This week I will once again discuss some of the voting systems that may be considered for our future electoral reform. Single transferable vote (STV) is often touted as a “proportional” system, it is not, it is merely Instant Run Off (otherwise k…
Continue readingTag: Electoral Reform
Montreal Simon: Joe Oliver and the Con War on Justin Trudeau
You might think that Joe Oliver would have stayed missing after the Cons lost the election, and he lost his seat.Or sought refuge in his private Bay Street Boy's Club…So he wouldn't have to answer questions about what him and Stephen Harper&#…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Poll: 8/10 of Canadians feel Trudeau/LPC doing good/acceptable job on electoral reform
Lots of sound and fury out there in some quarters (mostly the Conservative Party, and academics/newspaper pundits/editorialists) about how dare the Liberal government propose changing the electoral system from First Past The Post to something else with…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading.- Will Wachtmeister reviews Malcolm Torry’s book of arguments for a basic income, focusing in particular on social cohesion and innovation as important reasons why individuals should enjoy economic security. But Se…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Chris Harper highlights a few of the factors necessary to help boost the long-term health of children:First, Antonovsky found that whatever stresses you encounter must be comprehensible. Children, for exampl…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On strategic choices
Christopher Kam’s series of posts on political parties’ strategy surrounding electoral reform is definitely worth a read. But I’ll stand by the view that there’s another alternative interpretation of the likely outcomes – particularly based on the like…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Scott Santens discusses how a basic income could help to foster social cohesion. And Jared Bernstein confirms the seemingly obvious point that properly-funded social programs work wonders in reducing poverty. – …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.- In reviewing Gabriel Zucman’s new book, Cass Sunstein discusses the need to rein in tax havens and ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share of the price of a functional society:(W)hatever your politi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On standards for reform
Others have duly criticized the Star’s editorial on electoral reform. But I’ll argue that it can be brought in line with reasonable expectations with one important change.Simply put, it’s not a problem to insist upon “broad consensus” on a new electora…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: We Should Think Very Carefully
http://www.knowledge.info/A lot has been written recently about electoral reform — …
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Is a Referendum the Best Way to Determine an Electoral System?
.Is a Referendum the Best Way to Determine an Electoral System?
*Cf. Robin Sears: “The Conservatives are already demanding a referendum on any change to the electoral system, secure in the knowledge that that would mean certain defeat for any reform. Some gullible journalists have defended a referendum as an essential democratic test. What that naively fails to recall, of course, is that there has never been a non-partisan “democratic” referendum. The final choice will inevitably be political and require partisan approval.”**Why would they? First-past-the-post is not on the agenda, as the Liberal election platform clearly says: “We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.We will convene an all-party Parliamentary committee to review a wide variety of reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting, and online voting.This committee will deliver its recommendations to Parliament. Within 18 months of forming government, we will introduce legislation to enact electoral reform.”***Under FPP, less populated rural ridings carry as much representational weight in parliament as do densely populated urban ridings. Because of that discrepancy, they are really less democratically representational. Both a ranking ballot system and PR in particular would in fact be more representational of all voters in a given riding and thus more democratic.
****This has already begun in rural newspapers and even The Globe and Mail.
Politics and Entertainment: Is a Referendum the Best Way to Determine an Electoral System?
.Is a Referendum the Best Way to Determine an Electoral System? Theoretically a referendum may seem like the most obvious and democratic way to determine whether electoral reform is desirable in Canada; but, as we have seen with referendums at the provincial level in BC, PEI, and Ontario, the results
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: FPTP Or Not FPTP?
I don’t mind the Cullen/Coyne option, where we adopt a new system, have one election under it to see how we like it, and then have a referendum, where going back to pure FPTP is one of the options. Personally, I like better the idea of ratifying a newl…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Electoral Reform first, then a referendum? Doable.
