By Juyoung (Kirsten) Pak, V Form

My Election, My Will

Student-Submitted Note: Inspired by my US Government class, I decided to enter in the John Locke competition. I answered the question, “Do the results of elections express the will of the people?”. The parameters of the competition was to write an argumentative essay while incorporating elements from a traditional research paper.

Introduction

In most modern democracies, one of the few outcomes people can directly influence are elections, meaning that elections are a critical conduit for the people’s will. But what exactly is the will of the people? “The people” is a nebulous term that encompasses a wide array of interests, views, and preferences, making it nearly impossible to cover the innumerous wants and needs of specific groups. As such, elections are imperfect systems that stitch together different voices in majoritarian fashion, delivering the ‘people’s will’ through general consensus. The results, however, are undermined by the complexities of modern democracies, diluting the purity of what can be broadly defined as ‘the people’s will’.

Will of the People: Majoritarian at Best

The inherent flaw with equating a bare majority as the people is that large swathes of the population are actually not represented, and candidates that most likely hold opposing beliefs to these people are elected into office. Take, for example, South Korea’s 2022 Presidential Election, when the People Power Party’s (PPP)Yoon Seok-Yeol won by just 0.73%. As a result, the voices of the 16.3 million supporters of Democratic Party’s liberal policies, which are antithetical to the conservative PPP’s, were effectively mollified. In the same year in Brazil, left-wing Lula da Silva defeated right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro by 1.8%, and the last six US presidential elections have been won by single digits. In these cases, nearly half of voters selected the losing candidate with polar opposite views to the winning candidate, meaning that nearly half of people’s views were not represented by the results. Though not all elections are so close, these extreme cases illustrate that election results are the will of the majority, not the people as a whole. Even for larger margins, elected officials can never capture the nuanced, and often contrasting, shades that wholly represent the people; elections simply do their best to corral as many votes as possible.

The same runs true for multi-party systems. While in two-party systems, parties aggregate votes from different groups, coalescing groups of voices under the same banner, coalition governments usually have to mix-and-match parties into a majority, weaving groups together into a patchwork quilt. For example, the 2021 German federal elections yielded a SPD-Greens-FDP coalition, a group with many differences, such as the FDP’s staunch support of neoliberalism that is in direct opposition to the Green’s support of strict regulation and the SDP’s socialist policies. In this sense, multi-party systems are intrinsically the same as two-party systems, but tents are built post-election and in a more complicated fashion. And just as in two-party systems, non-coalition votes are effectively negated, meaning that large swathes of voices are not represented in the final outcome.

Is the Majority Even a Majority?

The majoritarian argument, however, is the best possible case in isolation. When other facets of elections are scrutinized, even this definition becomes flimsy. One of the main reasons is participation. In the closely contested 2022 Korean presidential election, Yoon won by receiving 16.4 million votes, or 37% of total possible votes, meaning that he only won a majority of participating voters, not a majority of all voters. This was despite a turnout of 77.1%, the fourth highest amongst recent elections around the world (Statista). The first two on the list, the 2019 Belgian (88.4%) and 2018 Swedish (87.2%) national elections, saw no one party receive more than 16% and 28.3% respectively, leading to tenuous alliances. However, voter turnout rarely exceeds 80%, with the OECD average being 69% (OECD). At this base rate, a candidate or coalition has to win 73% of the total electorate to truly have captured the majority, which almost never occurs in non-authoritarian countries. Regional and local election turnouts are even more atrocious. In the 2016 US mayoral elections, turnouts were less than 20% for 15 of the 30 most populated cities (Bloomberg). In the 2019 Dallas mayoral election, Eric Johnson won with just 41,247 votes out of 1.4 million registered voters, a paltry 3% of the registered vote. Even in the Netherlands, which had a 78.7% turnout for nationals, had an average of 51% for its 2022 municipals, a precipitous drop. In this sense, election results show the will of the majority of voters, not of the total electorate, narrowing the ‘will of the people’ to the will of the voting majority.

The socioeconomics of participation further muddy the definition. For example, in Taiwan (+5.4%) and New Zealand (+6.1%), women vote at higher rates than men. Meanwhile, in Japan (+9.2%) and Hong Kong (+6.9%), men vote at higher rates (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). Older groups are also more eager voters. During the 2016 US presidential election, 71.4% of 60+ years old cast votes, compared to 43.4% of 18-29 year olds. In the 2018 US Midterms, 63.8% of 65+ year olds voted, compared to 40.4% of 25-44 year olds. The US isn’t alone, and older age groups, especially the 60+, always have higher voter participation, though the margins vary by country. Some are high, like the Netherlands and Japan, while some are low, like South Korea and Germany. Additionally, multiple studies reveal that higher income groups tend to vote at higher rates in advanced democracies and wealthier countries. The opposite rings true for naturalized citizens, ethnic minorities, and less-educated groups. Coupled with imperfect turnout, these disparities mar the notion that majority rules. Rather, election results are the strongest aggregate of the voting majority weighted towards more motivated socioeconomic groups.

