Chief Minister ballot should be kept secret
Wednesday 21st September 2011, 3:00PM BST.
From Pierre Horsfall.
I WRITE to express profound disagreement with the removal of the secret ballot to elect our next Chief Minister.
The object of the exercise is to elect the person that States Members consider the best for the job with policies that they consider to be the most appropriate,
voting by secret ballot is the way to achieve this without any undue influence and intimidation, which can happen when you have a mix of people, some stronger than others. Its use for electing leaders is widespread throughout democracies.
As the US Supreme Court once described secret ballots: ‘The hard won right to vote ones conscience without fear of retaliation.’
The election process for our Chief Minister followed on from the process used for the election of previous committee presidents and I know that process was a replica of that used for the election of the World Chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, who was elected by secret ballot, with delegates ranging from tiny countries such as Tuvalu to Canada and Australia, the reason being to avoid, as far as possible, coercion and intimidation.
The same reason that the rules of public elections are carefully organised to keep the public’s own votes secret. All this appears to be of no relevance to the present States Assembly.
The election process for Chief Minister does not only include a ballot, it also provides for a policy speech by each candidate just before the first ballot is taken and the nature of that policy statement is such that it can be the deciding factor for a Member’s vote, it is a key component of the process. This point leads me on to the notion that candidates are now expected to promise, even before their own election, to state who they will vote for as Chief Minister.
This may not be too difficult for existing Members seeking re-election, because they have worked with the prospective Chief Ministers and know them well. However, for new Members, they simply may not have sufficient knowledge to be certain and may even have a change of heart during the campaign, or even when they listen to the speeches made just prior to the ballot.
This is as it should be but the Leading Article (JEP, 16 September) implies that a change of opinion, even if made for good reason, will virtually amount to a broken election promise to be explained.
If I was a candidate and was asked the question as to who I was going to vote for as Chief Minister, I would choose my words very carefully so as to allow myself the ability to vote according to my conscience, even if it meant having a change of heart during the course of the election or, importantly, during the two months between the general election and the election for Chief Minister.
In their own interests, candidates must retain the right to cast a genuine and honest vote on the day, based on increased and greater knowledge, without fear of an accusation of a broken election promise.
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Pierre, Pierre, you are talking out of your hat again.
The object of the exercise is not to elect the person that States Members consider the best for the job. It is to elect the person who has mandate given by the people of this island. That is how democracy works in the rest of the world. One day we’ll get to give it a go here, maybe.
That there are people who still evidently regard the good ol’ days of feudal politics and droit de seigneur as appropriate for the 21st century is disappointing – but I regret to say that I am no longer surprised by it.
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Utter rubbish, but no less than one would expect from Pierre Horsfall.
On such an important issue as this all elegible voters should have the opportunity to say who they wish to be the next Cheif Minister.
Their wages are paid by the voter!
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I’m pleased to see that the sensible party still has a voice.
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More drivel from a man who firmly believes his own hype. The sun is setting Pierre, you need to face that fact. Time to turn down the volume and retire in splendid isolation..
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Secret or not secret, it means nothing to me but means the world to some of these progressives in the states for some reason…It makes you wonder what a real triumph would be like to them if this is as exciting as it gets.
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Pierre, wrong on so many counts. If we had party politics and I voted for Party A and Party A then chose their prime minister by secret ballot I would be happy with that. What we have is a collection of individuals some of whom have been elected unopposed. These people will then (by past history) probably choose a chief minister who hasn’t face a democratic public vote in three years.
You also say my vote for deputies and senators is secret. Wrong again Pierre, every voting slip is numbered and they write this number along side your name on the electoral roll when they give it to you. So, fact, every person that votes can be indentified and the choices they made can be verified. Not very secret is it Pierre?
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Simple solution….make it a public vote and make it democratic! Then we need not worry about the secret voting.
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Hear, hear Mr Horsfall!
One shares your frustrations at this decision.
It was, one feels, wholly uncharacteristic and no doubt influenced by the upcoming elections.
But is it not an inherent flaw of any democratic system that when a legislature is composed of so many of the population’s finest minds – and there is no finer example of this than the States of Jersey – that at some stage a divergence of outlook and opinion between the political class and the electorate is inevitable?
For one only has to listen to a sitting of the States Assembly for a short time to appreciate the rarefied level of debate. Many has been the occasion when one has closed one’s eyes listening to the likes of Deputy Reed discussing the minutiae of education policy with Senators Le Main or Perchard, and imagined that one has been transported back in time to ancient Greece.
However one suspects the ‘man in the street’ lacks the basic intellectual ability to follow the rhetorical ‘tours de force’ one enjoys so regularly, and is thus unable to fully comprehend the reasoning behind many of the decisions made in that august chamber.
