5 more years: election frequency correct ?

[toxic avenger]

Because there would be constant irresponsible electioneering-informed policy-making, nothing would be possible long-term. Irresponsible election pledges would have to be upheld or said party would suffer losses within weeks. 4 years would possibly be the best term.

I'm only saying to have 10% of seats on the table every 6 months.

constant irresponsible electioneering-informed policy-making

Isn't that what the public now seems to believe happened with the last election ?

Also to my mind government is > 50% about performance, not policy and in any private organisation I've ever seen performance is often assessed quarterly and certainly annually (I'm thinking about performance relating to external financial reports, employee evaluations, internal budgets etc).

cYp

I'm aware of that, but the percentage would make no difference, every seat counts in an STV system such as ours that rarely produces majorities for single parties. The Chartists in the early 19th Century were justified in all of their five demands except the one where they advocated annual parliaments. Even their most ardent admirers nowadays accept that..

Also you can't compare government with private corporations, it's not an equivalent at all..

[Gombeen]

Well God knows they felt the sting in 2004 locals and Europeans. Doesn't change the government but certainly makes them sit up and listen.

[cyberianpan]

Also to my mind government is > 50% about performance, not policy and in any private organisation I've ever seen performance is often assessed quarterly and certainly annually (I'm thinking about performance relating to external financial reports, employee evaluations, internal budgets etc).

cYp

Also you can't compare government with private corporations, it's not an equivalent at all..

It is not a direct equivalent but it is worth looking at. "Ireland Inc" is say 400,000 employees ? This can be looked at more in terms of simple performance, the public let the politicos off the hook when all they speak of are "policy differences". Very easy for a bunch of barstool drunks with help from some friends to do a policy manifesto & campaign: actually managing the country is different.

I work in change management and if something isn't producing some results/progress in 6-9 months then it is regarded as a failure.

Companies listed on the Stock Exchange are assessed hourly ... they've to do formal reports quarterly/annually. Letting a bunch of ex SU hacks wander away for 5 years isn't very smart, only in the 6 months home run do they have to start performing.

It would be very rare for say a big investor to just lob over their lolly , locked in for 5 years, with no say !

cYp

[Auditor #9]

I've been thinking about this too today.

How about a safety valve to pull the plug on them initiated by the electorate? During any term (preferably 4 years) the electorate get one chance to pull the plug on the govt. This would be initiated by petition or by the opposition and would require a fairly high level of participation and dissatisfaction and involve a referendum-style vote.

Govt by Populism !!!!

Oh great then you have Demagoges getting elected witha populist message.

It works now so why change ?

It's quite a populist governance as it is so I don't see how a mechanism like that would provoke ... more populism?

If not something like this then heavier participation - anything to counter the atrocious lack of accountability. PPars, Evoting...

[toxic avenger]

Also to my mind government is > 50% about performance, not policy and in any private organisation I've ever seen performance is often assessed quarterly and certainly annually (I'm thinking about performance relating to external financial reports, employee evaluations, internal budgets etc).

cYp

Also you can't compare government with private corporations, it's not an equivalent at all..

It is not a direct equivalent but it is worth looking at. "Ireland Inc" is say 400,000 employees ? This can be looked at more in terms of simple performance, the public let the politicos off the hook when all they speak of are "policy differences". Very easy for a bunch of barstool drunks with help from some friends to do a policy manifesto & campaign: actually managing the country is different.

I work in change management and if something isn't producing some results/progress in 6-9 months then it is regarded as a failure.

Companies listed on the Stock Exchange are assessed hourly ... they've to do formal reports quarterly/annually. Letting a bunch of ex SU hacks wander away for 5 years isn't very smart, only in the 6 months home run do they have to start performing.

It would be very rare for say a big investor to just lob over their lolly , locked in for 5 years, with no say !

cYp

Who are the assessors to be? The electorate, or at least 10% of them? The electorate only care by and large about what affects them personally, usually money and health. How would that be an assessment say of their foreign policy, their overseas aid policy, corruption, etc. etc. It's not an equivalent to private capital any more than a hospital is, and for obvious reasons. I agree with you about the inherent downsides to the system we have, particularly the more parasitical of our elected members, but annual or twice-annual elections would create more problems than those solved.

