Kalistan

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Kalistan Elections 5701: Nationalists maintain Plurality
Moderates come in close Second and Socialists double their seat total
Kaliburg, Grand Duchy of Ananto
January 3, 5701


Map shows growing support for more moderate outlook

Members of each Institutional Party of Kalistan are celebrating this evening. Kalistan has held its most competitive election in two generations, as groups that represented genuinely competing viewpoints actually went out, spoke with voters and made the case for their positions across the entire Empire. "The System worked well," said Chancellor of the Empire Reginald Hanson, who held his seat easily in the Duchy of Vrassa At-large elections. All members of the government maintained their seats, but there was a significant shift from a Nationalist-dominated Assembly membership to a more even split between Nationalists and Moderates, with Socialists more than doubling their seat count Empire-wide.

In the 5701 elections, Nationalists captured 48.1% of the seats in the National Assembly, capturing none of the constituencies fully, and losing the absolute Majority they have held for decades. The Moderates finished in second with 35.4% of the seats. "Moderates got an important assist from the fact that Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Carolina is widely perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be a reformist and therefore would probably be a supporter of the moderate faction if she was a voter," said the Chancellor. And Socialists did well, earning 16.5% of the seats in the National Assembly, including a strong showing in the Duchy of Suldanor and both seats from the Free City of Sulari. The results show that to pass any piece of legislation, buy-in from more than one faction is now necessary, meaning that policy will be more moderate by default.

"Much of the churn was in the way votes were counted," said Hanson. "This year, we instituted a single standard system of vote counting of Rank Choice Voting. Its a system that allows people to rank their choices, first second etc and then have their second place votes count if their first place choices don't pan out. This proportional ranked choice voting system worked well for our at large district as well as our City Districts and ensured that more people got something they preferred instead of being totally shut out of the process." He said that the proportional system, combined with ranked choice voting meant that 87% of voters selected all those who eventually won as either first or second choice. "That shows a lot of support for these candidates," he said.

Chancellor of the Empire Hanson also said there was a lot of democracy in the candidate nomination process. "For years, the Empire has relied on Civil Society Organizations to name candidates for office," said Hanson. "The nominees came from Brethrenist meetings, unions, student groups, environmental groups, unions and syndicates, and non-partisan political education groups, to name a few. Each Civil Society group could name up to 2 candidates who were members of their organization, and who were nominated. Last summer at the Party Congress, our business was to sort through these nominees, and develop faction lists for each election. Sometimes a faction didn't get any nominees in a constituency, and in that case, didn't run a candidate in that race, but in nearly every case, the approved Party list of candidates for office was multi-factional, and people could select in almost all cases from all three factions. The Party was required to provide at least two names for each seat available."

Hanson said that the results of the election, where Nationalists maintained a clear plurality of seats, represents the Nationalist faction's long standing dominance in Kalistani Politics. "The Nationalists have governed this nation at least since the time of Empress Mary, and everything was geared toward their electoral success, but we cannot discount the explosion in votes for the faction I happen to belong to, which are the Moderates, or the doubling of the Socialist Assembly delegation, in both the Cities and in the Duchies."

Turn out was still lower than the Chancellor would have hoped for. "We has about a 23% turnout in the general election," said the Chancellor. "This is significantly less than we traditionally see in the non-partisan Free City elections, which often hovers in the 60s. But it is much better than the turn out in the last General election, which was below 20%, and significantly better than the national average over the last 40 years of 12.25%." The Chancellor thinks the uptick is due to civil society organizations pushing voters to turn out to support candidates preferred by the organizations. "They definitely gave us a big assist," said the Chancellor.

Hanson also added that there was almost no chance that the Empress would permit political advertising or campaign donations to improve that turnout. "She made it very clear that those two things would not be on the agenda," he said. "Like ever. She said this is a way that money and influence buys their way into liberal systems and if we were to permit that, we would very soon have an elite dominated Party and Assembly. She did not forbid public forums and direct canvassing, nor did she forbid campaigning by the Civil orgs that nominated the candidates. But printed propaganda was not allowed to have calls to action you would hear in commercial advertisements, and spoken Candidate information pieces were limited to specific periods of the day on KRTVN. Candidate information spots were permitted all day long on Radio Kaliburg."

Despite the notable limitations of the Kalistani elections, the Chancellor is nonetheless quite proud that not only did Kalistan run a fairly successful competitive election that produced valid results, but that they accurately reflected the expressed will of those who voted. "Yes, we have a strange system, and I am sure some liberals will look at it and say, 'Kalistan has no democracy.' But elections serve far different functions in Kalistan than they serve in in liberal nations. Here, they are designed to determine how Her Imperial Majesty's fiat will affect the lives of the people. The elections serve as a public endorsement method of the policy making apparatus. To be clear, elections are an institution in Kalistan. They serve a functional, instrumentalist role. They are not ideological, and they are not designed to provide a competing source of power or a vector for popular control. So they won't meet the basic requirements of liberal democracy. But they are not supposed to."

The Chancellor said that Her Imperial Majesty called to congratulate the Chancellor on the successful process, and informed him that if the Deputies can accomplish their mandate efficiently and thoroughly, she will be quite impressed with the results. "The Institutional Party passed the resolution to permit the relegalization of factions," said the Chancellor. "But Her Imperial Majesty has informed me that she will order it rescinded if the politics of the factions get in the way of accomplishing our work in the Assembly, so it is on us to not let disagreement in viewpoints get in the way of our work. We may have spirited debates, but Her Imperial Majesty was clear that we were not to let them derail us in carrying out the business of the Chamber."

The New Deputies will be seated in a Week.

@TheRepublic