There is going to be an electoral revolution in Israel.
It's starting here.
And you are going to be a part of it.
If you think you don't care, you're wrong. You do. And I'll prove it to you.
If you think we don't need a revolution, you're wrong. We do. And I'll prove it to you.
If you think you're not a revolutionary, you're wrong. You are. And I'll prove it to you.
And at the end of it, you and I, and the vast majority of Israelis - Jew and Arab, religious and secular, left and right-wing - will be vastly better off for our new system of governance.
Do I care?
If you live in Israel, whether you are Jew, Muslim, Christian or Druze, your life is very much affected by the system of government. The government passes laws that affect you, levies taxes that you pay, and spends those taxes on things. For the sake of your quality of life, you want a government that is lean, smart and gets things done for you.
In your memory, has there ever been a government in Israel that was efficient? Where every minister had a meaningful portfolio, and did his/her job well? Where the elected representatives were in a continuous feedback loop with the people who elected them and attentive to their needs? Where the government set out objectives at the beginning and achieved them by the end of its tenure? That even completed its term of office?
If I tell you that it is within your power to change this, do you care enough to find out how?
Yes, you do care.
Do we need a revolution?
If you imagined the concept of a lean, efficient and effective government and let out a snort of disbelief, you're too used to the way things are and have been since Israel's inception. That's because the proportional representation (PR) system in Israel practically guarantees that the government must be formed by a coalition of several parties. With a broad spectrum of political parties competing for your vote, the results reflect the wide spread of different outlooks and opinions that characterize any large population. As a result, there has never been a single party that has earned over 50% of votes cast.
When governments are formed by a coalition, there are always competing interest groups forming part of the government. The minor partners are invariably sectoral parties whose main purpose in joining the coalition is in order to get as big a slice of the budget pie as possible allocated to their causes, and to pass legislation that fits their agenda. They may be small relative to the dominant party, but they carry disproportionate power, because they often have the credible threat of bringing down the government if their demands are not met. The Prime Minister thus is left with the choice of either giving in, or calling new elections. This is why almost no Israeli government ever has completed its full term of office.
Prime Minister Netanyahu campaigned on this very point: it is not possible to run a country like this. We have to change our system of government.
We need a revolution.
What's a better system?
During the last election campaign, Netanyahu proposed a new rule: rather than the Prime Minister being the person who can cobble together a majority coalition under his leadership, the leader of the largest single party will automatically be crowned Prime Minister.
The logic behind this is that if you were considering voting for small party A, which supports large party B's candidate for Prime Minister, you may suddenly reconsider when you see that if large party C might get more votes than B, then their leader will become Prime Minister, even though A + B > C. This would drive more votes to larger parties, marginalizing the smaller parties, and therefore lead to more stable governments.
It's a nice idea, but it won't work.
Case in point: the 2009 election. Kadima was the largest single party, with 28 seats; Likud had 27. But because the right-wing bloc was so much bigger than the left, Netanyahu was tasked with forming the coalition and became Prime Minister.
Now let's imagine that Netanyahu's proposed rule had been in force then. Tzipi Livni would have become Prime Minister. And then what? Who would have pushed her agenda in the Knesset? Not Likud or Yisrael Beiteinu. Not Bayit Yehudi or the National Union. Not the Arab parties, who were sworn never to join a Zionist government. And certainly not the Haredi parties, whom she had aggressively alienated shortly before the elections. That leaves the 44 combined seats of Kadima, Labor and Meretz - barely a third of the Knesset. So Livni would have been Prime Minister, and unable to pass a single law. And if you'll say that the Prime Minister should have special dispensation to be able to govern even without a majority government - well, then you might as well dissolve the Knesset, since the Prime Minister will be able to rule by decree until the end of his/her term of office.
No, thank you; this idea is a non-starter.
It's time to break out of the PR paradigm.
It's time to switch to a Single Winner electoral system.
