Assembly Project

A few aspiring assembly organisers I’ve spoken too have discussed the idea that a people’s assembly could stand independent candidates in elections. Is this a good idea?

My personal opinion is that it’s better to wait and see where the assembly goes when you start it, and only make the decision about whether to stand candidates when the election approaches.

I do recommend holding an assembly whenever an election approaches, to discuss and vote on what the priorities are for the voters. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the assembly should stand candidates. It could decide to form a strategic alliance and support a candidate from a traditional party instead. Or it could declare neutrality, while directing people to volunteer for candidates who are sympathetic to its goals. But it’s better to wait to decide which option to pursue.

One catch here is that some types of election are held at short notice – by-elections (special elections) and snap elections. In the UK, by-elections can be held with as little as four weeks’ notice, with many or even most votes cast earlier as postal votes. It’s worth having a plan to call urgent assemblies should one arise, that can fit with a rapid election timetable.

To return to the topic, why be cautious? A big reason for this is that you don’t want to alienate some useful potential allies. One of the best ways to make your assembly have an impact is to develop a good relationship with your local councillors. As I noted in my article on why you should start a people’s assembly, some local councillors have welcomed the idea and attended assemblies themselves. But others will be suspicious. It’s best not to alienate them with a commitment to stand candidates against them. As I also noted in that article, there are many great things an assembly can do even if it never gets involved in electoral politics.

You also need to be careful not to alienate people from the people’s assembly by turning it into a political party or campaign organisation. A people’s assembly should welcome everyone regardless of views, but elected officials cannot be all things to everyone. For this reason, if you resolve to contest an election, it is probably better to spin off this project into an organisation of its own.

A reality check

Another reason to be cautious is that you don’t want to put a considerable effort into campaigning and then find it’s wasted. So if you’re considering launching a pro-assembly campaign, you need to assess how strong of a campaign you can launch. Winning seats requires two fundamental things:

• Your campaign can be as visible as your rivals’ campaigns. Can you put on a campaign effort that is at least as visible as the other parties? Exactly how this is done varies by area. In local elections, the ground campaign can make all the difference, whereas national elections usually require funding and media coverage.
  
  In the UK, the visible campaigning is done mainly through leafleting, signs on houses and door-knocking (canvassing) in closely-fought seats. In the US, leafleting is often illegal and local and national candidates spend masses on TV advertising. While you may not be as well funded as your rivals, you can compensate with more door-knocking, which is the most effective way to win voters. (Especially deep canvassing.) However, in some countries, door-knocking is frowned upon.
• You can persuade people to vote for you. There’s no point having a visible campaign if your message doesn’t resonate with voters, such as having a message that most of them despise or fixating on a single issue that they don’t consider important. Another danger, especially for independents, is having no clear message at all.

Both of these are too common problems for independent candidates; many people want to vote for an independent but don’t, because independents lack visibility and a clear message. Fortunately, I’m sure that a pro-assembly candidate, standing on a platform of priorities agreed at an assembly, would be in a good position to achieve the latter; the challenge is the former. The story of Independents for Frome is a great example of how an alliance of independents can win.

The book 101 Ways to Win an Election by Mark Pack and Ed Maxfield is also worth reading, to get an idea of what it takes to build a winning campaign. They estimate that you need 1 volunteer for every 200 electors. This appears to be assuming an intensely fought single-winner elections, so if the contest uses a proportional voting system or is a low-turnout local contest, you can get by with less volunteers.

It’s not just about the strength of your own machine, either. Another effect I’ve observed, in my studies of independent candidates in UK local elections, is that they tend to struggle against left-wing parties that are gaining votes nationally and putting in a spirited campaign locally. But there’s no evidence of a similar effect with right-wing parties.

Spoiler alert!

Finally, there is the dreaded spoiler effect, also known as splitting the vote. To explain this, first, a run-down on the different types of voting systems:

Non-proportional systems:

• First-past-the-post: (India, US, UK, Canada) Single-member seats where the candidate with the most votes wins, regardless of whether it’s as high as 75% or as low as 25%.
• Bloc voting: (some local elections in the US, UK and Canada) Like first-past-the-post but where you have multiple votes to elect multiple candidates. It requires a similar strategy, with the only difference is that you have to give clear instructions to voters on how to use their multiple votes.
• Two-round system: (France, parts of US, most other countries with elected presidents) There are two rounds of voting, with the top two candidates in the first round going on to the second.
• Alternative/Ranked vote: (Australia, parts of US) Single-member seats where voters rank the candidates in order of preference. Its main improvement over first-past-the-post is that you can stand candidates without having to worry about splitting the vote.
• Parallel voting: (Japan, Italy) Some seats are elected through a proportional system, others through a non-proportional one.

Proportional systems:

• Single transferable vote: (Ireland, Northern Ireland, Australian upper houses, local elections in Scotland, Malta) Voters rank candidates in order of preference to fill multi-member seats. This provides a neat mix of proportional and local representation.
• List systems: (most of Europe and Latin America, Israel, New Zealand, most devolved assemblies in the UK) These systems give seats to parties based on how many votes they receive. Which candidates win is based on how high they are ranked on the party’s list, though many versions allow alternative ways for candidates to be elected (open list, MMP) rather than just their position on the list (closed list). Unlike the other systems, candidates have to stand as parties, but you can have parties that are actually alliances of independent candidates. The Free Voters of Bavaria and Alternativet of Denmark are examples, though they have become more party-like over time.

To illustrate the spoiler effect, suppose that in a first-past-the-post election, an anti-assembly candidate gets 40% of the vote, an assembly-endorsed candidate gets 31% and another pro-assembly candidate gets 29%. The anti-assembly candidate would win, even though most voters preferred a pro-assembly candidate. A famous (or infamous) real life example is the 2000 US presidential election. Ralph Nader only took a small number of votes from Al Gore, but it was enough to split the left-wing vote and allow the right-wing candidate George W. Bush to win.

In practice, the spoiler effect often isn’t as strong as it looks. In the UK and especially in the West Country, the Liberal Democrats have often won seats where the traditional centre left has been weak, sometimes while running on a more left-wing platform. In the US example, polls found that some Nader voters would have otherwise abstained or voted for Bush.

The risk of the spoiler effect is worst in first-past-the-post and bloc voting systems. It is weaker in two-round systems, but can still happen. An example is the 2002 French presidential election; because the left-wing vote was so fragmented in the first round, the second round ended up being a contest between the centre right and far right. It is weakest if not absent in list and ranked systems.

Therefore, if there’s a candidate who is strong in your area and has a good relationship with your assembly, consider forming a strategic alliance with that candidate rather than standing against them. This is doubly worthwhile if their main rival will be far less cooperative.