Netanyahu vows to change electoral system

[Jefferson23]

PM: Likud, Yisrael Beytenu to meet in order to bridge gap on electoral reform; Liberman suggests presidential system.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu promised the joint Likud-Yisrael Beytenu faction on Tuesday that significant changes would be made to the electoral system at the beginning of his new term.

Stabilizing the electoral system is the primary demand of Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, as well as a key issue for likely coalition partner Yesh Atid.


In his ceremonial speech to the newly sworn-in Knesset, Netanyahu said it was wonderful that ministers and committee chairmen were able to do their jobs for four years because his last government lasted that long, but that more had to be done to ensure political stability for the future.

“It cannot be that the country facing the most challenges should suffer from instability and a weak electoral system,” Netanyahu said in the speech.

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=302246

[oberliner]

1. What do you think?

Do you think they have a good system?

[Jefferson23]

2. I don't know enough about their system but to say it seems complex compared to the U.S.

I am fascinated by the structure of it, and am reading more about it now with the newly elected
and how they'll form a functioning government or not. Seems there will be a great deal of infighting to come.

[shaayecanaan]

7. Its actually extremely simple

Take the total number of ballots cast for any given party. Divide that number by 1, then by 2, 3 and so on, up to 120 (the number of seats in the Knesset).

Do that for all given parties. The highest 120 numbers across all parties each result in the allocation of a seat - however, Israel also has a 2% threshold, so you have to exceed that to get even a single seat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method

[Jefferson23]

23. Thanks for the link. I find their system perplexing. They have and maybe I have it wrong,

but they have a closed list method which limits voters from choosing who actually represents them..thus all the
infighting among party leaders and the deals they end up making or not, in order to govern.


on edit for clarity.

[oberliner]

10. If they had our system Netanyahu would have lost last time

Livni actually won both the popular vote and the most seats.

[shaayecanaan]

25. Last time?

Her party won 5% of the vote "last time". Are you referring to the time before last?

[oberliner]

33. Last time

Not this election, but the last one. She got the highest popular vote and won the most seats. But alas, did not get to form the coalition.

[Scootaloo]

3. I actually use Israel as a decent example of a parliamentary government

They lack that whole "House of Lords" problem that hte British have... I guess the Japanese system could be a good example as well, but I really don't know enough to it.

Just because the people involved are almost uniformly despicable does not mean the system itself is flawed; it allows for multiple parties, many views, and single / small-issue voters to have representation.

[Ken Burch]

5. I'd like to see the Knesset increased in size.

The Knesset is the same size now(120 seats) that it was in 1949, even though Israel's population has increased sevenfold since 1949.

Also, a preference ballot on the Irish model might help, since it would encourage cooperation between similar parties without forcing those parties to merge and dilute their policies.

[shaayecanaan]

9. Not a bad idea...

The problem is that if you allow single transferable votes in the Israeli system, you are going to have even more schisms and spinoff parties.

My two cents - the problem with party lists as they exist in Israel is that the person who is at number 7 or number 8 on a ticket is inherently worse off than the person who is at number 1 or 2.

If the person who is at number 8 on a party ticket has any sort of talent, profile or charisma, they may well be better off splitting off and forming their own party list with themselves at the top. Even if their party gets drastically less votes than the one they left, they are still in a better position, having regard to the benefit they have from being #1 rather than #8.

How do Israeli parties get around this? By making sure that their lower ranks have absolutely no talent at all. No one cares about these people anyway, the public face of a party are the number one and number two ticket holders. It is pointless having talent on your backbench, you just want loyal supplicants who wont split off to form their own parties and will vote the way you want them to.

The other problem for a voter is that you don't get to vote for a specific person in Israel, you only get to vote for a party list. You might like Tzipi Livni, and cast your vote for her party, but by the time your vote is counted you are effectively voting for the #8 ticket holder, who happens to be a mentally unstable drug addict living in his parents' basement, or something to that effect.