Under the Single Winner system, the country is broken into electoral districts, each containing roughly the same number of registered voters. Any number of candidates may compete in a district election, but only the winner will represent the district in the Knesset. There are variations on how the winner is determined in the case of more than two candidates, with nobody getting over 50% of the vote (e.g. runoffs or plurality over 40%), but these are details. The most important point is that each district elects exactly one MK.
Why is this a good thing?
The Single Winner district-based system works extremely well in the USA and UK. It has a number of significant benefits:
Concerns
No system is perfect, and it would be dishonest not to include a fair assessment of some problems that the Single Winner system introduces.
Don't wait. Do it now. Make this cause go viral.
It's starting here.
And you are going to be a part of it.
If you think you don't care, you're wrong. You do. And I'll prove it to you.
If you think we don't need a revolution, you're wrong. We do. And I'll prove it to you.
If you think you're not a revolutionary, you're wrong. You are. And I'll prove it to you.
And at the end of it, you and I, and the vast majority of Israelis - Jew and Arab, religious and secular, left and right-wing - will be vastly better off for our new system of governance.
Do I care?
If you live in Israel, whether you are Jew, Muslim, Christian or Druze, your life is very much affected by the system of government. The government passes laws that affect you, levies taxes that you pay, and spends those taxes on things. For the sake of your quality of life, you want a government that is lean, smart and gets things done for you.
In your memory, has there ever been a government in Israel that was efficient? Where every minister had a meaningful portfolio, and did his/her job well? Where the elected representatives were in a continuous feedback loop with the people who elected them and attentive to their needs? Where the government set out objectives at the beginning and achieved them by the end of its tenure? That even completed its term of office?
If I tell you that it is within your power to change this, do you care enough to find out how?
Yes, you do care.
Do we need a revolution?
If you imagined the concept of a lean, efficient and effective government and let out a snort of disbelief, you're too used to the way things are and have been since Israel's inception. That's because the proportional representation (PR) system in Israel practically guarantees that the government must be formed by a coalition of several parties. With a broad spectrum of political parties competing for your vote, the results reflect the wide spread of different outlooks and opinions that characterize any large population. As a result, there has never been a single party that has earned over 50% of votes cast.
When governments are formed by a coalition, there are always competing interest groups forming part of the government. The minor partners are invariably sectoral parties whose main purpose in joining the coalition is in order to get as big a slice of the budget pie as possible allocated to their causes, and to pass legislation that fits their agenda. They may be small relative to the dominant party, but they carry disproportionate power, because they often have the credible threat of bringing down the government if their demands are not met. The Prime Minister thus is left with the choice of either giving in, or calling new elections. This is why almost no Israeli government ever has completed its full term of office.
Prime Minister Netanyahu campaigned on this very point: it is not possible to run a country like this. We have to change our system of government.
We need a revolution.
What's a better system?
During the last election campaign, Netanyahu proposed a new rule: rather than the Prime Minister being the person who can cobble together a majority coalition under his leadership, the leader of the largest single party will automatically be crowned Prime Minister.
The logic behind this is that if you were considering voting for small party A, which supports large party B's candidate for Prime Minister, you may suddenly reconsider when you see that if large party C might get more votes than B, then their leader will become Prime Minister, even though A + B > C. This would drive more votes to larger parties, marginalizing the smaller parties, and therefore lead to more stable governments.
It's a nice idea, but it won't work.
Case in point: the 2009 election. Kadima was the largest single party, with 28 seats; Likud had 27. But because the right-wing bloc was so much bigger than the left, Netanyahu was tasked with forming the coalition and became Prime Minister.
Now let's imagine that Netanyahu's proposed rule had been in force then. Tzipi Livni would have become Prime Minister. And then what? Who would have pushed her agenda in the Knesset? Not Likud or Yisrael Beiteinu. Not Bayit Yehudi or the National Union. Not the Arab parties, who were sworn never to join a Zionist government. And certainly not the Haredi parties, whom she had aggressively alienated shortly before the elections. That leaves the 44 combined seats of Kadima, Labor and Meretz - barely a third of the Knesset. So Livni would have been Prime Minister, and unable to pass a single law. And if you'll say that the Prime Minister should have special dispensation to be able to govern even without a majority government - well, then you might as well dissolve the Knesset, since the Prime Minister will be able to rule by decree until the end of his/her term of office.
