Electoral reform

We had our first of two meetings at AACI on electoral reform in Israel. The
speaker was Gad Yacobi, a former Israeli UN representative and Cabinet member
during the Shamir Administration. He has been actively involved in trying to
foster electoral reform in Israel for many years.
He started out by saying that he is not optimistic. The current system of
proportional representation favors the power of parties and lacks any direct
representation for the voter. When Ben Gurion adopted this system it was in a
great hurry in order to get the State organized, so they chose the simplest
system. Later he wanted to revert to the British system, but it never
happened. The main reason is that the parties and their members have a vested
interest in continuing the current system, since they are not responsible to
any particular constituency. Also, the parties have to form coalitions, which
means that small parties, especially the religious and the far left, are
essential and like to hold the balance of power. Because of this system,
when there is a National Unity Government, this leads to stalemate.
Of the 191 countries in the UN only 46 are democracies. There are only two
real Presidential systems in the world, the US and France, and the rest are
variations on the parliamentary system. A few years ago Israel tried the
direct election of the PM, but it was a failure, because then people voted for
marginal parties for the Knesset and so the PM and the Knesset were unmatched
(what is known as incompatible in France). So the direct election of the PM
was revoked.
There are many non-democratic aspects of the current system. For example,
in Kadima, Sharon's new party, the top members of the list are being chosen,
there is no electoral primary. In Likud the Central Committee votes (and
some votes are bought) and only Labor has a full vote of the whole party to
choose the electoral list in a primary. In the religious parties the rabbis
decide, and the far left party Yachad (Meretz) the party decides. Once the
list is chosen the electorate votes mostly for people they do not know and may
never have heard of, they usually only know the top 5 candidates on the list.
In the Knesset there is an Electoral Reform Committee that has been meeting
for years, and has come up with a new proposed system. In this system, the
country will be divided into 30 constituencies, but 3 candidates on a party
list will be chosen for each. It is felt that 3 members on a list can include
minorities and other groups rather than just one representative. That makes a
total of 90 members, the remaining 30 would be chosen as now on the basis
of the national proportional vote for parties. So the proposal is a
compromise between the two systems, and for that reason it may be too complex
to work. Two other changes, the minimum vote for any party is being raised
from 2 to 3% to avoid small parties (this has been agreed by the Knesset) and
parties smaller than 4 members would be excluded (this is proposed). It has
been calculated that this system would lead to 6 parties with 2 main ones
rather than the current 17 total parties represented.
One reason why electoral reform doesn't take place is that it is low on the
priority list of the Israeli public, understandably with security issues
taking top spot. Also, many of the Israeli electorate are immigrants from
non-democratic countries (former USSR, Ethiopia, etc.). In order to foster
education in this area, President Katsav recently formed an organization
called, "The Citizen's Empowerment Center for Democracy in Israel." This has
90 members split into 6 working groups that are expected to eventually come up
with proposals for electoral reform. At the meeting we agreed that we should
write them a letter supporting their efforts.
Anyway, electoral reform is a difficult task. Even in the very personalized US
system, where the appearance is that people vote for the man, in fact surveys
have shown that people's vote depends 80% on the party (Democrat or
Republican) and only 20% on the person!