Should every vote count?

April 26, 2004 6:30 PM

Canada considers electoral reform. The Law Commission of Canada just released a report that recomended a Mixed Member Proportional system much like that one that New Zealand recently adopted. Along with the steps being taken at the federal level, the provinces are at various stages in the process. The government in Quebec has proposed a similar MMP system for the province, a commission in PEI recomended the same system, BC has convened a Citizens Assembly, Ontario now has a Democratic Renewal Secretariat, and Saskatchewan and New Brunswick are considering changes as well. For more information visit Fair Vote Canada.
posted by Octaviuz (25 comments total)

Could this spell the end of Grit hegemony?

And, why is it that electoral methods that are considered mainstream throughtout the free world are so far outside the mainstream of US political discussion?
posted by Octaviuz at 6:33 PM on April 26, 2004

The report recommends scrapping the current voting system and adopting a mixed member proportional system. Under this proposal, two-thirds of the seats in the House would be filled by the winning candidates from individual constituencies or ridings. The remaining third would be filled by party list candidates on a compensatory basis – that is, to ensure that the total portion of seats held by each party closely reflects their total portion of the popular vote. - from the FairVote site

I wish we had something like that. You keep your local representation plus get party/interest group seats. Is it definitely going to happen in Canada?
posted by amberglow at 6:47 PM on April 26, 2004

Intellectually, I'm in favor of various forms of proportional representation, but emotionally I always stumble over the idea of voting for a party rather than a person.

So as long as those two are combined, I'm happy.
posted by obfusciatrist at 6:53 PM on April 26, 2004

Word on the street is: If Paulie Walnuts succeeds in his quest at engineering the most fantastic flameout in Western parliamentary history, and tries to form a coalition government with Smilin' Jack, Jack will make as his one and only condition that the Libs implement proportional representation.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 7:02 PM on April 26, 2004

Now Jack I like : >
posted by amberglow at 7:08 PM on April 26, 2004

Talking about alternative voting methods: any of you United Statesians ever pondered preferential voting for the presidential election? It would probably resolve the whole "Nader Issue" at the same time as "The majority of people didn't vote for Bush" issue.
posted by Jimbob at 7:28 PM on April 26, 2004

we're stuck, Jimbob, as long as we still have the antiquated and useless Electoral College.

The Canada thing reminds me of Lani Guinier: Making Every Vote Count
posted by amberglow at 7:36 PM on April 26, 2004

Well, at first I was worried, but this sounds like a very reasonable reform. I do hope this happens, as the only party I still feel cofortable giving my vote to isn't anywhere near a majority party.
posted by shepd at 7:42 PM on April 26, 2004

(The electoral college isn't useless, amberglow... it's one of the few reasons the middle of the country gets any notice at all.)

I'm excited to see this experiment happening so close at hand... but must admit that the gaming of the system mentioned in the WIKI article linked in the FPP is a little scary.

I'm a big proponent of preferential voting... but first, I'd like to see is the tripling of the number of congressional seets available — if not quadrupling it. I want my congressman to represent me by representing fewer folks altogether.

(This and other related issues covered in an article in the Atlantic Monthly.
posted by silusGROK at 7:53 PM on April 26, 2004

I don't know, silus--I think it should go by population. The Electoral College gives more power to states with fewer people, which isn't very democratic at all.
posted by amberglow at 8:05 PM on April 26, 2004

Well, we're not a democracy... we're a republic.
posted by silusGROK at 8:09 PM on April 26, 2004

Yes please! I'd love to make my first federal vote in a system like this.
posted by Evstar at 8:31 PM on April 26, 2004

Jimbob, I think approval voting is a much better alternative system than IRV for single-winner races because it eliminates tactical voting and it's amazingly simple to learn and implement. I'd love to see the electoral college and all other single-seat elections (like each state's constitutional offices) in the US be replaced with approval voting systems. For multiple-member bodies, I'm undecided, but a mixed-member proportional system sounds pretty good.
posted by stopgap at 8:43 PM on April 26, 2004

first, I'd like to see is the tripling of the number of congressional seats available

