When it comes to a referendum on the budget, if you add together the public sector, the private sector that relies on the public sector for its income (consultants, defence contractors, etc.,) and then add pensioners and diverse benefit recipients, you pretty much have a majority in favour of public spending. Add the status quo effect - plus the unwillingness of people to rock the boat - and you are fairly well assured that a popular vote under the current system will never reject a budget. The vote must be weighted.This plays into one of my objections. Citizens would be first bored at the prospect of annual votes (most citizens don't 'do politics'), but then many of them would become worried at the prospect of becoming losers. Hence the upward budget bias.
Remember how many attended the London rally against the 'cuts', and how few attended the rally in support of them.
Our present system gives governments several years to enact the right but repulsive (such as slowing the increase in state borrowings), ahead of a quick burst of wrong but romantic before the next election.
Richard's proposal for annual budget referenda would eliminate this safety period. Mrs Thatcher, for instance, could never have introduced her changes. Voters in annual budget referenda would never have pored line by line over budget documents. They would just have voted against the unpopular government.
Whatever the history of voting systems, if referism required weighted votes in order to be practicable (and Richard is not saying this, just mooting it), that would be another reason to leave referism on the drawing board, where it will stay anyway.
Richard hazards that "the total cost of a referendum would be between £30-60 million".
In Italy in the last few days we've seen that referenda can make a difference. A guest poster at Subrosa suggests that in this day of electronic communication it shouldn't be too difficult to create ad hoc voting panels, based on the systems for identifying jurors.
These people would then be “referred” to by the government and the local MP/MSP/MEP and their views and electronic vote taken into account during the decision making process. Each issue would require different people chosen at random from each constituency being involved.This would be cheaper than a referendum, though apparently consultative only.
But what would be the difference between this and an opinion poll? Except that it would cost taxpayers more money.
These proposals are diversions from the necessary quest for more referenda. Maybe this is one area of politics where Italy has something to teach us.
12 comments:
I think I agree with you. Richard's proposals are adding layers of complication whereas simpler solutions are normally the best. It could work however if we had a simple flat tax system. Say £10k p.a. income was a threshold. Under that amount you dont pay tax but neither do you get to vote on a budget. Sort of turning 'no taxation without representation' the other way around.
Shouldn't the qualification be comprehension rather than contribution? Some very profound thinkers, not all of them PPE graduates, have earned, and doubtless earn, absolutely fuck all.
Is it not more important as a qualification for voting to understand the consequences of one's decision for all, and for their descendants, rather than simply for oneself?
Comprehension would be very difficult to quantify in any meaningful way. You could equally claim that there are just as many very rich thickos about but since they would be contributing to the public purse they would still be entitled to a say in how it is spent.
I think 10k would be a very low threshold to qualify.
The old 'two wolves and one lamb voting on the dinner menu' problem. Very hard to get around.
As for weighted votes, can you imagine the political wrangling to make sure the right people get the right number of votes. It is hard to imagine a system more open to abuse by the elites.
"Shouldn't the qualification be comprehension rather than contribution? "
You are getting close to the literacy tests in the US used to exclude black people from voting, although obviously your intentions are not racist. Any test of competency, like vote weighting, would be wide open to abuse by clever elites.
If you are going to change the rules on who can vote, and I am not saying that you should, it would be best to do it in a simple, clear cut and therefore hard to manipulate fashion. For example: raise the voting age to reduce the number of young people with no life experience voting. We already have age restrictions, so moving them would not even be a fundamental change.
"I think 10k would be a very low threshold to qualify"
One problem is keeping the low threshold. Over the long sweep of time, powerful people can nudge things along until suddenly voting is only for a very exclusive club.
Once you implement a filter to cut people out of the franchise you immediately create the tools for some very nasty scenarios.
William: I presume you also have concerns about 18yrs being an arbitary qualifying age to vote. Do teenagers suddenly develop extra brain cells on their 18th birthday?.
Stewart is I think saying that a monetary threshold could be manipulated - couldn't an intelligence threshold also be manipulated?. - I'll leave that for you to argue with each other.
Sir Ernest Ben said "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it wether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedy" I think we are in danger of the same thing - especially the last bit.
You've taken me off your bloglist :-(
I don't see why referism wouldn't work though, PROVIDED the questions were set intelligently.
I'd envisage giving people a breakdown, of how much the state spends, per person, on various bits and pieces.
Most would be amazed to see that the core functions of the state (police, prisons, immigration, defence, fire brigade, road maintenance and refuse collection) cost about £1,000 per person.
And the simpler the tax system the better, so that people know exactly how much they are paying. A flat tax on incomes would be a start, but a flat tax on land values is even better.
Anonymous 8:51 PM, Anonymous 10:45 AM and Stewart Griffin:
I should have made myself clearer. I was not advocating weighting but suggesting that some idea of how things work may be a better qualification for holding a weighted vote than simply having a job in the private sector or a private income.
Apropos of literacy tests: Not a bad thing in an age in which hustings are a thing of the past.
Apropos of voting at 18: I cannot see that anything I have written might prompt an assumption that I'm bothered by it. I feel I should say that I am not in favour of universal suffrage; I would not, however, disenfranchise anyone simply on the grounds of age.
Re assessments of competence: Surely it isn't too difficult to establish whether a person understands that voting for a high spending, centralising government cannot increase one's wealth or liberty or that voting for a government dedicated to ceding ever more sovereignty to a foreign power cannot bring about our withdrawal from the EU. I suspect I need to state clearly that I'm not suggesting one's views on those issues should determine whether or not one is allowed to vote.
Re manipulation or abuse by clever elites: Apart from stating that every system ever devised by human beings has been manipulated or abused to some degree by clever elites (those who are clever tend to become if not already be part of the elite and what is the point of being part of an elite if not to manipulate a system, it's the rich wot gets the pleasure after all) I would ask whether any system is likely to be improved by the manipulation or abuse of talentless mediocrities who have the ear and approval of the mob.
I'm not in favour of weighting simply because one fears that those who benefit from a tax and spend budget are unlikely to reject a tax and spend budget but I am in favour of Referism, which demands a much better informed and more active electorate.
LOL! The verification word for this post was 'reformm'.
"Stewart is I think saying that a monetary threshold could be manipulated - couldn't an intelligence threshold also be manipulated?"
Yes, both types of system could be manipulated.My main point was that all these types of selective franchise system are open to abuse.
I am not clear if voting on the budget means voting on how much is spent, what it is spent on, how it is collected and from whom. All of which is relevant and all nigh on impossible to acheive a concensus.
If the objective is to achieve a smaller government - Referism seems like tinkering with just one aspect of it and one that would be better done on a much more local level.
From what I understand from Bastiat (The Law) our representatives should treat us all equally without favouring one group over another - not the present insanity of special interest groups all vying for their slice of the budget and in most cases actually funded by the government to lobby them.
Your comments about people being "bored" and not doing politics are not borne out by the limited experience we have of such referendums ... as in this post.
The experience is of turnouts higher than in corresponding elections, and a willingness to turn out at the same higher levels two years running.
Further, contrary to all expectations, in two out of three areas, the vote was to hold the budget down.
Now a general point if I may ... I appreciate your input ... put play fair. That post answered your comments, yet you still make them. That does not compute.
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