[Ken Burch]

15. I should have mentioned that I'd also like to see multi-member constituencies, as they have in Eire.

That would reduce the amount of deadwood further down the lists, since the parties would have to work on the assumption that, in theory, ALL of their candidates have at least some chance of ending up in the Knesset.

(for the record, I'd like to see the reforms I mentioned above in American politics as well, before anybody asks).

[shaayecanaan]

16. Yes, I was thinking that myself...

even if Israel was divided into four constituencies, it would reduce the amount of dead wood down the lists. It would also require parties to achieve a greater threshold in order to enter the Knesset.

It would also give parties some incentive to appeal to the whole of the electorate, rather than just their pet constituencies in one district or another.

[Ken Burch]

18. Out of interest, do you happen to know WHY the size of the Knesset is 120 seats?

Is there some historic significance to that particular number?

[shaayecanaan]

20. From Wikipedia

The term "Knesset" is derived from the ancient Great Assembly or Great Synagogue (Hebrew: כְּנֶסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה? Knesset HaGedolah) which according to Jewish tradition was an assembly of 120 scribes, sages, and prophets, in the period from the end of the Biblical prophets to the time of the development of Rabbinic Judaism – about two centuries ending c. 70 CE. There is, however, no organisational continuity and – aside from the number of members – little similarity, as the ancient Knesset was an essentially religious, completely unelected body.

There you go. I had no idea, myself.

I read once in a book called "The all-too promised land" that the ability for Arabs to vote was something of a historical fluke. Apparently the Communist parties announced that they had included Arabs on their versions of electoral rolls and would be inviting them to vote. The other parties had to choose between allowing Arabs to vote, or refusing and hoping that the courts would support them, and if not, potentially losing the entire Arab vote. They chose to go along.

[Ken Burch]

21. They could increase the size in multiples of 120...say, to 360 or even 480

You could divide the country into, say, 120 3 or 4 seat constituencies, which would still honor the numerological significance of the original size of the modern Knesset while acknowledging the reality of the post-1949 population growth.

And they could create an advisory upper house with the original 120 seat limit, that would comment on legislation but not actually defeat it, acting as a kind of "council of elders" as the original Knesset seems to have done.

And, for whatever it's worth, good on the Communists for doing that with the voter rolls...it probably did a lot to reduce tensions within Israel at that point(they'd have been reduced even more if it hadn't been for the decision to put Israeli Arabs under ethnic-specific martial law until a leftist protest movement forced the abandonment of that in 1965). If Israeli Arabs weren't allowed to vote in Israeli elections, it would be impossible to argue that Israel was NOT, in fact, an apartheid state.

[shaayecanaan]

26. Could you really attract that many quality candidates?

Personally, I am generally in favour of doubling the pay of politicians, and halving their number.

[Ken Burch]

28. Actually, increasing the number of seats might improve the quality.

As it stands now, there are so few seats, I suspect a lot of people who might be of very good quality probably give up even trying simply because they won't ever get a chance without spending years and years toadying to whomever today's political leadership is.

[LeftishBrit]

13. I think both the British and Israeli systems are badly flawed

The House of Lords is certainly not democratic or fit for purpose in its present form; but that is not our only problem. Our system completely lacks any element of proportional representation, and is a system designed for two parties, when we have more than two parties. This has resulted in very unrepresentive parliamentary outcomes: e.g. Thatcher having a huge parliamentary majority with accompanying excessive power when she never had more than 43% of the vote in any election. And currently the Tories having almost complete control with 36% of the vote - though part of this is because Nick Clegg the LibDem leader is exceptionally useless and can't or won't use most of the limited leverage that he has.

Israel is at the other extreme with almost complete proportional representation, meaning that ultranationalists and religious fringenuts have far more influence than they should, by being able to hold governments hostage. If the UK had such a system, we might well have a few BNP MPs - some Europaean countries have the equivalent; and if the USA did, you might well have even more disproportionate power for the Christian Right and the Tea Party than you do now. Although if I were an Israeli voter, I would myself support a relatively small party (Meretz), I think that on balance the Israeli political system gives far too much power to small parties with fairly ugly agendas.

