Electoral Reform (Senate, Commons, & Gov Gen)

[Kirkhill]

The longer the process then the greater the opportunity for speculation on how the final answer was determined: credibility.

 

[a_majoor]

Not to mention that these systems are subject to gaming and potential deadlocking. There have now been several governments in Europe where no one was able to assemble a clear majority or majority coalition, leaving the nation in the hands of a caretaker for periods of up to a year.

 

[McG]

The longer the process then the greater the opportunity for speculation on how the final answer was determined: credibility.

An extra day to determine results puts credibility at risk because the tin foil hat brigade has time to comment after polls close?  Nonsense.

Not to mention that these systems are subject to gaming and potential deadlocking. There have now been several governments in Europe where no one was able to assemble a clear majority or majority coalition, leaving the nation in the hands of a caretaker for periods of up to a year.

Of course, FPTP is subject to gaming too.  Also, you are presenting the false dichotomy that I referred to earlier.  Your blanket label of "these systems" and reference to paralyzed legislatures under PR systems is an intellectually dishonest attempt to present everything that is not FPTP as PR.  That is not the case.

 

[Coffee_psych]

For the NDP, Greens, and any other smaller party the desire to frame this debate in a false dichotomy is because only through proportional representation or large multi-representative constituencies will these parties see an increase in their share of Parliament's seats - these small parties would prefer we not look at other electoral reform options that retain our current single representative constituencies.

What a great point! Now just cause I'm still super new to this topic.  The main reason I know the Greens want equal voting is because 12%(ish) of voters go for them, translating to parliament, they could have 3000% the amount of seats.  So is there another way of making voting more fair but retain the legitimacy of single representative constituencies?

 

[Kirkhill]

What a great point! Now just cause I'm still super new to this topic.  The main reason I know the Greens want equal voting is because 12%(ish) of voters go for them, translating to parliament, they could have 3000% the amount of seats.  So is there another way of making voting more fair but retain the legitimacy of single representative constituencies?

There may be.  If it was desired.

Retain the First Past The Post for the House of Commons with the existing single representative communities.

And then reform - or re-form - the Senate to become a House of Communities - comprised of social groupings.  Then let your imagination run riot over how the social groupings would be defined, organized, selected and whether or not the Communitarian Senate or the Commons, representing geographic communities, has greater legitimacy.

That should keep the lawyers busy for a day or two.  I wait to hear the response from Quebec.

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

What a great point! Now just cause I'm still super new to this topic.  The main reason I know the Greens want equal voting is because 12%(ish) of voters go for them, translating to parliament, they could have 3000% the amount of seats.  So is there another way of making voting more fair but retain the legitimacy of single representative constituencies?

How do you define fair is the question. In some regards, 12% of the vote (3.4% in the last election actually) should = 12% of the seats. However, does that simple assessment equal actual fair representation? For example, the Bloc Quebecois received 19.4% of the vote in Quebec and obviously 0% outside of Quebec for a total of 4.7% of the total votes cast. Does fairness in this case equate to the BQ receiving 4.7 (5) seats in the house of commons of 19.4 (19)% of the total seats in Quebec? One results in 5 representatives while the other results in 15 seats. Arguably, the people of Quebec, in a PR system, voted for the 15 seats vice the 5, so wouldn't watering down the vote by employing it nationally be unjust? Why should people from outside Quebec (or any other region), who have no real interests in Quebec politics influence the results there to that extent?
A PR or preferential system don't necessarily make the election "more fair" on a philosophical basis as you always come back to the same point- There is no real way to make a system completely fair as at some point you have a loser. The loser, inevitably, feels that the system isn't fair since their beliefs aren't being represented. When in opposition, Liberals constantly called the Conservatives undemocratic because they didn't "listen to parliament", ie- do what the Liberals wanted. now that the Conservatives are in power it's the same thing.

Finally, in a minority parliament, is it fair that the balance of power might be held by parties who received minor amounts of overall votes? In our system, if we assume that Conservatives and Liberals go 1-2, than the power broker becomes the NDP by default. So, in effect, in the 2016 election, the 19% who voted NDP have more say in the government than the 31% who voted conservative. Is that "fair"?

