Improving Election Procedures and Practices in China:

Some Modest Proposals

Kevin J. O’Brien
Alann P. Bedford Professor of Political Science
210 Barrows Hall, Department of Political Science
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1950, USA
kobrien@berkeley.edu

April 23, 2008

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1157092

 Improving Election Procedures and Practices in China:

Some Modest Proposals

Abstract:

Based on a trip to observe villagers’ committee and people’s congress

elections in rural Yunnan in December 2002, some suggestions are made

concerning how to improve election procedures and practices. These include:

encourage candidate nominations by voters to be less ritualistic; rethink the use

of quotas and other means to ensure that sufficient numbers of minorities and

women are elected; further institutionalize primaries; establish candidate self-

registration; regulate proxy voting more carefully; consider the benefits of voters

casting ballots individually at their convenience rather than at long meetings;

promote greater political equality by adjusting election representation ratios; favor

secret balloting over simple anonymous balloting; make vote-counting more

transparent and mix up ballots before counting them; and most important of all,

abolish the “oppose” (fandui) vote and the requirement that victors in the main

election receive 50% of all ballots distributed in favor of a system where the

candidate who receives the most votes wins.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1157092

 Improving Election Procedures and Practices in China:

Some Modest Proposals

Election procedures and practices in China have made enormous strides

since I started studying people’s congresses in the 1980s and villagers’

committees in the early 1990s. When I first conducted field working on villagers’

committees in Fujian in 1992, household voting was still allowed, open

nomination procedures (hai xuan) were novelties found only in a handful of

demonstration villages, and few detailed, election implementation regulations

existed at the provincial level or below. Over the last fourteen years, these and

many other problems have been addressed. But some issues still remain, and

this paper will focus on several modest changes in election procedures and

practices that might be worthy of consideration.

These proposals emerged from a trip I took to observe villagers’

committee and county people’s congress election in Yunnan in December 2002.

The trip was sponsored by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National

People’s Congress and the Carter Center, and it took our team of election

observers across central Yunnan from Kunming to Dali. We focused on rural

areas and witnessed five elections, mainly in poorer villages in the mountains,

but also in wealthy localities in the valley. Many of the villages we visited were

predominantly Bai or Yi.

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The Nomination Process: Popular Participation, Quotas, and Primaries

We always arrived after the candidates were chosen, and thus did not

witness the nomination process (though we saw the results of primaries posted in

a number of districts and were able to inspect nomination forms in one location).

In county people's congress elections where primaries were not held, the

vast majority of preliminary candidates were nominated by ten or more voters

(rather than the Communist Party or other organizations). This was somewhat

unexpected, though equally surprising was how few ordinary villagers made it

through to become final candidates. Nearly all the elections we witnessed pitted

current or former village officeholders against one another. In the single village

where we were able to inspect nomination cards, one point that stood out is that

every nominator provided exactly the same reason for nominating a candidate --

"is in accord with the requirements of a deputy." This suggests that the

nomination process, where primaries are not held, is perhaps more ritualized

than might be desired.

In certain places, there was an uneasy relationship between a belief in

quotas (for minorities, women etc.) and a commitment to free choice via popular

election. It appears that various districts (often multi-member people's congress

districts and perhaps some villagers' committees) are effectively assigned a slot

for, say, a woman. But they are not required to elect any given woman. Then, if

as in one village we visited, the woman who came in second in the separate

women's primary drops out, a single woman ends up competing with a number of

men. One way to increase the likelihood that she is elected, as the female
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candidate in one village reminded the voters just before balloting, is to inform the

voters that the village was assigned a slot for a woman. This cannot help but

interfere with free choice by voters, and that this woman was later elected in a

landslide tells us much less about her true popularity than her large number of

votes would suggest.

Furthermore, the word primary or preliminary election (yuxuan) still seems

to be used quite loosely to refer to a number of quite different procedures,

ranging from village-wide votes using anonymous balloting to small group

"democratic consultation" (minzhu xieshang) and "mulling over" (yunniang).

These latter terms, which came up in reference to the nominating process in

people's congress elections, are reminiscent of a much earlier era when little

popular consultation actually occurred.