Something in between the British and Israeli electoral systems would be desirable: perhaps either the Alternative Vote, or Single Transferable Vote, system. We did have a referendum on getting Alternative Vote, but it failed, largely once again due to Nick Clegg being exceptionally useless. I think the Australian preferential voting system is not a bad one - which is not to say that Australia always gets the best leaders.

[azurnoir]

4. one of our Israeli posters said back on DU2

that he did not like the Israeli system because it allowed too many small parties (usually religious or settler) to gain power that they normally might not have and that the American 2 party system was in his opinion better

[Scootaloo]

6. Grass is always greener, I suppose

I regard American-style democracy to be primitive and barely functional, with a strong tendency to create a single overal direction that does not necessarily reflect the will of the people at large (See our foreign policy, which has basically been totally removed from public involvement since the early 50's)

[shaayecanaan]

8. I overwhelmingly prefer the Israeli electoral system to the American one...

The first past the post system combined with the overwhelming amounts of money and resources available to the two major parties, together with a supplicant media that excludes any viewpoint not within the orthodoxy of those two same parties, means that the US is really only a threshold democracy.

[oberliner]

11. Scary

If we had the Israeli electoral system you'd have the fringe RW-ers holding a lot more power than they do now. A frightening thought.

[shaayecanaan]

12. At best, the fringe parties would only hold a veto power

which means that they wouldn't be able to pass their own agenda, they would just be able to prevent the other parties from passing theirs.

No worse than what America has now, with the ability of minority Senators to filibuster bills. The benefit of the Israeli system is that occasionally, the moderate parties can band together to do what needs to be done.

At least Israel has been able to create a universal health care system. The United States doesn't even look on track to achieve that in our lifetimes.

The US has the singular distinction of being a State that offers both a crappy level of services, charges moderately high taxes and a has a yawning budget deficit to boot.

Very few states manage to fuck up all of those three things in the way that the US continues to do. Singapore, for instance, doesnt offer much in the way of healthcare but charges its citizens very little in the way of tax. Japan doesnt charge enough tax and has a huge deficit, but at least manages to spend some of that money on health and infrastructure. The Scandinavians charge high taxes but offer their citizens a high level of services in return.

At this stage, virtually any change to the structural system of US politics would be an improvement.

[azurnoir]

17. IMO what needs to done in the US system is a massive change in the lobby/donation system

which basically as it stands allows corporations and industries as a whole buy and sell politicians, you mentioned universal health care in part why the US doesn't have it yet is the insurance industry which 'donates' large amounts to politicians to basically retain the current for profit health care system in the US and has supporters on both sides of the aisles

[shaayecanaan]

19. Perhaps the problem is too much democracy...

or more precisely, too long an election cycle.

In the US, you have primaries, caucuses, mid term elections, presidential elections, municipal and state elections, elections for executive and even judicial officers, recall elections, citizen-initiated referenda (which I'm broadly in favour of, but still).

The amount of money it takes to maintain a campaign over the primaries and later elections is simply phenomenal.

Many other countries have fixed four year terms and a campaign of about six weeks. They are still on the take from the corporations, but obviously, because the campaign is shorter, their requirements for cash are a lot less.

The elaborate system of checks and balances in the US also inhibits change, and provides for a lot of opportunities for preventing it.

Ultimately though, a fair amount of blame has to be sheeted home to the American people. Its no secret that drugs are cheaper in Canada and Cuba and in various places. The Department of Veterans Affairs pays about half for its drugs compared to what Medicare pays.

Frankly, it would have been far more productive to pass simple amendments allowing Medicare to establish a formulary and to negotiate drug prices. That would have dropped the price of drugs by one-third to one-half. It would have been far more meaningful than the changes brought about by Obamacare.

Why isn't there more noise in favour of such simple changes, even amongst the people on this web site, for example?