 

[jmt18325]

How do you define fair is the question. In some regards, 12% of the vote (3.4% in the last election actually) should = 12% of the seats. However, does that simple assessment equal actual fair representation? For example, the Bloc Quebecois received 19.4% of the vote in Quebec and obviously 0% outside of Quebec for a total of 4.7% of the total votes cast. Does fairness in this case equate to the BQ receiving 4.7 (5) seats in the house of commons of 19.4 (19)% of the total seats in Quebec?

I think you'd better check your numbers again. 

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Why?

Output legitimacy.  The appearance of impropriety is intolerable.  The longer it takes to determine a result, the greater the window for shenanigans.

 

[McG]

Political science academics disagree with statements that voting results of the last election prove only the Liberals stand to benefit from ranked ballots.  The arguments come across a bit waffle-y in the article, but the underlying premise is logical. With FPTP, many or most voters make their choice on the lesser of two evils (Liberal or Conservative) as opposed to a choice on the best of six or seven candidates.  With ranked ballots, I would expect the 1st ranked of the vote would be more dispersed with the "lesser of two evils" not being placed until the second or third ranked of the vote.  Instead of a duopoly there would be an oligopoly of political parties with more votes for Greens, independents and Libertarians.  But, because single member constituencies would remain, the fringe issues would continue to be filtered out of the commons.

Liberals not necessarily advantaged by switch to ranked ballot system: experts 
Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press
Globe and Mail
15 Aug 16

If Justin Trudeau gets his way on electoral reform, will the Liberals “steal” every federal election in perpetuity?

As hearings on a new voting regime resume next Monday, the Conservatives contend that’s what would be in store if Canada adopts a system of ranked ballots, which the prime minister has in the past touted as his preference for replacing the current first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system.

Pollsters, pundits and proponents of proportional representation are only slightly less apocalyptic, predicting that a ranked ballot system — also known as preferential ballot or alternative vote (AV) — would certainly give the centrist Liberals an unfair advantage.

Hogwash, say political scientists who specialize in the study of voting systems.

“Would the Liberals automatically benefit? No,” says Wilfrid Laurier University’s Brian Tanguay.

“You can’t say anything would automatically occur once a change in the electoral system happens ... The moment you change the rules of the game, the calculations of both the parties and the voters themselves will change.”

Assuming a Liberal advantage is “very much wrong-headed” and “far too simplistic,” agrees York University’s Dennis Pilon.

Under AV, voters mark their first, second and subsequent choices. If no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of the vote, the contender with the fewest votes is dropped from the ballot and his or her supporters’ second choices are counted. That continues until one candidate emerges with a majority.

Had that system been in place in last fall’s election, polls have suggested Trudeau’s Liberals — who won 55 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons with just 39 per cent of the popular vote — would have won an even bigger “false majority” since they were the most popular second choice among supporters of other parties.

Trouble is, those analyses superimpose second choice preferences onto voting behaviour that was driven by FPTP — which compelled plenty of New Democrat and Green supporters last October to back the Liberals to defeat the Conservatives, rather than risk “wasting” their votes on the smaller parties.

If those strategic voters had been able to support their first choices, marking the Liberals second as surety against Conservative victory, the result could have been much different, experts say. For one thing, NDP support likely wouldn’t have utterly collapsed.

“My best guess, without doing a close riding-by-riding assessment, is that a preferential ballot would likely have produced a hung Parliament rather than a Liberal majority,” says University of British Columbia professor emeritus Ken Carty.

But it’s not just voter behaviour that would have changed. The parties themselves would have been forced to broaden their appeal if they’d been competing for second — and not just first — choice votes.

If AV did wind up benefiting primarily the Liberals, Pilon says the Conservatives would have only themselves to blame.

“The Conservatives have pushed themselves into a corner that’s just too extreme for Canadians,” he says.

“One of the arguments for AV could be that maybe we’d end up with a less extreme Conservative party. First-past-the-post allows the Conservative party to be more extreme because they don’t have to win 50 per cent or near 50 per cent to win ridings.”

So, which party would benefit most under ranked balloting? Hard to say.

It would likely be an advantage for smaller parties that tend to get squeezed by strategic voting under FPTP, says Arend Lijphart, professor emeritus at the University of California San Diego and widely considered the world’s leading expert on voting systems.

