Long-Term Votes

LONG-TERM VOTES

Democratic systems suffer from a structural flaw (and have done ever since they were first invented by the Ancient Greeks). They promote short-term policy-making because they encourage politicians to focus only on a time-span determined by the next election. The short-termism of modern democracies leaves them unable to address many of the deeper challenges currently facing man. Issues such as the environment and globalisation whose ’payback’ is far in the future remain politically marginalized while political parties with short-term concerns dominate the political agenda. Many imaginative and important ideas for our deeper future never see the light of day in the national debate.
The concept of long-term votes is designed to counterbalance this tendency. They would work as follows:

1. The period over which long term votes would function would be defined in the constitution. As their purpose would be to act as a counterweight to the short-term inclinations of parliament the period would be given in terms of the interval between general elections (commonly known as ‘the life of a parliament‘). It might, for example, be set at four times this interval. In the UK where general elections must be held at least every five years this would give a period of 20 years.

2. At each general election political parties would present their ‘long-term’ ideas for the country, covering the constitutionally-defined future period.

3. Citizens would retain their existing ‘short-term’ vote used, as now, to elect a representative to the forthcoming parliament. But in addition they would have a new long-term vote. This would be used to vote for the political party which they believed offered the best the long-term ’vision’.

4. Long-term votes would have no immediate effect. Rather their impact would be felt after the subsequent general election. This next election would incorporate a process of ‘validation’ in which citizens would confirm or repeal their previous long-term vote.

5. the validation process would have a direct bearing on the voting power of MPs in parliamentary decision-making. The percentage of long-term votes which were confirmed or repealed for each party would be used to calculate the relative voting powers of the parties’ MPs, according to a weighted calculation the details of which would, again, be constitutionally defined. Thus MPs from a party which had received a high percentage of confirmations would be granted a numerically larger number of votes in the chamber than those from parties with low percentages. This relative voting power would reflect the proportional confidence of the electorate that the political parties’ long-term plans remained sound and that they were carrying them out effectively. In effect the results of validation would adjust the direct results of a general election by modifying the balance of power in parliament in a way which reflected the electorate’s views about the parties’ relative success at planning and acting for the long-term.

6. Peoples’ choices at validation about whether to confirm or repeal their long-term votes from the previous election would be likely to be affected by two dominating factors:
- Whether a party’ s vision still looked good given the new circumstances which would almost certainly obtain. This would be dependent on the quality of thought which originally lay behind it.
- The extent to which the party had remained true to its stated long term plans in its short-term actions in the parliament. This would be particularly, although not exclusively, apparent in the case of the governing party.

7. This set of voting and validating operations would be enacted at every general election. Thus at each general election political parties would offer their latest visions for the long-term future and citizens would cast their long-term votes for or against them. At the same time they would confirm or repeal any long-term votes which they had cast at the previous general election.

The key benefit which this system would bring is a strong motivation for politicians to attend to the long-term as well as the short-term. This would operate at two levels. Political parties would have to conceive imaginative yet realistic plans for the national future in order to compete for voters’ long-term votes at each general election. But they would also have to make voting choices in the short-term, day-to-day business of parliament which were consistent with their future ‘vision’ in order to be able to persuade citizens to confirm their long-term votes at the next round of validation. (And so maintain a high level of voting power in the chamber.)





A note on the ‘mechanics’ of the long-term vote and validation system:

- Each constituency assigned sets of large, random numbers. Set to be sufficiently large so that all voters can have a unique number.
- At polling station citizen chooses one of the numbers (number crossed off - cannot be reused.)
- Voter writes the number on his long-term voting slip and validation slip (or these may be pre-printed). (no other identifying information on slips - therefore citizen not identifiable).
- To vote citizen marks up voting slip in the normal way, in private, and places in ballot box.
- Citizen keeps the validation slip, or a record of the number, until the next election. At validation citizen simply places validation slip (or a copy created using the recorded number) in either a ’confirm’ or ’repeal’ ballot box.
- During election counts election officials to establish records of the long-term vote numbers and which party they favour. From this they can work out at validation which party each validation slip relates to.
- Postal validation for those who have moved away from their constituencies since the previous election.