WHEREAS it is recognized that first past the post voting systems do not properly reflect the will of the people in a multiparty country;
WHEREAS the current system does not produce clear electoral victors (candidates seldom win with more than 50 percent);
WHEREAS the Liberal Party of Canada already uses a preferential balloting system in its own leadership and riding nomination contests;
BE IT RESOLVED that the Liberal Party of Canada implement a preferential ballot for all future national elections.
Liberal Party of Canada (Saskatchewan)
YES!
Eliminate the vote split – implement preferential balloting!
Sorry if I said somthing very similar in the Ontarian thread, but I do not believe that the preferential voting and proportional representation are mutually exclusive. I think the idea of cooperating with another political party in a way representative of the votes to each party is perfectly noble and should be encouraged.
I think preferential vote would allow less distortions in the general repartition of the seats after the uninominal election, which would reduce the problem of the additionnal MPs. I also think it could be feasible to have an electoral list which retake, as candidate of the proportional vote in the second column of the ballot, those which were the closer of 50%+1 in their own riding but lose the race. They would be more representative than some guys nominated for strange reasons.
I support this resolution 100%. The current mess we are in is a direct result of this first past the post voting system.It is archaic and dishonours our democracy.
Sure, but, a hell of a lot easier said than done… And there could be a very negative downside when it comes to the LPC… Be creful what you wish for…
I’m all for this. it’s the best alternative to the present system which isn’t working.
I agree there is an issue where there is a perceived lack of legitimacy from someone getting elected with say only 30% of the popular vote in a riding. It would hopefully reduce the need of some people to vote strategically as well and give us a better sense of how the population at large actually feels about each party. Hopefully it will also make people consider policy over party a bit more as well.
I agree with this resolution.
The proposal rejected in BC, PEI and Ontario were all too complex. A preferential system will only be effective if the voters understand both HOW to vote and HOW the winner is selected.
PB will also bring about a desperately needed change to our political culture: it encourages and rewards collaboration and understanding between parties. Since it is crucially important to receive as many second choice votes as possible, extremely negative ads and talk will be significantly reduced.
This would be a simple and effective change, and when proposed in a referendum, it would definitely succeed.
After an election, a coalition government could be a quite normal result: in line with the kind of relative convergence that would have been developing between some parties, even before the election.
I’d take this resolution a step further and put in place Preferential Balloting for all elected office within the Party, national, provincial, commissions and clubs and riding associations.
Only then can the Liberal Party avoid being accused of hypocracy when it is proposed for federal elections.
I may of not understood this idea. When they tried to bring it in Ontario. I listen and read what I could but it seemed to come down to; say, 8 seats be appointed by a party after the election, to bring up the totals.
If that understanding is correct, not on my watch. MP appointed by a party! After all the noise about senators not being elected.
If there is a better model than the one Ontario was floating, I am willing to listen, but on The Agenda, I didn’t hear anything that made me warm and fussy.
Rick, I think you are mistaken. What you are reffering to is the proportional vote, which imply (even if it isn’t obligated and if I foresee a way to prevent that) that a party will write a list of candidates which will become MPs if the party have more percentage of vote than it has a percentage of MPs elected by our good old system.
What they are reffering to is the preferential vote, which imply that you will be able to vote for your first, second, third, etc. choices in an election. If your first choice doesn’t have 50% of its riding voices, then it is like an automatic second ballot, in which your votes for your second choice are added to the corresponding candidate. At the end, every MPs will have 50% of the vote and then a greater legitimity.
What I like in this system is that the population wishes is more taken into account and you don’t have any MP which win with less than 50% of the vote (which happens more often than you think)
What I don’t like in this system is that little parties are not necessarily represented. This is because of that that I favour the proportionnal representation.
I hope I can help you to better understand what is going on by saying that.
this is the best form of electoral reform in my eyes. it would eliminate strategic voting, and considering the Conservatives have eliminated public funding for parties, it wouldn’t make a difference to the other parties whose votes will be shifted over to second or third preferentials.
alhtough this is of upmost importance to our democracy, i worry that other parties or the media will negatively spin it against us as some sort of sore loser strategic move.
The way to avoid being seen to employ “some sort of sore loser strategic move” is in fact not to employ one. I’m all for electoral reform, but based on some of the comments here, in the Liberal forum, I have to conclude that people here view this (and Canadians would be right in viewing it) as an effort to cement the place of the Liberals as the natural governing party of Canada, since come on.. the closest thing to any other party is the centrist party. I.e., second votes must logically largely go to the Liberals.
The way to show the party is not a bunch of sore losers is to commit to genuine electoral reform. That means *not Alternative Vote*, but rather proportional representation.
But here, even better: why not let the people decide, in a referendum process like that held in New Zealand. The first referendum (preferably preceded by a truly honest and well publicized information campaign to explain the pros and cons of the different systems without shilling for one or the other) has two questions:
1. Do you want to keep the current FPTP system or change to another one?
2. If we were to choose to move to another system, which one of these five would you prefer?
a) Straight proportional, b) Mixed-member proportional (could include AV for the single-member constituencies), c) Single Transferrable vote, d) Parallel (like a multimember proportional constituency added to x number of single member FPTP or AV constituencies; only semi-proportional), or (if you insist on including it) e) Alternative vote (not in any way proportional)
Then, after Referendum 1 ascertains the desire of voters to have electoral reform *and* the system the largest number of them prefer, we can have referendum #2 (after another honest and highly publicized information campaign) to choose between the current system and the system most popular with those who want reform.
The Kiwis were able to do this one, and they got the desired result of electoral reform, to a system chosen by the voters. If the voters truly choose alternative vote, so be it. At least the process will have been democratic. Then nobody can accuse the Liberals of sore loser backroom tactics.
However, if the Liberals go through with this undemocratic process to try to put in another non-proportional electoral system which seems like it’s designed to benefit the Liberal party, I predict the effort will backfire, and deservedly so.
This resolution and the one on electoral reform should be folded into one resolution as they essentially say the same thing.
It is very heartening to see that Liberals are prepared to take positive steps to position the Liberal Party of Canada as the party willing to remedy the democratic deficits of Canada!
So the Liberals where in power for how many years and didn’t do anything
like this. If it is such a good idea, Why not?
I disagree strongly with this resolution because contrary to some comments here I think it will beget an even more adversarial system. After all, everyone will be encouraged to mark only the first choice on the ballot, thereby leaving the system essentially as it is. The reason for that is the wider result than just your riding. If you prevent your vote from going to the NDP, say, you just might stave off the NDP moving ahead of the Liberals in the overall results. In addition, in this modern age EVERYONE wants their own voice to be heard. Why does it matter who your neighbours vote for in order that your say have a place at the table? OPEN LIST PR (that is where you can choose your preferred candidate from the party’s list of candidates) easily takes away the problem of the party deciding on your MP.
An added problem with this resolution is that it will make a coalition with any of the other progressive parties impossible. And in my view, if we don’t join as a coalition for the next election, we might as well pack up and go home now because we won’t be able to afford to exist and we’ll hand our country a two party system which has worked SOOO well in the country to our south. We don’t have to stay as a coalition for long, just long enough to bring back the vote subsidy and change the electoral system.
An idea I’d like to float is actually a combination of AV and OPEN LIST PR where on one side of the ballot you rank your choice (AV) and on the other side of the ballot you choose your party, and if you so choose, you can write in your preferred candidate. The best of both worlds, and similar to the idea of voting for both your representative and voting for the Prime Minister.
You make great sense, Jennifer.
The main thing at this point is for the Liberal Party to attack the democratic deficit at its root, and honour the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, by declaring squarely in favour of a basic principle — an equal vote and equal effective representation for every citizen of Canada.
If the party embraces that liberal democratic principle and goal, then the exact way of institutionalizing it at the federal level can be left open for further dialogue — with other opposition parties and the general public.