[fiannafuddy]

Constitutionally a government can run for 7 years without an election...so govt. could technically introduce leglislation to that effect if it wished

[THR]

The idea of electing only part of the MP´s each at set intervals like the American Senate is not good. It would be very difficult to get rid of an incompetent government.

More important than the length of the election-period is whether there should be the right for the head of the government to call premature elections. In the UK it has become something of a custom that a confident government always calls an election after four years while a government which itself believes it loses the next election holds out full five years.

I'm not entirely in favour of fixed-term parliaments but I think early elections should be held only if there is some breakdown of the government-majority.

As for the topic itself, three years is far too short while five years is a bit too long. Therefore, I'd go for four years. Still, in Austria they changed their election-periods from four years to five years. Up until the 90`s Sweden had three-year periods but they changed that to four years.

[johnfás]

It doesn't seem efficient to me to vote in a government all-in-one-go-every-5-years. In the US they have more separation of powers and mid terms feature.

Why couldn't we have an election for 10%of seats every 6 months ?

The President of the USA forms the Government. The President is elected for a four year term. So the comparison isn't particularly well conceived. Even if they had such a situation in the legislature in America whereby seats changed hands every 6 months, the Government of the USA would not change - only the legislature.

[ivnryn]

The idea of electing only part of the MP´s each at set intervals like the American Senate is not good. It would be very difficult to get rid of an incompetent government.

I don't see why. However, it would make it so that the government would lose seats as it loses popularity.

It would encourage the government to seek a larger coalition than might be strictly necessary.

If a coalition had 90 seats, it wouldn't be likely to lose more than 1-2 every six months so it would be reasonably safe. If there are only 16 seats "in play", it would get at least 6 of them as long as it had 37% support.

Also, the effects depend on how the votes are staggered.

One option is to have 10% of the constituencies vote every 6 months. This would mean that the government may end up moving the 'love' to the set of constituencies that are about to vote.

Also, there are some problems when constituencies are being modified. You could in theory have the same location vote twice in a short space of time and then not at all for nearly double the normal delay. Also, I wonder if there would be "voting migrants" who would move from constituencies which have just voted to ones are about to have an election (though this could be solved by adding a 1-2 year residency requirement).

Another option is to have a single constituency for the whole country. 20 seats could be filled every six months. This takes 4 years to completely update all seats (160).

Alternatively, if the constituencies were the province based were then it would work out at as something like

Dublin: 6
Leinster: 5
Munster: 5
Rest: 4

This quite strongly breaks the local link. It also would be hard on small parties and independents as the quotas would work out at around 80k (assuming 1.6 million voters).

A more radical option is to allow candidates to carry forward votes from previous elections. The top N candidates are elected and their totals are debited by the quota (or brought to zero if they have less then the quota). All votes held at that point can be carried forward by all candidates.

A candidate might have 10k supporters. If they kept voting for him, it would take him 8 elections to get to a quota. He would thus be elected. If he kept standing while being a TD, he could have built up enough votes so that he gets reelected when his term runs out.

It also means that a candidate with 5k supporters can get elected every 8 years. In effect, he gets 1/2 a seat.

A disadvantage would be that voter turnout would be a problem. Voters would likely not bother going to the polls if they were every six months.

I'm not entirely in favour of fixed-term parliaments but I think early elections should be held only if there is some breakdown of the government-majority.

A small reform here would be to require Dail approval before it can be dissolved.

Another option would be to allow the Dail to call elections directly, for example, the Dail can be dissolved without the support of the Taoiseach with

Year 1: 60%
Year 2: 55%
Year 3: 50%
Year 4: 45%
Year 5: 40%

This allows a strong minority to trigger an election even if the Taoiseach doesn't want one.

As for the topic itself, three years is far too short while five years is a bit too long. Therefore, I'd go for four years. Still, in Austria they changed their election-periods from four years to five years. Up until the 90`s Sweden had three-year periods but they changed that to four years.

It is always going to be a tradeoff between democratic control and short-termism.