Source: https://newgreenhorizons.us/howie-hawkins-dispatches-from-europe-georgia/

As Kermit the Frog famously said, “It’s not easy being Green.” That is true in Georgia as well as America. Georgian Greens are as familiar with Kermit’s lament as we are. Just to reinforce what I said in my last dispatch about how most Americans don’t know there is a country called Georgia, besides customer service rep for my international phone plan, I also had the same problem with customer service from my bank, which will not do overseas transactions on my debit card unless I tell them beforehand. When I told the bank customer service rep I needed to pre-authorize payments in Georgia, she tried to explain that wasn’t necessary because Georgia was in the United States. When I told her there was also a country called Georgia, she did find it on her list of countries and exclaimed she never knew. When I told that story to Merab Sharabidze, a former Green Party member of the Georgian parliament, he shared that when he went to a U.S. government sponsored meeting on environmental issues in Washington, D.C. in the 1990s, it had taken him a while to convince the American official registering him for the conference that he was from the nation, not the state, of Georgia. He had to point to a picture on the wall of President Bill Clinton with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze to convince the official. Just because Americans don’t know about the country of Georgia doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. The results of the election in Georgia tomorrow will have ramifications throughout the East Europe and West Asia region. Will Georgia turn toward Europe and liberal democracy, or toward a Russia-dominated autocracy? The ruling conservative Georgia Dream party is hoping to get elected on a socially conservative program of Orthodox Christian family values including discrimination against LGBTQ people and of avoiding Russian military intervention if Georgia votes the “wrong” way. The opposition, led by the independent President, Salome Zourabichvili, is a contentious coalition of many parties that really only agree on one thing: liberal democracy and EU membership for Georgia. Last night, I had dinner with three leaders of the Greens Party of Georgia: General Secretary Gia Gachechiladze, International Secretary Merab Sharabidze, and Guram Nikoleishvili, a member of the party’s executive committee. Guram was my guest on the Green Socialist Notes podcast on June 29 to talk about the massive street protests in Tbilisi against the foreign agents registration law, which civil society organizations and activists fear will enable the state to crush their activities as Russia has used a similar law to silence all political and anti-war opposition to Putin. The Greens Party of Georgia does not have candidates in tomorrow’s election. The party’s General Secretary, Gia Gachechiladze, was involved in negotiations with the other parties in which President Zourabichvili was playing match maker for the opposition coalition. But the Greens failed to get any of their candidates listed on a common slate under the Georgia’s fully proportional system where 150 members of parliament are elected by closed party or coalitions lists from a single national constituency, with a 5% electoral threshold to be awarded seats. All the slates sere finalized only about ta month ago for an election campaign that is obviously much shorter than American election campaigns. The Greens decided not to run anyone because as one of the few parties not sponsored by a wealthy oligarch, they wouldn’t get any media coverage because the major media organizations are owned by the oligarchs that sponsor the other parties. They said the social media platforms are also tough for them, too, because they are also owned by oligarchs, just like Elon Musk owns X, formerly Twitter. The Greens Party did qualify in 2024 as a registered party that could have run candidates because they submitted a petition that required 30,000 signatures. The party itself has about 3,000 formal members, but only about 100 who are consistent activists. Completing the 30,000-signature petition shows the Greens still have energy and public support. But they have little money. Instead of oligarch funding, the Greens rely on membership dues. But given the economic hard times Georgia faces, the party has suspended collecting dues until economic conditions improve. They will observe the election tomorrow and then turn their focus to local elections next year. The Greens Party of Georgia is the oldest party in Georgia. It is a founding member of the European Green Party, the federation of Green parties in the European Parliament. It got its start in the last years of the Soviet Union when it campaigned from 1989 to 1992 for multi-party democratic elections and independence for Georgia. In the first parliamentary elections in 1992, the Greens elected 11 members to the parliament. A Green member of parliament, Zurab Zhvania, switched to Shevardnadze’s ruling party in the 1995 election and became the chair of the parliament until 2001, when he broke with Shevardnadze over corruption. Zhvania formed a new party with Mikheil Saakashvili and would become prime minister with Saakashvili as President from 2003 to 2005. But Zhvania died in 2005 under suspicious circumstances that his family and many observers believe was an assassination. After Zhavania’s death, the Greens had no one in the government to protect them from the increasingly corrupt and repressive United National Movement of Saakashvili, whose goons raided and smashed up the Greens Party offices in 2007. In 2010, the Greens were part of the Georgia Dream coalition, which at that time was the pro-democracy force that rose up to drive Saakashvili and his UNM from power. The Greens Party’s International Secretary, Merab Sharabidze, was the Green on the Georgia Dream’s election slate and served in parliament until 2020. His business card from his days in the parliament identifies his parliamentary faction as “Georgia Dream – Greens.” The Greens left Georgia Dream because it became more authoritarian and pro-Russian. The current General Secretary, Gia Gachechiladze, has held his position as leader of the party since 2008. Merab and Gia appear to be in their sixties. Guram looks to be 30 something. I enjoyed eating and drinking with them. We ate Georgian fare, including a Georgian pizza, meat filled dumplings, spinach balls of spinach and spices, and cheese and fruit. They drank vodka and beer. I don’t drink alcohol, but I went through three cups of coffee, which I definitely needed after traveling east through two nights in 24 hours from New York to Georgia (the nation) and thoroughly confusing my jet-lagged biorhythms. We toasted repeatedly to the Green Party and to peace, with the threat of another Russian military intervention in Georgia, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Israel’s war on Palestine on our minds. They explained to me their view that Russia’s first military intervention in 1992-1993 in which Russia occupied the provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was in retaliation for Georgia permitting a pipeline for Azerbaijan gas to go through Georgia to Armenia, then Turkey, and on to Europe. The Russians had wanted Azerbaijan to send its gas through Georgia and then north through Russia and Ukraine to Europe in order to make Europe fully dependent on Russian gas exports. The 2008 Russian war in Georgia, the Georgian Greens said, was precipitated by George W. Bush’s declaration that Georgia and Ukraine should become part of NATO. Russia then recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent, although the international community does not. The three Greens I met with were divided on whether the governing or opposition coalition would win and what the consequences would be. The younger Guram was the optimist, thinking the opposition would win and open up political space for the Greens that the repressive Georgia Dream government is closing down. Gia and Merab thought Georgia Dream would win, but were not so worried that it would lead to the suppression of Green politics. Gia said the Greens survived the Saakashvili’s violent attack on the Green Party offices in 2007, so they can handle another Georgia Dream government led this time by its oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili. Merab felt Ivanishvili’s threat to shut down the pro-European opposition parties was just campaign rhetoric. Merab said that as the oldest Georgian party with an honorable history in winning democracy and independence for Georgia in the early 1990s and with Greens’ veterans from that period still active, he didn’t think Ivanishvili would dare go after the Greens. We will soon know whose predictions are more accurate.

