I'm going to link to another article on Fruit and Votes in order to make another point about electoral system change worldwide. In Bolivia, following the constitutional referendum, the electoral system is changing somewhat.
The single-member seats in the lower house are now to include seats set aside for indigenous representation. In practice, commentators think this won't have a significant effect - since the reserved seats are to be from rural areas which have a large Indian population. However, it does seem like an effort to redress the imbalance caused by five centuries of colonial domination and minority rule. It does, of course, restrict the choice of voters who would like to vote for a white, mestizo or other non-Indian candidate.
The changes to the second chamber electoral system are interesting as well. It seems that each district in the Senate will return 4 members. These districts formerly elected 3 senators each. The leading party was supposed to get 2 and the second placed party 1. The old system thus ensured an 'artificial' majority for the strongest party in a district but also helped the second-placed one (especially if the 2nd placed one got less than a third of the vote). The new system is supposed to be based on proportional principles and so, in theory, up to 4 different parties could be returned per district. And, alternatively, a popular party might be able to win 3 of the 4 seats [and conceivably, of course, 4 seats if they got more than 75%].
technorati tags:
political news | news | world news
More at: News 2 Cromley
No comments:
Post a Comment