Category Archives: Elections
Electoral institutions and the cost of elections
To continue the topic in my recent DRC posts, Jay Ulfelder makes a great point about the difficulties poor countries face in holding fair elections.
I’m not suggesting that poor countries should forgo elections. The process is often expensive and messy, but it’s still preferable to the alternative of government by self-appointed rulers. Mostly, I hope the authors of electoral laws and procedures in poor countries will try to design systems that take these challenges into account. For example, why not hold presidential elections in one round instead of two, avoiding the costs and logistical problems of organizing runoffs?
… Not every country can afford every electoral system, and these financial and logistical difficulties ought to be a big part of the rule-making conversation in cases where they loom large.
Jay is bringing up an important, but often forgotten aspect in the study of electoral institutions. Despite not coming up frequently in academic literature, however, I will say that for the most part practitioners are very aware of election administration costs and system design. There are a few issues, however, that I think we should consider when discussing this.
- Institutions by nature are (and should be) hard to change. (Liberia just found this out the other week). If a country makes a decision to create a one-round system, there is a good chance it will believe a one-round system is always the only way it should ever do something, even if the logic behind that decision no longer holds true many years later. If we are choosing less optimal rules for the sake of cost, there may be long-term consequences down the road.
- Along the same point about the durability of electoral systems, most countries already have a legacy with a certain system. This could make the debate over changing the rules somewhat irrelevant. That being said, many of the poorest countries only hold elections due to donor pressure, which means the rules should be a little bit more malleable than normal.
- Political institutions are highly endogenous to political actors; the case in the DRC is a good example. There will always be winners and losers when rules are changed. Electoral systems should take into account the capacity of the country, but donors helping make such decisions should consider whether the political fallout from such changes would outweigh any benefits.
Why is decentralization still a silver bullet?
I realize there are plenty of development practitioners who are very aware of the limits of decentralization, but it’s still treated as somewhat of a silver bullet in the industry in general. The recent election administration problem in DRC – where decentralization is one of the key goals of donors – is a perfect demonstration of what is wrong with this line of thinking.
The central government in Kinshasa can’t afford to move election equipment to its country and we think that dividing the country to 26 new states will make things easier? How will each of those government administrations be able to procure election equipment for their local elections?
The short answer is, they couldn’t. Unfortunately, donors often view decentralization as an end in itself, rather than asking what greater goal it should serve.
Elections in DRC may (will) be delayed
Via Texas in Africa, this isn’t terribly surprising.
With just under three months to go until the polls are due to take place, Laurent Ndaye, a senior member of the country’s independent electoral commission (CENI), said equipment such as ballot boxes and voting booths were not yet in the country.
“We’ve proceeded to order the electoral hardware, we’ve paid for more than 70 percent. What’s posing the problem now is to transport all this material (to the Congo),” he said, adding that the kit was in China, South Africa, Germany and Lebanon.
The delays meant that materials will have to be flown in but the U.N. has refused to help so private firms would have to be contracted, raising the costs, he said.
In January, President Kabila’s allies in the legislature pushed through constitutional reforms that changed presidential elections from a two-round system, to a one-round, plurality vote. Kabila insisted it was a cost-saving measure, although critics (not without merit) accused Kabila of simply rigging the rules to benefit him. I think they were both right.
India channels American Progressive Era
Indian ballot paper. Photo from Electoral System Design: The New International IDEA Handbook.
Via the Times of India, hunger-strike activist Anna Hazare, fresh of his victory advocating for anti-corruption measures, will now begin to push for electoral reform in India. Hazare’s new idea is to introduce recall elections, which he hopes will provide another check on corrupt elected officials.
I’m generally not a fan of recall elections and it seems somewhat redundant to have them in a parliamentary system. However, I believe the last two governments have lasted the full five-year terms, so maybe this isn’t such a bad idea. I also wonder if India’s parliamentary system will make recalls more effective (versus those in presidential systems) as the less stable nature of parliamentary majorities will give parties greater incentive to punish corrupt politicians. This is because every recall election comes closer to directly threatening the jobs of every MP in the same alliance, as it would bring them closer to snap elections. In contrast, a US member of Congress gets to keep their job till the next scheduled election, regardless of who’s in charge.
If you can get through the endless pop-up ads in the link, the article does have a nice summary of other electoral reforms that have support, but will probably go nowhere.
EC had proposed that in the ballot paper or on the ballot unit of the Electronic Voting Machine, there should be a column “none of the above” after the name of the last candidate. EC had said it would enable a voter to reject all candidates, if he chooses so. The proposal does not even require a big legislative intervention. All that is needed is an amendment to rules 22 and 49B of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.
…Bhushan was equally excited about building a system of referendum for important policy issues and legislations. “It is wrong to say people do not understand these issues. There could have been referendum for an issue like Indo-US nuclear deal. An elected representative is not representative for everything and does not understand all issues,” Bhushan said. He also said use of money power in elections was a big menace and needed to be made integral to electoral reforms.
Recalls and referendums. Direct democracy reminds me a lot of American Progressive demands during the turn of the last century. While some of those reforms did bring more accountability (direct elections of senators), I’m not as convinced direct democracy has done the same. Organized interests will find ways to influence the process, whether it be through an MP or direct plebiscite.
With that being said, it is inspiring to see India’ s success as a democracy and I hope they have the best of luck pushing for these reforms.
50,650,00 eligible voters in upcoming parliamentary elections
Refat Qomsan, Assistant Interior Minister for Administrative Affairs, stated during a seminar yesterday that around 50,650,000 citizens will be eligible to vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Qomsan also restated that every polling station will have no more than1,000 voters in an effort to keep polling station congestion at a minimum. My rough calculation of the number of registered voters form the March referendum was 44,995,034 voters, which is not an insignificant difference from the new number.
The voter registry is based off the national ID card, which everybody should have (and which have recently been updated with electronic chips) so the government shouldn’t have that hard a time getting the number right. I don’t really know of any stories of people being turned away from polling stations from the recent referendum, so the systems has seemed to work alright for now.
Diaa Rashwan, political analyst at the ACPSS, said that dividing voters according to their residential area is a major step, however, the Ministry of Interior also has to coordinate with the Ministry of Health in order to eliminate those who have passed away from the database, referring to the scheme used by the National Democratic Party in previous elections where they used dead citizens’ IDs to vote.
This is encouraging. Sharing lists of citizen data between an EMB and other parts of the government can have many administrative advantages. Often times, however, the agency in charge of the voter registry is underfunded compared to other ministries and has little clout. This makes it hard for them to get access to information that would be useful in constructing and maintaining an accurate and up-to-date voter roll. Seeing as Egypt’s new EMB is essentially controlled by the Interior Ministry, this probably won’t be an issue.
Low voter registration numbers in Tunisa
Just over 3.7 million of an estimated seven million potential voters had added their names to the roll, a member of the independent election commission, Larbi Chouikha, told AFP ahead of the close of registration at midnight (2300 GMT).
The provisional figure, which does not include an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 Tunisians of voting age abroad, represented about 52 percent of potential voters still in the country.
The commission will release official figures on Tuesday. Registration opened on July 11 and was supposed to close on August 2, but was prolonged due to a slow turnout.
The October 23 election will be for a constituent assembly charged with drawing up a new constitution to replace that of the former dictatorial regime.
This is a pretty amazing, especially when you consider how many Tunisians expressed an intent to vote in initial surveys. Probably partly due to response bias in those polls, but also to the disorganized nature of the interim government in managing elections.
Internet voting and turnout
Via Election Updates, comes this story out of Virginia,
Many county and state election officials often lament of low voter turnout, but Surry County, Va. is anticipating 100 percent voter turnout for an upcoming Republican Primary — or a zero percent turnout. A quirk in redistricting means that the county will have to open a polling place for one voter for the upcoming primary. It will cost the county approximately $2,000 to open the polling place for the day and even if the lone voter shows up in the early moments of election day, the county must keep the location open till polls officially close across the state. Registrar Lucille Epps said she contacted the Virginia Board of Elections to ask if the lone voter could be sent to the next closest precinct but was told that was not possible.
Paul Gronke astutely adds:
This is a fun and silly story that Mindy Moretti dug up, but there is a very good reason beyond cost that the voter should be sent to another precinct–privacy! Obviously, Registrar Epps can not report returns for this precinct, but notice that the Registrar CAN’T REPORT PRECINCT LEVEL RETURNS FOR THE OTHER PRECINCTS EITHER, because a simple calculation will reveal the single voter’s choices.
Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development
This is a good point, and I wonder about it in a few other contexts. In Norway, for example, the country will be piloting an internet voting system for ten municipalities in their upcoming September local elections. If internet turnout matches that of Estonia’s first trial with i-voting, i-voters would be somewhere around 2 percent. Combine that with the low number of people per municipality, and the low number who vote in local elections, and it’s somewhat possible that you could have an extremely small number of internet voters per area. Maintaining transparency requires the government to post who voted via each method (paper ballot, early voting, internet) as well as the results for each method, so there could be a theoretical risk of being able to identify internet voters’ decisions. In most cases this isn’t that big of a risk, but it’s just a reminder of the many things that have to be considered when developing such a complex system.
The Party Still Decides…continued
Jonathan Bernstein probably doesn’t read my blog, but I was happy to see him repeat some of my recent arguments in his New Republic piece.