No, thank you; this idea is a non-starter.
It's time to break out of the PR paradigm.
It's time to switch to a Single Winner electoral system.
Under the Single Winner system, the country is broken into electoral districts, each containing roughly the same number of registered voters. Any number of candidates may compete in a district election, but only the winner will represent the district in the Knesset. There are variations on how the winner is determined in the case of more than two candidates, with nobody getting over 50% of the vote (e.g. runoffs or plurality over 40%), but these are details. The most important point is that each district elects exactly one MK.
Why is this a good thing?
The Single Winner district-based system works extremely well in the USA and UK. It has a number of significant benefits:
- Government stability: Niggly little single-issue parties that thrive under PR will wither and die, since they will likely never be able to win a district. Sectoral parties will win seats in their demographic strongholds, but because these populations tend to be clustered, they will not have disproportionate influence over the government. Broad interest parties that have wide appeal will sweep the majority of districts, most likely leading to a situation where a single party will be able to form the government by itself, with no need for a coalition at all. The Prime Minister will have freedom to govern according to the platform on which he/she was elected, without having to genuflect to narrow sectoral interests.
- Lean government: Coalition partners need to be bought with ministries and perks. A single party government can appoint only the officers it needs.
- Accountability: No more the anonymous party list. Every person in the country has their MK, who is directly answerable to the voters of his district. If Joe Citizen has an issue that he wants to escalate to the government, he can contact his MK. And if the MK does not perform, the citizens can fire him at the next election.
- Positive selection: Once candidates are directly accountable to their electorate, it's no longer good enough for a do-nothing political hack to be able to manipulate the internal party nomination mechanism so he gets a high place on the list. If he doesn't perform, the voters will simply kick him out. Knowing this, the internal selection process will have to factor in the electability of the candidate, and the best people will naturally bubble up to the top. Result: the Knesset is filled with effective people who get things done.
Concerns
No system is perfect, and it would be dishonest not to include a fair assessment of some problems that the Single Winner system introduces.
- Safe seats discourage voter participation. A Labor voter in a Likud stronghold may feel that his vote has no significance, and therefore not bother to vote.
- Local issues affecting national governance. A district election may be swung by issues particular to that district, potentially skewing the national result.
These and other problems can be remedied. I won't go into possible solutions here; that may be for a later posting or open forum discussion. Bottom line: the benefits of a Single Winner system far outweigh the drawbacks.
Can I make a difference?
Yes, you can. And the time is now, when the Prime Minister has made it clear that one of this government's priorities will be electoral reform - and before he starts implementing his well-intentioned but misguided plan described above. We need to raise awareness throughout Israel of the Single Winner system and gather mass support, until the political decision makers realize that this is the popular will. It's good for everyone, with the exception of do-nothing political hacks and sectoral interest parties, who will (rightly) see it as a threat to their power.
Any good revolution needs a catchy slogan. Ours is:
This neatly encapsulates the most obvious and intuitive benefit of the Single Winner system: every person has their own MK that they elect and is directly accountable to them.
Fortunately, in the Internet age, anyone can become a revolutionary. Here's what you can do:
Any good revolution needs a catchy slogan. Ours is:
Who is my MK?
מי הח"כ שלי?
This neatly encapsulates the most obvious and intuitive benefit of the Single Winner system: every person has their own MK that they elect and is directly accountable to them.
Fortunately, in the Internet age, anyone can become a revolutionary. Here's what you can do:
- "Like" and share our Facebook page, and invite your friends to join.
- Post your own thoughts to the Facebook page for discussion.
- Tweet with the hashtag #WhoIsMyMK
- Join discussions on Internet forums and related news article talkbacks.
- Link back to this blog and our Facebook page.
- Contribute your own posts to this blog (subject to admin approval).
Another specific need is for volunteers who can translate this and future posts into Hebrew, Arabic, and any other languages that are commonly spoken in Israel.
Don't wait. Do it now. Make this cause go viral.
