Electoral System

A new Consensual Presidential Democracy (CPD) must have a new electoral system. What follows is the result of the analysis of most electoral systems in the world. The initial criteria for the selection of an electoral system were firmly linked to the overall objectives of managing global existential risks by creating a de facto World Government operated by the future federated European Union, which would be gradually transformed into a Human Federation. Therefore, the European Union has been used as a model for this electoral system once the EU has become the European Federation (EF). However, these principles, could also be applied to individual countries.

According to the principles of CPD, the legislation at a federal (central) level will have to be passed with a maximum consensus between the parties and between the chambers of the Parliament, somewhat similar to the systems in use in Scandinavia and in Switzerland. The whole electoral system is tuned with that objective in mind, favouring the creation of coalitions, rather than a ‘strong’ single party rule.

In general terms, CPD is a mixture of a representational and direct democracy. The EF Parliament will consist of two Houses:

  • The Lower House, the Nations’ Chamber, consisting of MPs, elected for 5 years. Here, a proportional representation will be applied for the election of the President and the MPs, using Two-Rounds System. The MPs will be elected by the voters from one-mandate constituency (district). Party lists might be allowed, say for half of the elected MPs, although one-mandate constituencies seem to be better, since they maintain a closer link between the voters and their representative.
  • The Upper House, the Citizens’ Chamber (the Senate) consisting of representatives, selected for 6 years using a sortition method, a variant of a direct democracy, described here.

Direct democracy will also be applied for petitions. Petitions will allow any group of citizens to challenge any law approved by the parliament at any time, and even propose modifications of the Constitution. For other matters, national or local Citizens’ Conventions will be called with a detailed explanation of pros and cons on a given matter, since matters at a local level are much better understood, where the decisions are to be applied. No referenda will be carried out, since they will be substituted by Citizens’ Conventions.

The participation in the election will be mandatory, against a penalty equal, for example, to the penalty for a parking offence. Among the long-standing democracies that make voting in elections compulsory are Australia, Belgium and Luxembourg. Other, well established democratic nations – the Netherlands in 1970 and Austria more recently – repealed such legal requirements after they had been in force for decades. Mandatory voting is also used in Latin America. Examples there include Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. In some countries voting has been made compulsory at the discretion of sub-national governments, or is applied only to certain types of elections.

There will be a multi-party system in the EF with four types of electoral systems: for the President, the Lower House (the Nations’ Chamber), the Citizens Chamber (the Senate), and for referenda and petitions. No electable mandate can extend beyond two five-year terms.

This would be followed by the articles broadly corresponding to the Constitutional Framework with the new electoral and governance system as in the diagram below:

The details of the proposed electoral system are described in the following sub-sections.

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