maria gil ulldemolins

Before I start, may I say that I do not consider myself a very political person? I do not think like a political scientist (I know that for sure, my partner happens to be one), I think like a designer. I spot needs and try to solve them. So that’s where I’m coming from. I’m a feedback and discussion junkie and that’s what I’m trying to get to. Thanks!

Now, here in Spain we are in full election swing. The big day is the 20th of November, 20N. As it happens, the country has pretty much always been hugely dived ideologically (there is this saying of “the two Spains”).

This year, as a foreseeable consequence of the recession (which has been specially cruel in Spain), the right wing party is going to amass a rather big success, estimated at 45% of the votes (this translates into them taking around 190 seats of the available 350, which is considered absolute majority). So that’s them ruling by fair and square democratic election.

What I have seen, though, is that an important part of the population doesn’t know who to vote. That’s not new, and, in a way, that’s the only reason why there are campaigns, to convince them to vote one way or another. What is not being said, though, is that whilst people don’t know which one of a few parties represents them best, they are very confident about which ones do not represent them at all.

So, in a system where one looks at who is desired rather than who is despised, you might find that 45% of people pick a representative that, actually, is despised by the other 55% of people (but they wouldn’t agree on who they preferred).

So here’s my suggestion (again, feeling very shy about this): what if each citizen had a positive vote (intended for the party they favor) AND a negative vote (intended for the party they dread)? What I have thought so far is that a negative (-) vote would cancel out a positive (+) vote. My first impressions is that this should considerably reduce vast majorities, allowing smaller parties to have a voice (and yes, there is a risk that even if you managed to greatly reduce a main party, you’d allow for the more extreme, tiny parties to emerge. I cannot tell if people would veto big or small).

So, for instance, this is your positive vote proportion:

And this is combined with a completely made up negative vote:

In this case, everything would be a lot more even. How would a government made out of small fractions work? (note from the proper political scientist, aka Mr. M., “it would work BADLY!” Ok, noted. As someone who works with design thinking, though, I have the feeling that systems could be revised to promote collaboration and mingling and interdisciplinarity. But hey).

This could also happen:

A party with a reasonable amount of sympathizers gets cancelled out. Would that be fair?

Other issues would be: if it wasn’t compulsory to use both votes, you could end up with more negative votes than positive ones. What implications would that have?

I’ll leave it here (don’t they say that a timely surrender is a victory?).

Any feedback will be appreciated. Thanks!