Like other experts interviewed by The Canadian Press, Lijphart is a fan of proportional representation, a voting system in which a party’s share of seats in the legislature reflects its share of the popular vote. But, while ranked balloting would not produce a proportional distribution of seats, he says it would still be better than FPTP.

“I think you get a more accurate choice with ranked choice balloting and you’re really also making it easier and more straight-forward for the voter because the voter doesn’t have to calculate how is my vote going to work. They can vote the way they feel.”

The beneficiary of such voter liberation would likely vary from region to region of the country, says Pilon. In some places, like the Greater Toronto Area where voters tend to switch between the Liberals and Conservatives, the two main parties would benefit. In places like B.C., where voters are more likely to switch between NDP and Conservative, those two parties would benefit.

In the handful of countries that use ranked ballots, like Australia, Pilon says the system was introduced deliberately to allow two main parties to work together to shut out other parties — and it’s largely worked out that way. But that hasn’t been the experience in Canada, where the system was used provincially years ago.

Back in the early 1950s, when B.C. was governed by a Liberal-Conservative coalition, Tanguay says those two parties brought in ranked ballots to “keep the socialist hordes out.”

They assumed “Conservatives’ second choice would be Liberal and Liberals’ second choice would be Conservative and one of them would get into power and keep the CCF (forerunner to the NDP) at bay.”

But those assumptions were “shattered” when Social Credit “came out of nowhere” to score the most second-choice votes and win the election.

And that, says Tanguay, underscores the unpredictability of what could happen if ranked balloting were adopted nationally.   

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/liberals-not-necessarily-advantaged-by-switch-to-ranked-ballot-system-experts/article31404531/

 

[McG]

I still don't like the idea of a PR system, but I think Andrew Coyne does a fairly good job here of countering most of the typical anecdote based arguments against that we see on this site.

No, proportional representation would not turn Canada into a dystopian hellhole
Andrew Coyne
National Post
August 18, 2016 1:26

Here is how some opponents of proportional representation think it works. After the votes are cast, each party receives a number of seats in strict accordance with its share of the total vote. Rather than running in constituencies, MPs are simply pulled off lists drafted by party leaders. 

The parliament that results is a fragmented mess: dozens of parties, many of them of a fringe or extremist hue. Unable to command a majority on their own, mainstream parties are forced to negotiate with the fringe parties for power. The upshot: chaos, instability and, as often as not, financial ruin.

You’d be surprised how many otherwise well-informed people believe this. Here, for example, is Bill Tieleman, B.C. NDP strategist, writing in The Tyee: “How would you like an anti-immigrant, racist, anti-abortion or fundamentalist religious political party holding the balance of power in Canada? … Welcome to the proportional representation electoral system, where extreme, minority and just plain bizarre views get to rule the roost.”

At the other ideological pole, here’s columnist Lorne Gunter, writing in The Sun newspapers: “PR breaks the local bond between constituents and MPs … In a strict PR system, party leaders at national headquarters select who their candidates will be, or at least in what order they will make it into Parliament …”

The question naturally arises: where are these dystopian hellholes? Is that really how proportional representation works, either in operation or result? Why, then, would anyone choose it?

Because the system described above does not remotely resemble proportional representation as it is practised in most countries at most times. Look at any list of the world’s most successful countries, by whatever metric you prefer — GDP per capita, say, or median incomes, or triple-A credit ratings, or if you find those too limiting, the UN’s Human Development Index — and you find the same names appearing.

Yes, you’ll see the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, all using the familiar “first past the post” system. But so, near the top of every list, are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, all of whose parliaments are wholly or partially elected by proportional representation.

Whether this is because of or in spite of their political system is another question. But we can at least describe accurately how their political system actually works, rather than rely on caricatures born of half-remembered newspaper clippings.

How many parties, for starters, does one find in the typical PR-based legislature? There’s a range, depending (in part) on the size of the electoral districts from which they are elected. Remember: what distinguishes PR is the use of multi-member, rather than single-member, districts. The more members per district, the more closely you can match the number of seats a party gets to its proportion of the vote.

So at one end, you have countries such as Austria, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden, all with six to eight parties represented in their legislatures — or about one to three more than Canada’s, with five. At the other, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland, with 10 to 12.

