The Progressive Labour Party Government is “on the side of angels” on electoral reform, according to politics professor David Farrell. But it should have gone further and examined all the options for an alternative to the current system, he believes.

And he cautioned against the reforms building in bias which would make the PLP “electorally unbeatable”.

Some 150 people turned up for Dr. Farrell's lecture on electoral reform on Friday. “If I had to praise the PLP, I would praise it for its embracement of electoral reform, for its willingness to countenance electoral reform because the existing system has its problems, it can't be denied,” was his conclusion.

“But if I would worry a little bit about what it's doing, it would be to say that it's an awful pity that at a time when the rest of the world's democracies are prepared to take very seriously electoral reform - to weigh up the pros and cons of a range of different systems - it's a bit of a pity the Bermuda Government is foreclosing that, is preventing serious consideration of systems other than the first past the post system.”

In a broad-brush treatment of alternative electoral systems Dr. Farrell's explained that Bermuda's unequally sized constituencies created a bias toward the United Bermuda Party (UBP), but the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) has been able to compensate somewhat with a more “efficient” vote.

And the current system is a non-proportional system which leads to the winning party getting a larger share of the seats in the House of Assembly than their share of the vote, and significant numbers of voters not being represented.

Dr. Farrell said that in comparison to other small countries Bermuda fared “very favourably” in terms of Assembly size.

Gibraltar, a territory with 31,000 citizens, has one elected representative per 2,066 citizens, according to Dr. Farrell's statistics.

The average for ten small states (with population size of less 100,000) was 1,652 citizens per MP while Bermuda's ratio is 1,461.

With just 30 MPs, the ratio would be 1,941. “So you could develop an argument that the Assembly size should be reduced. But again I urge caution because if you reduce the Assembly size, you are increasing the risk of disproportionality - you're increasing the unfairness of the electoral system,” said Dr. Farrell. “I would say if you're going to do it, it should be a very small change - a very small change rather than anything more dramatic.”

He then addressed the proposed changes, pointing out that the Government's proposals, while it would result in more equally sized constituencies, amounted to replacing a non-proportional system with another non-proportional system.

And turning his attention to the remit of the Boundaries Commission, he questioned why race was not being considered by the Commission, since Bermuda is an “ethnically divided society”.

The Boundaries Commission's remit also does not allow consideration of other electoral systems and says nothing about limits in variation of constituency sizes, he said.

“The ending of the parish based constituencies will correct some of the existing problems because by definition you're going to get a more even spread of constituencies. But this is going to favour one party over the other. And how do you know that you're not removing one bias and introducing another? What guarantees are there that by removing parish based constituencies bias, you won't have other biases coming into the system ? The second point is the shift to single member constituencies will see a small effect on election outcomes, but it's nearly not as big an effect as could be produced by much more ambitious proposals.”

If the PLP does attract the “core black vote,” he explained, then “it does present the possibility of becoming electorally unbeatable or certainly very difficult to beat.”

He then outlined three types of Proportional Representation (PR) electoral systems and said that while the Bermuda Government's proposal to move to a single member plurality system would put the Island in line with the system used by the majority of the world's population, on a country by country basis it is not the most favoured system.

“We could really care less what's fashionable,” said independent MP Trevor Moniz at question time. “We would like to get the best system for Bermuda.”

He suggested that details such as population size, literacy rate, voter turnout and other levels of representation should be factored in to any comparative analysis. And Mr. Moniz said that some forms of PR systems sacrificed transparency and accountability.

“We really have to tailor whatever solution we seek to the fact that Bermuda's a unique situation.”

“There is no such thing as an ideal electoral system,” the professor agreed. “Every country is unique.”

In general audience members thanked the professor for his lecture and declared their prior ignorance about the matters discussed as well as considerable mistrust of the Government's intentions.

The PLP has held a longstanding position on electoral reform - pursued in two constitutional conferences - and the party included the proposal in its campaign manifesto leading up to the 1998 elections which swept it into power.

“In many ways the PLP are on the side of angels,” Dr. Farrell later told The Royal Gazette. “It seems a pity they are not going that extra mile to do it properly.”

The Boundaries Commission has been empowered to redraw the constituency boundaries under a revamped single seat system.