From: Dale McMillen <dmcmillen@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Date: 02 Jan 93 18:39 PST
Subject: Re: GREENS & CANDIDATE ACCOUNTABILITY
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1678600004:cdp:1678600012:000:5509
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!dmcmillen    Jan  2 18:39:00 1993


Hi Joseph L. Gelinas, Jr.,
 
I appreciated your thoughtful response to my comments about accountability
and proportional representation.  I have a few questions and would like
to make a few clarifications:
 
ME:  Imagine the political troubles that Clinton would have if the
     Democratic Party convened and decided to withdraw his nomination,
     render a vote of no-confidence, or similar action.
 
YOU: Were the Democratic Party to hold such a convention, it would have no 
     effect at all.
 
Come now!  I am talking political troubles, not legal troubles.  He is
having a tough enough time as it is getting Congress used to his some
of proposals while he still has strong support.  Can you imagine his
difficulties if he lost popular support?  (Note how he plans to continue
his bus-stop campaign style after his nomination to ensure continued
popular support.)
 
ME:  Now, perhaps it would be better to have a constitutional provision
     for recall whereby the citizens would vote, as in a referendum,
     whether or not to recall the President.
 
YOU: There is no mention [in the U.S. Constitution] of the citizens
     petitioning for such expulsion.  I suppose the Members would
     consider such a petition, were one delivered to them.
 
I am suggesting an amendment to the Constitution, in which case there
would be mention of it.
 
YOU: I would say that we have deliberately rejected proportional 
     representation.
 
When? Where? Why?
 
YOU: We have deliberately chosen that elected officials represent _all_
     of their constituents and are honour-bound to consider the needs
     and desires of all those constituents, not just the desires of those
     constituents who happened to agree with or have voted for them.
 
Ditto -- When? Where? Why?
  
YOU: This [proportional representation where both sides get their views
     represented, in proportion to votes, rather than winner take all]
     is all well and good, if Pro-Life is all one cares about.  But most
     people have a lot of other concerns and interests.  For the vast
     majority of people, when compared to war, international trade, and
     such, abortion just isn't important enough an issue to base a national
     election on.
 
I was only using the single issue of abortion as an example of the
benefits of proportional representation.  In real life, there would
be an entire platform of issues which a party's representative would
represent.  Proportional representation allows all the minor views
(with some lower limit, of perhaps 5 percent) to be heard.
 
ME:  With proportional representation, it is clear that the elected
     official is only accountable to the party and platform that s/he
     ran on.
 
YOU: As opposed to the citizens who elected them, or the nation they
     (supposedly) represent? 
 
Yes!  But note that countries with proportional representation do not
have Kings (or in our case, a President).  Rather, they have a Prime
Minister or someone whose position is much closer to that of Speaker
of the House or Majority Leader rather than like the position of
our President.  (And, they seem to function fine.)
 
A bit of commentary:
 
There is a problem with assuming that the elected leader is supposed
to represent the interests of the entire population they represent.
 
About a year ago after the 1991 election, the Democrats on the Fairfax
County Board lost their majority to Republicans.  Well, the first thing
that the new board wanted to do was to reverse a downzoning decision
that the previous board had made.  The previous board had gone through
an extensive citizen input process to determine their zoning preferences
and it seemed clear that the vast majority of citizens wanted downzoning.
Well, the new Republican Board claimed the citizens wanted to reverse
the downzoning, since they, after all, elected a Republican Board.
(We are only talking 4/5 and 5/4 split).
 
However, what the Republicans failed to explain was how their victory
indicated the that citizens wanted to reverse the downzoning.  They only
campaigned on making the county "more friendly" to business, which sold
well during a recession.  They did not campaign on reversing the down-
zoning, but still they claimed they were representing the will of the
citizens (when in fact, they were representing the will of the few land
developers who contributed handsomely to their campaigns).
 
By presuming to represent the will of the entire population, the
politician can, in fact, manage to represent no one, but himself.
An organization can stage a rally with hundreds or thousands, or
collect a petition with tens of thousands signatures (at great
cost of volunteer labor and donations), yet the politician can
still claim he represents the views of the "silent majority",
who support him, but have better things to do than waste a their
time rallying or collecting signatures.  Remember Nixon?
 
The benefit of proportional representation, clear platforms, and
strong parties is that the politician is only called to represent
the views of his or her party.  There is no need to worry about
representing the other views, because those views will also be
represented through their proportional allotment of representatives.
And if the politician does not represent the party's views as stated
in the platform, the party has the obligation to recall the politician.
Recall will therefore protect the interests of the the people who voted
to advance the issues in that party's platform.
 
Dale