John Deverell
Pickering-Scarborough East
I suggest amending this resolution by adding to it the general principle set out below. The combination of this general principle and preferential voting would set our political landscape afire, to our party’s benefit.
In the 2011 federal election 4 in 10 Canadians did not vote, and only about 1 in 8 Canadians voted for the Liberal Party.
Clearly something is wrong.
Many years ago Martin Luther King electrified America with a few words. History was changed when he spoke.
His words were simple: I have a dream.
Yet so compelling were his words that hundreds of thousands of people marched when they heard them.
Today, for the Liberal Party to become attractive to more Canadians again, we need to be able to say to Canadians that we are the party with dreams.
One of the dreams we should have is to become the political party that can say to Canadians:
We commit ourselves to strive each and every day to improve your democratic rights.
We will do this at all levels of government – local, provincial and federal.
We will strenthen your democratic rights, not diminish them.
We will give you the most advanced democratic tools that any political party in any modern democracy can provide.
That last sentence is the general principle of this dream of democracy – if we adopt it, then all our policies and initiatives can be measured against it.
Give Canada’s democracy back to its citizens; be the party that stands for their rights. This will give voters a compelling reason to flock to the polls to vote Liberal so as to empower themselves.
This MUST be done.
1. Alternative Vote gives more power to the second choice of a riding. Right now, the most powerful second choice is the NDP, not the Liberals. So AV does not help the Liberals.
2. In a democracy, the right to representation belongs to all, the right to decide belongs to the majority . Alternative Vote does not determine the share of seats in the legislature, nor does it guarantee that every vote will translate into a seat (the right to representation). Hence it does not either guarantee that the party with the most seats will have the support of the majority (the right to decide). It merely eliminates vote splitting, at the expense of institutionalizing strategic voting (because with AV your last choice can always be a “strategic” vote).
3. Between 1945 and 1998, among 14 different western countries, there are only 3 countries that had more elections than Canada: New Zealand (with FPTP), Denmark (with party list) and Australia (with the AV system). Germany, Norway, Finland , Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden: all these countries have PR and had fewer elections. (Pilon, D. “The Politics of Voting” , p.64)
4. The debate on the system to adopt can become divisive and burdening. The LPC may want to consider instead in its policy: what is the consultative process to lead to electoral reform. New-Zealand successfully changed from FPTP to MMP after two referendums and one Royal Commission. The first referendum was on whether or not to keep FPTP or change to another system. The Royal Commission then set out to discuss which system was better, with much citizen involvement. This was actually the advantage over a Citizens Assembly: though it was great with the CA to put the citizen in charge of deciding and there was some outside input, it was mostly a jury deciding on its own. The Royal Commission actually led to more citizen involvement. The second referendum was on the proposed MMP. In November NZ will have a third referendum to see if they go back to FPTP, keep MMP or switch to AV or STV.
In our riding Board of Directors we did a workshop where we called out words to describe what we thought the Liberal party stood for. “Inclusive” was near the top. I’ve also seen the word on other ridings’ roundtables and such.
And the absolute leading resolution we hope to pass at our Convention completely contradicts this leading concept of Liberalism. And you wonder why we are the third party.
This is a bad resolution from the outset. Eliminating vote splitting, the common reason given for preferring AV over first past the post, hurt women minorities. It’s vote splitting that allows minority groups to get any representation. Where first past the post ensures that only the larger voices get heard, AV tries to up the ante so that only majority voices get heard.
Australia, the only major jurisdiction that uses AV, doesn’t get any more proportional results than Canada. In fact they are often worse. Moreover, if you look at who loses out when secondary preferences are taken into consideration (possible because Australia records the first round leader as well as the eventual winner), you find it’s women and visible minorities that get knocked off.
To really put the icing on the cake, because people assume (probably incorrectly) that the Liberals will be the natural second choice of both NDP and Conservative voters, this resolution will make it look like the Liberals are acting for purely partisan reasons. This is poison for a party that is currently running third in the polls.
AV is about the only voting system in use that is worse than first past the post. The Liberal Democrats in the U.K. have suffered at the polls for supporting it there – where it went down in flames.
What’s needed is a resolution calling for the Liberals to join the NDP and Greens in demanding that Stephen Harper follow through with his earlier call (when the right wing vote was split) for proportional representation.
Proportional representation is used by most nations around the world because it works. Now that the liberal Party can no longer rely on “strategic” voting, and in fact will probably be hurt by it, it needs to demand real electoral reform.
I’m amazed at the amount of misinformation is this discussion. AV is used in Australia where it does very little different from first past the post other than make it harder for women and visible minorities to win.
Rather than spout theories about why it may or may not be better, why not look at what happens where it is used? You can also check out IDEA.net, which rates it worst at offering ways to help elect more women.
Consider also that most nations in the world use some form of proportional representation. And consider that Canada leads the world in the number of federal elections over the last 60 years. Finally consider that Britain, which uses first past the post, has more political parties in parliament than Israel.
Proportional representation is widely used because it works. AV is rarely used because it does a worse job that first past the post and is more complicated and error prone.
If people want the LPC to become like the Liberal Democrats in the U.K., then by all means, let’s push this through. Another half-baked policy is all the LPC needs to convince the voters to abandon ship.
I would oppose using the Alternative Vote system, particularly given the difficulties Australians seem to have with it. I would support Single-Transferable Vote for small multi-seat constituencies of equal populations. STV is used in Ireland and has the advantages of both Proportional Representation and the Alternative Vote.
AV elections in Australia have shown that the second choices on ballots make a difference in only a small number of seats. A study of 21 elections between 1919 and 1996 showed that only six per cent of the leading first-choice candidates were defeated by (often strategic) second choices. In Manitoba and Alberta, where AV was used for 15 elections over three decades, second choices changed the outcome only 2 per cent of the time. So 94-98% of the time we get the same winner. In a very small number of swing ridings, the strategic second choice of voters may sometimes win, but the overall results are just as distorted as our current system, or worse. Most voters are still not represented by the party or candidate they want. Just as problematic, as another “winner take all” system, AV maintains the institutionalized adversarial politics (mud slinging) that most Canadians are fed up with, and tuning out of.
I think one of the few merits of this kind of change is that it would give independent candidates a little better chance and this strikes me as fundamentally more democratic. Ultimately, the outcomes in elections may not be a lot different but I’d feel better about the process. On the other side, Rick Zavitz makes a good point when he asks why we didn’t do it when we had power. I think his question is an honest appraisal of the fact that since we might now benefit, we suddenly like it.
Sam, the independent candidate under AV doesn’t stand a chance. Even less than he does today.
I am for one member one vote, then we truly will have a leader who is wnating by the majority of the members, not delegates casting a block vote. There should be no restriction on who may run as leader.
If I am not mistaken, the use of AV for internal Liberal elections is recent. So I can understand that Liberals that are new to it like what they see. However the context there is a competition amongst teammates to choose the best. In national elections, the AV system tends to favour extremes at the detriment of the center, yeilding no better representation than what we have today. So I agree with those who say that it is a bad alternative for Canada, and that a proportional system would be better.
Nonetheless there is something that can be done: The Liberals do have a (minority) government in Ontario, and the Ontario municipal elections act currently restrict municipal elections to first-past-the-post or block voting in multi-member ridings. Modifying section 52 to allow the ranked ballot and section 54 to allow the single transferable vote counting procedure would add two new possibilities: AV in single-member ridings and the single transferable vote in multi-member ridings.
The latter is my personal favourite in the municipal context, but I believe that cities should be allowed to choose. I am confident that through public consultation and examination of historical precedents, most would come to choose the single transferable vote as the most representative system.