And sadly – as the current electoral campaign amply demonstrates – there is never any lack of opportunistic and populist demagogues – such as Mr Syvret – who are all too willing to exploit the resultant frustrations by pandering to the basest instincts of the ‘mob’.
Thus one fears that if current trends continue our current system of government will soon be ‘not fit for purpose’.
One posits we would be far better served if we did away with this bloated, expensive and bureaucratic apparatus forthwith (and at the same time rid ourselves of its ‘Militant Tendency’) and instead established a council of the ‘great and the good’ to run the island’s affairs free from outside influence.
Thus liberated from the need to pander to this increasingly vociferous ‘mob’ such a body could take the decisions which were in the best long term interests of Jersey, and of course its finance industry.
Proud Jerseyman
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If politicians cannot do their job without hiding what they do from the public, they should not be representing said public.
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Jersey is a representative democracy.
This means that candidates compete for votes on the grounds of their policies and hopefully one day in Jersey the candidate that they intend to support for Chief Minister.
The candidate with the most support for their policies wins.
What a lot of people in Jersey want is an end to the empty promises, pledges with fingers crossed behind the candidate’s back, etc.
What value are election pledges that can be ditched in favour of ‘conscience’ the day after the election?
There is room for conscience in politics eg votes on capital punishment and abortion are normally free votes but that is where it should stay.
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Imagine if all votes were made public.Pierre Horsfall has a valid point.It’s not about secrecy but more a right to exercise independent rights of voting, without fear of retribution.
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Indeed, 11. According to the gentleman who wrote this letter, there should be no fear of retribution through the ballot box, hence his preference for total secrecy in the given process.
It follows that, if the public don’t know who voted for who, then the public will be in no position to vent its collective spleen at election time.
I understand that those of the writer’s ilk would regard this as democracy, although I would not venture a view upon whether such an opaque exercise could be objectively viewed as such.
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It seems to me that a conflict is here. On the one hand, people want to know who votes for oiks to be chief comedian.
On the other hand, it is better for the state of the states for the dirty secrets and “jobs for the buoys” to remain hidden. Once we vote for the monkeys, they are in and they don’t account to anyone but those who they might brown noose in the states. And there it is, hung out to dry rot for all to see.
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The slippery toads should stay slippery and should conduct their dealings under the dank, pungent rock which is paid for by the taxpayer. When disturbed, toads emit a foul smelling, slimy secretion.
By analogy, perhaps, for the sake of clean air and nasal enjoyment, it would be sensible not to examine the process by which the “chief minister” milk monitor is selected (never elected) or, worse, to disturb it lest the most foul stench is released into the sterilizing sunlight of transparancy. That would indeed be bad for the islands “financial industry”, an entity which will readily identify with secrecy in public office.
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“The election process for our Chief Minister followed on from the process used for the election of previous committee presidents and I know that process was a replica of that used for the election of the World Chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association”.
Well, a couple of points arise from this. Firstly, the “ministerial” government was sold to the public on the basis that it would represent progress and that it would promote democratic maturity, an aspect of which is clearly transparancy. It therefore seems otiose to look backwards at the committee system which the pro-Clotiers pleaded was obsolete. Perhaps we should indeed revert to the Committee system because nothing could be less satisfactory than what is now in place.
As for the comment regarding the CPA, well, I am sure that one can find numerous examples of nepotistic, “mickey mouse” organisations where transparancy is disregarded for specious reasons. I know, for example, that the third reich disregarded openness and due process. If that is a paradigm which we are told that we should follow, then perhaps we should be examining the throught process of those in office and their cohorts outside of the states.
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Pierre, wrong, wrong, WRONG.
The PUBLIC should vote for the Chief Minister not the old school boys club. End of. The system is wrong.
You are only scared of the vote being public BECAUSE its the old boys club.
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Pip Clement # 10
“Jersey is a representative democracy”.
Please explain your statement.
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A representative democracy is where elected representatives take decisions on behalf of their electors as opposed to a direct democracy where the people vote on the issues themselves.
The States is an example of representative democracy while a parish assembly is an example of direct democracy.
However if you throw in Pierre Horsfall’s thoughts on secrecy and the right of a member to vote in accordance with their own conscience it does make the whole idea look like a nonsense.
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Succinct answer Pip.But the present system means that the States Assembly is mainly made up of district councillors,whom are elected with a few hundred votes or sometimes none at all, if unopposed. They are not elected by the voting public, but on a parish level,hardly a representative democracy. As to the removal of a secret ballot,it now works as an undue influence on members of the States to watch their backs, not their convictions, which is a retrogard step in the balance of true democracy.
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If the Candidates for Chief Minister were recently elected to the states then fine. No Issue with it being secret.
But when the candidate no longer has a mandate or is a known incompetent (see previous two incumbents) then it stinks of the old boys network.
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