Ordinary Gweilo

Many things puzzle me about Hong Kong politics, but one of the more confusing is the voting system used in the Legco elections.

I believe it is the same system that is now used in the UK for the European Elections (introduced five years ago, after I had fled the country). It is clearly fairer than single seat constituencies with first-past-the-post and it would work well if we had a small number of political parties fighting it out for the seats. However, as Hong Kong actually has a large number of different parties with overlapping platforms it does create some difficult problems.

Logic dictates that each grouping should compile a single list of candidates and then encourage its supporters to vote for that list – even thought it encompasses candidates for different parties. However, this apparently simple solution is fraught with difficulties (as pointed out by Andy Ho in this week’s Spike). The parties have to agree on a combined list, and some candidates will be taking a risk in balancing their personal popularity against that of the list they have joined. Electors may be faced with a difficult choice as well, if their preferred candidate (or party) is low down the list and they have doubts about those at the top of the list.

So, although the pro-democracy grouping have come up with a single list in NT East, this hasn’t happened elsewhere. Instead there are multiple lists, with the risk that votes could be wasted if one candidate or list is very popular at the expense of other lists. To try to counter this, they are encouraging supporters to split their votes, but obviously that is difficult to achieve! It also runs counter to the main purpose of party lists, which is to simplify voting.

The problems are less acute for the pro-Beijing parties because they are less fragmented, though this helps to explain why effort is being focused on the DAB and the Liberal Party at the expense of the HKPA (as explained at greater length in a Next article that is reprinted in this week’s Spike).

The problem with voting systems is that each one has drawbacks and you can always argue about which produces the fairest results. I don’t believe that this system to be especially unfair, but it isn’t really suitable for Hong Kong today. However, it’s a fact of life that political parties all over the world have to adapt their strategies to the voting system that is in use. In practice, voting systems are rarely changed, because the existing system will always benefit some parties, and any change will likely one party more than others (so even if there were an agreement to change, there probably won’t be an agreement as to what new system to adopt). So you may the best of what you’ve got.

For example, the British Labour Party was unhappy about the first-past-the post system when the Conservatives were in power, but it now seems to work in their favour so they are most unlikely to make any change. Of course the Liberal Democrats are unhappy because they are under-represented, but they do now have many more MPs than was previously case because they are playing the system better. The irony is that you need to get into power to get any change pushed through, and then you don’t want to do it! So it seems very unlikely than anything will change in the UK or Hong Kong.