensive doctrines in the community. The maintenance of an overlapping consensus requires an agreement to disagree and this means restraint from the imposition of uniformity. One point on which there is normative disagreement is the issue of who may represent whom. In particular, different parties may have different views about this. One party may want to compose its list of candidates in the light of particular characteristics, while another may not. The maintenance of overlapping consensus then requires that the issues be resolved at the party level, rather than by legislation.

Conclusion

This brief has confined itself to high level principles underpinning the HSF’s approach to electoral reform. There is plenty of detail to discuss, and further briefs in this series will deal with them.

Charles Simkins
Head of Research
charles@hsf.org.za

Annexure