I Love my Dog...

But would I vote for her?

When Ana, the Portuguese friend we had lunch with last week, mentioned the PAN party, Pessoas, Animais, Natureza (People, Animals, and Nature) I was intrigued. When she explained they had gotten enough votes to send representatives to Parliament, I must have looked like Onix chocking, her/my head to one side. “Who is going to vote against animals and nature?” she explained.

Voting In Portugal

In Portugal, people over 18 years of age can vote. In fact, they are automatically enrolled. (What a concept!) A few years back, Portugal implemented a number of new policies and programs (Simplex) in hopes of simplifying and modernizing citizens’ interaction with their government. One of those initiatives was a new Citizen’s ID Card, Cartão do Cidadão. (We received a similar, though different colored, Temporary Resident Card about 10 days after our SEF meeting.) The benefits of the Citizen’s ID Card are many:

• It replaced 5 cards that residents needed in the past: a paper ID Card, a taxation card, a healthcare card, a social security card, and a voter identification card.

• By registering the card with a PIN, one can interact more efficiently with the government through secure digital portals.

• It includes biometrics, the fingerprints we provided during our SEF visit, offering further authentication capabilities.

Frankly, given the cards many functions it is difficult to imagine living in Portugal without one. But the benefit goes beyond simple efficiency:

At the beginning of the last decade, Portugal was still an extremely centralized country, with rifts between local and central authorities, difficult to bridge. 

The internet had made massive inroads with the country's elite, but few citizens were making an effort to access the internet or online services. 

So the challenge to modernize the state using digital means, and bringing citizens and public authorities closer together through digital communication channels, strengthening social cohesion, seemed an insurmountable one. — Thales Group

I added the italics above. While issues surrounding voter ID laws seem to polarize the U.S. population…here a simple plastic card’s intent is to strengthen social cohesion. And as a byproduct, one can vote. [I realize the U.S. is much bigger than Portugal. But the fact that voting laws vary from State to State has never made sense to me. Aren’t we all Americans? … apologies to my non-American readers.]

So many choices…

So Many Parties

Portugal has a lot of political parties … I found 21. Now to be fair, there are really two dominant parties: the Socialist and the Social Democratic party. The Socialists currently hold the most seats and are defined as a center-left party in the socialist tradition. The Social Democrats are referred to as center-right (meaning more financially conservative). They held power until 2015 … you may recall my post on Socrates. (If you are Portuguese or an expert on Portuguese politics, please feel free to comment. Also please feel free to weigh in on the surprise win of the Social Democrats in Lisbon’s recent Mayoral Election.)

Anyway, if you have been following along when there is no clear majority you have to form a coalition … find other folks who you can agree with. Collaborate, compromise … what an interesting concept.

Portugal’s Assembly of the Republic after than 2019 election.

Back to the Animals

In my research, I did find more “obscure”/”single-issue” parties in Portugal. A little over 8,000 people voted in the 2019 election to bring back the monarchy (The People’s Monarchists). There’s a party focused on Retirees and Pensioners who in the last election got about 11,500 votes. Rise Up is the country’s far-right nationalist party. (Unfortunately, it would seem we are seeing more of these parties gain members throughout Europe driven in part by the refugee crisis. With only 17,000 votes Rise Up lacks representation in Parliament.)

However another nationalist, conservative party Chega does hold one seat in Parliament. Chega wants to reduce taxes, considering the current system "brutal and aggressive to the ones who work and build wealth”. It supports chemical castration and some members also support the death penalty. (You may recall Portugal began abolishing the death penalty in 1852.) Chega promotes the “Western civilization” and some consider the party racist holding antiziganist (anti-Romani) views.

Less fringy, with 221,000 votes and 5 seats, we have the People’s party. (This is the conservative, Christian coalition that we discussed in our look at abortion in Portugal.) And in fifth place, we have PAN (People, Animals, and Nature). With just under 174,000 votes they have 4 seats in Parliament. Like many other parties in Portugal it has its roots, or similarities, in other EU parties:

…for the Animals is the first successful political party in the world that does not put the short-term interests of man above all, but instead the entire planet and all her inhabitants. A fundamentally different approach than the traditional parties, which focus on the short-term interests of people and in particularly on money and economic growth without thinking about the consequences for humans, animals, nature, and the environment. All our work and all our solutions have a planet-wide focus. And that makes us unique! — Partyfortheanimals.com

From their description above you can see that their progressive views make them a natural fit with other green parties and the Socialist. They are shown as one of the dark green dots above. They along with the Left Bloc (brown) and Unitary Democratic Party (red) form the coalition government of Portugal.

Is One System Better?

I think about the two-party system in America.

• I wonder if there are lessons from American history (Federalist, Whigs) that speak to the Republican Party today?

• I recall a time when there were Republicans, e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was financially conservative and socially liberal.

• I also know that there are many shades of Democrat.

• And that in certain states, many Independents are excluded from a key part of the electoral process … primaries. (While I was never part of the Yang Gang, I listened to Andrew Yang’s conversation with Kara Swisher on her podcast SWAY about ending the two-party system. He raises some interesting points. If you are so inclined download this episode, put on your earphones, and take a walk.)

"He's not listening to us, he's listening to Big Money. That's why we're here at his yacht in D.C." — CommonDreams.org

And, I am Also Bothered By…

As a former Californian, I always felt screwed by the Electoral College. Do you really have a representative government when 1 million Montanans have the same number of votes in the Senate as 39.5 million Californians?

And don’t get me started on the West Virginia Senator who represents less than 2 million voters but can gum up the works while lounging on his yacht. Yacht … West Virginia … does anyone else see the non-sequitur?

And then we have the issue of gerrymandering¹ … which can exist in either system but is far less likely in a Parliamentary system.

Finally, doesn’t it come down to the vote … more specifically the percentage of eligible voters that vote? If the U.S. 2020 election showed us nothing, it showed us turnout matters. In part because of Covid and the fact that only in-person voting was permitted during the Portuguese Presidential election, less than 40% of the eligible Portuguese voters participated. During the last election for the Assembly, it was less than 50%. While everyone seems to have an opinion about the effectiveness of their government, many seem too disenchanted to participate.

1. Since the Republican Senate seats skew heavily toward rural areas, in this case, it is possible for 41 Republican senators, who represent just 21% of the population, to stop voting rights legislation backed by 70% of Americans. — Heather Cox Richardson