The AV or single transferable vote in fact favours parties and candidates in the center, not the extremes. Under that system candidates and parties will always be looking for areas where they can find agreement with their competitors so as to attact second choice votes. Further it is a system that ensures the winner has majority support which has always been the essential basis upon which parties have conducted leadership and nomination contests, albeit sometimes accomplishing that by way of one or more run off votes.
At the same time the AV or STV system avoids the great downfall of PR which is ensuring that each riding has its own member of parliament. In a country the size of Canada the need for each area to have its own MP is clear. People appointed off party lists as is in done in straight PR votes are unlikely to feel a clear connection with the problems of a particular area or region. PR may be a great system for a small, relatively homogenous community but it will never serve here.
AV in contrast is extremely democratic. Right now easily half of our current MPs lack support of 50% of the voters of their riding. Indeed the current Conservative government would likely be a minority one given that that party would have been the second choice of very few other voters.
I do not really understand the need for this resolution.
If we want to assure that each riding has an MP who received 50% of the vote then move to a run-off system. However, where there are more than two parties, what is the issue with winning with a plurality rather than a majority?
Long story short: I think this resolution is a waste of time.
First, the Liberal Party of Canada, whether the third party, in opposition, or in government, should not be unilaterally changing the electoral system. Changes of this nature should, at the very least, be decided by an all-party committee or, better yet, by a Royal Commission with extensive citizen engagement/consultation.
Second, if we are going to talk about electoral reform, we should talk about electoral reform, with everything on the table: the Senate, the constitution, etc.
Personally, I’d like to see genuine representation by population is the House of Commons, with none of this hogwash where PEI gets four seats when it has the population to support only one. These members should be elected directly by the people and accountable to their constituents. Whether they are elected through FPTP or preferential balloting I don’t care. In addition, the Senate could be elected through straight proportional representation, giving a voice to those smaller parties.
Obviously this is an overly simple explanation where the reality would be vastly more complex. What I’m saying is: if we’re going to talk about electoral reform, lets talk about it…doing otherwise is a waste of everyones time.
I wold prefer to see a merger with the Greens rather than the NDP. We are closer to them in ideology.
Has anyone ever seriously considered the link between inequality within our nation (and others) and the electoral system used to elect the representatives and leaders?
Has anyone ever considered the link between aggressive foreign policy including government aggression toward our own citizens and the electoral system in play within our nation?
I have given consideration to the above questions for many years and I believe there is a serious flaw in plurality voting systems and a direct link to the decline of governmental accountability to society and the decline of environmental eco systems.
There are 50 nations that still use our First Past the Post plurality system in one form or another. Many are nuclear armed and most sit on the wrong end of all of the inequality charts noted in the extraordinarily enlightening book The Spirit Level.
I am presently a Liberal Party member and I have strong supportive opinions for Proportional Representation even if it is not party policy. Some party members believe that Preferential Ballots or Alternative Voting should replace our FPTP system and many others simply want the status-quo. That proposed system is just another First Past The Post system that again denies our society a real democracy.
The British left the FPTP system in all of its colonies but it is interesting to note this entry attributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica – “The case for Proportional Representation is fundamentally the same as that for representative democracy. Only if an assembly represents the full diversity of opinion within a nation can its decisions be regarded as the decisions of the nation itself.” It should be obvious to all that no plurality system can represent the full diversity of a nation – only a Proportional Representative system can do that.
Somehow we believe that if everyone voted voluntarily, or by law, everything would be ok. I fail to see how this would change anything. If everyone voted for the party of their choice in the same percentages as in the last federal election we would still have a Canadian government that overrides 60 percent of our population and all opposition with an iron hand. Do we somehow believe that things would be different because those that don’t vote are more knowledgeable and reasonable than those that voted?
My question is – Is there anything we can do quickly to awaken our party and our country and indeed the entire world to the disastrous effects of FPTP?
My question is – Is there anything we can do quickly to awaken our party and our country and indeed the entire world to the disastrous effects of FPTP?
The Preferential Ballot systems appeals to me, over proportional representation, because I think single seat constituencies provide for greater accountability of individual MPs.
It is noted in these comments that advocating the Preferential Ballot system may appear to be a ploy by the Liberal Party, which could benefit by the tendency of many voters to rank a centre party higher than an extreme party they oppose. That might benefit the Liberals if there were only three parties. However, with a Preferential Ballot system there will be more than three parties, plus independents, in the running.
Preferential Ballot will work well in Canada. We cannot continue with a system that enables a Party without a popular majority to arbitrate in the House of Commons.
There is an old saying “keep it simple stupid” that I really believe applies to this issue as well as a number of others been discussed here and other places
I’m sure I could find a tens of thousands people to agree with me very quickly. That the last thing the general public needs is to have more confusion added to their already confused state. So it matters little if any or much change to the present system is a good thing or not, if all this is going to do is create more confusion in the minds of eligible voters.
We could start putting an end to the confusion right here right now if we choose to. This is not an issue that should even warrant discussion at this time. Let alone being the main topic over the mainstream media as the single biggest concern within the Party. If we are ever going to perceived by the general public as being serious political contenders, we need to be spending our time formulating policies that matter to them instead of us.
I challenge everyone in here to make a difference. How votes get tabulated doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in comparison to issues that are relevant to the well being or economic survival of millions of Canadians. The very first thing we need to do it bury the amount of votes this policy is getting by focusing our attention on more relevant issues.
I dearly hope I have been as clear as a bell about this and enough of you take it to heart to make a difference. Because as important as this message is to us for our well being, it’s not nearly as important as it is too Canadians for theirs.
I really have to agree with this.
While I think election reform is important, and perhaps even necessary, it’s a complicated subject and the thought we give it now could save us a lot of trouble in the future.
At the same time, I don’t think it’s our most important issue, and while many Canadians were frustrated with the last elections, this probably isn’t the way to address those frustrations. Electoral reform is AN issue for the party, but it shouldn’t be THE issue for it. It would reflect badly if we give this too much attention, as though we are more concerned about winning the next election through tactics instead of through policy change.
This is an issue warranting further discussion, but now might not be the time. If we only had the time to cover one issue, this shouldn’t be it. Please think carefully, and look further into the suggested resolutions, before casting your vote.
I agree with this in theory, although I am deeply concerned that it has emerged as our top priority. The reality is that people don’t care about this and it was overwhelmingly defeated in Ontario. Yes it is true that they spent little time educating the public about it, but it would be a serious error in judgment for a party hoping to gain ground to make this a major issue. Issues such as balancing the budget should take clear priority.
This would be some variant of the preferential ballot already defeated by not one but two referendums in British Columbia? What sort of message would it send to BC for our party to adopt a system that 60% of voters here decisively decided to avoid?
Nevermind the fact that we as a party have only become entranced with some sort of alternative to the FPTP system following the 2011 election debacle. Where were the Liberal party’s complaints when Chretien was cruising to victory after victory with about 38-40% of the vote?
This is a system that only a political scientist looking for something to do could love.
We have to figure out how to win with the system we have, as opposed to kvetching about how the rules are stacked against us. This debate not only makes us look out of touch, it makes us look like sore losers.
Mike’s point is well taken. This is not a policy to plant on our masthead but that is not to say it is not a good policy for our Party to adopt.
There is no question that our Party when in government had no interest in electoral reform and can be accused of being hypocrites now if we push such a policy. But times in the wilderness are meant to be educational and we are no exception.
Conrad Black’s endorsement of prison reform, now that he has had the benefit of being there, only enhances him in the eyes of many. So it would be with our Party, if upon making it back to power we seriously pushed electoral reform such as preferential balloting
To: Info Avaaz
Date: 2011
Subject: Election Reform in Canada
Dear Avaaz,
Canada is very interested if you would run a campaign based on the below:
Canada needs election reform as the majority of voters are not represented after voting. IRV is a slight modification to the current system. People are already familiar with strategic voting and it is essentially automatic strategic voting. It’s already used in some US municipal elections. There’s a referendum coming up on it in the UK (called Alternative Vote there.) If we win IRV we can try PR next round. It’s the practical choice.