Virtually all of these countries have some element of local representation: only the Netherlands, whose total area is less than that of some Canadian ridings, elects MPs at large. And none uses the “strict” form of PR Gunter describes, known as “closed list.” Rather, voters can generally choose which of a party’s candidates they prefer, so-called “open lists.”

How unstable are these systems? Since 1945, Canada has held 22 elections. In only one of the PR countries mentioned has there been more: Denmark, with 26. The average is 20. It is true that the governments that result are rarely, if ever, one-party majorities. But, as you may have noticed, that is not unknown here. Nine of Canada’s 22 federal elections since 1945 have resulted in minority parliaments.

Is there occasional post-election wrangling, while parties negotiate on the makeup of the coalition governments? Yes. But the notion that this inevitably makes the large parties hostage to the fringe is contrary to both logic and fact. The larger parties may agree to govern together, as Austria’s Social Democratic party and Austrian People’s party did in 2003, rather than accept the right-wing Austrian Freedom party as a partner. Or if they do decide to deal, they must be mindful of the voters’ wrath at the next election, as New Zealand’s National party discovered in 1999, after it was judged to have sold its soul to the anti-immigrant New Zealand First party.

So where did the caricature come from? Two words: Israel and Italy. Even here the picture is exaggerated: the Israeli parliament has 12 parties, Italy’s eight. By comparison, France, which uses a two-round system, has 14, while the United Kingdom — yes, Mother Britain — now has 11. More to the point, there are circumstances unique to each, not only in their parliamentary systems — Israel uses an extreme form of PR, while Italy’s, which has gone through several, defies description — but in their histories and political cultures.

To be sure, the world is full of people, and parties, with unsettling views. But it’s too simple to ascribe these to particular electoral systems. Just now, the gravest extremist uprisings are to be found in the United States and the United Kingdom, where they threaten to devour the Republican and Labour parties, respectively.

Or as it has been said: if Israel and Italy are enough to make the case against PR, then we should as well avoid first past the post, as that’s the system in Zimbabwe. 

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-no-proportional-representation-would-not-turn-canada-into-a-dystopian-hellhole

At the end, this article alludes to an idea that I saw somewhere else recently (I thought it was somewhere in reporting on academic submissions to the electoral reform comittee but I can't seem to find it).  It was argued that real world observations and election modeling show that, while parties with extreme views are more likely to get a few seats in a PR elected system, FPTP systems were more likely than any other system to elect an extremist party as the government.

While I cannot find that article that I saw previously, there was a more recent presentation to the electoral reform committee which noted that ranked voting would have easily filtered Donald Trump out of the running for the US presidential campaign.
http://www.hilltimes.com/2016/08/17/ranked-ballot-system-could-have-stopped-trump-says-u-s-expert-set-to-speak-to-mps-on-electoral-reform/77607

 

[Kirkhill]

If I'm not mistook Westminster ditched Multi-Member Ridings in 1885. 

I am still opposed to the PR system because it puts the power in the hands of the parties and not the electors - and - as is shown by the moves in Alberta and Ontario on campaign finance reform - the parties are quite capable of organizing a stitch-up to prevent any new parties making into the public square.

Our new aristocracy, family compact, chateau clique.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

I will agree with those who oppose Proportional Representation for one more reason, and Andrew Coyne or any of the other talking/writing heads that haven't read the constitution be damned.

The Charter of right part of the constitution is quite clear:

3. Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.

If your vote is to be counted as against a party, who then based on the number of votes all the people give them decide from a list who will be member of Parliament - then in my mind, that deprives the citizens the right to vote on the members of Parliament - It becomes the parties who decide who gets into parliament. Moreover, such system makes it impossible for independents to ever get elected - even if rare under our current system - as it is near impossible for a single independent to ever get enough votes to get elected anywhere.

BTW, I suggest you only look at the comments and position of Segolene Royal on Brexit (reflecting that of many other  continental European politicians) to see the very type of arrogance in the "professional" politicians a PR system creates.

In our current system, it does not matter how many people generally support a party: any one of their candidate, if unpopular with his/her electorate can find himself/herself hitting the road after an election if he/she failed to serve his/her electorate properly. In a PR system, since many parties have fairly a solid minimum percentage of vote as starting point, the core group of politician these party choose becomes entrenched and near impossible to remove, even if the public would love nothing more than trounce them.

