For many are called, but few are chosen

For many months now, people in the United States of America have been involved in a tortuous process which will (eventually) culminate in the election of one individual as President of the entire country. Two rival parties vie for public support, although each one in reality contains a wide range of opinions and viewpoints. Within each party, a ruthless process of elimination takes place, as candidates realise, one by one, that there is no realistic chance of them securing their party’s nomination. There are few rules as to what constitutes acceptable behaviour, and a huge amount of money has to be spent on advertising, television slots, literature and the like. It is therefore clearly an advantage to be wealthy at the start of the process.

In the United Kingdom, the vote to leave the European Union, against the advice of almost every political leader, has brought about a severe storm within each of the two foremost parties. Within the party in government, there is to be a long drawn-out contest for a new leader, not as bruising as the American one, but with some similarities. Within Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, no vacancy for leader officially exists, but there is a huge rebellion within the Parliamentary Party, which may also lead to a similar drawn-out internal process.

Elections within the Bahá’í community are organised on a quite different basis. For a start, there are no candidates. No-one puts themselves forward. Within each town or village, the Bahá’ís come together once a year for a meeting organised on spiritual lines. After prayer, and some short readings encouraging the election of people with the best combination of “recognised ability” and of “selfless devotion”, each person simply writes down the names of nine Bahá’ís within that town/village on their ballot paper. The nine people who receive the most votes are automatically considered to have been elected as the Local Spiritual Assembly. Of course, there are further details, but in essence that is how it is done. The Bahá’ís do not even discuss between themselves the qualities of other individuals. The election is considered as between the voter, his or her conscience, and God!

The result, hopefully, is a harmonious process in which no-one knows who has voted for whom, and in which no cliques can form. Hopefully, the nine people elected will include reasonable and moderate people, whereas an adversarial system can sometimes favour more stubborn people, with strong opinions.

“Well, yes,” you may say. “It is easy for a small group of people who know each other. It wouldn’t work for the whole country.” Fair point. What happens, in the election of the National Spiritual Assembly, is that the Bahá’ís in each area vote for one person, who becomes their delegate and goes to a national convention. The delegate, once at the convention, will again be able to vote for nine people, again without any hindrance from the procedures of nominations, canvassing, etc. And the odd thing is – it works! Every vote is cast for someone, because of their positive qualities, rather than, as sometimes happens elsewhere, against someone, because of their less attractive qualities or their predetermined ideas.

Democracy means “government by the people”, but the actual system for achieving that varies widely from country to country. In the United States, the President is elected separately from the Congress. The result is that he (or she?) is charged with running the country, but does not necessarily have the legislature behind him (or her). In the United Kingdom, this never happens, because the person charged with organising the day-to-day running of the country, the Prime Minister, sits in parliament and needs to have the support of that Parliament (well, a majority of it), otherwise he/she falls out of power. This last situation is effectively what has just happened.

In the Bahá’í system, both the Local Spiritual Assembly and the National Spiritual Assembly are automatically elected afresh every year, so there should always be some renewal alongside a certain continuity, so confrontation and opposition are simply not required as part of the system at all. There are no competing groups or parties, so everyone naturally pulls together.

Abdu’l-Bahá, who visited the U.S.A. in 1912, hoped that the American democracy would become glorious in spiritual matters, even as it was aspiring to develop in material ways. He predicted that it would eventually be America which would start the process of instituting a world-wide and permanent peace. It is my personal hope that the people of the United States of America will one day have a government which will be able to further the causes of peace, understanding and justice in the world. And in Britain, which has now stepped back from membership of an ever-closer union of nations, the election of tolerant and far-sighted leaders is every bit as important…