Electoral laws are marked cards with which the groups that draw them up intend to win the game by using advantages that, in quotation marks, we will qualify as legal. Many people, led by their good faith or ignorance, believe that all votes are equal. If there is a rule common to all these norms, it is that this assumption is completely false. It is curious that one of the democratic acts par excellence, voting, is one of the most unequal. A book could be written, much thicker than Petete's, with examples to confirm this; from cases with millions of useless votes, to occasions in which the winner is not the one who comes first in votes. I will limit my field by referring only to the Spanish case.
The one that concerns the Congress is designed to maintain the two-party system. It favors the winning party and less the second, the rest are harmed in increasing proportion as it is further behind. (Ask IU). It also benefits the less populated provinces (of conservative vote favorable to UCD at the time of its elaboration) to the detriment of the others. The Senate's is different and of very inferior democratic quality. It greatly favors the most voted party, which does not need a high percentage of votes to obtain an absolute majority; a little to the second and the rest barely reaches testimonial representation. The Senate has always been a reserved preserve for PP and PSOE. Some consider it a useless chamber. I would think twice before making this statement. It is true that it could have been conceived as an elephant graveyard but, beware! It is also an army in reserve ready to act if Congress fails. See, for example, the powers it has in matters of great importance such as the reform of the Constitution.
It is well known that in the last Catalan legislature the independentists had fewer votes than the rest, but more seats. This imbalance is due to the fact that the province with the most tradition of voting for national parties, Barcelona, is punished with fewer deputies than they would correspond to by population, while those with more autonomist or independentist vote, the rest, are rewarded. In addition, in order for the law to be difficult to change, it is shielded with the need to have a two-thirds majority to modify it. Would everything related to the procés have happened if this rule were more proportional?
(In parentheses I will mention another curious fact related to the latter. Catalonia has a law that allows substantial lifetime salaries to be collected, along with other prerogatives, to former presidents who request it. To revoke it, a two-thirds majority is also needed. To declare the DUI with a simple majority was enough. Pure congruence!).
Thus, if we use the metaphor that parliaments were images of the electorate, we would find that all would be like those galleries of curved mirrors that play with sizes and greatly disfigure them. If we want to be more modern, we will say that photoshop, or any other image retouching program, has been used thoroughly.
But if there is a parliament where reality and image are unrecognizable, it is the Canarian one. I don't say it, the classification scales of these laws say it for their democratic quality and that place us in the tail positions. We could also write another book, the size of "The Quiet Don" (taking advantage of the centenary of World War I and the Russian Revolution) with its incongruities. It would be an eminently Marxist treatise (by Groucho, of course; not by Karl). The island barrier, 30%, is the highest in the world. Not even Sergei Bubka jumps it in his best times. The next one I think is Turkey's, 10%, designed so that the Kurds do not enter parliament. Here it was a cacicada to veto the insularist parties. Thousands of votes are wasted, hundreds of thousands sometimes. On each island the vote has a different value. One from El Hierro can be worth almost 20 times more than another from Tenerife. The place occupied in votes does not coincide with the one corresponding to seats. With 0.27% of the electorate you get 2 deputies and with 5'84 none. Why continue! I don't think it's a panorama to be proud of. It was not designed, nor modified, with objectives of justice and equality; the history, the past grievances and the specific interests of parties, especially CC and PP, weighed heavily in its preparation.
Lately I have read articles referring to its modification. We will all agree that it is necessary, since it is almost impossible to worsen it. I am very afraid that we will return to the old ways and its birth will be an incarnate struggle, because as I said at the beginning, everyone will want the rules of the game to favor them and interests will prevail over principles. To me, who only goes in the invention my ideology, I would like it to respond to values of justice and equality, valuation of the person above the territory, respect for minorities and no increase of deputies, (the proportion inhabitants-deputies is one of the smallest in Spain). In any case, I would reduce it to an odd number to avoid ties.
This could only be carried out with a single constituency and zero barrier. I know that this proposal will not be defended by any party. So, as the truth does not exist, (nor will it exist), but we must walk the path to try to find it, in the interest of it I would modify my pretensions to admit other constituencies as long as one more was created, not territorial, where the remains were distributed; or that there were two ballot boxes: one only for the island, which would elect a deputy (maximum two); the other for the single constituency. Regarding the barriers, it seems to me that 3%, maximum 5%, would be logical to have similar limits to the European democracies that contemplate them.
All facts have their consequences. You can't learn to swim without getting wet. The Canarian people will not be a single people, united and in solidarity, if their daily task is confrontation and insularity. We cannot blame the responsibility on geography. It is in the minds of some or many of us, but those in charge of legislating are the people who occupy a seat in parliament. They can start setting an example.
By Diego Arrebola