Voting in Bad Faith

Draft Amendment (No. 17) of the Standing Orders of the States of Jersey. 03 November 2011

POUR: 23 CONTRE: 18 ABSTAINED: 1 ILL: 3 OUT OF ISLAND: 1 EN
DEFAUT: 1 NOT PRESENT: 3 EXCUSED ATTENDANCE: 3

This was the proposition to put the open ballot for Chief Minister into law - the vote had been taken in September to make the election of a Chief Minister into an open ballot.

18 opportunists took the chance to reverse that decision, which - since this was simply enshrining in law what the States had decided less than two months before - was an act of very bad faith. These were:

CONTRE
Senator Terence Augustine Le Sueur
Senator Paul Francis Routier M.B.E.
Senator Sarah Craig Ferguson
Senator Alan John Henry Maclean

Connétable Kenneth Priaulx Vibert
Connétable John Le Sueur Gallichan
Connétable Daniel Joseph Murphy
Connétable Michael Keith Jackson
Connétable Silvanus Arthur Yates
Connétable John Martin Refault
Connétable Juliette Gallichan


Deputy James Gordon Reed
Deputy Carolyn Fiona Labey
Deputy John Alexander Nicholas Le Fondré
Deputy Anne Enid Pryke
Deputy Kevin Charles Lewis
Deputy Anne Teresa Dupre
Deputy Andrew Kenneth Francis Green M.B.E.

I was extremely disappointed to see Carolyn Labey join the ranks of those who want secrecy, so that the general public can't see who has voted for Chief Minister. There's been a marked reluctance of many candidates in this year's election to give any straight answers, perhaps because they thought people wouldn't vote for them if they said one person and voted for another. At least now, we'll know where people's allegiances lie. This reluctance to have transparency is part of the reason why the public becomes disillusioned with the electorate, and it is also shown in the way in which the last six years have seen the States have massively more "in camera" closed sessions than any other small jurisdiction.

And it is a last posthumous act of meanness by those leaving the house, who certainly did not listen to or consult their constituents on this matter.

The honorable course, if you disagreed with the initial vote, would be to abstain.

Senator Bryan Ian Le Marquand
ABSTAINED

Some good quotes from the original debate:

Senator Freddie Cohen:

We have only recently adopted the principles of ministerial government and some of those principles will be right and others of those principles will be wrong; and one that I believe is wrong is the principle that the electorate is not aware of who each Member votes for in the election for Chief Minister and for that matter in the election of any Minister. I would have thought that in any system where the electorate do not have the right to directly elect a Chief Minister, as I believe they should not, that they should at least have the credit of knowing who those who they supported have voted for in an election for Chief Minister.

Deputy Montfort Tadier:

This idea that somehow in the States we are not old enough, we are not mature enough to be able to cope with somebody not voting for us. It is simply a myth. It is a nonsense argument. Everything else takes place in public. As I have said, votes of no confidence, even much more
controversial votes happen in public and I think the vote for Ministers, including ... ideally Ministers but we are here to debate just Chief
Minister, I think, so that should be done in public.


Deputy Judy Martin:

This business about changing your mind: new Members, say somebody was a new Member who came in and topped the poll out there in Senators or whatever and wanted to be Chief Minister, to get to know him you get 10 minutes' speech and 15 minutes of questions; and you are going to get to know that person? No, no; there is much more going on. The debate will be going on between the date the elections are over and the date on the 14th when we elect the Chief Minister. That is where it will all be going on, behind closed doors, in coffee rooms, in restaurants, having a nice glass of wine. It is not done in this House, and if anyone is kidding their self that you listen, most of the minds are not made up before they come in on the 14th who they are going to have as the Chief Minister out of the 4 or 5 - obviously you may have to change your horse if it falls at the first fence - but other than that you will have a good idea. Openness and transparency in this House.

Deputy Daniel Wimberley

I have come to a novel conclusion, which goes further than we should have secret ballot for Chief Minister. I believe that all the votes for all propositions should be in secret, because then nobody will know and we will not be influenced and we will not upset anyone and we will not incur the wrath of any Ministers who we vote against or vote for; we will not be parachuted in as an Assistant Minister because we vote for them all the time, because nobody will know; and when we go to our constituents and they say: "Which way did you vote?" "You do not know, do you?" and we can say what we like. I think that is the right way to go... That is not really what I think. [Laughter] That is not really what I think and it is quite impossible, is it not?

Senator Le Marquand said that we should be free to vote for the candidate that we think is the best candidate, and I have written in my note: "And? Okay. So we vote for the candidate we think is the best candidate; and how does that imply that it should be in secret?" and I was puzzling this: why is there a connection between it being under wraps? Does that mean that if it was open I would not vote for the person I thought was the best candidate? What would induce me not to vote for the person I thought was the best candidate? Then he came up with this wonderful expression: "Incur the wrath of the successful candidate." We were just told, were we not, by the other non-candidate, Senator Ozouf, that if this goes through it will make it more partisan? But the argument for keeping it under wraps is that it might incur the wrath of the successful candidate if we became public and open. What is going on? I have to echo what Deputy Martin and others have said: "Are we grown-ups or are we kids?" It is just unbelievable.

Deputy Ian Gorst

I really can see no overwhelmingly good reason why we cannot say or publicly have our vote for Chief Minister open and a matter of public record. We come to our decisions on balance, we bring our independence and rational thought process to our decisions and we therefore should expect to be held accountable for those decisions and I believe that that is right and proper.

Deputy Trevor Pitman

I am asking for openness and I think all 53 of us in here would surely say that openness and transparency is a good thing. All I would say to end is that I think secrecy is really, I do not want to use the term "disease", but it is something that really is undermining democracy and it is what a lot of people feel unhappy about, whether they are from the Right or the Left. I think anything we can do to show a little more commitment to openness and transparency, any more we can do to make people feel they are engaged with what we are doing and the fact that we are asking them to participate in life in politics has got to be a good thing. I finish by saying if we are not man, woman or jelly baby enough to stand up and say who we are going to vote for and be quite happy to explain to that person: "I am not voting for you because", it is like listening to your critics. If you do not listen to your critics, sometimes you do not learn what you were doing wrong or could have done better. I am always willing to listen to my critics. I am willing to be up front with people and tell them why I do not support them. I am willing to tell them why I think they have done a great job.

Vote shown at:

http://www.statesassembly.gov.je/view_vote.asp?id_number=2473