Tuesday 8 July 2014

Without choice there is no accountability

True democracy is accountable in the sense that either the people vote directly on legislation or their representatives can be removed easily by the people.

First-past-the-post doesn't provide a fully-accountable form of democracy because if voters want neither of the main parties their vote is ignored. We have been given an accountable vote when the significance of our vote doesn't depend on the party or candidate we vote for. In a proportional system to vote for one candidate is to reject all the others but this is not the case with first-past-the-post. With fptp we are not blocking the other candidates unless we vote for a party which is established so these candidates are much less accountable to the voter. To be a candidate for one of the main parties is almost to have a one-in-two chance of success.

To be in receipt of tactical votes is not to be accountable because you have not been elected out of popularity but instead fear of the alternative.

To have been accountably elected means that the voters had a full opportunity to refuse you and you have not been elected as the least bad of a (falsely) limited number of options. To have been elected tactically is to have been elected only because people did not have a wider choice. If the voters do not have a full choice then we cannot say that the representatives are fully accountable.

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