Fruits & Votes is the Web-log of Matthew S. Shugart ("MSS"), Professor of Political Science, University of California, Davis.
Perspectives on electoral systems, constitutional design, and policy around the world, based primarily on my research interests.
Also experiences with growing many varieties of fruit (always organic) and other personal interests. Please see the Mission Statement for more. (There is also an explanation of the banner.)
Other "planters" have been invited to contribute. Please check the "Planted by" line to see the author of the post you are reading.
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This is not the sort of forecast we have in these parts very often:
TONIGHT… SHOWERS LIKELY… POSSIBLY MIXED WITH SNOW NEAR THE FOOTHILLS.
Nor this:
WEDNESDAY… SHOWERS… POSSIBLY MIXED WITH SNOW NEAR THE FOOTHILLS… AND A SLIGHT CHANCE OF THUNDERSTORMS. SOME THUNDERSTORMS MAY PRODUCE SMALL HAIL. HIGHS 51 TO 56 IN THE WESTERN VALLEYS TO 43 TO 48 NEAR THE FOOTHILLS.
Some places a little east of Ladera Frutal may have highs in the low 40s (on the quaint Fahrenheit scale)?
Evidently, chill-accumulation season is underway. Ladera Frutal no longer has any tender subtropical fruits trees to worry about, their having been wiped out in The Freeze of 2007. The under-ripe bananas on some of our stalks may stay that way, however.
I completely forgot, but there was a significant presidential election yesterday, in a very large country with a very restricted electorate.
Just 538 voters cast ballots, a tiny fraction of the country’s adult population, but the only citizens constitutionally entitled to vote for the country’s chief executive.
Evidently, someone who was a mere state legislator just four years ago was the choice of this elite class of voters. Intriguing.
(Thanks to Steven for the reminder and inspiration.)
Normally, Canadian budget consultations would take place in the House of Commons finance committee. Deliberations in committees of the elected house are especially important when the government, and hence the finance minister, are from a political party with less than half the seats in the house.
However, there is a small problem. You see, the House finance committee can’t meet because the House can’t meet, having been prorogued to prevent a likely no-confidence vote earlier this month.
So, instead of confronting the opposition parties–whose leaders have signed an accord claiming they, and not the governing party, have the confidence of the house–in an assembled committee of the house, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is meeting individually with the finance critics (or what in the UK would be shadow ministers) of the opposition Liberal and New Democratic parties.
Oh, how I would love to know what is being said in those meetings! Most of all, I would love to know to what extent the Liberal and NDP critics are ‘on the same page’ in their meetings, and the extent to which Flaherty is offering separate assurances for each party’s core concerns.
The potential coalition hangs in the balance as much as does the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The budget proposal must be tabled on 27 January, and it is by definition a confidence vote.
(Meanwhile, the federal Conservative government and the Liberal government of the province of Ontario have reached an accord on a bailout of the Canadian auto industry. More importantly, Ontarians can now drown their economic sorrows in beer at the movies!)
Apparently Somalia has a premier-presidential system.* Or at least Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein believes so, by arguing that only the legislature, and not President, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, has the authority to remove him.
I’ll admit that Somalia had been off my radar as a potential case of semi-presidentialism of any sort, as I would normally not think much about classifying constitutional powers in systems without a functioning democracy. Or state.
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* Oops, not it can’t be! Robert Elgie notes in a comment that the president is not popularly elected. (I had recalled otherwise, but now realize that I was probably thinking of Somaliland, the statelet in the north.)
* 13 of the 49 (27%) ran for office, but were defeated in the general election;
* 7 of the 49 (14%) ran for office, but were defeated in the primary;
* 10 of the 49 (20%) chose not to seek a permanent term (including one who was prohibited by state law from doing so).
(It occurs to me that the parenthetical case there actually did not choose not to run.)
From that record, including some of the specific cases discussed by Nate, it seems clear that the poor reelection record of these interim Senators would be expected from the common practice of Governors choosing objectively weak candidates. Apparently, many of them have had no prior electoral experience or other record of achievement. Of course, that may be deliberate, either as deference to the party or electorate or as a simple short-term patronage exchange (with the current Illinois scandal being an extreme case of the latter).
