Iraq 1, Senate 0
BY JAMES TARANTO
The Best of the Web
Wednesday, October 5, 2005
The Iraqi National Assembly has reversed a change in the rules for this month's constitutional referendum, amid criticism from the U.N. and Sunni Arab leaders, Reuters reports. The referendum will fail if two-thirds of the voters in at least three provinces vote "no," and the dispute was over the definition of "voters":
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On Sunday, parliament voted to define the rules for the referendum, saying that for it to be defeated, two thirds of registered voters--rather than two in three who cast a ballot--in three of Iraq's 18 provinces would have to say "No."
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Under this plan, registered voters who stayed away from the polls would have been effectively voting "yes"--which is patently unfair to the "no" side (since they would actually have to get their supporters to the polls) as well as to those Iraqis wishing to exercise their right not to vote.
Still, such scale-tipping rules are not unheard of, even in established democracies. One example is the Turkish Parliament. In March 2003, just before Iraq's liberation, lawmakers in Ankara voted 264-250 to allow the deployment of U.S. ground troops on Turkish soil. But because 19 abstentions were counted as if they had been "no" votes, the resolution was defeated, and U.S.-Turkish relations have been strained ever since.
Another example is the U.S. Senate filibuster. Breaking a filibuster requires a vote for "cloture," which ends "debate" on a bill or appointment. A cloture vote requires the approval of three-fifths of senators--not of senators voting or even present, but of all senators currently serving, which means at least 60 when there are no vacancies. Thus if 40 senators are absent or not voting, a 59-1 vote in favor of cloture would still fail.
In this regard, then, Iraq is already more democratic than the world's greatest deliberative body. Three cheers for progress.
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