As it would appear that even after three days of deliberation on the EU some participants in the Tomorrow's Europe poll still didn't know the role of the European Parliament, Paul Davies - formerly of the Electoral Reform Society - continues his series looking at the EU's only democratic institution (Part 1, Part 2):
Last week we looked at the technicalities of how MEPs are voted in to their positions, but what lies behind the systems - how and why do people choose their MEPs in the first place?
Once in, MEPs supposedly divide their time between Brussels, Strasbourg and their constituencies, attending various meetings and hunting around for people that know what it is they do. They also split themselves up into groups.
Nothing strange about that, of course, politicians - like voters - define themselves by the groups they choose to represent. However, regardless of the systems used in the voting, the votes themselves are more often than not cast along national party lines and often influenced by national issues; yet MEPs are grouped not by nationality but by interest. And if few people can name their MEP or their MEP's party, even fewer can name what group within the European Parliament their MEP operates in.
Which would appear to make the whole process something of a mockery of democracy: vote for a vague unknown on the basis of something only tenuously related to the role that the elected party will undertake and have absolutely no idea what the elected party does after the election.
Some element of this strange and slightly suspect situation could, theoretically at least, be alleviated by a more widespread adoption of more voter-centric electoral systems, which could, again in theory, do something to bring the actual issues the European Parliament is concerned with more to the fore in elections for MEPs.
However, with elections still based on strong party lines, with Europe-wide groups within the European Parliament getting understandably zero coverage at election time, and with all elections seen by many people as primarily a chance to pass judgement on the major national parties and their respective national performances, changing voting systems again could backfire, as through further confusing the voting public the European Parliament could become yet more remote.
Ultimately it comes back to interest, and if people and parties alike aren't all that interested in the workings of the EU, save as something to shout about while reading their red-top of choice over their morning coffee, then no system in the world is going to cure anything.
Before we all give up, go home, and the European Parliament slashes its collective wrists, there is a counter to all this. It's called UKIP.
UKIP, as the name suggests, are a predominantly Euro-centric party. If the British voting public treated European elections as a mere chance to express their mid-term opinion on how the main parties are treating the national issues, then UKIP would do as well in national elections as they do in European ones. Yet they always perform significantly better in European elections, suggesting that there may be something more sophisticated to these strange EU parliament votes after all.
Which is all very lovely, but also sadly very wrong. UKIP do better in European elections because around Euro election time, they make more of a fuss and remind a few more people that they exist. It's the equivalent of a minor-label record going major and getting on the Radio-1 playlist. Same song, different chart position.
Nope, despite UKIP's best efforts, the European Parliament elections are beset by possibly the world's least well-informed electorate.
Thankfully, perhaps, a large proportion of the British population know that they're criminally ill-placed to pass judgement on electing people into highly paid, highly powerful positions, and don't turn up. That or they're just lazy. Either way, we can concentrate on those that do bother voting - the select 30 per cent (on average).
Some of these people, obviously, do just vote based on the colour of the candidate's tie, and because they feel as though they should. These people are stubborn idiots so we shall ignore them too.
Instead, let us take a case study - the author of the majority of this blog, no less - J Clive Matthews. ‘Clive' doesn't just pay attention to the EU; he gets paid to write about it. He also, I'm told, votes in European elections. Yet turn back a week or so, and he gave us a full and frank posting on how even he doesn't have a clue. And if someone such as Clive doesn't know what's going on, what hope is there for the rest of us?
If one cares to think about it for too long, all democracy can be thought to technically fail due to the inherently uninformed people whose votes define it and shape its future. Most of the time we can put up with this as a Churchillian "worst form of government except for all the others". However, the EU takes this to a whole new level, a level with a questionable purpose and a worrying future - two things we'll look at later on.