IRV is automatic strategic voting. It allows you to rank candidates. If there is a second instant runoff ballot, one of your choices will make it on. This system is superior to strategic voting because it:
a) takes the guess work out;
b) doesn’t require any recruitment; and
c) stops vote-splitting 100%.
Although PR is used in almost all developed countries, there is fierce opposition to it in Canada and other Anglo-Saxon countries. It is portrayed as radical here. The mainstream media hates it. Even the Toronto Star is rabidly anti-PR. It has lost in 5 provincial designed-to-fail referendums. It is toast here. A better bet is a Layton majority. If we go “all in” on PR, we will end up with nothing and can look forward to many neo-Con majorities in the future.
I think the safer route is to got for moderate gains with IRV first, which will be hard for the media to kill. Then after Canadians get a taste for electoral reform we go for PR. IRV, although not perfect, will get us to where we want to go. If we risk all on PR and lose — which has happened 5 times already — then electoral reform is dead as dirt. Papers like the Toronto Star are already claiming electoral reform is a settled issue: “the people have spoken loudly and clearly and rightfully rejected it.” (to paraphrase Torstar corp.)
…………………………………………
If FairVote’s petition below gets enough signatures, Avaraz will take on this campaign.
http://www.fairvote.ca/en/civicrm/profile/create?gid=7&reset=1
Declaration of Voters’ Rights
We the undersigned Canadian citizens demand the following basic democratic rights:
•to cast an equal and effective vote and to be represented fairly in Parliament, regardless of political belief or place of residence.
•to be governed by a fairly elected Parliament where the share of seats held by each political party closely reflects the popular vote.
•to live under legitimate laws approved by a majority of elected Parliamentarians representing a majority of voters.
I will be voting against this resolution at the Convention if it comes before a vote of the delegates attending. This resolution is in adequate in its current form.
When resolutions are submitted to the National Policy Chair, the originator should also provide with it a short background on why this resolution is being proposed in the first place, with some solid rationale as to why this is important. The rationale, of course, should be based on some solid research to show how ‘Preferrential Balloting’ would be better than what we have now.
I also agree with Zachary Armstrong that Canadians need to become engaged in a a broader discussion on several fronts dealing with democratic renewal. Perhaps the LPC might consider taking the lead on a national discussion on democratic reform.
NOTE – my 2 cents to IT staff… we should be able to vote “up” or “down” on resolutions, just as a group of delegates would vote “for” or against” a resolution at a convention.
Being limited to voting “yes” only gives the artificial impression these resolutions are highly supported when there are probably hundreds who would vote against them if the could.
Preferential balloting of any kind does nothing to solve Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem or vote splitting. When a balloting system utilizes a ranking system while also containing more than two strong candidates, the process itself warps the actual intent of voters. Instead of pursuing voting systems that have been proven to be mathematically flawed we should educate ourselves about the possibilities we’ve yet to entertain. Choosing a system simply because it sounds good without any consideration for its practical applications is the opposite of the Liberal way and a much better fit for the policy development team in the NDP.
Ok. I’ll bite. What is Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem and why does preferential balloting not deal with vote splitting?
Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem (otherwise known as the Paradox of Voting) was produced by mathematician, economist and Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow in the 1950s. The theorem proved that no-ranked choice voting system could mathematically satisfy basic, common-sense characteristics at the core of democracy with the outcome it produced and therefore all voting systems are defective. It took decades to navigate around this problem with a newly revisited type of voting called Approval Voting or Range Voting. These systems use ratings instead of rankings and can therefore mathematically escape the paradox.
Ultimately any supporter of electoral system change should immerse themselves in the mathematical and system design theory behind the various systems in order to understand their true functionality and how well they deliver on principles of good governance. The easiest way to follow the mathematical arguments is to read William Poundstone’s ‘Gaming the Vote’ which presents a lively history of world wide voting reforms and the mathematical debates behind them.
The last time there was a referendum, I voted for reform -first past the post doesn’t work very well. Mr Harper is Prime Minister with only what percent of the popular vote???? There are lots of countries in Europe that have some form of representational election. If we don’t like THIS resolution what WOULD we like?? Can we come up with a viable alternative?
A better time to consider this is when we form the government. It smacks too much of sour grapes at this time and should be shelved for another convention; preferably one which would be also available online.
I agree with the use of a preferential ballot within the Liberal Party. As for electoral reform, most people want it, yet it has not happened federally, or provincially in Ontario, and has failed twice in BC.
I knew all the electoral reform referendums were going to fail. How? Because the new electoral system promoted sucked.
It’s real simple. Create a national, multiparty electoral commission, which also has electoral experts on it.
Have Canadians give their opinion on what type of system they want, and then the commission will present 4 different electoral options to Canadians, which Canadians will then get a chance to look over, and then give their opinion on it.
If they are no further changes to the 4 different systems, then on the next general election, place on the ballot those 4 electoral systems to choose from, plus the current system.
A preferential ballot will be used to choose the new system, or to keep the current one.
So those who want a pure communist system, can now have their PR placed on the ballot. Also, I have created my own electoral system, that I would wish to see on the ballot.
Not a bad idea and similar to what they are doing in New Zealand.
I’m not against preferential voting but I think we would be better served using APPROVAL VOTING. The proposal doesn’t mention which type of preferential balloting we are proposing. Do we count all of the second place votes or do we just count the second place votes of the candidate that comes in last and then the second and third place votes of the candidate that comes in second last, and so on until someone achieves a majority? I would like to see clarification on that question.
APPROVAL VOTING is simply allowing voters to vote for more than one candidate in a single representative constituency. It eliminates vote splitting because if someone wants to vote Liberal and NDP they can. If they want to vote Liberal, NDP and Green they can. If they want to vote Liberal, NDP, Green and Conservative they can.
APPROVAL VOTING also means that we will have greater competition for incumbent candidates in safe ridings. You can have two or three Liberals running in the same riding without fear of splitting the Liberal vote and allowing another party to win. Most hard core Liberals would vote for all three Liberals and the three Liberal candidates would have to attract the support of regular voters in order to win.
APPROVAL VOTING means that winning candidates need to attract widespread support from not only their political base but also from those people who are normally predisposed to voting for another party. Most of the time the party that wins a majority would have more than a majority of support among voters. Anyone who has filled out a customer survey from Home Depot has used APPROVAL VOTING. Home Depot asks you to list all of the hardware stores that you have visited in the past 6 months, they don’t ask you to rate them. When they see that 60% of their customers also shop at Canadian Tire and 50% also shop at Lowes and 40% also shop at Pro Hardware then it gives them very valuable information of the competitors their customers approve of.
APPROVAL VOTING is a voting method that anyone can understand. It doesn’t dramatically change the outcome of elections but rather gives those elections a much greater stamp of legitimacy. The greater stamp of legitimacy is what will restore faith in our democratic institutions.
Maybe I’m missing something, but Approval Voting seems to me to be overly complicated. Is a first choice vote worth twice as much as a second place one? Three times?
Figuring this out might take another 10 conventions to decide on.
Yes you are missing something, and that is how preferential ballots work and how approval voting works. What you have described about having to calculate ballot results based on how candidates are ranked is a problem of preferential balloting. In preferential balloting, you rank all candidates and based on a run-off system (require the calculation of quotas only determined once all ballots are counted in the first place) the winner is determined once the choice is whittled to two. This creates a false majority where voters are forced to choose between the last two standing instead of those they actually have any interest in support.
