DA Moves to Change SA Electoral System

It's a stupid proposal. Constituent A with 10 000 voters might have five candidates running for election. If one candidate gets 9 998 votes and two others get one vote each then all three go to parliament and get to earn one million rand a year plus benefits. That's madness.

And having individually elected MPs will increase corruption. Americans call it lobbying but we know what it is.
 
saksakgp said:
It's a stupid proposal. Constituent A with 10 000 voters might have five candidates running for election. If one candidate gets 9 998 votes and two others get one vote each then all three go to parliament and get to earn one million rand a year plus benefits. That's madness.

And having individually elected MPs will increase corruption. Americans call it lobbying but we know what it is.
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Don't even get me started on that 'special interest' crap from the USA.

Another point is that this system will kill smaller parties. Currently a party needs 0.25% of the vote to get a seat. Under the new system, assuming they don't win an area, they would need 1% of the national vote.
 
saksakgp said:
It's a stupid proposal. Constituent A with 10 000 voters might have five candidates running for election. If one candidate gets 9 998 votes and two others get one vote each then all three go to parliament and get to earn one million rand a year plus benefits. That's madness.

And having individually elected MPs will increase corruption. Americans call it lobbying but we know what it is.
Click to expand...

Is this what maths lit does for you?
 
saksakgp said:
Constituent A in Northern Cape will have 10 000 people while constituent B in Gauteng will have 500 000 people. Three MPs for each? Nah...
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The SAPA article in the OP is not too clear, but the Mail and Guardian article does mention equal voters per constituency.
The Bill suggests the establishment of 100 three-member constituencies, each with approximately the same number of voters. The boundaries of the constituencies would be decided by the Electoral Commission.
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It is quite embarrassing how weak this bill was.
If we wanted real accountability, MP's elected by constituency would not be able to be fired by their party (If for example they voted against the party line, and rather voted in the interests of their constituency). All the party could do is withdraw party funding for the MP for the next election.

But instead, we have proposed a system that tries to paper over the cracks rather than fix the problem.
I understand the reasons why we did this, but it is most certainly not the best option as far as the public goes
 
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