The problem with an election

Posted on September 11, 2023 by theodorestathis

Election is a tool and not an end in itself. It was first used by the Latins around 500 B.C. under the republican system of government. It is used today to elect political and other type of officers. The thinking behind its use is that it expresses the wishes of the majority of the people and therefore it is considered, from time immemorial, to be a democratic action. In fact the tool named election is considered to be synonymous with the word democracy. You use elections to select officers of any kind? Then you have democracy. It is difficult for one to have an objection to a process like this, if it is free of any kind of interference. But even so, as the result is being interpreted, the process does suffer from the syndrome of the tyranny of the majority.

At this point we have to answer the question: can the election process be free of interference? The answer, on the basis of the up to date experience, is: Never! No matter what precautions one may invent in order to take interference out of the electoral process at the end no one succeeds. The political candidate has as an objective to be elected and the voter or voters of all kinds have as an objective to benefit in some way, or to profit, to exploit, or to control the officer’s future actions because of his need to be reelected. The voter may be a simple citizen who wants to benefit just himself not all citizens. He may be a business man, a company, a syndicate, and much more badly an enemy of the nation!

The interference, sooner or later, is, objectively, produced. Collusion and many times corruption, as well, go always hand in hand with the election. It is a couple that never gets divorced. There is a possibility that this may happen and that is the case when the nation enjoys the benefits provided by a truly democratic state. Even then this will not happen immediately after democracy sets in, because it will take a lot of time and effort for the values of the members of the whole society to change from values that have been promoted for centuries by the axiomatic principle: everybody for himself to values where the priority of all members of the society is the good for all, not the few, not the many but for all. For the same reason all the different types of citizens’ assemblies of our days face the same problem. What we need to have is a cultured society, whose characteristic trait is the humane stand of life, which only democracy can provide.

I find it difficult to believe that the citizens of the world prefer to have a type of democracy in which collusion and corruption dominate its vital business, which is the wellbeing of all citizens and that is the reason I am optimistic that with effort the change will come.

Filed under: Elections |

3 Responses

Yoram Gat, on September 11, 2023 at 6:53 pm said:

> interference

This again is vague. What makes for “interference”?

I think your analysis misses the point by presenting the oligrachical outcomes of electoralism as some sort of a corruption of a purer system that is democratic. Elections are by their very nature (in their purest, most “free and fair” form) are an oligarchical device. Since a normal person is unknown and cannot be voted for, elections cannot produce a government that is representative of the population. They must produce a government of elites since only elites are known to a non-negligible part of the electorate. With elites in power, they promote their own values and interests. This is not a democracy, where the values and interests of the population are supposed to be promoted.

The designers of the electoralist system – the American and French revolutionaries – deliberately and explicitly designed the system to be oligarchical (a “republic” rather than a democracy, as the American founders put it). They would have to have been quite incompetent to aim for an oligarchy and to fail so miserably as to create a democracy. They were not and they did not. They largely got what they aimed for: a rule by the “natural aristocracy” (even if that natural aristocracy would not necessarily live up to the expectations of the founders).

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theodorestathis, on September 12, 2023 at 6:49 pm said:

In my article with the title: The Problem with an Election I state among other things: “The interference, sooner or later, is, objectively, produced. Collusion and many times corruption, as well, go always hand in hand with the election. It is a couple that never gets divorced. There is a possibility that this may happen and that is the case when the nation enjoys the benefits provided by a truly democratic state. Even then this will not happen immediately after democracy sets in, because it will take a lot of time and effort for the values of the members of the whole society to change from values that have been promoted for centuries by the axiomatic principle: everybody for himself to values where the priority of all members of the society is the good for all, not the few, not the many but for all. For the same reason all the different types of citizens’ assemblies of our days face the same problem. What we need to have is a cultured society, whose characteristic trait is the humane stand of life, which only democracy can provide”. I mention this as a possibility and we will not know that this may happen unless it is tried. Under the present conditions we exclude the use of election for selecting members for a legislative body. As to the comment of Yoram “I think your (meaning mine) analysis misses the point by presenting the oligarchical outcomes of electoralism as some sort of a corruption of a purer system that is democratic. Elections are by their very nature (in their purest, most “free and fair” form) are an oligarchical device”, I miss no point whatsoever. In both cases the legislative body is oligarchical and so it is also the one whose members are selected by sortition, because in this too not all people participate, but much fewer those selected by sortition.
The discussion of this point gives me the chance to present the way the legislative body is being constructed in my system and I thank Yoram for that, who, with his questions, creates for me the opportunity to unfold some of the details developed in my book. Firstly, the electoral law is of the simple proportional type and in any region there is more than one candidate, the more the better. Secondly, the party candidates’ slate is formed by using a series of sortitions. Let us assume that in a region the number of the candidates is sixteen. For a party to elect all of its candidates in the slate of that region it has to get 100% of the votes. This never happens, unless the state is in the siege of a dictatorship. Thirdly, from each activity of the production sector of any kind the group of volunteers, being members of the party and wanting to be candidates, is formed. All members of this group must satisfy the prerequisites set. From each group two members-one woman and one man-are selected by sortition in order to ensure a good representation. In this way we obtain a new group-equal in number of women and men- from which we select the sixteen candidates of the party slate. In the general elections voters do not vote now for candidates, they vote for the party on the basis of its program and the good will it has developed over the time. After the election a third sortition takes place to determine the first, second, etc candidate who is elected on the basis of the percentage the party won in the region. In this way the result does not express the preferences of the party leader or of any organ of the party. In my system party bosses go finally home and democracy within the party is at work. In addition the legislators are now true delegates of the development regional program of the party in the legislative body and the deliberations in that body are now made with the highest probability among equal peers, because of the kind of prerequisites, thus serving more reliably the people of the region. On the whole the legislative body in which all parties participate enjoys the highest quality of representation of all people of the nation and of course of the region.

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theodorestathis, on September 12, 2023 at 8:05 pm said:

To add some additional points to my previous comment on my proposed system of government
Candidates for legislative bodies need not be rich or have “danations” of any kind to become legislators. They do not even have the need of TV, radio or other advertising services.

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