I'd propose a simple first step. Index the size of congress to that of the smallest state. Each census, just divide the total population of the country but that of the smallest state (perhaps an average of the smallest 5 to avoid fluctuation). Because each state is guaranteed at least one representative, WY now has 200K fewer people than the national average district. Based on the 2000 Census, this would only increase the House to 568 (.2) members but it would make their distribution much fairer. It would also diminish the inequities of the Electoral College by a small amount.
Assuming that the ratio between the largest and smallest states continues to grow, this would allow the House to increase in size naturally.
posted by Octaviuz at 8:47 PM on April 26, 2004

I'm definitely going to refer to him as "Smilin' Jack Layton" from now on.
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:48 PM on April 26, 2004

If the size of congress increases, then we're gonna need a bigger boat. 133 (.2) more members is a significant number, and I don't think people are going to be supportive of constructing a new Capitol building to fit them all, no matter what the benefits in terms of fairness. The first step towards fairness in our Congress should be to fix the biggest current inequity: give DC statehood or least real representatives.
posted by stopgap at 8:55 PM on April 26, 2004

I wish we had something like that. You keep your local representation plus get party/interest group seats. Is it definitely going to happen in Canada?

I'd be pretty surprised if it did anytime soon. The last major movement towards electoral reform in Canada was back in the late '80s and early '90s, with the Triple-E Senate movement (elected, equal, effective.) Canada's Senate as it currently stands is essentially expensive and useless--Senators are appointed by the PM in power, essentially for life (or until they reach the mandatory retirement age of 75) and though the Constitution allows them to veto bills, they never do so as that would be overriding the democratically elected parliament. The Triple-E proposal involved a senate much closer to the US model: a given number of senators per province would be elected for limited terms, and they'd actually perform the "sober second look" function they have on paper.

Problem was, Ontario and Quebec, the two provinces with the most population and the most power under the current system, saw it as a power grab by the western provinces (and oil-rich Alberta in particular). A watered-down version of the Triple-E proposal, bundled with a bunch of other constitutional reforms (including a formula for constitutional amendments, which we currently don't have) was put to a vote in the Charlottetown Accord referendum of 1992. It didn't pass, and nobody in federal politics has raised the issue since.

Incedentally, there's a proposal I like better than the Law Commission proposal here--the idea of combining a proportional representation Senate with the first-past-the-post style Parliament. But since it's from J. Random Blogger rather than an actual politician, it's probably going nowhere.
posted by arto at 11:24 PM on April 26, 2004

I don't know how well this system would work, since it would be mixed, but it is my understanding that proportional representation can lead to undesirable effects. It is very difficult to achieve a majority of the popular vote in a system with more than two parties, and smaller and sometimes more extreme parties often gain unprecidented power because the government needs their support in a ruling coalition. Both the Italian and the Isreali parliaments come to mind. (Please correct me if I am wrong in thinking these are proportional systems - I am basing this on conversations with someone who knows much more about international political history than I do, and I am apt to get details wrong). Though it would mean that the Reform (or whatever they are called these days), NDP and Green parties might have more seats, it would also mean that white supremicist parties might also have seats.

I also believe that arto's suggestion of a proportional second house is what is currently being tried in the Welsh and Scottish parliaments.
posted by jb at 12:42 AM on April 27, 2004

Octaviuz - about the Grit Hegemony, it's such a shame that Rick Mercer's skits from this past season aren't online anymore - he had a great series on "Why the Liberals will rule Canada forever"
posted by jb at 12:57 AM on April 27, 2004

If the size of congress increases, then we're gonna need a bigger boat

Here's to swimmin' with bow-legged women.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:23 AM on April 27, 2004

It is very difficult to achieve a majority of the popular vote in a system with more than two parties, and smaller and sometimes more extreme parties often gain unprecidented power because the government needs their support in a ruling coalition.

I always saw that as a good thing, on the whole--it forces people with differing ideologies to work together, and prevents any one party from actually dominating too much (unlike what we have here, lately).
posted by amberglow at 5:39 AM on April 27, 2004

Huh. What does it mean that the first time I've heard of the final report is on MeFi, a month after it was released? And even a Google news search didn't pull up very much either.