Nate also notes the institutional variation among states in filling vacancies:
states can move to solve the problem themselves by passing a “fast” special elections law, as states like Oregon, Wisconsin and Massachusetts now have (and Illinois soon will). Other states have evolved other checks and balances; Utah and Wyoming require that the candidate be selected from among a list prepared by the state party apparatus, while Alaska, Hawaii and Arizona require appointees to be from the same party as the departing senator. Arkansas provides for gubernatorial appointments, but does not allow the appointee to run for re-election.
Clearly, the process of gubernatorial appointment* needs reform. But it is clear to me that the answer is not what one commenter suggests: that every elected official should have a “vice” (meaning a stand-by replacement, not the other meaning it might more accurately imply!). Many Latin American countries have such a suplente system, and it is much abused–a cure worse than the disease.
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* Something that is not clear to me is whether Illinois or any other state allows for outright appointment by the Governor, or if the actual process is nomination by the Governor, followed by appointment upon conformation by the state legislature. It is my recollection that California, at least, has an “advise and consent” provision. The media coverage on Illinois leaves the impression that the Governor chooses unilaterally. I do not know if that is so. Maybe politically it does not matter in the current Illinois case: anyone with appointment–even if confirmed by elected representatives of the state’s electorate–would be branded, rightly or wrongly, as Blagojevich’s man or woman. But it certainly means that a wounded governor would have to defer to a representative body’s preference.
Accomplice In The Wood Chipper, a new(-ish) blog with a title that I don’t quite get but rather like, has an interesting analysis of the voting patterns in Ohariu. This is the district of Peter Dunne, who holds the distinction as the one New Zealand minister who remained in government with the recent turn from a Labour to a National PM.
The House of Representatives doesn’t always live up to its name, thanks to the way it is elected. Representation of women and many ethnic and religious minorities lags. Only in 2006, for example, did it get its first Muslim member. And, as of yesterday’s results in Louisiana, the House finally has its first Vietnamese-American member, who will join the Republican caucus. Congratulations to Anh Cao! (It did not hurt to be running against William Jefferson.)
OK, a puzzle that I hope someone can help with. I thought Louisiana used a top-two runoff system. Clearly most of its House seats were already decided in November. Yet the two “runoffs” Saturday had more than two candidates, and in neither case did the winner break 50%. The combined vote of Jefferson and a Green candidate was greater than Cao’s votes (though if we play that game, we should note also that when the Libertartians’ 0.82% is added to Cao’s total, he is back on top). In the other race, Democrat Paul Carmouche lost to Republican John Fleming by 0.38%, with Fleming barely over 48%.
With so much attention focused on Canada’s federal government, and the government-in-waiting, I almost forgot that Quebec is about to go to the polls in a provincial assembly election. That’s happening on Monday! {Today!}
(Click “Qc.” above to see discussion of the previous election, in March, 2007.)
The results of state assembly elections in five Indian states were announced today. The voting in some of these states took place during or after the attacks in Mumbai (26-29 Nov.).
The five states, with the prior governing party and the victor of these elections shown, are:
All in all, a pretty good record for the Indian National Congress, the party of incumbent federal Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The only states the INC did not win were those that voted before the Mumbai attacks. And, as I note below, the INC gained on the BJP even in the two pre-attack states that the BJP held, suggesting there were national pro-INC factors at work independent of both the attacks and any particular state issues. Although these states are not necessarily bellwethers, overall, these results have to be good news for the INC as federal elections approach within the next few months.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) attempt to build a national campaign around the issues of terrorism, inflation, and a deepening agriculture crisis as a prelude to the Lok Sabha elections worked, at best, only partially. Local issues of governance won the day.
The BJP was pushing the “soft on terrorism” line even before the attacks in Mumbai.
The election was fought very much on BJP turf, as indicated by the party being the incumbent in three of the states, and how many of the federal parliamentary seats in these states are currently held by that party:
Delhi, Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh elect 72 of 542 members of the Lok Sabha, while Mizoram elects one. BJP has 57 and Congress 15 MPs in the current Lok Sabha from these states.
Federal elections must be completed no later than May.
So, when will the next general elections take place? There is nothing that suggests that the Congress would advance the polls. Congress hopes inflation will dip sharply from March 2009 onwards and by April-May the party will be in comfortable position. The party also expects to deliver on the issue of security by then, with a new home minister already in place.