It is worth noting, however, that such problematic practices may have

been especially common in Yunnan – a province where village elections arrived

much later than they did in most other parts of China.

Drop-outs and Candidate Registration

In one village, the number two vote-getter in the primary dropped out in

the two-week period before the main election was held. This at first seemed

troubling, especially when he told us that the cause was a long-standing kidney

condition (had it suddenly become much more urgent?). Later, we found out that

he ran a factory, was quite busy, had been asked for many contributions when he

was a village office-holder, and had never wanted to run in the first place. This
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anecdote suggests that a better procedure for putting oneself forward as a

candidate might be desirable. As it is currently set up, if I understand the

process correctly, a potential candidate does not announce that he or she is

willing to stand for election, and does not even have a formal opportunity to

withdraw until after the first winnowing occurs. It may be true that for cultural

reasons many Chinese are uncomfortable announcing that they wish to be

candidates for public office, and prefer for it to seem that they have been urged

into running by others. But the large number of drop-outs we heard about leads

me to think that individuals should have a means of making it known that they

would like to serve or are unwilling to serve. (Candidate registration, for

example, is common in many countries.) That many individuals withdraw after

being nominated undermines the primary process and must be confusing to

voters. It may also lead to concerns that pressure has been exerted to

encourage unapproved candidates to withdraw, when, in fact, it has not.

Proxy Voting

This practice was common and is potentially open to abuse. In one

villagers’ committee election we observed, I noted one balloting room where

perhaps 75% of the voters were voting for 1-5 others (this meant that somewhat

fewer than 10% of the total number of voters were voting for themselves alone).

In this balloting station, said to be the voting location for people from particularly

distant village groups, the number of proxies was listed next to each voter's

name, but procedures for filling out proxies were rather haphazard (for instance,
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the forms allowing the proxy to be cast were often filled out on-the-spot rather

than beforehand by the person who had assigned the proxy). In this location it

was also true that the requirement that one person be allowed to vote for up to

three others was adhered to by allowing a person to return to the balloting booth

twice. To be fair, in this same election, voters in other balloting rooms who

arrived with too many proxies or forms that were not filled out earlier, were turned

away -- much to their dismay!

In a more urban setting, we encountered some very complex proxy voting

arrangements. For instance, workers in a foreign-owned factory were not

granted time off to vote. So up to 10 workers would choose one of their co-

workers to cast all 10 ballots and they would pool their earnings for that day to

compensate the proxy for his or her time lost. Arrangements of this sort brought

to mind the benefits of casting one's ballot individually at one's convenience

rather than at very long meetings, as is the current custom.

Election Representation Ratios

In recent years, discrimination against rural voters in people’s congress

elections has been reduced from 8:1 to 4:1. What is not widely known in the

West, however, is that the election law grants local authorities the right to reduce

this ratio further (from 4:1 to 1:1), and that in places such as the suburbs of

Qujing City, Yunnan they have already reduced it to 1.5:1. This is a very positive

trend. It would be interesting to learn who decided this (the provincial people's

congress?) and on what grounds (indications were that more developed rural
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areas on the outskirts of cities were judged most ready for equal representation).

Villagers’ Committee elections have proved quite decisively that rural people can

handle the responsibility of voting without difficulty: that, in Chinese terms, their

quality (suzhi) is not too low. Perhaps it is time to think about true political

equality -- a 1:1 urban/rural ratio everywhere, in all elections. This would also

incidentally, be in accord with the National People’s Congress’s stated goal to

pursue the principle of "equality" in all election work.

Secret Balloting

All the people's congress elections we observed used anonymous

balloting. None of them, however, required secret balloting in a secret place. In

fact, the one voter in a factory election who took advantage of this option was

loudly derided by his fellow voters. Most voters thus filled out their ballots while

sitting next to their family members and neighbors. Although, I have no direct

evidence that this influenced their voting, one piece of indirect evidence suggests

it did. In an election outside Dali that turned out to be fairly close, I noted that

