e767pmk@yahoo.co.uk
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2018 22:22:41 +0100
This is similar in Britain (not that I'm a constitutional expert).
Candidates stand for election in each electoral area, and we vote for which
one we want to serve as our Member of Parliament. The winner is the one
with most votes -- the 'first-past-the-post' system. Usually one of the big
parties gets a majority of MPs so forms the government directly, but
sometimes (as at the present time) the biggest party needs a support
agreement with a smaller party to get a majority. While this may seem like
an elected dictatorship, it's obvious who is in charge, and we get the
chance to vote them out at the next election.
By contrast, as I understand it, mainland European countries often have a
large number of small parties so coalitions are the usual arrangement. The
problem here is that much policy-making may be hidden in behind-the-scenes
deals between parties, i.e. a party may have to support something that it
doesn't want to get something that it does, or vice-versa. This can give
unstable governments as in Italy as the original poster said, or the
opposite when an election just changes a few of the elected representatives
and everything continues as as before. The EU seems to be based on the
European model, with a large bureaucracy notionally governed by a small,
unfocused elected assembly, which may account for the fractious relationship
between the UK and the EU; indeed, a cynic such as myself may feel that the
aim is to create the impression of democracy rather than giving power to
voters.
As British MPs are elected regionally, there's no direct correlation between
the total number of votes gained by parties and the numbers of their MPs, so
there are periodic campaigns to adopt some kind of proportional
representation system, though this brings various other problems. A bigger
problem is potential voter-identity fraud, a frequent topic in RISKS.
There's talk of requiring voters to show some proof of identity at polling
stations, but what, as there's no particular official UK identity document?