Gallimore raised a most legitimate question

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Patrick Gallimore, in a Letter to the Editor on February 8, 2025 captioned ‘US voting system is flawed’, pointed out the fact that the system of electing a US president via the Electoral College could result in a person winning the presidency but failing to win the popular vote. He pointed to Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 as an example; he could have easily pointed to George W. Bush’s victory in 2000 and three other instances before that. Mr Gallimore, quite legitimately, questioned if such outcomes are ‘democratic’.

A minority winner is possible whenever a leader is not chosen directly via a direct vote. In a parliamentary system, it is not the number of votes per se which determines the winner, but the number of seats. It is therefore possible in a parliamentary system to elect a minority government. This did, in fact, happen in Jamaica in 1944. The election of that year was won by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which won 17 seats to the Peoples National Party’s (PNP) 13 seats. The JLP received 199,538 votes (42.7 per cent) to the PNP’s 203,048 (43.5 per cent).

In a ‘first past the post’ system, the margin of victory is irrelevant; one more vote than the opponent in a seat secures victory. For the 1944 result to be possible, it meant that the PNP victories were larger than the JLP’s in term of the votes in the seats won. In short, the outcome is that each vote is weighted differently, with a vote in smaller constituencies carrying more weight that a vote in larger ones. So is it really ‘one man one vote’? This is the same situation in the US Electoral College.

Ed McCoy, in a Letter to the Editor on February 11, 2025 captioned ‘Mind you own business’, lambasted Gallimore for raising the issue of whether or not the Electoral College is truly democratic. Given the US history of attempting to school the rest of the world (including Jamaica) on what is and what is not democratic government, this is a most legitimate question to raise. We are interested in all electoral systems around the world, as they hold lessons for us as we try to structure our own society. The truth is, there is much we have seen in the US which falls short of the lessons which the US has been imploring the rest of the world to adopt.

It is unfortunate that McCoy claims that Gallimore should not have expressed an opinion on the Electoral College, since he is “not a US citizen”. McCoy goes on to accuse Gallimore of parroting “his country’s political left’s inept talking points”. McCoy, by virtue of his address, lives in the US and he claims, in his letter, that he is not a Jamaican citizen. Given his line of reasoning, does he not see his regular proselytising of right-wing views to a Jamaican audience as seeking to interfere in Jamaica’s governance? Maybe he should ask himself why should Jamaicans living in Jamaica care about his views. I am sure that US citizens living in the US care nothing about my views.

PETER-JOHN GORDON

Department of Economics

UWI Mona

peterjohn.gordon@

uwimona.edu.jm