Approval Voting on the other hand does not rank candidates. The only option on an Approval Ballot is to check any candidate you feel you can reasonably support to represent you. There is no complex math involved, no extra rounds of voting or counting, and no ranking required of the voter. Just a simple check mark. The advantage is that vote splits are eliminated because voters are free to select candidates from any political leaning they wish. In Canada, that would mean the progressive vote would no longer be split which would ultimately benefit the Liberal Party.
Chris, I am so pleased to hear from a fellow approval supporter! I thought I might be the only one here in Canada since it’s so little known (other than to those I’ve spoken to and converted!). I am actually in the process of starting up an organization for the promotion of it in Canada but haven’t had the hours to complete the site or its content yet (right now is quite hideous but is located at approvalcanada.org). Maybe you could leave a message with your email over there and we can get in touch!
The key element of APPROVAL VOTING is that it gives voters more than one choice if they choose to exercise it and there is no ranking involved. If you have 6 candidates on the ballot and you vote for 3 of them then it is 1 vote in favour for each of those 3 candidates and no votes in favour of those candidates you don’t approve of.
I think that electoral reform has failed in Canada and the UK because we had these citizens’ assemblies or committees that came up with a silver bullet system and then, surprise surprise, many people who didn’t get exactly what they wanted voted against it.
If it were up to me I would have a panel put together 10 or 12 voting systems and we would put all of them on a ballot. We would then use APPROVAL VOTING to determine which system Canadians liked the best. Speaking only for myself, I would vote for APPROVAL VOTING, preferential voting (with some conditions) and first past the post. I wouldn’t support any of the proportional systems because I really like having single representative constituencies. I might be convinced to vote in favour of a run-off system as well but the way I see it, if we have APPROVAL VOTING you don’t need run-offs. There would be others who would vote for anything as long as it’s not first past the post while others would vote for all of the proportional options.
Using APPROVAL VOTING to determine the most popular voting system means that everyone has the opportunity to get behind the system that they favour most but can also support other systems that they find acceptable. It is very likely that we would have majority support for at least one of the options (it is certainly possible that we end up with majority support for more than one). In this referendum, whichever system has the most support becomes our voting system. It might not be a bad idea to have another referendum programmed in for 20 years hence so that people can pass judgment on the earlier decision.
@Chris Land,
I think because the whereas clauses specifically mention the process that we already use within the Liberal Party, it is clear that the intent is to implement Alternative Vote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_vote).
I’m a big fan of alternative vote, as it rewards politicians and political parties for building consensus and because it ensures (in all but the rarest of circumstances) that the most preferred candidate is elected. It has also proved to be relatively friendly to independent candidates, which partially addresses your very valid concern about increasing intra-party competition (STV addresses this more fully). Approval voting does not address this however, as there are strong disincentives towards parties that nominate more than one candidate under approval voting.
This is not the case for approval voting, which is much more prone to tactical voting. Consider the following situation:
60% of voters really like the Liberal candidate, but think the NDP guy is ok too. They vote for the Liberal candidate and the NDP candidate.
35% of voters really like the Conservative candidate and no one else. They vote Conservative only.
5% of voters really like the NDP candidate and none one else.
Who wins? The NDP candidate despite being the first choice of only 5% of the electorate, while the Liberal candidate loses despite being the first choice of 60% of voters. That’s a pretty perverse outcome and I would argue actually far worse than our current system. It rewards the party with the most hard-core voters, not the one that’s best able to reach out.
“Who wins? The NDP candidate despite being the first choice of only 5% of the electorate, while the Liberal candidate loses despite being the first choice of 60% of voters. That’s a pretty perverse outcome and I would argue actually far worse than our current system. It rewards the party with the most hard-core voters, not the one that’s best able to reach out.”
No actually. There is no first or second or third choice in Approval Voting. There are only approved candidates or those who aren’t. If you can’t stomach the win of say the NDP, then you don’t vote for them. It’s that simple. You cannot apply a preferential ballot mindset to Approval and then say Approval is bad because it doesn’t follow the results of another system. In Approval, ‘hardcore’ voters, as you call them, would only select one candidate because they feel that strongly about their election and have no interest in seeing another candidate elected.
What you’re forgetting because you are a partisan Liberal is that most voters don’t have such a dogmatic attachment to any one party or candidate. Most voters (only about 1% of voters belong to political parties) are open to more than one party/candidate and the election of one over the other isn’t an issue of life or death to them.
Instead of dealing in hypotheticals I will give you an actual example from the 2008 election. In that election, Conservatives were supported by 37.6% of the population, Liberals by 26.2%, the NDP by 18.2%, the Greens by 6.8% and the BQ by 10%. However, there was a huge majority of voters that, if given the chance to select more than one candidate, would have.
45% of those who voted Conservative were unwilling to support any other party. But of the rest of their voters, 25.6% would have also voted Liberal, 15.4% would have voted NDP, 0.6% would have voted BQ, and 11.9% would have voted Green.
33.8% of Liberal voters would only select Liberals (the hardcore Liberals you speak of). 20.5% of those voters would be comfortably supporting the Conservatives, 23.1% the NDP, 6.2% BQ, and 16.6% Greens.
26.4% of NDP voters would only support the NDP. Of the rest, 30.9% would also support Liberals, 12.4% Conservatives, 4.5% BQ, and 25.8% Green.
The Bloc had the lowest amount of support that would not be interested in casting a vote for someone else at 7.1%. The rest of the voters would also support Liberals at 20.5%, Conservatives at 15.2%, the NDP at 37.5% (which additionally explains the most recent election – the support for the NDP was already there), and 19.6% Green.
The Green vote had a secure 28.1%. The rest of that party’s voters would also support other parties – 31.6% would go Liberal, 15.8% would go Conservative, 24.6% would go NDP, and none would go BQ.
If voters were allowed to express their full electoral intent and cast an approval ballot, the Liberals likely would have one the election. But beyond that, voters would have been able to to show their full support without worrying about how strategic voting might get warped in the process and cast ballots for those who they truly support. All preferential systems result in either a false plurality caused by vote-splits, or false majorities caused by forcing voters to select and rank candidates they have no interest in supporting. If that same election was conducted under an runoff system, the Greens would have been out before the BQ despite the Greens having a higher aggregate of preference from voters.
Approval ensures that the most supported candidate wins. Under approval, instead of electing a compromise we would elect the consensus. It would make political parties campaign for every vote instead of those they can safely count on from their base that can win them election when vote splits occur.
I recently went to panel that one of Tim Hudak’s top advisers was on and he said micro-targeting is successful because when there is low turnout and vote splits, 2% of the vote can make the difference. If we used approval, the whole electorate would actually have to be considered which would lower negative campaigning and make it more likely that those turned off by negative antics would participate. I think it’s pretty obvious which system the Liberals would fair better under. I also think Approval is a system that is best for our democracy because it actually allows true democracy to exist.
Theresa,
My objection to approval voting is that it fails the majority criterion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_criterion) – that is, if a candidate would receive 50+% of the vote under the current system, that candidate should still be elected under any new system. Alternative vote passes that criteria; approval voting does not.
I know you stated that you felt approval voting avoids the pitfalls of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. It does not, and your example that maps 1st and 2nd preferences from polls to votes under approval voting shows exactly how approval voting is just a preferential system in disguise. If you look in more detail here at how approval voting compares to other voting systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_runoff_voting_to_other_voting_systems #Voting_system_criteria) you’ll find that it fails quite a few really important criteria. In particular I’d draw your attention to the Condorcet Loser Criteria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_loser_criterion) which approval voting fails. In effect this means that under approval voting the least supported (what I would call the “worst”) candidate wins.
In terms of “there is no first or second or third choice in Approval Voting. There are only approved candidates or those who aren’t,” that’s my point. If I personally prefer the Liberals to the NDP, and the NDP to the Conservatives, there’s no way to express that. I can only give a yes/no on each candidate.
