Quartiles franchise

The quartiles franchise is the suffrage system extend in Savam governing the right to vote in elections for the Assembly of Commons, state and local elections. It is a limited census-based universal suffrage: voting is allowed and votes are weighted according to one's position relative to the cens, but there is no restriction in terms of gender or race once those first conditions are met. Other conditions are based on age and the granting of civic rights following the national service. The current system exists since the reform of 1903 that followed a political crisis at the height of the Labarrist Age.

Context of the 1903 reform

In the early years of the 20th century, Savam was in the midst of the so-called Labarrist Age, with Marshal Valentin d'Hoste-Labarre serving as Viceroy since 1894. The Marshal had been elected to this position by the parliament in the immediate aftermath of the Savamese defeat in the Embute War, with the hope that his reputation as the "Hero of the East" (having managed to repel all Ceresoran assaults during the war) would help provide a strong unified leadership while the country rebuilt its power.

Although Labarre was initially on good terms with the parliamentarians, their relationship quickly soured. Indeed, while the federal parliament was mostly composed of liberals, the Marshal revealed himself as a supporter of radicalism and a keen populist. During his first term (1894 to 1904), Labarre used his viceregal powers extensively to implement a number of policies that were at odd with mainstream liberal ideology, leading to recurrent conflict with the parliament. Liberal parliamentarians were staunch supporters of the archetype of the enlightened respublic, which was defined by its emphasis on parliamentary over executive power, limited suffrage amongst the "productive classes" (the nobility, educated elites and bourgeoisie), laissez-faire economics, support of the moral order, and federalism (defense of states' rights). On the other hand, the growing radicals were supporters of centralisation in the Empire, executive primacy in many areas (including favouring technocratic over elected magistrates), the reduction of the nobility's privileges and a broadened electorate, interventionist economic policies, and the creation of a welfare net (no doubt influenced by their relationship to trade unions). Liberals regularly characterised those politics as populist, and often amalgamated all radicals with their more extreme branch: Collectivism. Labarre also came to be in conflict with members of the Council of the Chancellorship, although he managed to have more supporters appointed to the council using his influence, slowly but surely establishing a balance of liberals and radicals at the top of Savam's executive branch. He also managed to install supporters in the federal magistrature by changing their appointment rules using his executive authority, whenever the constitution remained silent or unclear on those specific procedures.

By the early 1900s, the opposition between the parliament and Marshal Labarre was creating a number of issues for the country. Both were trying to implement their own politics and block or slow down the others', eventually leading to a perceived lack of action or direction coming from Quesailles. Looking at those times from the present, one can see that this was not true. Although more reforms were enacted during the Marshal's second term, his first term saw the beginning of a successful state-led industrialisation program, which helped Savam recover its position within the great powers of Messenia. Public schools were also established during the first term, combining federal and local funding.

Labarre did manage to enact policies against the will of parliament by using both his leverage on commoners (rousing protests and using strike threats), helped by his orator talents and a genuine care for the lower classes (as claimed by many of his biographers), and his sympathies in some of the non-noble business elites that stemmed from his support of free trade (versus liberal protectionist policies) and his opposition to widespread affermage reserved to the nobility. But this support had limits, and some of Labarre's policies could not be implemented without the approval of the parliament.

In 1903, as he was nearing the end of his term, Labarre was working on a number of important welfare reforms, specifically the establishment of a federal pension system and the creation of a right to strike for workers. Obviously, those reforms were not seen with a good eye by the liberal establishment, and Labarre's political influence was not strong enough to push them through. Although the election of 1901 had seen an increased number of radical-inclined parliamentarians elected, it also looked impossible for Labarre to be re-elected by a mostly hostile parliament in 1904.

Quartiles

Definitions

A quartile is based on the same mathematical principle as deciles, which are sometimes more familliar to non-Savamese audience. Quartiles are a type of quantiles: given a set of data values, there exist 3 points that divide that set into four groups containing an equal number of data values. Deciles divide the set in ten groups of equal amount, following the same principle.

