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| Subject: Jim and Ian's points | |
Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 20:47:49 12/01/04 Wed In reply to: Ian (Australia) 's message, "Australia has preferential voting" on 19:57:24 12/01/04 Wed The trouble with having the same electoral system for Upper and Lower Houses is, I think, quite obvious: the party system would ensure (presuming that the same party was in majority in both houses, which is pretty inevitable) that there would be no point in having two houses at all. The party whips would ensure that the party's members in the Upper House would agree to legislation proposed by the party in the lower house, and object to the policies which were objected to by the party in the lower house. The only way in which you could prevent this would be to stagger elections, so that you could have a different party controlling each house. But this in itself raises a further problem: when the two are in conflict over a policy, which takes precedence? Obviously, the House whose elections were most recent, since they would be a more accurate expression of the will of the electorate. So there'd be no point in having two houses, once again. Now, you could remedy that by having different electoral procedures for each house, such as first past the post for the Lower House and proportional representation for the Upper House. But then there is no way to resolve which takes precedence when there is disagreement. Personally, I think that bicameral legislature is a joke if both houses are elected, for these and other reasons. A case in point is Blair's attempt to make the Lords more 'accountable'. What has been the result? The rise of the Commons to the point where we have unicameral legislature in practice if not in theory. On a related point, I and millions of other Englishman are allergic to proportional representation. Even though PR would practically institutionalise Tory government, I would still rather have the occasional socialist administration than the ghastly perpetuation of coalition government which PR entails. I think that it is important to remember that the only party to win an election outright under a PR system (i.e., get 51% for one party) was the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1933. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |