Bruce Moon: One citizen, one vote and all of equal weight – an elusive concept in practice

The concept of democracy – where all citizens have a vote and all votes are of equal weight has proved to be a very elusive concept over the ages.

It is generally credited to the citizens of Athens, Greece and indeed the very word “democracy” is derived from Greek origins.  However classical Greek democracy was very different from the practice as we understand it today.  While it is true that all free men did have a vote, the majority of the population were slaves and it is doubtful if Greek civilization could have functioned without that.  Women of course, did not count.

 

In British practice, Magna Carta in 1215 is generally credited with being the first step towards democracy.  While indeed truly significant, in substance what it established was that the King was not above the law and power remained very substantially in the hands of the barons.    The House of Commons and the House of Lords were established and it became the practice that the King could not raise taxes without the consent of both – while it being accepted that taxation was necessary for the country to operate.

 

By around 1800 the structure by which electorates were defined for the House of Commons had become archaic and in 1832 the first Reform Act was passed.  This did little more that abolish numerous “rotten boroughs” in which the number of eligible voters had been reduced to miniscule figures and indeed in some cases some voters were disfranchised.  The Second Reform Act of 1867 made progress and widened the franchise but even by the 1884 Third Reform Act, to be a householder still remained its basis.  Even here, the fact that there were many times the number of voters in large, largely new, industrial towns than in many rural electorates meant that in the latter, individual votes were worth correspondingly more.

 

So colonial New Zealand was plumb in the middle of this evolution and had few, if any, precedents for guidance.  When representative government was established in New Zealand in 1856, an individual property qualification still applied.  Maori men who possessed this qualification were eligible to vote equally with other citizens.  However since nearly all Maori land was held communally, only about a hundred individuals qualified.

 

This was recognized to be clearly inappropriate so four Maori electorates were established in which all adult Maori men were eligible to vote, this at a time when many settlers were unable to do so. It might be claimed of course that four was a totally inadequate number but in relation to the number of eligible settlers it was not as unbalanced as it might appear.  Indeed a number of distinguished Maoris held these seats and played a significant part in the proceedings of Parliament.  One was Sir James Carroll, a half-caste who at different times represented a Maori and a general electorate.

 

New Zealand remained in the forefront of electorate reform internationally.  A few years later, all adult men were enfranchised and then in 1893 adult women were too, I have seen a copy of the 1895 electoral roll for the new electorate of Geraldine and there alongside each other are both my paternal grandparents!  In such matters New Zealand need apologise to nobody!

 

So far so good evidently, but even then things were not quite fair in our country.  A “country quota” mean that the number of electors in rural electorates was less than in towns, it being argued that they were significantly more difficult for a member to manage than compact urban electorates.

Well, the country quota was eventually abolished but the anomaly of electorates with significantly less voters than the average has persisted, both for Parliament and for local bodies, particularly for Maori electorates with correspondingly less votes for a Maori candidate to be successful than for any in a general electorate.  As an example, as I read it, in the somewhat complicated system of preferential voting for the most recent local body elections, the winning candidate in the Nelson Maori ward received a mere 240 votes.  The lowest polling successful candidate for a general seat receive 1582 votes.*  The contrast is glaring.  Remember too that the latter had to receive a sufficient number of votes not only from voters of European ethnicity but also from those who are Chinese, Indian, Pacifica and any number of other ethnicities as well!

 

In what is, or surely ought to be, a well-integrated society, the anomaly of giving substantially more weight to a racially identified set of citizens, merely on the grounds that some of their ancestors were here a few hundred years earlier than the rest, is a glaring anomaly in a supposedly democratic system.  Maori wards and electorates should be abolished for ever as indeed for the latter, the Royal Commission which proposed MMP for parliamentary elections unequivocally recommended.

 

*  It is recognized of course that in some North Island areas with a significantly higher proportion of Maori residents, the figures will be somewhat different.  The point remains nevertheless.

Bruce Moon is a retired computer pioneer who wrote "Real Treaty; False Treaty - The True Waitangi Story".