You said “I also think Approval is a system that is best for our democracy because it actually allows true democracy to exist.” I agree that our current system isn’t particular democratic. Right now we have a majority government that only received the support of 39.6% of those who voted, and only 24.3% of eligible voters. In a real democracy a majority government should require the support of a majority voters, and neither approval voting nor alternative vote do anything to achieve this. At least under alternative vote guarantees us that each representative has the support of at least a majority of his or her constituents. Approval voting guarantees us no such thing.
Also just an fyi – I know in Australia they force voters to rank every single candidate, but that’s not a requirement of alternative vote. I don’t think anyone is proposing anything that draconian here.
And by the way – to see someone mention Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem here warms might heart. It’s nice to see such intellectually stimulating and thoughtful debate.
Cheers and best regards,
Ryan
First I want to say I appreciate the thoroughness of your comment and the way in which you delivered it. I find discussions of electoral reform can get pretty heated and sometimes get away from the actual topic at hand.
Your majoritarian criterion is important to many but not the only criterion that is important. On this criterion, Approval does not fail but certainly does not guarantee a candidate supported by the majority. Though, other than in runoff voting systems, it is the system that is most likely to produce a candidate that is supported by the majority. For me personally, majoritarian concerns bother me very little since I believe it just makes logical sense that whoever is supported most, wins. We often make the argument that the Conservatives were voted against by a majority. But every other party was voted against by an even greater majority. While majorities are nice, they are better when they are legitimate majorities and not ones cobbled together by runoffs.
Approval voting does not mean necessarily that a candidate who fails to win a majority is elected. There’s no reason why a threshold requirement can’t be implemented and when not met, perhaps no one is elected. This seems fairer than pretending a majority of the population supports a candidate when they don’t. Those specifics are to be argued in a different discussion, however.
As for the reverse issue of a candidate being able to receive 50%+1 and still not being elected because another candidate hits that threshold and exceeds it further than the first candidate, I again have no personal issue with this. In that case the most supported candidate is still elected and to me that’s what representative democracy is all about.
Approval is in no way a preferential system as preferential systems require rankings of some sort. Approval is a ratings system, as is its more complicated variant, range-voting. Preferential systems by definition require the voter to differentiate between all candidates. To me, your suggestion that Alternative Vote doesn’t require you to rank all candidates suggest that in a model of that sort, Alternative voting is actually more of a hybrid of a preferential system and an approval system because it requires rankings where a mark is written but allows for unfilled boxes unlike all other rank-based systems. In this case, Alternative Vote is actually taking some aspects of Approval into its process. The only difference between this and range voting is that in range voting, it would be okay to give two different candidates the same rating (say 5 out of a system between 1 and 10).
I don’t think your argument about Approval allowing the least supported candidate to win holds any water. by definition of the system, voters can select any candidates they wish and as many as they wish. Support is strangled under preferential systems that require a choice between two options instead of a binary choice between supporting or not supporting a specific option, irregardless of support or non-support of any other candidate. It has been mathematically worked out through data by American mathematicians that Approval does in fact do better than preferential systems in this regard.
As for Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, that theorem states that when there are more than two candidates in an election, vote splits will occur that will distort the overall intention of voters. Vote splits are caused by preferential balloting and any balloting containing a rank will split votes. Approval voting is not a preferential system, does not force the splitting of votes, and therefore very easily addresses Arrow’s Theorem.
Yes, Approval by design does not take into consideration preference beyond support or not. I am personally okay with that and so are many voters who do not have party memberships nor care about parties the same way we do. Approval is not bad, wrong, unfair or any other descriptor better applied to people than voting systems because of this. It is a matter of personal taste whether that is a concern to you or not. For you it is, for me it isn’t. Electoral system design is precisely about this issue. The system, once the math and theory are covered, must ultimately be suitable to its environment and the public who will use it. I don’t think we can throw out approval because you personally have preferences that run counter to how it functions.
It simply isn’t correct to say Alternative Voting guarantees the intent of a majority of voters is represented in the final result. When you whittle down the race to two candidates in a runoff you create a false majority instead of a split-vote plurality. The majoritarian candidate doesn’t have the real support of a majority of the voters, they’ve just been forced to go down the list until they hit rock bottom and the results are derived from that. Hardly ideal and hardly the original aim of those in favour of the system. If you aren’t required to rank every candidate that changes it a bit, but also adds in more confusion for the voter and as system design theory has worked out, the most important characteristic of a voting system is that the electorate using it can actually understand the process it employs from start to finish. Runoff systems work a lot like that cup game where the ball is hidden under the cup and the cups are moved around until finally you have to guess which cup your ball is under. Voting should and needs to be more straightforward. The reversal of the democratic deficit by way of low turnout won’t be happen if the way we vote isn’t explainable in just mere seconds.
“And by the way – to see someone mention Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem here warms might heart. It’s nice to see such intellectually stimulating and thoughtful debate.” I agree about how nice it is to have thoughtful debate on the subject. I’ve been researching electoral system design theory and mechanics for the last four years in my spare time and am pretty passionate about it. I’m glad to have gotten to engage you and others on options that exist being PR and preferential voting since it is usually assumed those are the only alternatives.
Ultimately the things you find uncomfortable in Approval Voting can be answered through its more specific offspring range-voting (with the exception of majoritarian results). In the end, I think the best option would be to do as New Zealand is doing in a few days and provide several options to the electorate.
Thanks for the discussion!
This discussion presumes that somehow the Liberal Party is again in a position to change the law.
Most discussants then go on to support the Alternative Vote, a scheme they think will advantage the Liberal Party.
Unfortunately the Alternative Vote, like the present voting system, does not provide representation for about half the active electorate. It is not a democratic voting system, and therefore is unlikely to attract the active people we need to attract to rebuild the party.
Also, it provides no basis for the negotiations our leaders will need to conduct with the Green Party and the NDP, before the next election, if we are to achieve government in 2015.
Here’s the voting resolution I wish we were discussing instead.
Democratic Voting: A proposal by policy director John Deverell and the Honourable Dan McTeague, president of the Pickering-Scarborough East Federal Liberal Riding Association, to put Liberals in government by 2015
Whereas the defeat and replacement of the Harper Conservative government at the earliest opportunity is of utmost importance to the character, reputation and future of Canada
And whereas that goal cannot be guaranteed with the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Green Party campaigning independently, but could be achieved by specific active cooperation among them
And whereas rivalry and mistrust among the opposition parties can be allayed, and a temporary and partial electoral alliance against the Conservative party can be justified, only by a commitment to overcome the democratic deficit and advance the fundamental democratic rights of Canadians
Resolved that henceforth the Liberal Party of Canada will take the lead on democratic reform by advocating equal effective votes for Canadian citizens and proportional representation in Parliament by the MPs and parties for whom they vote.
Further resolved that any government in which the Liberal Party participates will enact democratic proportional representation by making the necessary changes to the Canada Elections Act within one year of taking office.
Further resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada will cooperate with other political parties willing to enact equal effective votes for Canadians and representative democracy for Canada including, as and where necessary, pre-election negotiations in swing ridings with the objective of nominating a single candidate to defeat the Conservative and help elect a democratic coalition government representing a majority of Canadians.
John Deverell
Pickering-Scarborough East
I’d be more supportive of your motion than the current one John.
The one point I don’t agree with is presupposing that proportional representation can or should be used as a tool to beat down the Conservatives with. Yes, left-of-centre voters are disadvantaged by first past the post right now. In the 1990s it was right-of-centre voters. Sooner or later first past the post screws everyone, and I support proportional representation not because it advances my partisan interests but simply because it’s fair and it works.
That applies for the Liberal Party as well. We shouldn’t support proportional representation because it would have given us more seats in May. We should support it as a party because by embracing just causes we will earn the support of more Canadians, and earn a mandate to govern.