Public Interest

One thing that accounts for lower participation rates is the disconnect between potential leaders and those they represent. A 2021 OECD survey found that an average of 41% of citizens of OECD countries trusted their governments. America is particularly low, and a 2015 Pew Research found that public trust in the government was only 19%; 74% believed that elected officials “don’t care what people like me think,” while 77% said “they lose touch with people.” If people believe that voting doesn’t affect their daily lives or trust the government to do what is right for them, they simply aren’t as motivated to vote.

This, in part, has to do with the nature of modern politics. Politics are a multidimensional tug-and-war between different interests, and elections are the gateway into winning. Knowing that they only need a majority of votes, political apparatuses will push candidates, who are either selected by parties or by an extreme minority of voters in caucus or primaries (where candidates are also selected by parties), and develop talking points that have the highest chance of eliciting votes. In this sense, campaigns draw on the people’s preferences to see which would galvanize the most amount of voters. However, the manifold issues that various people face are amalgamated into reductionist talking points and party ideologies that are easily digestible and incites votes, such as market regulation/deregulation, immigration, and gender issues, rather than at the granular level. In effect, people vote for parties and platforms, rather than the candidates, meaning that they are voting in a bounded system. As a result, their choices in this limited system are not a true reflection of their desires; the high level of disconnect between voters and politicians, therefore, is understandable.

This is especially pernicious in two-party dominant systems, as voters with diverse interests are stuck between a binary where both, or neither, candidates represent their needs, which can lead to a lesser of two evils phenomenon. Both 2016 and 2020 elections saw the impact of this phenomenon, as a third of voters on each side voted because of “a dislike for their opponent” (Delkic). Dogmatic partisanship also ensues. A 2022 Pew Research study found that 78% of Republicans and 68% of Democrats affiliate with their party because they believe the other party’s policies are “harmful to the country.” This reason far outstrips other reasons, such as the party looking out for their interests (56% Republicans, 55% Democrats) and identifying with others in the party (40% Republicans, 45% Democrats). A 2020 study by Yale researchers confirms that partisanship trumps all other factors for US voters, even if the candidate violated democratic principles. This issue isn’t simply an issue in the US. During the 2019 UK general elections, 32% of voters exercised a “tactical vote, instead of choosing their preferred party or candidate.” The tightly-contested 2022 Korean presidential election was called a “contest between two “unlikables” (NYT) where in the months leading to the election, over 50% of those polled disliked both candidates. While hard to calculate exactly how this impacts election outcomes at all levels and in different countries, it is clear that results are at least somewhat affected by what people don’t want rather than what they want.

The Media

Further complicating matters is the media and its power to promulgate information and frame discourse. To start, the media is increasingly controlled by a small group. In Reporters Without Borders’ 2023 World Press Freedom Index, which investigates the “ability of journalists … to select, produce, and disseminate news in the public interest independent of political, economic, legal, and social interference,” only 8 countries, all in Northern Europe and in the OECD, received “good” ratings (RSF). The 30 other countries in the OECD fell into the “satisfactory” or “problematic” range. In the US, which was “satisfactory”, 6 media corporations control 90% of what people “read, watch, or listen to,” down significantly from 50 companies in 1983. EUObserver, an independent news outlet based in Brussels, warned this year that “across the EU, a free and independent media is withering” (EU Observer). The ramifications are simple: when only a handful of companies control the people’s exposure to the greater world, diversity of opinion is curtailed and dialogue can more easily be shaped to favor certain interests, rather than the nation’s or the people’s. This is especially important during elections, as news coverage can be warped to present a candidate favorably or misrepresent another.

The problem is compounded by online media. Because of its instantaneous and extensive reach, news is easily accessible and can easily proliferate. According to a 2022 Statista study, the percentage of people who consume news on social media in the OECD is at least 28% (Japan) and up to 71% (Greece), with most in the OECD falling in between 40- 60%.

Though social media can facilitate vibrant dialogue, positively impacting and transforming societies, misinformation can also spread further, faster, and easier than before. With the inordinate and overwhelming amount of information available, and the difficulty of moderation, it can be hard for the average person to parse through and fact-check everything they read online. Research attests to the destabilizing effects it can have on strong democratic regimes (Schleffer and Miller, Hindman). Expert Dr. Chrysalis Wright, a board member of UN’s Communications Coordination Committee, mentions that in America, “around 70 percent of Americans feel that fake news has impacted their level of confidence in the government” (UCF). She goes on to state that research has also found that white males and those over the age of 65, two groups with the highest turnout, are “more susceptible to believing fake news.” To add, algorithms and communities within social media can silo users into echo chambers of misinformation, amplifying certain beliefs. With troll farms also battering users all across the world, at least some choices during elections are unduly compromised, meaning that results are at least somewhat contaminated.

Conclusion

Elections are, at best, socially accepted and legally mandated compromises to bow to majority vote, rather than accurate representations of public will. At worst, they convey a Frankenstenian will, with some parts more prominent, while others are grangenous and atrophied. If the recent riots/protests in the US, Brazil, and France are any indication, this daemon can run amok, fueled by certain stratums in society that don’t feel like they are being heard, showing the need for rework and reinvigorate this lifeblood of democracy.

Kirsten Pak is a Vth form boarding student from Hong Kong. Kirsten enjoys studying history, English literature, and recently, US politics. Kirsten’s interest in politics has taken her to analyze the modern state of elections its process.