Von-Mally's Choice Reveals Why Party Lists Shrink Democracies

Lists to Party

Check the party lists for the ongoing Rodrigues Regional Assembly (RRA) elections and you will find the Leader of the Mouvement Rodriguais (MR) sitting at the top of his. That could be a lot safer for him than contesting one of the 12 FPTP seats especially if the MR doesn't grab too many of them. Which makes it more difficult for voters to dump Mr. Von-Mally. See you needed at least 48.19% of the local region votes in the riding of Port-Mathurin to get into the Regional Assembly back in 2012. A tad more than in 2006. Whereas all you need to qualify for a PR seat is that your party gets at least 10% of the island region votes and it doesn't get enough FPTP candidates elected. There's also another way Von-Mally could get in: his party grabs a majority of the FPTP seats but that majority gets neutralised by the PR seats. He would then go in on the first of the 3 extra seats that guarantee that the winner of the FPTP competitions forms the regional government.

Thoughts on Electoral Reform (5)

Elections in Mauritius Are Seldom Referendums

Vote share doesn’t matter that much in Mauritius. We instead have competitions in 21 unequal ridings and the party which grabs anything more than half of the contested seats earns the right to form government. Our first-past-the-post (FPTP) setup is a system which works and has served us really well. And that too for decades. Making it an important part of who we are. Just like progressive taxation and a high savings rates have until 2006. Important matters of the state need to be given the appropriate consideration. It’s definitely not a bad idea that we let ourselves be inspired by examples of profound thinking. Like what Feynman told us about hardware reliability of the Space Shuttle: the necessary redundancy was provided by several independent identical computer systems.

Une nécessaire réforme de notre système politique: A Note

I have a few comments with respect to the points made in this article which appeared today.

1. We are prisoners of the two-party system that the FPTP generates. We don't have a two-party system here but most elections have been dominated by two alliances each made up of two or more parties. Our political system has been quite dynamic if we look at the weights of the different parties on the political chessboard over time and in the different alliances at voting time. It has also been renewing itself. Maybe not at the speed we would have wished though.