The key to grasping the place of Ames in the Republican nomination process is that it occurs right in the middle of the invisible primary—that portion of the process that takes place before voters are involved. During this period, candidates aren’t seeking the support of rank-and-file Republicans; they are appealing to party insiders of various kinds: party-aligned interest groups and media; governing and campaign professionals; formal party officials; and activists. From the point of view of those actors, the invisible primary is a time to sort out conflicts and coordinate action.
Read Bernstein’s piece (and his great blog!) and mine. Horse race narratives are generally not important, but elite signaling is. What’s happening now in Iowa is actually extremely important.
The Party Still Decides
The Party Decides
Walter Shapiro has an article in the New Republic about the overhyping of the Iowa Straw Polls.
Over the years, I have reached a different conclusion: The Iowa Straw Poll is one of the most insidious events in politics. Even though the straw poll is about as scientific as sorcery, political reporters over-hype the results and pretend that they mean something.
I’m normally very sympathetic to these arguments, and I get what Shapiro is getting at. Unfortunately, I have to disagree with his premise, and I wonder if he secretly does too. Shapiro starts by noting how unrepresentative of the larger Republican party the Straw Poll is:
In November 2008, 682,000 Iowa voters cast their ballots for McCain. The 119,000 Republicans who participated in the 2008 caucuses were the party stalwarts. But the 14,000 Republicans who voted in the 2007 straw poll were a microcosm of that microcosm—just 12 percent of the caucus attendees and a microscopic 2 percent of McCain voters. N
Yes, the event may only be made up of the most hardcore Republicans, but who does Shapiro thinks decide primaries? I’ll again encourage people to read my professor, Hans Noel’s book, The Party Decides, to get an idea of how modern presidential primaries really work. Events like the Straw Poll are a good way for party elites to test the loyalty of candidates to their policy preferences, while simultaneously examining their electablity. These events may play a large roll in the “invisible primary” that is actually quite crucial in determining who winds up getting the party’s nomination.
But my problem with Shapiro’s argument is not just that these elite events matter, it’s that he himself seems to admit that in his piece, which at times almost contradicts itself. As an example, Shapiro states:
Given the skewed nature of the event, you might think journalists would ignore the results. But, on the contrary, too many of my colleagues in the press inflate the straw poll’s significance, because they are desperate for any tangible numbers to enliven the long wait until convention delegates are actually selected.
Then, in the very next sentence!
And so the consequences of failure at the straw poll can be dramatic. In 1999, a disappointing sixth-place finish at Ames forced Lamar Alexander out of the race immediately after the results were in. The poll also fatally damaged the campaign of Elizabeth Dole, who dropped out two months later.
Ending the campaigns of two candidates doesn’t sound like an insignificant event. I sympathize with Shapiro’s frustration over something that’s important only because we say it’s important (cable news with its small audience comes to mind), but that doesn’t mean it’s not important! One could make the same argument about overstating importance to a wide number of things such as the Iowa Caucus itself. After all, it’s only so many delegates, but we make it out to be a big deal! For better or worse, it is a big deal and I think it would be wise to pay attention to what happens there.
What’s the status of subnational government in Egypt?
I finally have a reason to post one of my photos from Alexandria
Via Heba Fahmy, comes this story regarding the appointment of Adel Labib as Governor of Qena.
CAIRO: Most residents of the Upper Egyptian city of Qena welcomed the decision to appoint Adel Labib as the governor for the second time, while others called for a new civilian governor…
Labib was previously the governor of Alexandria, where residents strongly opposed his decisions and hindered his development projects, according to Mahmoud.
…“Labib will try to prove that Alexandria’s residents were wrong about him,” Mahmoud said, adding that Qena’s residents will also try to prove that Mikhael was the wrong governor for them.
A governor isn’t liked in one area, so he’s simply moved to another. Imagine Scott Walker getting dumped on Minnesota because they didn’t complain enough!
I’m not going to address the politics of the appointment, or the considerable controversy that recent appointments have caused in the past few months. But I would like to know: has there been any talk about changing the system of local governance in Egypt? Governors are currently appointed by the president, which isn’t an unheard of system, but it’s not very accountable either. (Indonesia recently moved from central appointments to direct elections for its governors, although the execution hasn’t been flawless).
Egypt last held local elections in 2008 and the old rules had them staggered for four year terms. Local elected officials didn’t have much power (shocking!) although the elections still had some importance due to the potential impact they had on presidential elections. (In order to qualify as an independent for the presidency, potential candidates had to collect 250 signatures from elected officials, who could be from both the local and national level).
Obviously a lot of important stuff needs to happen first, and local government elections aren’t considered that important when building a narrative about different factions vying for control of the country. When it comes to actually governing the country well, however, local government can be extremely important. Hopefully the attention stakeholders are committing to the current electoral system will extend to subnational government as well.
Ahwa Talk 