18/20 ballots left open on people's laps favored the winner. This suggests that

people who voted for the ultimate loser did not wish to advertise their choice and

that those who voted for the winner (who was also a member of the local village

elite) were perhaps advertising their loyalty and maybe even subtly mobilizing

others to follow their lead. This left me convinced that secret balloting in a secret

place might at times produce different results than simple anonymous balloting.
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There are also issues related to secrecy surrounding what is often a three

stage election process -- primary, main election, and runoff. In one county

people's congress election held in a very poor, remote mountain village, the

voting results were roughly as follows:

1) The Primary (yuxuan) -- conducted in village groups

Candidate A: 900 votes; Candidate B: 150 votes

A – 86% B –14%

2) The Main Election -- conducted at a public meeting, but with

anonymous ballots and ballot boxes

Candidate A: 550 votes: Candidate B: 600 votes

A – 48% B – 52%

(election declared invalid, owing to the legal requirement that winners

receive over 50% of all ballots, including write-ins, spoiled ballots and

abstentions)

3) The Runoff -- conducted in village groups

Candidate A: 1000 votes; Candidate B: 450 votes

A – 69% B – 31%

I think most members of the delegation which observed the main election

would agree that it appeared to be free and fair. As for the primary (held two
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weeks before), and the runoff (held two days later), we were not there and thus

cannot say. But the enormous swings in popularity cannot help but raise

concerns about lobbying and other forms of pressure that may have been applied

in a small group setting, not least because the ultimate winner was the current

Party secretary and the ultimate loser, though a former member of the village

elite, was now an ordinary villager.

In the end, we did not have enough information to conclude whether lack

of secrecy affected a significant number of votes. When not required to do so,

few voters took advantage of the opportunity to use secret balloting locations. In

principle, I would suggest that secret balloting best reflects voters' preferences,

anonymous voting is second best, and unknown procedures used in village

groups is a recipe for assorted irregularities.

Vote-Counting

I happened to pay considerable attention to ballot-counting procedures in

several villages. A number of issues arose. For one, there was much

uncertainty about what constituted a valid ballot and what counted as an

abstention (qiquan piao) or a spoiled ballot (fei piao). This came to my attention

in a village outside Dali, when five of the blackboards used for counting showed

five or ten abstentions and one blackboard recorded over 100 abstentions. But it

also appeared in other villages, such as one outside Yuxi, where counting went

painfully slowly because ballot counters in some rooms were dividing up ballots

into many different piles, depending on whether voters had made one or two (or
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more) marks on their ballot. The likely source of this problem were: 1) the ballot

counters could have benefited from more training; 2) more importantly, voters

were instructed to approve (zancheng) one candidate and reject (fandui) another.

Rejecting a candidate is an unnecessary complication that does not provide

additional information and clearly confuses many voters and counters. If there

was one suggestion I could make to national and provincial legislators, it would

be: in future revisions of election regulations, serious consideration should be

given to abolishing the fandui piao. If voters are just voting for one person, one

mark on the ballot is sufficient. Simplest is best.

People's Congresses and the Ministry of Civil Affairs may also want to

think more about vote-counting procedures. I was more impressed by the open

counting on blackboards (which we saw in people's congress elections) than the

counting in a back room (which we saw in villagers’ committee elections.) The

former typically received much attention from villagers who crowded up to each

blackboard. I suspect the ability of voters to witness the counting was also a

significant legitimacy-enhancer, if anyone questioned the honesty of the

counters. Slow counting was an issue in a number of locations (not least

because voters tended to drift away as the hours passed and the entertainment

wound down), but the solution one set of eager counters used (having two

people reading out ballots and two people writing down results simultaneously on

one blackboard), offered too many opportunities for confusion. Another effort to

increase transparency -- the practice of having one person looking over the
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shoulder of the person calling out the votes to ensure that the right name was

called -- was irregularly used in the elections we witnessed.

In the people's congress elections we observed, there was no effort to mix

up the ballots before counting took place. It was clear, in other words, that all the

ballots in one box had come from a specific village group. On the one hand, this

provided useful information about the fairness of the counting to voters and

observers, when it, for instance, turned out in one village that one set of small

groups had voted 3:1 for one candidate and the other had voted 3:1 for the other

candidate. On the other hand, given the newness of voting and concerns about

retaliation or pressure being applied when runoffs arose, one might argue that

this practice compromised ballot secrecy. In a more mature electoral system,

there may be no harm in knowing how people in a precinct voted. In a system

still coming into being, this might best be kept private.

