St Luke's Church, Eccleshill - The Link magazine

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May 2001, Page 2 (continued on p4).

May the best men win?

The old town of Custardton (pop. 4,000) sits at the top of the hill with the village hall looking over the green. In recent years the hall has had an office added, and the village council now meets here, the centre of life in the local universe.

Not that everyone thinks so. At the bottom of the hill the prune factory originally built low-cost dwellings for their workforce, and recent building has meant that Pruneville (pop. 2,000) has become a sizeable community in its own right, even though many of the residents are newcomers to the borough of Custardton. And, of course, the politics are totally different. Up the top of the hill they all vote yellow, but down the bottom they vote purple to a man.

So the village council, 12 good men and true, should have 8 yellows and 4 purples on it? Sounds logical? Not a bit of it!

At the election before last, each party fielded 12 candidates. By ancient tradition the village hall was the polling station and the hours of voting were 10am to 4pm. Twelve yellows were elected by a turnout of 60% of the electorate. The “Wrinkly Times”, a disreputable rag published from a hovel behind the prune factory, revealed that of the 3,600 who voted, only 600 came from the bottom of the hill - the rest either thought the climb up to the village hall was too much effort, or they were at work (Plush Prunes Ltd. has a policy that absentees are sacked immediately, and its hours of work are 8am to 4.30pm). “Unfair”, shouted the purples.

Even so, shouldn’t the purples have had 2 seats, in proportion to their votes? No, because they used the “first past the post” voting system, where everyone puts 12 crosses on their ballot paper. Not surprisingly, each yellow candidate got 3,000 votes, and each purple one got 600. A landslide, caused not by choice but by the system. Even the yellows could see that something was wrong!

So the village council, to their great credit, made a change. At the next election there was a second polling station by the prune factory, and the opening hours were extended so that everyone could vote without losing their jobs. This raised the turnout to 4,500. However, guess what? Twelve yellows were still elected! It makes sense, really. Each yellow candidate got 3,000 votes, and each purple one got 1,500. Giving everyone an equal ability to vote doesn’t by itself mean the result will be fairer.

Can anything be done about this state of affairs? Yes - Single Transferrable Voting (STV) is designed to get round this problem. Here’s how it works:

On the ballot paper you number the candidates - your favourite gets a number 1, the next a number 2, and so on. When votes are counted, your favourite gets your vote. If he/she has already been elected, or if he/she gets eliminated, your vote is transferred to your second-favourite, and so on.

Let’s see how it works out in Custardton. At the election 4,500 people vote, and there are 12 places on the council, so to be elected a candidate must get at least 4,500/13=347 votes. Mr Bigcheese, the former council leader, gets 3,000 votes, but he only needs 347 of them to be elected, so 2,653 of them are passed to Mrs Daisy Banana, president of the WI. She in turn passes 2,306 to Noah Parkingline, who passes 1,959 to Mrs Daffodil Bloom. Mr Jaundice is the fifth person declared elected, but now Professor Plum has the most votes, 1,500 from the bottom of the hill. He needs 347 to be elected, so can pass on 1,153 to Mr Whortleberry. Now Miss Lemon (with 1,265) is elected, then Mr Whortleberry, then Mr Amber, then Mrs Winestain, then Mr Goldfinger, and finally Violet Bishop. At the end of this process there are 224 votes left for Mr Sunshine and 112 for Mr Indigo Moonshine, neither of whom have enough to get elected.

One big advantage of this method is that the purples don’t have to put up 12 candidates to benefit: if they have only five candidates they will still get four of them elected. Another big advantage is that the most popular of each party get elected first, so that if the yellows wanted to put up 15 candidates they could do so knowing they would still get eight seats, and their electors will choose which eight.

Politics are still not ideal in Custardton, and no-one pretends that having four seats means the purples will get their way in the village council. But it does mean their voice will be heard. The village council fairly represents the whole constituency, and if we believe in democracy then it is important that all views are heard on the council.

Q. Democracy is not mentioned in the bible, so why should Christians be in favour of it?

A. In the bible the ideal is theocracy, which means government by God. But the problem is, who can discern what God is saying? Not the priesthood! The bible is full of the priests making big mistakes!

C S Lewis wisely wrote that no system of government is perfect, because all humans are corrupted by power. The best we can do is to make sure we have a system which removes sinners when the electorate can see they have gone astray. That’s what democracy allows, and every other method of government has been found to be worse!

John Hartley

 

This web page was last updated on 11th December 2002.