Wednesday 17 October 2007

Party standings - Israel vote

The Israeli electoral system, unique in the world, allocates seats according to votes cast nationally, if parties exceed a modest threshold level.
Its major problems are that [a] elected representatives are answerable not to local voters, but to central party machines, and [b] that massive policy and spending influence can be exercised by marginal forces, on whom multi-party coalitions depend. A directly-elected presidential chief executive would circumvent that latter serious structural problem, while the former issue could be tackled by regional multi-member constituencies, possibly along with US-style primaries.
The great bulk of the 20% Arab voters clearly vote for mixed parties, not only for Labor but also for Kadima, and not for the Arab parties, which shows how absurd is the apartjeid libel hurled at Israel by enemies.

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