 

[Kirkhill]

Amen OGBD,

The party is supposed to be a creature of the MPs, not the other way around.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Ditto.  PR should not even be on any list of options.
1) Even a split riding rep / party list model militates against direct representation and accountability.
2) Further weakens independents and strengthens parties, which leads to...
3) ...further consolidation/centralization at the core of party power, militating against other attempted reforms intended to oppose the trend toward centralization.
4) Nothing prevents parties from filling party lists with duds who can't get elected in a riding but are thought by the party to be deserving of patronage.
5) Most importantly: we don't have any federal positions subject to Canada-wide election.  The party share of the national vote is irrelevant.

 

[ModlrMike]

I've said it before, but it bears repeating. While we may have one General Election, it is actually composed of 338 individual elections. In addition, the notion that you are voting for "insert name" as party leader (ie: Harper, Trudeau, or Bloggins) is only true if you live in their riding. Any of the other systems currently proposed only serve to disenfranchise the voter. It deprives the electorate of the right to be represented by their chosen Member of Parliament. Even those who didn't vote for the specific MP are represented by them. As imperfect as our current system may be, it's the least imperfect of all the proposed choices, IMHO.

One of the cornerstones of representative democracy is that the representatives are, by and large, drawn from the communities they represent. Does anyone think for one moment that the voters of Victoria would be happy being represented by someone from Halifax or Quebec City? Conversely, how would folks from Quebec City feel if their MP lived in Calgary?

 

[McG]

There is no requirement for MPs to come from the riding that they represent.  All parties practice parachuting star candidates into safe ridings under our current system.

 

[Sub_Guy]

I think mixed PR is the way to go.  You'd still have FPTP, then so many seats would be allocated to PR.  New Zealand uses this model.

You'd vote for your chosen politician, then you'd vote for the party.  So everyone would still get to vote who represents their riding, however the boundaries would have to be redrawn.  A certain percentage of seats would be set aside for PR, those would be filled from the party list.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

In a system like that, DH, I would certainly want to make sure that:

1) I would be allowed to vote separately on my MP and my "party" vote, because I can think of situation where I would love to have a certain person running in my riding elected as my MP, regardless of his/her party affiliation, but prefer another party's platform generally; and,

2) That the number of members appointed by PR be limited enough to "restore some balance" for those who seem to think the current system is not balanced, but not to the point of correcting it so you basically get back to a proportional system.

Remember, however, that even in such a system, you give to political parties a superior legitimacy than politician who wish to run as independent. In effect, you give political parties a greater "right" to have members in parliament than ordinary citizens who would wish to serve independently of affiliation.

To me, that is still unconstitutional.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

In a PR system, since many parties have fairly a solid minimum percentage of vote as starting point, the core group of politician these party choose becomes entrenched and near impossible to remove, even if the public would love nothing more than trounce them.

Ditto.  PR should not even be on any list of options.
.....
2) Further weakens independents and strengthens parties, which leads to...
3) ...further consolidation/centralization at the core of party power, militating against other attempted reforms intended to oppose the trend toward centralization.
4) Nothing prevents parties from filling party lists with duds who can't get elected in a riding but are thought by the party to be deserving of patronage.
......

Which probably explains the rise of right-wing parties in Europe; the same group of politicians kept on getting elected, and they stopped listening to their constituents.

 

[Kirkhill]

I think mixed PR is the way to go.  You'd still have FPTP, then so many seats would be allocated to PR.  New Zealand uses this model.

You'd vote for your chosen politician, then you'd vote for the party.  So everyone would still get to vote who represents their riding, however the boundaries would have to be redrawn.  A certain percentage of seats would be set aside for PR, those would be filled from the party list.

DH - I'll go this far with you:

Make the senate a PR house and keep the commons as FPTP single member. 

Then you can let the senators form government and let the commons go back to being the paymasters and the checks on government.  This would reinstate the primal balance between the governing "class" and the governed "class".

The union bosses would then be right up there in their rightful seats alongside the archbishops and the head of Power Corporation.  ;D

Oops - forgot to include the seats of Notley and Wall and the other Confederal Dukes pro tem.