Most likely, the feds are waiting to see if/how it plays on the provincial level. Nunavut's system is interesting (no parties, and the elected candidates decide post-election which one gets to be premier), but it's likely they want to see how these sorts of systems will go over in more populous Canadian elections. It ain't coming to Ottawa any time soon, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it come eventually.

(amberglow, Trudeau had a few years of minority government, where a fair bit of NDP social policies were implemented by the Grits, and it was generally a good system. I don't share jb's worries of a white supremacist party getting seats, first because I doubt there is such a party here, second because it wouldn't get enough votes to elect a single member, and third because it takes more than a handful of members to result in Italian-style government.)

Then again, here in Nova Scotia the last election was essentially a three-way tie, and it hasn't stopped the Tories from screwing over the province and being ineffectual at the same time. That's a tough combo.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 5:55 AM on April 27, 2004

Alternative voting experiments would be quite easy in the U.S. Any state could adopt proportional representation for electors in the Presidential electoral college, or for the choice of its own legislators. Any state could adopt instant runoff systems for any election, including for the choice of electors in the electoral college and election of Senators and Congressmen. It is an open question whether a state could adopt proportional representation, using multi-member districts, for their U.S. House of Representatives delegations. The Constitution's framers clearly contemplates single member districts, and present law assumes it, but there's no clear Constitutional prohibition, either.

The real obstacle to proportional representation is a principled one: that it undermines constituent service, because it makes a legislator owe their seat to something other than a plurality of voters in a discrete district. A mixed system of district and party-list voters still doesn't work, because it undermines the power fo the district representatives, who now make sure that the legislative bodies as a whole prioritize constituent service.

Clearly, this is not a valid objection to instant run-off. There, the objection is a more self-serving one: the major parties have no interest in increasing the power of the minor parties. Democrats don't want to have to deal with Greens or with the radical black and hispanic parties which would spring up in the wake of instant run-off systems. Republicans don't want to have to deal with Libertarians or with the radical Christian right parties which would spring up on their end, either.

JB: you're right about Israel, but Italy's system is more or less first-past-the-post (like the U.S. and British systems). The multipartisan character of the Italian parliament is a factor of the tremendous regionalism in Italy, as well as a tendency towards bossism in politics. (Bosses would much prefer to run small parties than be one of many leaders of a bigger party.)
posted by MattD at 6:25 AM on April 27, 2004

it undermines constituent service, because it makes a legislator owe their seat to something other than a plurality of voters in a discrete district

That presumes that that is the only valid paradigm out there. What I like about proportional representation is the concept of voter-defined constituencies. Right now, the VRA requires that ethnic minorities get their "fair share" (a concept poorly defined by the Justice dept.) which results in all manner of ugly looking districts and an incentive to segregation. Only those minorities the live apart from the majority population get representation. Furthermore, it suggests that somehow, if my Congressman is Black then I'm represented even if that Congressman opposes free trade (one of the several issues on which I differ with many in my preferred party).
A PR electoral system actually increases constituency service because it allows almost all voters to have a rep that they voted for and feel comfortable approaching. Since each jurisdiction is represented by more than one person, voters can also direct their inquiries to a rep with a specific area of competence (e.g. the state forests are being cut, call the Greens...).
posted by Octaviuz at 8:24 PM on April 28, 2004

Oh and,

It is an open question whether a state could adopt proportional representation, using multi-member districts, for their U.S. House of Representatives delegations. The Constitution's framers clearly contemplates single member districts
Well, proportional representation hadn't been discussed (at least, not in North America) at the end of the 18th century.

and present law assumes it, but there's no clear Constitutional prohibition, either.

Actually, while present statute requires it (2 USC 2c), this was not always so. Several states have at one point or another elected representatives at large though they used rules similar to those for the Electoral College, the winners took all the seats. Hence the prohibition by Congress.
posted by Octaviuz at 8:50 PM on April 28, 2004