Elections in Menghe

Elections in Menghe are held every five years for delegates to the National Assembly and provincial assemblies, every two years for Village-level mayors and County-level councilmembers, and every year for delegates to the Village and County level Social Consultative Conferences. Executive officials at all other levels, from the Chairman of the Supreme Council to county heads, are appointed by a separate cadre management system and do not face democratic elections.

At each level, candidates for the election can only run if they receive the approval of the district's Elections Board, which is subordinate to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. The Menghean Socialist Party exercises tight control over these elections boards, ensuring that only candidates who are friendly to the regime may run. As such, while elections may involve a more or less fair race between two Socialist Party candidates, or between a Socialist Party candidate and another candidate from the United Front for National Restoration, candidates expressing serious opposition to the system are denied access.

The situation lightened somewhat in the 2019 election, where independent candidates were allowed to run for National Assembly seats for the first time since 1927. Stringent restrictions on media use and campaigning ensured that the UFNR retained a large majority in the legislature, but international observers rated the election as a significant step toward free democratic competition.

Eligibility

All Menghean citizens over the standard age of 19 are automatically registered to vote. Each district puts together an electoral roll using citizen registration data, and citizens confirm their identity at the polling station by showing their Resident ID card. Voting is not compulsory, though the MSP holds large rallies every year to encourage party supporters to vote.

Citizens may only vote at the polling station whose district contains the permanent address listed on their Resident ID card. Until recently, citizens could only cast ballots if the permanent address on their Resident ID card was situated in the county-level entity where their household was registered; thus, migrants from rural areas to cities were only eligible to vote in their home counties, and only if they remained registered with a relative's address. This restriction was relaxed in 2018, allowing migrant workers to cast ballots in their destination city if they had updated their permanent address at least one year prior.

Citizens living in a different part of Menghe from their registered home, or unable to reach a polling station on election day, may mail in an absentee ballot. Absentee ballots must be sent from Menghean soil, thus Mengheans living overseas cannot vote unless they return in person; an exception exists for military personnel serving at sea or on overseas bases.

Voting rights may also be revoked on other grounds. Citizens may not cast ballots from prison or jail, even if not yet convicted of a crime, nor may they cast ballots while on parole. Male citizens over the age of 19 who did not submit to a conscription eligibility check, or who were conscripted but did not appear for training, are also denied suffrage until they complete their training. At the judge's discretion, individuals convicted of misdemeanors may regain the right to vote after release, usually with a waiting period of five or ten years, while convicted felons lose the right to vote indefinitely. Suffrage may be restored to a convicted criminal if their case is cleared by a review court or if they are pardoned by the Chairman of the Supreme Council.

Voting process

Three weeks before an election, citizens wishing to run for office must first seek the approval of the relevant district's Election Board, a temporary body which determines the list of candidates appearing on the ballot. Each National Assembly district has an election board, as does each Provincial Assembly district and each County-level unit; candidates in village-level elections must seek the approval of the county-level board above them. By law, candidates must hold Menghean citizenship, reside in their constituency for at least five years, and be over the Standard Age of 24. Further qualifications, which may include a high score on the National Administration Examination, a certain number of signatures on a petition, or a clean criminal record, are left to the discretion of provincial lawmakers and the Election Boards themselves. Until 2019, it was standard practice for Election Boards to require that candidates running in legislative elections have the endorsement of the United Front for National Restoration. Parties generally choose nominees through their own internal process, and can nominate multiple candidates from the same party to run in an election.

Once candidates are approved by the Election Board, they may only campaign during the two weeks immediately preceding the election. There are strict regulations on campaign finance, advertising, and political speech: public news channels are prohibited from covering campaign events, and campaign posters may only be mounted on special boards in front of polling stations, with one poster of equal size for each candidate. Public speeches and rallies by candidates or their support groups may be broken up by police if they violate local laws on public order or noise.

Elections take place every year on July 14th. Election day is not a national holiday, but employers are encouraged to let their workers out early to vote or grant breaks in the middle of the day. Winning candidates are sworn into office on August 1st, which is also the anniversary of the founding of the Federative Republic of Menghe, and coincides with a week-long national holiday.