Given the use of FPTP, it is always a good idea to look closely at more than just who won (i.e. who may have won a manufactured majority of seats). For instance, in the Rajastan election of 2003, the BJP majority (110 of 200 seats) resulted from 39.2% of the vote (against 35.6% for the INC). In Madhya Pradesh in 2003 the BJP’s 173 (of 230) seats came on 42.5% of the votes (INC, 31.6%). Chhattisgarh in 2003 had a really close election, in votes: the BJP won 50 of 90 seats despite a votes win of 39.3% to 36.7%. Then there’s Mizoram in 2003: the Mizoram National Front won its 21 (of 40) seats on 31.7% of the votes, against 30.1% for the INC.3 Only in Delhi did the winner in 2003 come close to an “earned” majority, with the INC winning 47 (of 68) seats on 48.1% of the vote.4
The 2008 results are available at the Election Commission of India website, but I do not see state-level aggregation of vote totals. Some of the INC wins over the BJP were substantial, however (in seats): 96 – 78 in Rajasthan, 42 – 23 in Delhi, and 32 – 0 in Mizoram (where the BJP barely contests; the incumbent National Front managed only 3 seats). In Chhattisgarh, the BJP won 37 seats to 31 for the INC, which is quite a lot closer than the 50-37 last time (in an assembly of 90 seats, now cut to 70). In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP won 126 seats (a loss of 47), but the INC remains far behind (63, a gain of 25 in an assembly cut in size from 230 to 201).
Note that the Rajasthan result this time around is not a majority, with the INC having 96 of 200 seats (+40 on 2003). The BJP won 78 seats (-32). The INC has a potential ally to support a minority government in the Bahujan Samaj Party (6 seats, a gain of 4). As Adam notes below, it is even more likely to make deals with independent members (many of whom sought the INC nomination, were denied, but won anyway.)
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1. Many elections in India take place in stages, with some districts voting on different days from others; always FPTP.
2. Party abbreviations: INC = Indian National Congress, the main component of the governing United Progressive Alliance at the federal level; BJP = Bharatiya Janata Party, the main component of the federal opposition bloc, the National Democratic Alliance; MNF = Mizoram National Front.
3. And 16.2% for the Mizoram People’s Congress and 14.7% for the Zoram Nationalist Party.
4. The BJP had 20 seats on 35.2%. Here my source is a PDF from the Election Commission of India, as Adam Carr does not have a summary on his site.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has obtained Governor-General Michaëlle Jean’s consent to temporarily shut down Parliament, a move that allows him to avoid a confidence vote next week that he was expected to lose. [...]
Mr. Harper said Parliament will return on Jan. 26 and the first order of business will be the 2009 budget.
He grudgingly acknowledged he has to make peace with the opposition parties. “Obviously we have to do some trust-building here on both sides.”
The Prime Minister said he will spend December and January hammering out the budget. “My work over the next few weeks will be focused almost exclusively on preparing the federal budget.”
From where I sit, this is quite a breach of democratic protocol, to suspend the House because parties within it that represent a majority have declared they are set to form a new government.
Even if Harper remains Prime Minister upon the reconvening of the House, obviously his budget will look rather different than the one he was planning when he, evidently, though he had a de-facto majority government. In that sense, democracy still wins. But the principle that parliament should not be allowed to meet when it is expected to vote its lack of confidence in the incumbent government is far from a good one.
Quoted in a CBC item about PM Stephen Harper’s intent to use “all legal means” to block a coalition from replacing his minority government:
“I think a lot of political science students are going into their university classes today asking their professors: To become prime minister of this country don’t you have to win an election?” Heritage Minister James Moore said in an interview Tuesday with CBC News.
I would hope those political science professors would respond:
No, you must win the confidence of parliament.*
If one party happens to win a majority of parliamentary seats, then winning the election and winning the confidence of parliament are more or less the same thing. When no party does, they aren’t. Basic political science, eh?
Then again, among the options possibly being considered (citing the 1975 Australian crisis) is for the Prime Minister to fire the Governor General. Now that would be interesting.
If by my laws you walk, and my commands you keep, and observe them,
then I will give-forth your rains in their set-time,
so that the earth gives-forth its yield
and the trees of the field give-forth their fruit.
--Vayikra 26: 3-4
F&V time: This blog's date function is so set as to start a new day at approximately local sunset.
(Why, if we have "day" and "night," should a new "day" start in the middle of the night?)
FRUITS: Support your local, organic growers; and, plant vines and fig trees and pomegranates for the generations to come...
VOTES: For democratization and full representation, for environmental sustainability, social justice, and peace, always sincerely...