The EGP member parties meet in Dublin December 6th-8th. Several resolutions on the genocide in Gaza were proposed and there is now ageeement on using the FYEG (federation of young european greens) resolution as a blueprint:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/632ad1fcd00c211cf0c45893/t/672b55134914b12c689f3bd9/1730893075998/R3+Palestine+Israel+v2.pdf

The swedish, norwegian, english and welsh are among member parties working on amending the resolution to be harsher towards Israel, will be interesting to see where the congress ends up. There is a pretty strong culture for consensus in the amendment sessions and my experience is that smaller member parties get more than their fair share of the floor if they want to.

There are people who are experts about voting system design. Almost all of them believe that the system we have for single-winner elections is just about the worst possible. Maybe somebody can invent something that would be worse. (In fact I have done that, but never mind.) But we have many alternatives that would all be better. Somehow the experts don’t settle on one system to use instead of our bad one. Why not? They keep finding newer systems they believe would be better, and argue with each other about which one is best. And they don’t actually do much to get any of those systems to replace the bad system we use.

If we could agree about what an ideal voting system ought to do, we could define a mathematical model which would do that, and it would be the best possible voting system. But in fact the “experts” don’t agree. They have close to two dozen rules that they think an ideal voting system ought to follow. And they have proven that no voting system can follow all of the rules. They disagree about which rules are most important and which ones we should give up. So “election science” is not a science at all.

My own opinion is that we should support whichever of the good alternatives has the most support, and try to get it put in general use. Then later if enough people support something that looks even better, then agree to switch to that. We do better to get a good system this year than to get a perfect system someday in the distant future. That is my opinion.

At the moment there are two systems that have significant support. One of them is RCV, Ranked Choice Voting. The other is AV, Approval Voting. There are a number of more complicated systems which don’t have much support yet.

The most common version of RCV goes like this: You vote for as many candidates as you want to, and you vote for them in order, The one you want most, the one you want next-most, and so on. When they count the votes, only your first choice counts. The candidate with the fewest votes is thrown out, and each of his votes go to whoever is listed as second choice. If the second choice loses, then the votes go to their third choices. When it’s down to two, the one with more votes is the winner.

The most common version of AV goes like this: You vote for as many candidates as you want. When the votes are counted, everybody you voted for gets a vote from you. If you vote for five candidates then five candidates get a vote from you. The candidate who gets the most votes, wins.

RCV has the most support in the most places now, so I will focus on that. Since it is the front-runner, it has gotten various criticisms.