Ballots in Menghe follow a standard national format, as specified by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Voters entering the polling station receive a separate ballot for each office up for election, with the list of names approved by the Election Board printed on it. To the left side of each name is the emblem of their party, and to the right is a blank space. Voters select their choice by using a red rubber stamp (usually engraved with the Gomun character 選, "choose") to mark the blank space next to the candidate of their choice. This is a single non transferable vote system, with no option to rank preferences or choose a party list. There is no option for write-in candidates, either. Ballots are color-coded by office, and are deposited in separate matching-color ballot boxes for each office: white for village-level elections, green for council elections, orange for provincial assemblies, and blue for the National Assembly.

If a voter stamped multiple boxes, or added a write-in name, the ballot is considered spoilt and excluded from the tally; if an ink stamp overlaps between two boxes, it is counted as belonging to the candidate with at least 50% of the stamp in their box. Traditionally, vote-counting was carried out manually by staff hired by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, but some districts have purchased optical paper-scanning machines similar to those used in banks to count money and record checks. As of 2019, no districts have switched over to electronic ballots.

Votes are tallied on a simple-plurality, first-past-the-post basis, with the election going to whichever candidate has the largest number of votes even if they lack a majority. If the election is very close, the Election Board may call a recount at its discretion, or may hold a board vote to determine the winner. There is no provision for second-round or runoff elections.

Elections by locality

Village-level

In rural "fifth-level divisions" (villages and towns), the mayor (rijang or ŭbjang respectively) is directly elected, with elections taking place every two years. In myŏn, the urban equivalent, there is no executive office. In gaja, special fifth-level divisions in the Dzungar and Ketchvan Semi-Autonomous Provinces, the village chief may be either elected or selected in accordance with tribal custom. Under the 1989 Yusin constitution, this is the only administrative level at which the executive faces a popular vote.

International observers consider village elections to be the fairest in Menghe, with genuine competition between candidates. Independent candidates were first allowed to run at this level in 1989, provided that they received the approval of a local elections board, and there have been numerous cases of independent candidates winning village or town mayorships. The Menghean Socialist Party tolerates this greater leeway because fifth-level governments have extremely limited administrative power, and are mainly responsible for overseeing the allocation of services budgeted by higher governments.

County-level

In "fourth-level divisions" (counties, county-level cities, and metropolitan districts), the appointed executive leader is advised by a group of elected councilmembers, generally between 3 and 7. Each councilmember represents a separate single-member district, and elections are held every year. Councilmember districts may be contiguous with village, town, myŏn, or gaja borders, though they are generally larger and sometimes cut across smaller units, especially in urban areas.

As in village-level elections, the MSP tolerates relatively genuine competition at this level because councilmembers have very limited power. While they may vote on advisory papers for the county head, their votes are nonbinding, and the county head can dissolve the council and call new elections at his or her discretion. Most councilmember work consists of constituency service, with rural councilmembers overseeing service provision by the village-level leaders below them, and urban councilmembers overseeing service provision directly. Councilmembers also play an important role in gathering public input on local policy issues and weighing possible options at deliberative meetings.

Provincial assemblies

Each of Menghe's provinces, including the Semi-Autonomous Provinces, has an elected legislature whose members serve two-year terms. They represent single-seat districts, the number of which is generally proportional to provincial population. There is no equivalent provincial-level legislature in Menghe's four Directly Governed Cities.

Provincial assemblies have more authority than their county-level counterparts, including the power to pass provincial laws and overrule decisions by the Governor with a 2/3 majority. Yet because Menghe is a unitary system, laws passed by the National Assembly supersede provincial laws, and the provincial assembly's scope of authority is limited. Election Boards at this level also have a history of regulating candidate choices more restrictively.

National Assembly

The 278 representatives in Menghe's National Assembly are directly elected from single-seat districts. Each district represents about 1.9 million people, rounded such that each province has an integer number of districts. National Assembly representatives serve five-year terms, with all elections taking place in the same year, i.e. 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019. There are no term limits.

Historically National Assembly seats were the most tightly controlled. Until 2019, only candidates affiliated with the UFNR coalition were allowed to run. Particularly during the 1990s, it was common for one Socialist Party candidate to run unopposed, with the MSDP and MLP endorsing him or her, and a few elections remained uncontested even in 2019.