Well-constructed proportional systems have an excellent track record too. In an open proportional system, voters get to decide not only how many seats a party gets, but also who holds those seats for a party. All of the horror stories for proportional representation are from countries with closed systems (ie Italy, Israel), where who fills the seats is entirely determined by a list from party headquarters. There are 10 countries in the world more prosperous than us today – of those 10, 6 also have lower income inequality. All 6 of those countries use an open proportional system. That’s what Liberal values are to me – prosperity and justice going hand in hand.
Quite right Ryan, but my resolution is not simply proposing to “beat down” the Conservative phony majority. It is proposing to “right-size” all the parties on an ongoing basis, and in that way transfer more authority, influence and responsibility to the citizenry. Lord knows we need more of all three, i.e. we need representative democracy.
At this point in time the self-interest of the Liberal party and the general interest of the citizenry are in perfect alignment — and I hope we as a Liberal Party are wise enough to admit it and act accordingly.
Deverell
I don’t disagree with you John – I just think the wording of your resolution could be made a bit clearer. Cheers.
My take is that we need to move away from our current voting system, and I perceive the preferential system will give us a government that is far more representative of the electorate. Split voting? It’s a very common strategy to vote for a second choice because one doesn’t believe one’s first choice will get in and one doesn’t want the third choice at all. We have fresh experience of what this can usher in.
In shorthand summary, to choose the Alternative Vote as Liberal electoral policy is to choose continued Harper government after 2015.
There are two interrelated questions: whether the undemocratic voting system should be democratized, and whether the Liberal Party intends to contribute strongly to the realization of this widespread desire.
The Liberal Party is in third place, and even with a substantial stand-alone comeback in popular vote is unlikely to achieve single-party majority or minority government in 2015. Thus a go-it-alone strategy strongly implies no electoral reform for the election of 2019, by which time I and many other senior Liberals will probably be dead.
We will have left no democratic legacy for our children or the country.
To achieve democratic reform the Liberal Party will have to make common cause with the NDP and Green parties before the election of 2015 in such way as to win control of government in 2015. The coalition government would then enact, sooner rather than later, the desired changes to the Canada Elections Act.
What changes? Broadly speaking, Green and NDP policy calls for equal effective votes for citizens and democratic proportional representation. If the Liberal Party refuses to embrace democratic representation, and instead opts for a tricked-out version of the electoral status quo (in which about half the voters continue to elect nobody), it becomes very difficult to imagine a principled basis for the opposition parties to cooperate to win enough seats to dislodge the Conservative phony majority government.
In shorthand summary, to choose the Alternative Vote as Liberal policy is to choose continued Harper government after 2015.
I hope all Liberals instead will prefer to campaign for democratic proportional representation, and after that a much-improved democratic dialogue among Canadians and their elected politicians.
John Deverell
Pickering-Scarborough East
John Deverell
Pickering-Scarborough East
I really don’t believe the legacy of senior Liberals is a valid reason to make any change. It might be more constructive to actually discuss with young Liberals this legacy you wish to leave us and ask what framework we might actually want to work within. Legacy building had a large role to play in why we are now where we currently are in Canada’s political system.
To aim for electoral reform with the sole purpose of giving an advantage for ourselves will be seen exactly as the Liberal party doing just that. I personally wonder where the appetite for PR was before May within the Liberal party, just like more thoughtful Canadians might now be wondering where the NDP interest in it has gone since May.
The first rule of electoral system change is that it cannot be instituted to advantage any party, it must advantage the voters. Creating further distance between electors and elected officials does not do this. An electoral system should reward voters, not parties, and PR simply gives political parties more power. I wouldn’t support such a self-serving party and I hope the Liberal party does not become that party.
Do Liberals whether young or old, male or female, western or eastern, rich or poor, want equal effective votes and equal political representation for every Canadian citizen — or not?
Only from a position of strength, not weakness or it appears like whining.
Now there’s a rallying cry calculated to stir every heart: DEMOCRACY LATER. MUCH, MUCH LATER.
I like this proposal for preferential voting more than porportional representation. The problem with the later is that it reduces the power of the individual member of parliament as they are now TIED to the party (people are not voting for MPs anymore but for parties). THe preferential system removes the worst part of first past the post which is vote splitting and keeps the authority of the authority of the MP.
Many of the comments here in support of AV and against PR reveal some very basic misunderstandings of what is involved in these two kinds of voting systems. Let me make this clear: saying that proportional representation is the same thing as closed national (or provincial) party lists is no different from saying that a spicy meal is by definition five habañero peppers per plate.
Proportional representation is a *principle* that says the seats in a legislative assembly should reflect the overall choices of voters. Party lists are merely one kind of proportional representation, and *nobody* in Canada has proposed a pure party list system.
Two kinds of proportional systems have been proposed in Canada, both as the result of careful consideration of *all* the available evidence:
1. A single transferrable vote system, which BC voters approved by 57.7% in 2005 — a massive landslide by any standards — but which was not adopted because the BC government set the bar at 60%. (When is 50%+1 a “clear” majority? And when not?) The second time around, in 2009, BC voters “rejected” BC-STC with only 39.9% in favour. Remember, 39.9% of the vote is all it takes to eject a majority government in our current system.
STV is a system of multi-member ridings, typically with 5 members. Parties can run as many candidates as there are seats, and voters rank candidates by order of preference: the one they most want first, then who they would vote for in second place etc. The calculations for transferring lower ranked choices are complex, but without going into the guts of the system, this lets the actual results reflect the actual vote percentages much more faithfully. No more of candidate/party X getting in with 38% of the vote because of a vote split.
The procedure for selecting candidates for the riding is just like for one-member ridings, only five candidates are selected and every voter gets to rank them as they want. Nobody is bound by a fixed party list.
2. A “mixed member proportional” system, which was proposed in Ontario and also in the carefully researched and argued 2004 report of the old Law Commission of Canada.
MMP elects one set of MPs by the same single member plurality as we have now, but adds extra members to adjust the overall vote so that it reflects the proportion of votes for each party. In theory, at least, the MPs elected from these lists (usually smaller in number than the directly elected MPs) would be the equivalent of “safe seat” MPs nowadays: the ones considered “cabinet material”. Even this list doesn’t have to be a closed list: voters can in principle rank their preferences on the relevant party’s list.
As things are now, MPs are hardly independent. Over the past several decades, Canadian MPs have come to be ever more tightly bound by party discipline simply because of the inherent dynamics of our single member plurality system which discourages cooperation. The problem of autonomy of MPs comes in part from the way our party system works in parliament, and in part from the electoral system we already have. On the other hand, the problem of whether an individual MP represents their riding better than an MP from a multi-seat riding or a top-up party list is different again. A single MP elected with only around 50% of the vote (hardly the usual case) only represents the views of about half of the voters. In the no less common case where an MP is elected with say 40% of the votes due to vote splitting, the vast majority of constituents find their views unrepresented and often unrespected. The only relevant advantage is that the single seat riding MP *in theory* works better as a local ombudsman. In MMP or STV, the extra MPs allow all voters’ preferences to be represented more accurately in Parliament.
Neither of these is a closed list system, but they are both varieties of proportional representation. There is a good reason why these were proposed and why they are the kind of PR that has been adopted most recently in other places. People have learned from experiments with closed list PR (the kind used in Israel and the Netherlands and previously in Italy) and know how to design a better system. This is why these two systems were proposed after careful research and discussion, right here in Canada.
Anyone who wants to express an opinion on proportional representation versus alternative vote ought to read this document. After all, one of the ground rules of our party’s policy discussion process is that it should be “evidence based”. This means knowing about the issues and not muddying the waters with opinions based on ignorance. There is a good summary of the report and a link to download it here: http://tinyurl.com/74bq3sh.