Arguments against RCV and why they are inconclusive

Here is the first attack. RCV or similar systems have been tried in various places, and usually when they switch to RCV, third parties do not start winning elections. Since this voting system does not guarantee that third parties will win, we should support some other voting system instead that we have no real-world data about. But I say there are no guarantees. After all, if today voters think “The Green Party would be better but they only got 1% of the vote last time and they can’t win so why vote for them?” then with an alternative voting system we could still get “The Green Party would be better but they only got 30% of the vote last time so why bother to vote for them?”. An alternative voting system doesn’t guarantee a third party win. It only allows it.

Here is the second attack. In Burlington VT they switched to RCV and a progressive candidate won. Democrats and Republicans were outraged. Ignoring other third candidates, in one round of voting the Democrat came in third and lost. In the next round of voting the progressive got enough Democrat votes to win. But even more progressive voters voted Democrat second. If you count up the first and second place votes together, the Democrat got more votes. If the votes had been counted the old way, the Democrat would have won. It isn’t fair that the candidate with the most votes didn’t win. In response, I say that this is just another argument about what’s most important. With RCV, who you want more is important. With FPTP or AV, that doesn’t matter. You get to choose which way you think is better, there’s no objective way to argue that scientifically.

Here is the third attack. The argument is that third parties should not change who wins. Suppose candidates A and B run and A wins. If candidate C also runs, and because of that B wins, then a terrible miscarriage of justice has occurred and it is a bad voting system. If the Burlington election had been just Democrat and Republican, the Democrat would have won. If it had been just progressive and Democrat, the Democrat would have won because Republicans hated the progressive more than they hated the Democrat. The Democrat would have won every time if it was just two parties running. So how is it OK for the Progressive to win instead? Again I say that this is just another argument about what’s most important. If the most important thing is to keep third parties from changing the outcome, then you’re left with voting systems where that doesn’t happen. If that isn’t the most important thing, then RCV might be the best. If you believe in runoffs, it doesn’t make sense for the Republicans to get their Republican candidate into the runoff and also they get to choose who the opponent will be. They only get to decide between Democrat and progressive if their candidate loses. (I say it’s more important that each voter gets one vote – one vote at a time. This is just a different choice about voting systems. You can disagree about what’s important if you want to.)

Here is the fourth attack. RCV says you get a backup choice in case your first choice loses. But that doesn’t always work. Here’s an example. Imagine that the Republican gets 48% of the vote. It doesn’t matter about Republican second choices. 43% of the vote puts Green in first place, and 9% put Democrats first. Everybody who votes Green first also votes Democrat second, but none of the Democrats vote Green second. So first the Democrats lose, and then in the second round, Republicans win 48:43. This Republican win came because of the Greens. If enough of them had voted Democrat first, the first round would have come out 26:25 Democrat, and the next round would be 52:48 Democrat. Greens lost that election because they didn’t have sense enough to vote their second place choice first. My response is that this is a possible way to look at it. But if enough Democrats had chosen to vote Green second, Green would have won. But they didn’t bother. The third-party Democrats got to choose and they didn’t want Green. If there’s any blame here it’s on them.

A little about AV

Here is an attack on AV. Say you are a Green and you think Greens will lose this election. You have two choices. You can just vote Green, or you can vote Green and Democrat. If you just vote Green, you have gotten no advantage from AV. The Democrat or the Republican will win and you have no say in which it is. If you vote Green and Democrat, then it’s basically the same as voting Democrat. They got your vote. Imagine that it comes out 52% Democrat and 30% Green. That’s respectable for Greens and we can decide to campaign harder next time. Meanwhile Democrats can say that the country is 52% Democrat. But is it really 30% Green and 22% Democrat? The election didn’t say. If it had been an RCV election, the Republicans would have won and if it was 30% Greens first then everybody would know that the Democrats are now the third party. Next time they could choose between voting Green second versus watching the Republicans win again. I say, with AV if you are a third-party Green you get a choice. You can either vote for the Democrat because you want the Republican to lose, or you can vote against the Democrat and the Republican both, and that’s it. It isn’t that good a choice. But that’s just my opinion.

I think that AV is extra good for primaries. It means the candidates aren’t running against each other. With an AV Green primary, you should vote for all the candidates that you would campaign for. The winner will be the one that the most people will campaign for. If you are a candidate, then do your best to persuade the voters that you would be good. You don’t need to persuade them that somebody else is bad, that might in fact reduce your votes too. If you get 80% and the winner gets 90%, you haven’t done bad at all. So after the primary, we get the best chance to reduce hurt feelings and campaign together. There’s no guarantee. We might be bitterly hostile over some issue. But the candidate who’s best at resolving that issue has the best chance to win.

Bottom line: Support whichever alternative voting system has the most support. They’re all so much better than what we have, that it’s more important to make a change than to argue about which is best.