JOHN JEFFERY: First-past-the-post constituency system not the way to go

This year’s elections in SA and UK and the forthcoming elections in the US raise an important question: if the rules of our democracy were different, would there be different winners?

Since 1994 SA has adopted a pure proportional representation (PR) system. PR is intuitive and it allows maximum representation of political views in parliament. This system is party based. Parties get seats based on the popular vote — if a party wins 20% of the vote, it gets 20% of the seats in parliament.

But there is a trade-off here. PR offers political parties enormous power over their MPs, as the party decides who to send to parliament. The Electoral Act is supposed to temper this. Before the election, parties submit the names of their candidates to the Electoral Commission to allow the public to object.

After the election, the list of candidates can only be amended annually, and then only by adding to the bottom of the list. But this system can be abused, as the MK party has demonstrated. By removing people from its lists and forcing people to decline their seats, MK has contorted the process so that we now have a leader of the opposition whose name did not go through the process outlined in the Electoral Act.

Some have mooted a return to the first-past-the-post constituency system in SA. In this system the country or state is divided into constituencies and the voters in each constituency elect one person to represent them in the legislature. This is the model in the UK and most of the US. MPs in this system are directly accountable to their constituencies: if that MP does not deliver, they can be voted out even if their party is popular.

But there are trade-offs. If your preferred candidate doesn’t win, your vote isn’t represented at all. Worse still, a party can win power even if it does not have the most votes. For example, in the 1948 whites-only election, Jan Smuts’ United Party (49%) received more votes than DF Malan’s National Party (38%). Yet the NP won more seats, formed a government and implemented apartheid. This is also a stark reminder of why electoral systems matter — a different system in 1948 may have rewritten our history.   

For as long as the UK has had universal suffrage it has never had a government elected by more than 50% of voters. Margaret Thatcher dominated UK politics with huge majorities in parliament, yet never received more than 42.4% of votes. This year, the Labour Party won almost two-thirds of parliament with only 34% of the vote. 

Electoral college system

The US uses a similar model for its electoral college system. Whoever receives the most votes in the electoral college wins the presidency. Each state is allocated electoral college votes based on the size of its population. With the exception of two states, all electoral college votes in that state go to the candidate who wins the most votes — even if that victory is on the basis of one vote more than their opponent.

A president can therefore be elected even if they lose the overall majority of votes in the country. For example, in the 2016 presidential election Hillary Clinton got 48% of the votes, 2.8-million more votes than Donald Trump, who got 45.9%. Yet Trump won the election, taking 306 electoral college votes against Clinton’s 232. 

If decisions in a democracy are determined by the views of the majority, can a first-past-the-post system be regarded as democratic, given that the president or government that is elected may not reflect the wishes of the majority? 

Yet another problem with the first-past-the-post system is that smaller parties can often be underrepresented, especially if their support is spread across the country rather than concentrated in smaller areas. In the UK, Reform UK won 14% of the vote, significantly more than the EFF in SA, yet won only five seats in the British parliament — 0.7% of all MPs.

Some have advocated a mixed system as a compromise. This is the system we have at local government level, where half of the seats come from a first-past-the-post system in wards, and half are from PR to ensure parties’ seats match their overall support. If this system were to be implemented at national and provincial level, a number of issues would arise.

The first-past-the-post system is attractive because it makes MPs accountable to their constituencies. But this accountability is diluted if constituencies are too large. The UK — which has a similar sized population to SA — has 650 MPs in the House of Commons. SA has only 400 MPs, about one MP for every 150,000 people. In a mixed system only half of them will be elected directly, meaning each “constituency” would include about 300,000 people. Will MPs really be held accountable? If not, can cash-strapped South Africans stomach increasing the number of MPs?

In addition, given the governance problems at local government level it is not clear that a mixed system is particularly effective. Phrased differently, has the mixed system contributed to council dysfunctionality? Would there be sufficient representation of racial and religious minorities or people of less popular views? Will the work done by PR MPs and constituency MPs be adequately divided? These are just some of the questions that need to be answered before any changes are made. 

Increasingly, there are calls to revert to some kind of constituency system. The home affairs minister has set up a panel to look at electoral reform. This is a worthwhile endeavour, but we should bear in mind that all systems have trade-offs. While some in SA clamour for a first-past-the-post system, many in the UK (possibly the majority) long for PR.

Our system has been designed to maximise representativity. This was considered essential in 1994. In a country as diverse as SA, let’s not give that up without careful consideration. 

• Jeffery is a former deputy justice & constitutional development minister and ANC MP.