CDC looking at ways to make every vote count
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THE Constitution Drafting Commission yesterday explored the idea of including votes of a defeated constituency candidate in the new formula for allotting party-list seats.
“Every vote cast by the people in an election must count and not go in vain,” the CDC said.
A CDC member said people would be more convinced to cast a ballot, as their support would still be significant no matter if their favourite candidate won or lost in the election.
Besides, it would discourage vote-buying, he said.
The idea was tossed up after the presentation on the comparison of electoral systems by its committee studying legislative systems. It was part of the four approaches the CDC has come up with to help guide its consideration on the most suitable electoral system for the country.
The other principles are that members of the House of Representatives must be elected directly by the people, elections must be simple and easy for people to understand and people should be encouraged to turn out and vote, Prapan Naikovit, chairman of the committee studying legislative systems, told the meeting.
The point concerning how every vote must matter was the biggest subject of the CDC discussion.
Several members were concerned and suggested that the word “every” could make it impractical, so it should be altered to “most votes”.
Some CDC members questioned how some votes could matter in a situation where candidates received as few as 10 votes when the turnout ran into the millions.
However, their chief Meechai Ruchupan insisted that it should be possible and that the 21 members should brainstorm some kind of solution.
The responsible committee chairman Prapan also presented the three main electoral systems as well as their pros and cons in the meeting. They were simple majority, proportional and hybrid.
The pros of a simple majority, which is widely used in the West, are that it was simple and easy to understand while the major con is that votes received by MPs who didn’t win would be discarded. And that makes it unfair when votes received by the winner and the losers were close.
The new proportional system was more just than the previous one. However, it did not allow room for constituency MPs and that was a downside because those MPs were closest to the people.
The hybrid system put together the pros of the other two. However, it still did not really reflect the real vote as it allows more party-list MPs than the votes political parties received, he added. The CDC did not jump to a conclusion immediately.
