The proposed runoff system is “more democratic” and will do no harm to voters who support a candidate who failed to win the first round of elections. If anything, the proposed system gives those voters more options than they now have. So said Nigel Henry, chief analyst of Solution By Simulation, as he added his voice to the debate on the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2014 at a forum hosted by the Constitutional Affairs and Parliamentary Studies Unit (CAPSU) of the Department of Political Science at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, yesterday.
Voters who support neither the United National Congress (UNC) nor the People's National Movement (PNM) but who supported a third party would have the option in the proposed system to vote for the “lesser of two evils” or to choose not to vote again, Henry said. In the current first-past-the-post system, third party supporters’ only option was to accept the result at the end of the first round, he added. Under the proposed system, Henry said more people would have the opportunity to be happy with the result than under the current system. “Result A can be called more democratic than Result B if more people are happy under Result A compared to Result B. “I argue that given that statistical definition of democracy, the two-round system is a more democratic system,” he added.
Speaking to the T&T Guardian in a postevent interview, Henry said if the legislation was enacted, it was likely to have a tangible impact on voter behaviour as more people were likely to vote in favour of a third party once they understood that a vote against one of the two major parties could now have a more meaningful impact on the eventual outcome of the election. “You can translate third party votes into third party seats,” he said. Henry was among a five-member panel trading perspectives on the merits of introducing a second round of runoff votes into the Parliamentary electoral system. Another panellist, Samraj Harripaul, SC, chair of the Law Reform Commission, agreed with Henry that introducing a second round of voting would have a substantial impact on voters’ behaviour. He said from his research, voter turnout was equal to or higher than first-round voting in “95 per cent” of the runoff elections around the world.
Speaking before Henry, Dr Hamid Ghany, coordinator of CAPSU, presented a compilation of elections results data from previous elections and identified all the constituencies in which there would have been runoffs and the candidates/parties who would have been involved. His data showed that a high number of runoffs took place in election years in which there was a strong third party: Ten in 1981, 11 in 1991 and 14 in 2007. Ghany identified the specific constituencies and candidates who would have been involved in runoff elections. The data showed that third party candidates would not have been involved in the majority of the runoffs. Dr Olabisi Kuboni, chair of the Constitution Reform Forum (CRF), like at least two members of the audience who volunteered their own perspectives in the open session, took issue with the lack of consultation in the process by which bill had been devised. “The CRF is saying that the debate in the bill must be stopped. It must not become law. The runoff system is better for majority rule but the question we have to ask is majority rule for whom,” he said. He said the runoff system would only perpetuate entrenched racial divides in T&T’s society.