Electoral freedom

Although Menghe does hold elections, most international human rights groups still consider it an autocracy, as the Menghean Socialist Party has historically manipulated the rules to ensure that it remains in power. Election Boards have enormous power to determine which names appear on the ballot, and have used this power to ensure that only MSP-affiliated or MSP-friendly candidates run. Between 1989 and 2019, the modal election featured two MSP candidates, or one MSP against one MSDP or MWP candidate, ensuring that even with free competition any result would keep the UFNR in power. Additionally, ballot boxes are often poorly shielded, raising the possibility that electoral staff can see which box a voter marked, and vote counting is performed by Ministry of Civil Affairs employees who can manipulate the results if needed.

Menghean elections also have limited influence because the most important positions in the country are unelected. The Supreme Council, currently Choe Sŭng-min, is indirectly elected through a show of hands in the National Assembly, in a procedure carefully orchestrated to ensure the victory of the incumbent. Local executives, such as provincial governors, prefectural administrators, and county heads, are appointed through the Cadre Management System based on a standardized scorecard of job performance, and can generally overrule decisions by the elected body advising them.

Isaac Keaty, a prominent scholar of authoritarian politics, rated Menghe's election system as "semi-competitive" in 2017, noting that although opposition candidates were barred from running, there was still genuine democratic competition between pro-regime candidates. This gave voters the ability to throw out incumbents who had performed poorly and elect challengers with more popular policy preferences. It also gave local governments a stronger incentive to bolster their popularity, with some statistical evidence that more competitive districts also spend more money on health and education services. After the end of the Disciplined Society Campaign, some villages and counties even began experimenting with more free candidate nomination processes, such as allowing an independent candidate to run if they collected a certain number of signatures.

The largest change to the system came in July 2019, when the National Assembly passed the Competitive Elections Law. This law mandated that Election Boards for National and Provincial Assembly seats follow a standard set of transparent procedures to choose the candidates appearing on ballots. Foreign pressure, particularly from Hallia, Tír Glas, and Dayashina, was a major contribution to the reform, though prominent domestic intellectuals had been calling for it for several years.

• Election Boards may not require that candidates have a party affiliation in order to run.
• In order to appear on the ballot, independents must gather a petition with 10,000 names and submit it to the district's Elections Board three weeks before the election.
• Non-affiliated candidates may campaign for a period of two weeks leading up to the election.
• During this two weeks they will be permitted to hold speeches and rallies, as long as they do not use these rallies to agitate for violent action.
• Non-affiliated candidates may not form opposition parties, and must run and legislate as independents.
• Television and radio networks are prohibited from running campaign advertisements for any candidate.
• Candidates who advocate for secession or who have secessionist ties are disqualified from running.
• Candidates who advocate for violent overthrow of the government are disqualified from running.
• International election observers shall be permitted to enter polling stations.

On paper, these rules provide for fair democratic competition, representing a major improvement over the UFNR-controlled elections in prior years. Even so, many of the new provisions are designed to tip the playing field in the MSP's favor. Bans on secessionist and violent-overthrow rhetoric served as grounds to remove radical opposition members, and the stringent limits on rallies, campaigns, and television coverage gave independents few opportunities to make their identities and platforms known. More practically, the new rules were only unveiled five weeks ahead of the July 2019 election, giving opposition candidates very little time to gather the necessary signatures. The MSP's decision to draft and endorse the bill likely stemmed from its prediction, later proven correct, that under such restrictive rules it could still maintain a commanding majority in the legislature.

Recent national elections

2014 National Assembly elections

Following the July 2014 elections, the MSP's majority in the National Assembly fell to 189 out of 278 seats (68%), its lowest figure since the National Assembly first convened in 1989. Most of the gains were captured by the Menghean Social-Democratic Party, which raised its seat share from 42 to 67.

Although this result had no real implications for policymaking - the MSDP remained a member of the UFNR and the MSP's own majority was large enough to reach a 2/3 majority by itself - it came as a surprise to many domestic and international observers. Some interpreted it as a decline in the regime's popularity, with dissidents casting protest votes for the MSDP, while others interpreted it as a sign that Menghe's political center of gravity had shifted to the right of the MSP's policy positions. A more skeptical third view argues that the MSP anticipated and allowed this outcome - the share of MSDP-contested seats also reached an all-time high - but even this would signal a turn toward multi-party competition.

See also

• Government of Menghe
• National Assembly (Menghe)
• National Social Consultative Conference (Menghe)
• Menghean Socialist Party