The other day I speculated here that the Kenyan presidential election, which was being held that day, could produce an electoral trainwreck. What I was referring to was the possibility of a “fancy” outcome, akin to what occurs in the U.S. when the popular vote margin goes one way and the Electoral College margin goes the other. The rules in play in Kenya hold open the possibilty that a candidate can carry a plurality nationwide and garner at least 25% of the votes in five of Kenya’s eight provinces—two of the three criteria for being elected—but still fail by virtue of being defeated in his run for a seat in the Parliament, which would render him ineligible. Alternatively, a candidate might fulfill the nationwide plurality criterion and win a seat in Parliament, but fall short on the 5/8 criterion—not a terribly far-fetched possibility given Kenya’s tribally-based, and therefore areally-based, politics.
Well, according to what has been certified as the “official” result, which may not be the “real” result and may not turn out to be the “final” result, the “fancy” outcomes that I mentioned didn’t occur. What did occur was a trainwreck nonetheless that has produced widespread protests from within Kenya (including mass demonstrations and reports of more than 100 deaths so far) and from around the world. In this instance, the trainwreck is of the good old-fashioned variety, centered on allegations of massive irregularities, including vote-buying and rigged vote totals. These tried-and-true institutions of democratic governance proved sufficient (though barely so) to throw the election to the incumbent, confounding the pollsters’ predictions. I didn’t mention this regrettable but mundane scenario in my earlier posting precisely because it seemed so thoroughly expectable that it hardly merited mention. (Corruption on election day: Stop the presses!) The “fancy” scenario, on the other hand, seemed novel enough to to warrant some brief commentary.
In the United States, the reaction is one of shock and awe. We are shocked, shocked, that the outcome of a presidential election could be tainted by such nefarious practices. And we are awed by the efficiency of an electoral system that enabled the in-party to get itself officially declared the winner within hours after the polls had closed, without putting the national through a lengthy and thoroughly unnecessary wait to see how it had all come out.
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“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” — Joseph Stalin
I might suggest that the efficiency of a system that gets Kibaki sworn in as President so quickly is not so distant from the system that engineered the victory in the first place.
Bloggers on the ground, if any readers are interested, are here. News, blog and text updates from the country are also here and here.
Chris,
http://kenyanjurist.blogspot.com/ suggested (BEFORE Kubaki was sworn in) that that ceremony had to happen sunday (and there was a Moi precedent too).
I still fail to see why would anyone organize an election anywhere in Africa (with those bad roads and predictable recount petitions) 3 days before the official end of the president’s mandate, but it seems like that is the practice in Kenya.
Why would the popular vote in the US going one way and the electoral college going another be considered a “fancy” outcome? If the framers believed that the electoral college would always follow the popular vote, it would have been superfluous. If you look at how the electoral college was selected in the framers’ times, it becomes apparent that the electoral college (and a great deal of the rest of the constitution) is intended to prevent tyranny by majority, i.e. once you get 51% of the people in favor of something you can do anything you want, no matter how dictatorial. Kenya’s restrictions seem to be oriented towards the same goal, however imperfect they may be. If you look at the current criticism of the electoral college in the US, particularly out of California, it is transparently oriented towards forcing the policies of liberal California onto more conservative, but less populous, states. This is advocated as “democracy” while simultaneously dismissing proposals that California’s electoral votes be divided in proportion to the California in-state voting. The simple goal of this is to allow a critical mass of people (in the 50-60% of the vote range) to shove everything they want down the rest of the country’s throat. A constitution that at least makes this a little difficult is not a bad thing, either in Kenya or the US.
To clarify: My use of the term “fancy” simply means “structurally or procedurally complicated” and carries no normative implications. I happen to think that the Electoral College is a bizarre setup, but that’s an argument for a different day.
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