First off, Happy New Year everyone! I also hope you all had a good Christmas, and Happy Eastern Orthodox Christmas to those celebrating that this week. Let’s talk electoral reform again, shall we? I know it’s the seemingly implausible ̶…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Nicholas Fitz observes that inequality is far worse than the U.S. public believes – even as it already wants to see significant action. And Thomas Piketty updates his policy prescriptions arising out of Capital:…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: That’s Just Funny
http://www.theguardian.com/It was never going to be easy reforming our electoral syst…
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Michael Harris On Rona Ambrose and the Con War On Electoral Reform
As we all know, Rona Ambrose can on occasion, and even without realizing it, be quite funny.Like the time she found herself agreeing with Australia's Stoner Sloth that marijuana makes you stupid.Because she should know eh?About the stupid.And as Mi…
Continue readingMontreal Simon: The Panic of the Cons and the Idiocy of Margaret Wente
As you know, the Con zombies and their friends in the media have been attacking Justin Trudeau and his plan to change the electoral system as if there was no tomorrow.After having realized there will be no tomorrow for them, once the first past the po…
Continue readingDemocracy Under Fire: The Problem with Proportional.
Fair Vote Canada in an open letter sent to the Prime Minister has come out strongly for
the Democratic Voting Task Force to involve citizens from the beginning on Trudeau’s pledge to have reform studied by an all-party committee, that is as it should be. However as with the NDPs platform pledge (and now even the Greens) they then say, while calling on the Task Force to conduct wide-reaching consultations, that Fair Vote Canada is clear – the government must come down in favour of some system of proportional representation (PR).
Having been looking at electoral reform options for a number of years now, and having previously come out in flavor of MMP (Mixed Member Proportional, the only truly proportional system) I now, after further study, am not at all totally convinced that a fully ‘proportional’ system is practical or even desirable in Canada. Something that more closely reflects the voters wishes is most certainly desirable, as is some modernization to our voter identification and balloting systems. Given the way our system works it would certainly be nice to be able to separate somewhat our wishes as to the local representative and our wish for the party to hold power but what of the problems that such a system may bring. Is the solution worse than the problem?
Several countries use a form of Mixed Member Proportional voting however few if any the size and diversity of Canada. There is a great deal of difference between adjusting for proportionality in a country the size of say New Zeland at 268,000 sq km, a population of 4.5m and 71 electorate seats, and Canada with almost 10 MILLION sq km and a population of 36 million and 338 ridings!
In the debate about proportional representation you will see a lot of arguments that go something like this…..
Winner-take-all gave Canada a House of Commons in 2011 of 166 Conservatives, 103 New Democrats, 34 Liberals, 4 Bloc Québécois, and one Green. TOTAL 308
Instead, the proportional results would have been roughly 127 ( 41% ) Conservatives, 97 (31%) New Democrats, 56 (18%) Liberals, 17 (5.5%) Bloc Québécois, and 11 (3.5%) Greens.TOTAL 308 MPs
That is NOT however how it works, irregardless of what ‘proportional’ system we use based upon the national vote (or a separate vote for party) the local MPs will be still elected for each riding (using a first past the post method) and thus cannot / will not loose their seats in order to make the results proportional thus the final make up of the HoC would look more like this….
166 ( 41% ) Conservatives (the number actually elected), 125 (31%) New Democrats, 72 (18%) Liberals, 22 (5.5%) Bloc Québécois, and 14 (3.5%) Greens. TOTAL around 400 MPs(rough figures / rounding errors / no partial MPs!) Note that the Greens and the Bloc would ‘appoint’ more MPs than were elected! (I also note we now have more than 308 ridings to start with!)
All Open List proportional voting systems chose from preordained list of ‘extra’ candidates provided by the party however there are several methods by which voters may chose said candidates and how such choices translate into who on the list actually is chosen.
The ballots can become quite complex with some such systems with the necessity to list not only the local candidates but the party lists (chosen by the party hierarchy) of each of the partys vying for power. A national list for our system could have to contain as many as 25 names per party but even if chosen on a regional basis the ballot could contain 20 or more names in total, with some folks complaining about the delays at the voting booth to just select one candidate this could become an issue. Even if reduced by having party lists for each province it is still will take longer to vote and remember there is no guarantee that any or all of these folks will ever see the floor of the HoC and how does one choose which province (or district) has the extra MP(s) if and when needed for top up? Presumably by the ones that get the highest number of vote (first past the post!) and would that mean that those in more populous Provinces / districts would get their choice over and above less populous areas.
