Lets Hope This Contempt For Democracy Can Reach A Turning Point In Both The US and UK.

From the country where turnout is the lowest in the developed world, where big money has almost completely bought the media and politicians, where computer programmes are widely used to legally gerrymander boundaries, where one side stops the counting of ballots if they think they might lose, manipulates electoral registers and 'discourages' potential opponents from registering and voting, and where non audited electronic voting makes us suspicious of even the votes that are counted, comes a new wheeze.

'California Counts' is the new way the Republicans have found to steal the 2008 presidential election, just as they stole the 2000 election in Florida.

The difficulty for electoral reformers like myself is...

that - if the proposals for California were adopted in every state in the US, then it would result in more fairness in the electoral system (note - still not proportionally fair because the Republican funded ECRI would base seats on 'winners' of congressional boundaries rather than proportionality to voters). In just this state - it would give more fairness to the minority Republicans in California while still denying the same right to Democrats in Republican states. This fairness in the largest state while unfair in nearly all the other states would be enough to give a huge bias in favour of the Republicans.

As Johann Hari in the Independent points out, apart from the virtually impossible task of changing the constitution, it was thought impossible to introduce fairness into the system simultaneously across all states. But there is a way, change the rules in a state so that 100% of delegates vote for the presidential candidate that wins the popular vote nationwide. This would circumvent the electoral college ideas of the 18th century which has led to the unfair mess of the winner of the popular vote losing the election (as happened to Al Gore in 2000). This gives Americans a glimmer of hope for democracy, lets hope that California and other states take this chance.

In the UK, the current party funding scandals give the Labour government a unique opportunity to clean up politics in this country - as Polly Toynbee points out.

Individuals and organisations are always going to want to buy influence from political parties. If we want a true democracy, we have to curtail this wealth from influencing policy. Those opposed to state funding and the capping of donations, have to ask, how else can political parties be fairly funded?

The Power Inquiry suggested a system where state money is allocated to particular parties depending on how voters tick boxes on the ballot paper. The voter is free to allocate no money to any party or donate to a party other than who they vote for. At £3 a year per supporter (donated to the local constituency party not the party nationally), this would allow a maximum (depending on support and it would probably be much lower) of £90m a year to be shared amongst all the parties (we already state fund parties to the tune of £50m a year, with the bulk of this state funding going to the official opposition - currently the Conservatives). This would be a powerful incentive for the parties to listen to voters, the more supporters they get the more money they get. Surely this has to be better than parties begging wealthy individuals or organisations for funding, who make them skew their policies as a result?

Any serious attempt at cleaning up politics has to include electoral reform. It is so disappointing that Labour has wasted its stonking majorities when it had a full mandate to implement a PR referendum by following it's manifesto commitments. But it is not too late. Labour could start a debate on this whenever it wants and the current climate is a perfect opportunity to get people to listen.

Our electoral system (first-past-the-post) gives the clue as to why our political parties are so unattractive. Membership of political parties is abysmally low. This means three main things:- fair funding is hard to come by, attracting members, voters and crucially, decent candidates, is even harder and with membership so low, the percentage of members who are tribal loyalists, corrupt or extreme are increased.

With our right wing press and no serious seat taking electoral system pressure to the left, Labour governments are increasingly to the right of their membership and electorate and the Labour leadership undermine party democracy with the argument that only by ignoring the membership can we win under our present electoral system. And those who do join left of Labour parties know that winning any real power under this electoral system is virtually impossible.

A Labour led government is the only chance we have of changing the electoral system. All the decent people who have given up on political parties, or joined the Greens or Lib Dems have to join or rejoin Labour, if we want electoral reform and restoration of party democracy. These people leaving the Labour party to the tribal loyalists has cost us many good policies. Lets push the Labour party all the way on this. If Gordon Brown did this and even if he lost the next election, he would be the most important and radical PM we had ever had.