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Academics discuss likely implications of electoral system

With a new mixed electoral system being implemented in the year-end legislative election, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and academics from Taiwan, Japan and South Korea offered various views on the system at a symposium on Saturday.

The impact of the new system remains to be seen, but the election reform was decided upon with the consensus of all political parties and there is no turning back, Wang said at the International Symposium on Mixed Electoral Systems in East Asia, which was organized by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University.

It can be both difficult and easy at the same time to imagine how a new electoral system will impact the political environment, Yoshiaki Kobayashi, a professor at Japan's Keio University, said in a keynote speech.

Citing the US 2000 presidential election as an example, Kobayashi said that if former vice president Al Gore, who garnered more popular votes but less electoral votes than US President George W. Bush, had been elected president, the US' response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon would probably have been different.

The new electoral system should change the legislative environment, although there is no way of knowing whether it will be for better or for worse, Wang said.

It is generally agreed that the system favors a two-party system and facilitates political debate, Kobayashi said.

However, 10 years after Japan adopted the system, reviews are mixed, Kobayashi said, adding that some legislators do not believe the mixed voting system is an improvement.
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