The wording of the Savamese suffrage system is loosely based upon those mathematical principles, notably because it does not use median but average values. It has been argued that quartiles should instead be referred as "quarters" (quarts or quartiers in Savamese), especially by several imminent mathematicians from the Imperial Acadamy of Mathematics, but this usage has failed to catch on. The texts of the 1919 constitution and the original 1903 law both use the word quartiles, and two amendments proposed to modify this wording failed to pass in 1932, then again in 1974.

Electoral principles

The quartile suffrage system is based upon the taxable income of citizens. The average taxable income is, in the context of suffrage discussion and legislation, called the census (Savamese: cens); in that context, it has not relationship to the common Ellish usage of census for data collection. From the cens, one thus divide the taxpayers population in two groups, earning more and less than the cens. Those two groups are further divided into two groups each so that the following pattern is created:

• First quartile: people earning less than 50% of the cens
• Second quartile: people earning between 50 and 100% of the cens
• Third quartile: people earning between 100 and 150% of the cens
• Fourth quartile: people earning more than 150% of the cens

The number of people in earch quartile is not equal, as this would be only possible if the median taxable income was used to define the cens, not the average. In effect, the cens is rarely exactly the average taxable income. It is defined by law and regularly adjusted for change of income distribution and inflation, but may linger for some time. As a result, some taxpayers may be counted in a quartile they do not belong based on their income and the actual average income. Adjustments are almost exclusively increases to the cens, which always transfer thousands of people from the second to the first quartile, negating their ability to vote. Such changes are not always welcomed and have often been met with riots and other civil disturbances, especially if the increases takes place amid a tense political context (see, for example, the Poll riots from 1983).

The first and second quartiles are usually the largest cohorts, with their exact rankings dependent on the fluctuations of the distribution of wealth in the Empire.

People belonging to each quartile are then allocated voting rights according to the quartile. The lowest quartile, earning less than half of the cens is not allowed to vote at all. The remaining three quartiles follow a weighted system, with one's vote given an increased weight as one rises in the quartiles, as follows:

• Second quartile: weight 1
• Third quartile: weight 2
• Fourth quartile: weight 4

Under this system, a voter from the fourth quartile counts as much as four voters from the second quartile. As a result, although it allows about 60% of the adult (25+ years of age) population to vote, the Savamese system is heavily skewed toward the interests of the wealthiest members of society; this has given rise to the familiar expression on ne compte pas des têtes; on les pèse (“you don’t count heads; you weigh them”). Depending on the exact distribution of the voting population, the top quartile can account for almost a majority of the total castable votes, and rarely less than 40% (with current statistics, the top quartile controls 42.2% of the votes with only 11.7% of the adult population). A faction thus needs only to convince the wealthiest class of voters to achieve power in the Assembly of Commons.

A exception to this system is the nobility. Nobles are allowed to vote whatever their position is relative to the cens. If a noble has a taxable income lower than half of the cens, his or her vote will still be counted with a weight 1, meaning that for the nobility, the first and second quartile are merged.

The minimum age to vote is 25. Because most of the population aged less than 25 does not have high income, the voting age actually matters little when combined with the quartiles. A last condition, albeit a very important one, is completion of national service in the armed forces, which allows the full accession to citizenship. Regardless of their income, a Savamese national that did not complete their service will never be allowed to vote.

Voting population

In 2013 in Savam the average taxable income was 19,371 Aurels per annum and the cens has been fixed at 18,500 Aurels since 2010. A revision of the cens is expected to take place in 2014 or 2015. According to those figures, the Imperial Electoral Directorate counted that 60.4 million people were eligible to cast a ballot (i.e. belonging to the second, third and fourth quartiles), with the minimum taxable income required of 9,250 Aurels per annum. This represents 60.17% of people aged 25+. Further data are compiled in the table below:

Quartile	Number of individuals (in thousands)	Share of adult population (percent)	Votes per individual	Total votes (in thousands)	Share of votes (percent)
First	39,982	39.83	0	0	0
Second	33,768	33.64	1	33,768	30.57
Third	14,916	14.86	2	29,833	27.0
Fourth	11,714	11.67	4	46,858	42.42