In closed list systems, each political party has pre-decided who will receive the seats allocated to that party in the elections, so that the candidates positioned highest on this list tend to always get a seat in the parliament while the candidates positioned very low on the closed list will not. The party executive or party leaders generally control the list; consequently closed-list systems transfer political power to the un-elected persons who author the party’s list of candidates. The choices at the ballot box would be simpler with just selecting a local candidate and a preferred party but I seriously doubt that many folks will not select the party that the candidate belongs to, unless perhaps an independent is running. It should be noted that in this, and most other, ‘proportional’ systems there is normally a limit set as to the minimum popular vote below which the ‘party’ will not be considered for ‘top up’ MPs. Where should this be set, 5%, 10%, higher , lower?
The problem with both open and closed list MMP systems is that a candidate who perhaps has received considerable support from his ridings voters but not quite enough to be elected would in some situations be replaced by an individual, put on a short list by the party hierarchy, who many of those voters do not know from Adam. Who does this individual represent and is accountable to, the party, the district, the province in which he resides or who? It is obvious that it will be the party thus increasing the already overly amount of power the party bosses hold over our MPs.
One possible partial solution to some of these problems is to use Local Lists, that is to NOT have any pre ordained lists but to choose the extra MPs from those in the party who were not elected but received the highest proportion of the votes in their riding as compared with all other ridings. This would reduce the party control over the choices, at least use individuals that stood for election in the usual fashion and received an endorsement from many of his or her local citizens. Of course this still brings into question as to who they represent and are accountable to, and adds the perception that said riding has two MPs, a situation that would probably also occur to some extent with party list choices. It would however somewhat balance the desires of an area that was strongly in favour of party ‘A’ when the national popular vote favoured part ‘B’ by giving that area a greater chance of getting some of those ‘extra’ MPs! As noted previously in all of the above variations a lower limit is set below which a given Party would receive NO extra MPs, the setting of this threshold could have an enormous impact upon the outcome. For instance in the example above if set at 5% the Block would retain their 22 MPs but the Greens would be reduced to just one, all of a sudden its NOT proportional! I also note that in some MMP systems there is also an upper limit on the percentage of ‘list members’ that can be appointed in relation to the directly elected members 20% , 39% etc.. These little ‘details are important.
With the number of MPs varying depending upon results and possibly as many as 20-25% extra MPs having to be ‘nominated’ (and accountable to an unspecified authority) this is not an acceptable situation IMHO, the cost to the taxpayer alone, never mind the high percentage of ‘appointed’ MPs and where to put them, should make these systems (MMP, AV-PLUS) subject to a great deal of detailed study to see if the “cure” is worse than the problem. Any of those who openly promote “proportional voting” must in the same breath specify exactly which method of PR and which variation of said method they favour, anything less is meaningless. This is no less true of any of the alternative somewhat less proportional systems!
Non of the above will solve the real problem which is the apparent inability of our leaders and our MPs to drop the partisan rhetoric and work together for the good of the country (something which, given the probability of minority governments under PR they must learn to do) and the lack of any consequences (other than getting turfed from power when the electorate finally wakes up) when they fail to do so. We need parliamentary reform as much, if not more than electoral reform, let us hope that the new government will also work on that in the coming months and years..
Given the strong feeling about the various options, many of which unfortunately have been formed more upon the wish to change the results rather than any real knowledge on how such changes work in a practical sense, I expect my comment count to increase dramatically on this one. Please remember I am all for electoral reform (which encompasses far more than just the voting system) and more equitable results but see more problems than solutions in this option. Please dont shoot the messenger but do discuss the options.
The systems are many and varied and I hope to cover them in more detail in the future but for now check out the basics in my previous post on electoral reform here.
For much more information and opinion check out these post
Democracy Under Fire: The Problem with Proportional.
Fair Vote Canada in an open letter sent to the Prime Minister has come out strongly for the Democratic Voting Task Force to involve citizens from the beginning on Trudeau’s pledge to have reform studied by an all-party committee, that is as it shou…
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