My overall assessment of vote-counting in these elections is that I did not

see irregularities that would have caused the announced result and the true

result to differ. Nor did I see any evidence of fraud.

Run-off Elections

The requirement that victors receive more than 50% of all ballots

distributed has some unfortunate, unintended consequences. Most importantly,

it causes an undue number of runoffs when races are close. In fact, it

mathematically guarantees that close races will always be declared invalid when

the write-in votes, spoiled ballots and abstentions are added in. (Given that
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about 10% of the ballots in many locations fall in these three categories, this

means that unless a victor's margin is 55%-45% or greater, a run-off will always

be needed). As we saw in one quite tight election this can create several

problems. For one, it is not desirable to teach voters that democracy only works

when there is a rout. Second, too many elections can lead to voter apathy

(although the common practice of paying villagers 5-15 yuan to vote may reduce

this problem somewhat). Third, it is inefficient. Banning write-in votes in the final

balloting would be one way to reduce the number of run-off elections. A more

"democratic" option would be to move toward a system where whomever

received the most votes in the main election was declared the victor. Several

voters I spoke with outside Dali and outside Chuxiong complained there were too

many elections already. In fact, in several of the locations we visited, a villagers’

committee election and people’s congress election were held just a few weeks

apart.

People's Congress Elections Versus Villagers' Committee Elections

This trip was well-suited to compare the two kinds of elections. In general,

at least in late 2002 in Yunnan, villagers committee elections were nearer to

international standards than people's congress elections and civil affairs staff

seemed more attuned to the requirements for free and fair balloting than people's

congress staff. Perhaps the single most interesting thing I learned on the trip is

that villagers’ committee and people's congress elections "feel" very much the

same to voters. They are carried out in the same location, with the same
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districting, with the same voters, with the same hoopla, and even (often) with the

same candidates. Although the positions elected are quite different (as NPC

officials are at pains to explain), everything else is similar except for the Ministry

of Civil Affairs’ use of secret balloting, "sea election" nominating, primaries, and

so on. This strikes me as potentially delegitimating to people's congress

elections. In order to protect their prestige and status, people’s congresses

should be formed by elections at least as democratic as elections run by civil

affairs offices.

The Significance of People's Congress Elections

That candidates in county-level people's congress elections were mainly

villagers' committee members, Party branch members and other members of the

village elite, paradoxically, gives these elections perhaps their greatest

significance. It is hard to imagine that voters cared greatly about electing

deputies to county people's congresses, which frankly remain quite weak. But

what county people's congress elections do well is offer villagers an opportunity

for a referendum on the current leadership in the village, some of whom were

elected in the last villagers’ committee election, some of whom (e.g. Party

leaders) have never been subject to a popular vote. This mid-term, public

opinion poll could have an important effect in showing villagers’ committee and

Party branch members where they stand in the village; it might subtly shift power

between winners and losers, and it may encourage incumbent village leaders to

improve their work. It could likewise show who is vulnerable, derail otherwise
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promising careers, and lead both officials and voters to contemplate putting

forward more popular candidates when the next, arguably more important,

villagers’ committee election comes around.

Conclusion

Based on one, admittedly short election observation trip but also a decade

of research from afar, I have suggested a handful of technical improvements that

might be made in rural election procedures and practices. They include:

encourage candidate nominations by voters to be less ritualistic; rethink the use

of quotas and other means to ensure that sufficient numbers of minorities and

women are elected; further institutionalize primaries; establish candidate self-

registration; regulate proxy voting more carefully; consider the benefits of voters

casting ballots individually at their convenience rather than at long meetings;

promote greater political equality by adjusting election representation ratios; favor

secret balloting over simple anonymous balloting; make vote-counting more

transparent and mix up ballots before counting them; and most important of all,

abolish the “oppose” (fandui) vote and the requirement that victors in the main

election receive 50% of all ballots distributed in favor of a system where the

candidate who receives the most votes wins.

What unites these suggestions is the relative ease with which many of

them could be made and the comparatively large payoff they might have in

enhancing voter participation and interest while promoting China’s ongoing effort

to strengthen grassroots democracy.