Contra Reid's Voting Reforms

David Reid has another letter published in the Taipei Times in which he this time argues for further democratic reforms to the government in Taipei. I can share his tactical aim of further checking the abuse of power by the government in Taipei (and thereby the one in Beijing also to a certain extent), however I believe the methods he proposes for doing so - the introduction of a preferential electoral voting system and the lowering of the vote threshold for referendums - would be as likely to achieve the opposite result as to that intended.

I should preface my criticisms with a certain clarification of premises. I take the term "government power" to its conceptual root in referring to the presumption of one man to presume a rule of force over another, which in the democratic context, occurs for no other reason than that he happens to belong to a political majority. Therefore, my criticisms are to be taken as arising from a much broader premise than mere reference to the current KMT administration or even exclusively to the bureaucratic apparatus of state coercion over which Taiwan's two chief parties fight. So with that preface in mind, allow me to proceed to my criticisms of David Reid's suggestions...

A preferential voting system may indeed allow for greater representation of minor parties in the legislature, but why could these not instantly be bought off by a determined, majority holding government - either through the transparent bribery of political compromise, or through what me might refer to as more opaque forms of compromise? The clear moral opposition that a minority party (such as the TSU) might have been able to voice when highly unlikely of attaining political power themselves would be far more difficult to maintain with any credibility and thus such a minority party would likely become a mere filter, diluting but still furthering the spill of government power throughout Taiwanese society.

Regarding Reid's proposed lowering of the referendum vote threshold on the grounds that such an act would discourage non-voting and boycotting tactics, it strikes me as a pertinent question whether Reid has forgotten the very purpose of setting a high threshold. A lower vote threshold would represent a much lesser restriction on the power presumed by a political majority - whether in government or not (recall my prefacing remarks). A lower vote threshold for national referendums would cut both ways, sometimes serving the powers of a political majority against the government, and sometimes serving the power of a different majority in government. Such a move strikes me as a deceptively small but actually very dangerous step toward the possibilities of populist totalitarianism, which is quite contrary to the end of inhibiting the spill of government power throughout Taiwanese society.

Addendum:

At one point in his letter, Reid remarks:

"A thorough review of the ECFA by the legislature may have done much to allay the fears of Taiwanese about the content of the agreement. "

My reading of the government's decision not to publish the details of the ECFA was that doing so would bring a significant number of KMT legislators under political pressure from their financial sponsors and local electorates to reject the ECFA or resign. I don't think that publication of the details of the ECFA itself would have "allayed fears" about its' content, rather it would have stoked such fears and prompted political action.