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Mar 4, 2013
Your Friend in Knesset
One of the debates surrounding the formation of a new government is the idea of electoral reform. There are lots of ideas and suggestions that have been floated, and realistically probably nothing will come of it. A couple of the more talked about ideas include raising the minimum threshold and changing to a district-based, or regional perhaps, form of representation.
I have long been in favor of regional voting, district-based representation. I feel it makes the elected official more responsible to the voter, the elected official will have to be more accessible to the voter, and at the end of the day he will be held responsible for his actions and record.
There is a little interesting tidbit I found in the news on this subject. While electoral reform is not yet happening, and is perhaps already even on the back-burner, Yesh Atid is preparing for the day.
According to NRG, Yesh Atid has mapped out the country and has appointed one of its MKs to be responsible for each region. The specific MK will be responsible for the regions residents and have to work towards assisting "his residents" and solve their problems.
Yesh Atid calls this program "Your friend in the Knesset". You can go to the Yesh Atid website and put in your place of residence, and discover who they have assigned to represent your area. After that, any problem you have you can be in touch with that MK.
To test it, I checked out who is the representative for Bet Shemesh. As expected, MK Rav Dov Lipman is the representative who will deal with Bet Shemesh area issues. In addition to Lipman, another MK anmed Rinah Frankel is also assigned to the area. It is not unusual for more than one MK to be assigned to the area - I checked and Jerusalem has 8 MKs assigned to it, and Haifa has 5. Tiberias has 1, but Ashdod has 5. I don't know how they divided it up and how they decided how many MKs to assign to each area, but I love the idea.
I am not a Yesh Atid supporter, but I commend them for coming to the Knesset with new ideas. One of the benefits of so many new politicians in Knesset is that these are people who did not come up through "the system". They are political outsiders. What is good about that is that they are not tied to any particular system, and can bring fresh ideas to the table.
I have long been in favor of regional voting, district-based representation. I feel it makes the elected official more responsible to the voter, the elected official will have to be more accessible to the voter, and at the end of the day he will be held responsible for his actions and record.
There is a little interesting tidbit I found in the news on this subject. While electoral reform is not yet happening, and is perhaps already even on the back-burner, Yesh Atid is preparing for the day.
According to NRG, Yesh Atid has mapped out the country and has appointed one of its MKs to be responsible for each region. The specific MK will be responsible for the regions residents and have to work towards assisting "his residents" and solve their problems.
Yesh Atid calls this program "Your friend in the Knesset". You can go to the Yesh Atid website and put in your place of residence, and discover who they have assigned to represent your area. After that, any problem you have you can be in touch with that MK.
To test it, I checked out who is the representative for Bet Shemesh. As expected, MK Rav Dov Lipman is the representative who will deal with Bet Shemesh area issues. In addition to Lipman, another MK anmed Rinah Frankel is also assigned to the area. It is not unusual for more than one MK to be assigned to the area - I checked and Jerusalem has 8 MKs assigned to it, and Haifa has 5. Tiberias has 1, but Ashdod has 5. I don't know how they divided it up and how they decided how many MKs to assign to each area, but I love the idea.
I am not a Yesh Atid supporter, but I commend them for coming to the Knesset with new ideas. One of the benefits of so many new politicians in Knesset is that these are people who did not come up through "the system". They are political outsiders. What is good about that is that they are not tied to any particular system, and can bring fresh ideas to the table.
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Labels:
electoral reform,
knesset,
Yesh Atid
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Teverya/Tiberias has a population of about 42,000. Ashdod has a population of over 200,000. Hence the difference in numbers of assigned MKs? Ashdod is a busy industrial port, and Tiberias is a small city surrounded by a rural population. Very different areas in their needs.
ReplyDeleteIt is a nice initiative, so is the one where they intend to all come to each parliamentary session. A true initiative though, would be for these MoKs to move to these areas and live there too.
ReplyDeleteJosh
Cute gimick, but since there's no regional voting, there's no reason that a particular MK has to truly represent "his" district's interests when voting. What if there's a regional need that goes against the YA platform? Would they help you? Probably not, but with regional elections there's a much better chance.
ReplyDeletethis has nothing to do with voting. not that I can make out at least. it is just assigning MKS to districts to help the people within those districts. they will have an address to turn to with their problems. nothing to do with voting.
ReplyDeleteit does not replace changing to a district-voting system...
It does not replace the district voting, but it is an attempt to make you think that Mr or Ms X is representing your area, while the other politicians and parties do not care about 'me'.
ReplyDeleteJosh