Opinion | How Hong Kong’s democracy can evolve to break the ‘blue’ versus ‘yellow’ political deadlock

While most elected bodies in democracies make decisions based on binary voting, the winner-takes-all approach will only widen social divisions

A system that captures the highest average preference would be more inclusive

Reading Time:4 minutes

Lawmaker Raymond Chan Chi-chuen (right) takes a strong stand during the election of the chairman of the Legislative Council’s finance committee on October 14. Across two days, pro-democracy lawmakers raised repeated procedural questions and tried to delay the proceedings. Photo: May Tse

Published: 8:00pm, 4 Jan 2020Updated: 10:33pm, 4 Jan 2020

Prospects for the new year are not good. Certain events, such as elections, are definite – presidential and parliamentary in Taiwan in January, Legislative Council in Hong Kong in September, and presidential in the United States in November. Everything else is uncertain. Let us consider the perspectives from both Beijing and Hong Kong.

But first, democracy should be win-win, not win-or-lose. Politics should be for (almost) everybody, not just 50 per cent plus one. Sadly, at the moment, it’s all win-or-lose. What’s more, some election and decision-making systems give distorted results.

In Hong Kong’s district council elections in 2019, which were conducted according to the “first-past-the-vote” system, the “pro-democracy” parties won a massive 86 per cent of the seats but only 57 per cent of the votes. Britain’s Conservative Party won a majority of the seats (56 per cent) in parliament but a minority (43 per cent) of the votes.

Taiwanese lawmakers are elected by a partly proportional representation system, while Hong Kong’s Legco elections are part-proportional representation and part-first past the post. Both can give capricious results.

And finally, the US 2020 presidential contest, which uses only the first-past-the-post system, could produce another contentious outcome – US President Donald Trump for a second term. In George Washington’s day, the system was win-win: the runner-up became the vice-president.

While electoral systems vary enormously, pretty well everywhere, decision-making is based on (simple or weighted) win-or-lose majority votes. There are other multi-optional systems; a few are even win-win. But while Beijing rarely does, Hong Kong, London, Taipei and Washington frequently use the simplest and most divisive methodology – binary voting.

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