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09-02-2015, 09:50 PM
An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
My four examples above show how, in just a few months alone, several rights that should be freely enjoyed have been eroded. Add up fifty years’ of abuses and we should be ashamed that we still haven’t built barricades in the streets. But worse, the very institutions that are supposed to protect those rights: a vigilant legislature and an even more vigilant judiciary… they are just not there. They’ve all shrunk away. For all this to have happened, just like that, should tell us that the defects of our system run very deep.
There is no need, I am sure, to spell out how the present situation springs from the huge parliamentary majority enjoyed by one party. But I think I do need to spell out that just voting another party into power isn’t necessarily going to correct it.
The problem is that the electoral system we have has a bias to producing huge majorities. I have written about this a few times before, but I feel it may be necessary to lay out my arguments again.
In a relatively spread-out country where there are significant differences in demographic profile and therefore political views from one place to another, a first-past-the-post system is a fairly good way to produce a legislature that is representative of the spectrum of political opinion and party support. Moreover, there is a stickiness in people’s locations. It’s not easy to move from one region to another region. The family may have to be uprooted, a new job has to be found. So, the differences among regions are not easily erased by movement of people.
But in a compact urban place like Singapore, especially one where HDB public housing can be found in all constituencies (with the exception of Joo Chiat), there aren’t enough differences in average voter profile from one constituency to another to produce much variation in voting outcomes. A minority community is a minority nearly everywhere. A minority political opinion is a minority nearly everywhere again. When it is easy to change residential (and therefore voter) address – because distances are short and people can move house without having to look for another job, because similar homes are on the market, similar schools and shops are everywhere — the ‘contrast ratio’ of political opinion from one constituency to another is reduced.
It’s like putting marble chips, glass beads and peanuts into a bowl. Stirring, which represents the movement of people among the different districts and suburbs, tends to produce a certain evenness in the mix. There is a tendency to homogeneity. And this homogeneity of averaged voter profile from one constituency compared to another, tells us that a small popular majority will translate into a huge parliamentary majority.
We then compound this by creating Group Representation Constituencies. So even noticeable variations in voter preference at a level of 20,000 or 25,000-voter Single Member Constituencies, are evened out when agglomerated into GRCs of 100,000 – 150,000 voters.
Such electoral effects are not unique to Singapore. It is inherent in the mathematics. For example, Barack Obama received 52.9% of the popular vote in 2008, but this translated to 67.8% of the electoral college. In the US, each state’s delegation has to vote as a block in the electoral college, so all you have to do is to win the slimmest of majorities in a state, and the entire state’s delegation has to vote for you at the electoral college. It’s a super GRC system...https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2...cond-republic/ (https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/a-second-republic/)
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?200152-Sobering-piece-by-Alex-Au-on-the-state-of-our-nation&goto=newpost).
My four examples above show how, in just a few months alone, several rights that should be freely enjoyed have been eroded. Add up fifty years’ of abuses and we should be ashamed that we still haven’t built barricades in the streets. But worse, the very institutions that are supposed to protect those rights: a vigilant legislature and an even more vigilant judiciary… they are just not there. They’ve all shrunk away. For all this to have happened, just like that, should tell us that the defects of our system run very deep.
There is no need, I am sure, to spell out how the present situation springs from the huge parliamentary majority enjoyed by one party. But I think I do need to spell out that just voting another party into power isn’t necessarily going to correct it.
The problem is that the electoral system we have has a bias to producing huge majorities. I have written about this a few times before, but I feel it may be necessary to lay out my arguments again.
In a relatively spread-out country where there are significant differences in demographic profile and therefore political views from one place to another, a first-past-the-post system is a fairly good way to produce a legislature that is representative of the spectrum of political opinion and party support. Moreover, there is a stickiness in people’s locations. It’s not easy to move from one region to another region. The family may have to be uprooted, a new job has to be found. So, the differences among regions are not easily erased by movement of people.
But in a compact urban place like Singapore, especially one where HDB public housing can be found in all constituencies (with the exception of Joo Chiat), there aren’t enough differences in average voter profile from one constituency to another to produce much variation in voting outcomes. A minority community is a minority nearly everywhere. A minority political opinion is a minority nearly everywhere again. When it is easy to change residential (and therefore voter) address – because distances are short and people can move house without having to look for another job, because similar homes are on the market, similar schools and shops are everywhere — the ‘contrast ratio’ of political opinion from one constituency to another is reduced.
It’s like putting marble chips, glass beads and peanuts into a bowl. Stirring, which represents the movement of people among the different districts and suburbs, tends to produce a certain evenness in the mix. There is a tendency to homogeneity. And this homogeneity of averaged voter profile from one constituency compared to another, tells us that a small popular majority will translate into a huge parliamentary majority.
We then compound this by creating Group Representation Constituencies. So even noticeable variations in voter preference at a level of 20,000 or 25,000-voter Single Member Constituencies, are evened out when agglomerated into GRCs of 100,000 – 150,000 voters.
Such electoral effects are not unique to Singapore. It is inherent in the mathematics. For example, Barack Obama received 52.9% of the popular vote in 2008, but this translated to 67.8% of the electoral college. In the US, each state’s delegation has to vote as a block in the electoral college, so all you have to do is to win the slimmest of majorities in a state, and the entire state’s delegation has to vote for you at the electoral college. It’s a super GRC system...https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2...cond-republic/ (https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/a-second-republic/)
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?200152-Sobering-piece-by-Alex-Au-on-the-state-of-our-nation&goto=newpost).