[azurnoir]

22. there is a fair amount of "noise" on this site about what is called single payer

however on this site there is also a fair amount of cause du jour following which at the moment is gunz gunz and yet more gunz, that said our election cycle is every 2 years which makes any real change difficult for the reasons I noted in my prior post or keeping those $$$$$ rolling in, maybe the problem could be called too much capitalism also, allowing any drug company or health care system to charge patients and companies different amounts, ie a treatment or visit could cost an insurance company $150.00 due to contracts but the uninsured could pay $300.00 for the same exact treatment and if one is covered under Medicaid the charge could be $125.00 for the government because that is what they'll pay
The simple changes you speak of are vigorously fought against because they could cost someone some profit and a politician voting in their favor will be punished

[shaayecanaan]

29. There is indeed...

Shit, I think that assault weapons should be banned, for most people they're just toys anyway to be used on the range. But ultimately its not as important as healthcare.

I remember the White House lying through their teeth when the Pharma Memo was leaked:-



It became pretty clear that the memo was accurate. Obama caved on just about everything that would have actually decreased healthcare costs by a substantial degree. Worst still, the Act prevents Vermont and other like-minded states from going single payer.

According to the CBO, the impact of Obamacare on health care premiums (large group) will be a decrease of between 0 and 3%. Big deal, its not enough. Someone is going to have to come along and to a better job.

[azurnoir]

31. This is the second failure for single payer in the US

the first was in the early 1990's shortly after Clinton was elected then the oppositions battle cry was communism, and with the Cold War fresh in the collective memory of the US it succeeded without much being said.

This time it was more complicated but the end result was much the same with those that had championed it folding like origami paper, but it has been shown that in the US someone dies from lack of healthcare every 12 minutes, yet people seem to find this tolerable for some reason
stranger still I've had arguments with my inlaws over this with them claiming that in countries with universal health care you must months to see a MD ect so government health care is out for the sake of quality care but they themselves are covered by TriCare which insurance for retired or ex military families, for a very small monthly payment they have virtually everything covered while regular HMO type coverage only covers a once a year physical completely and then not all of the lab tests done for preventative care, it is a sorry state of affairs here indeed and needs to change but I have become doubtful

[shaayecanaan]

32. Somehow, it will have to change...

Healthcare is already 16% of GDP, when the baby boomers start dying en masse it will start to get up to as much as 22%. The finance industry manages to account for another 12%. Defence counts for 8%, once you include related expenditure.

Its getting to the stage where once the health insurers, defence contractors, and bankers have their fill at the trough, there is barely anything left for anyone else. Eventually (well, hopefully) the Democrats will elect some latter-day FDR who actually has the balls to get shit done.

Here, I don't have private health insurance. My sister, who is a nurse, doesnt have it either. She works in private hospitals and reckons the quality of care there is less as the patient ratios are higher (gotta keep making those profits).

Private hospitals here are essentially glorified day surgeries performing nip and tuck operations. The moment the shit really hits the fan the helicopter arrives and takes them away to the larger public hospitals.

[Jefferson23]

24. Clean elections, especially public funded general elections...

I can only hope to see this in my lifetime.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

27. The US insurance industry reports record profts quarter after quarter,

and yet they would still like to screw over those most in need.

I agree with you assessment of lobby/donation/politicians circle jerks (my paraphrase) and I wonder if our esteemed politicians actually ever meet a constituent in private unless large sums of $$ are promised.

[shaayecanaan]

30. by comparison

Medicare in australia failed to pass initially after it was blocked in the senate. The labor government of that time refused to back down and opted for a double dissolution election, which they narrowly won. They still faced a hostile senate, but were able to pass medicare by holding a joint sitting as provided for in the constitution.

That was back when labor governments were prepared to throw themselves on the punji sticks in order to get change. Theyre generally not willing to so that anymore.

[bemildred]

14. "Dictator for life" would be good too, eh? There's some electoral stability. nt