Fundamental changes are needed in Lebanon, Let's start with how we vote

Opinion Analysis by Albert Geokgeuzian, Staff Writer

August 18th, 2020

The foundation of any democracy is its voting. You vote, they count, a candidate wins. At first glance voting might seem so simple; you get your ballot, you select your preferred candidate and you leave. However, it isn't as simple as it may first appear and the best system requires greater thought. The voting system that Lebanon, and many other countries, have is called First Past The Post voting, a.k.a FPTP. You select one candidate and at the end whoever has the most votes wins. The problems with FPTP are many ranging from Strategic Voting, to a duopoly of politics, and as such Lebanon must switch to a system that allows for a more proportional representation and is more resistant to corruption. The system that affords us these is the Single Transferable Vote; a.k.a STV.

To understand why STV is better, we must first explain why First Past The Post is so bad. 

The rules for FPTP are simple, each citizen gets one vote and the candidate with the most votes wins. To highlight the problems, let’s take a look at an example election.

In this example, Barry got 7% of the votes, Mike had 23%, Joe had 20%, Michelle had 32% and Jinan had 8%. In FPTP, Mike would win and the election would be over. 

However as we can see, 77% of the voters didn’t vote for Mike. As such, this showcases one of the biggest problems with FPTP, plurality, not majority, wins.

Another problem for FPTP is that it encourages a 2 party system.

Given enough time this system will almost always come down to a battle between 2 parties. To showcase this, let’s have the same election as before and look at future elections. This time voters are going to remember the results of the last election, and as such Barry and Jinan’s supporters will realize that their candidate had no chance of winning so this time around they strategically vote for the candidate closest to their own. The results are as follows:

Barry’s supporters strategically voted for Mike, while Jinan’s voters strategically voted for Michelle. Mike ended up with 40%, Michelle with 41% and Michelle won the election. In the next election Joe’s supporters realize their candidate can’t win and as such they strategically vote, Joe was a central politician and so Mike and Michelle split Joe’s supporters and trade victories between elections which has now become a 2 party system; which also leads to many voters feeling disheartened because their vote doesn’t matter if it doesn’t go to one of the established parties causing voter apathy and a lower turnout. 

This eventuality is a terrible environment for any third party candidate that isn’t in the already established parties. The voters don’t have the freedom to choose their preferred candidate because they have to consider how others might vote as well. Even if you are in an established party, if more than one candidate runs from the same party, they risk splitting votes and giving the win to their opposition.

The current system doesn’t give voters the freedom to choose whomever they want, ensures that the established 2 parties are the only ones that have a chance, doesn’t ensure majority approval, makes voters disinterested in the democratic system. It was the first system to be thought of, that’s why most countries use it. However, newer, BETTER, systems have been developed, which takes us to Single Transferable Vote. 

As a starter, STV allows more than one candidate to run from a single party, it allows independents to run and to be at least considered without Strategic Voters. It also ensures that politicians have to work harder to get votes, they have to be more productive because voters don’t have to blindly vote for a party regardless of the candidate. It also doesn’t ensure voter apathy, it gives voters greater power than FPTP.

The main goals of STV could be classified as follows: 

1- More proportional representation

2- Local representation

3- More than one representative

This ensures that overall more citizens are happier with the results than previously.

A problem that is often cited with STV is how can you send more than one representative for each region? The best way would be to combine smaller previous regions into one bigger region that allows for more than one representative to be sent and keeping local elections. Now let’s explain the process of STV.

 In STV, the road to winning is not “most votes wins”, instead you take the total votes (100%) and divide it by the number of representative seats that are open which would result in the required quota needed to win.

For example, if there are 3 seats open, we divide 100 by 3 which would result in each candidate needing 33% to win. Once all the votes are counted, we look at the biggest winner and take away all the extra votes and look at those 2nd placements. Thus, if there are 3 seats open with a required quota of 33%, and one of the candidates received 50% of the votes, they get awarded the seat and the surplus of votes (17%) are redistributed. If there are no more candidates with extra votes, we turn our attention to the biggest loser (the candidate with the least votes) and then redistribute their votes. This process continues until, in this example, 3 candidates have 33% of votes, each. 

If there comes a point where voters have only selected 1 candidate and no 2nd choice, then those votes don’t go to anyone else, if that candidate is eliminated, the votes go with them. This could lead to a scenario where, at the end of the process, 2 candidates win with 33% but the last remaining candidate only has 28%. 5% of voters hadn’t placed anyone other than 1 candidate, so what happens now? In most STV systems, if there is only 1 candidate remaining and only 1 seat is open, then that candidate is awarded the seat. 

For a better understanding, with fluid explanation and examples I highly recommend watching this video and a simulation of how a bigger election might look like here.

One common disagreement with STV is that 2nd place, 3rd place votes shouldn’t have the same value as 1st placed votes, however I disagree. The benefit of STV is that it is able to simulate multiple elections in one. If one candidate has the least votes, we can pretend they didn’t run, and we can see who the voters would have voted for if they hadn’t.

Lebanon has fundamental issues. No one can deny that there are massive steps we need to take in order to build a better Lebanon, and for that to happen we need greater power as voters, that is what STV gives us, greater power to the voter. We would be able to vote for whomever we want, not “the candidate likely to win who I also dislike the least”. Voting is the cornerstone of democracy, ours is in ruins, let’s change it for the better.