I didn’t check your page, Christopher, but I agree with you. There are many possibilities here if we talk about proportionnal representation. The one that I would like would be that instead of a party list, we could give to the candidates which were almost elected regional seats which would allow them to represent some electors and not just their party.
I might also be wrong, but I think with the preferential vote plus the proportional vote, we would have less distortion between the final number of MPs with riding and the percentage each party had. So we would have less distortion in parliement to “correct” with the proportional system (but we would still have some).
You really should check out Christopher’s link. It’s very very good.
The system you’re talking about is used for elections in Baden-Wuttenberg and a few other places I believe. It’s preferable to closed lists in my opinion, but I think there are better methods out there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_list has a few). My biggest issue with it is can ignore a riding’s rejection of a weak candidate and place them in parliament over a strong candidate. For example, who do you think most people would rather have in parliament – the Liberal who lost with 30% of the vote in downtown Toronto, or the Liberal who lost with 25% of the vote in rural Alberta? The Liberal in rural Alberta is likely the one who would garner more votes from the wider electorate as they must have had a great deal of personal popularity to get 25% of the vote in such a tough riding. The Liberal who loses with 30% in downtown Toronto must have had quite a bit of unpopularity.
It also tends to concentrate these toss-up MPs in swing ridings, where elections tend to be close. Those areas are already focused heavily on by politicians as it is, and I think it would be preferable to allow the minority viewpoints in less contested areas a chance to be heard.
Still, I’d prefer what you suggest over closed lists any day, and it does have the advantage of simplicity.
I understand your criticisms, Ryan, and I knew that this votation system was used in Baden-Wurtemberg (but this is the only factual thing I know about it). I come to this idea by myself, while thinking about the problem of a blocked list controlled by the political parties. I would be glad to know what you favour instead of it.
I also think that we really shouldn’t oppose an idea because it is not ours, since it only lead to a permanent deadlock. So if any interesting proposal is on the table, I will take it, and “AV” is one of them. I’m not assuming that you or anybody here would do such a thing, I just have the impression that the reformers are often destroyed between themselves because they cannot agree.
To be honest, I think an elegant solution to this list problem is really the missing piece of the puzzle for MMP. Open lists are fairer, but are massively complicated to implement on a ballot. I think the kind of best-loser scheme that you suggest is a reasonable compromise between the two. I just wonder if there isn’t a more elegant way to handle it…
There is absolutely no problem about criticisms for my position. I find it myself a little “not elegant”.
However, particularly since the PQ “implosion” in my province, I found that MPs aren’t totally bounded to their parties. Before that, I though that the freedom of the MPs was a dead thing in our modern and institutionalized democracies. But I was wrong. Thus, the criticisms to proportional representation that I heard up to this time was right : Proportional representation likely means the end of MPs independence with respect to their parties.
As a consequence, for me to support a votation system reform, I added a last thing : The MP must represent somebody, and not only his own party. The bottom to top communication between electors and MPs is necessary to avoid a “partycracy” which would probably give an enormous power to party leaders.
That is why I oppose the German system as it is today, although I found it extraordinary during many years (for a youngster of 22 years old, however). I want a system in which MPs are able to enforce their demands, supported by the members of their party which elected them, to the leader. And I want a system in which creating coalitions between political parties is possible, in which those coalitions can be defeated without elections (as in Germany) and that of course without creating a psychodrama in which the Prime Minister almost call the coalition a Coup.
Frankly, December 2008 has been the moment I had been the most infuriated by the actions our honorable Prime minister was doing in my life… That beats everything, because as a scholar in philosophy and politic, I knew he was lying, or that he was distorting the truth to the sole purpose of staying in power.
Now, regaining my composure, I can say that over the two projects you are favouring, my criteria turns me more in favour of the Single Transferable Vote than for the other one. I also find that preferential vote is not enough and we might lose stamina if we gain preferential and after that we want the proportional. But I think we cannot do otherwise.
I agree with you totally about the lack of agreement being an issue. Personally I favour a referendum purely on broad questions (ie preferential or not, proportional or not) to try and avoid that, and leaving these details of implementation to someone like the Law Commission. Personally I prefer either open-list MMP (as described here http://www.elections.ca/res/eim/article_search/article.asp?id=129&lang=e&frmPageSize=&textonly=false) or STV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote). That being said, I apologize if I came across as totally dumping on your suggestion there lol. I do see a lot of merit to it, particularly in terms of its simplicity, and a lot of its flaws can be addressed by having sufficiently small regions. If what you describe was on the ballot, I would campaign vigorously and enthusiastically for it.
I agree too that AV is a step in the right direction. My beef with it though is it’s not all that large of a step unfortunately.
Many of the comments here in support of AV and against PR reveal some very basic misunderstandings of what is involved in these two kinds of voting systems. Let me make this clear: saying that proportional representation is the same thing as closed national (or provincial) party lists is no different from saying that a spicy meal is by definition five habañero peppers per plate.
Proportional representation is a *principle* that says the seats in a legislative assembly should reflect the overall choices of voters. Party lists are merely one kind of proportional representation, and *nobody* in Canada has proposed a pure party list system.
Two kinds of proportional systems have been proposed in Canada, both as the result of careful consideration of *all* the available evidence:
1. A single transferrable vote system, which BC voters approved by 57.7% in 2005 — a massive landslide by any standards — but which was not adopted because the BC government set the bar at 60%. (When is 50%+1 a “clear” majority? And when not?) The second time around, in 2009, BC voters “rejected” BC-STC with only 39.9% in favour. Remember, 39.9% of the vote is all it takes to eject a majority government in our current system.
2. A “mixed member proportional” system, which was proposed in Ontario and also in the carefully researched and argued 2004 report of the old Law Commission of Canada.
As things are now, MPs are hardly independent. Over the past several decades, Canadian MPs have come to be ever more tightly bound by party discipline simply because of the inherent dynamics of our single member plurality system which discourages cooperation. The problem of autonomy of MPs comes in part from the way our party system works in parliament, and in part from the electoral system we already have. On the other hand, the problem of whether an individual MP represents their riding better than an MP from a multi-seat riding or a top-up party list is different again. A single MP elected with only around 50% of the vote (hardly the usual case) only represents the views of about half of the voters. In the no less common case where an MP is elected with say 40% of the votes due to vote splitting, the vast majority of constituents find their views unrepresented and often unrespected. The only relevant advantage is that the single seat riding MP *in theory* works better as a local ombudsman. In MMP or STV, the extra MPs allow all voters’ preferences to be represented more accurately in Parliament.
Neither of these is a closed list system, but they are both varieties of proportional representation. There is a good reason why these were proposed and why they are the kind of PR that has been adopted most recently in other places. People have learned from experiments with closed list PR (the kind used in Israel and the Netherlands and previously in Italy) and know how to design a better system. This is why these two systems were proposed after careful research and discussion, right here in Canada.
Anyone who wants to express an opinion on proportional representation versus alternative vote ought to read this document. After all, one of the ground rules of our party’s policy discussion process is that it should be “evidence based”. This means knowing about the issues and not muddying the waters with opinions based on ignorance. There is a good summary of the report and a link to download it here: http://tinyurl.com/74bq3sh.
Make Voting “Mandatory” in Canada with a
“None-of-the-following” as the FIRST option on the ballot.
40% did not vote in the last election –> We have an “unknown” variable. When 40% do Not vote, We do Not have democracy.
Before we make any changes to our Electoral system –> PR, Approval V, Alternate V,IRV, Preferential V…
we need to solve the “unknown” variable.
That should be the “first” thing.
In my view, the “Mandatory Vote” is the most efficient and effective way of solving the “unknown variable.”
- “democracy depends upon the active participation of its citizens” (1)
- “to re-establish electoral participation as a civic duty in our society.” (1) Bill S-22
- if we had had Mandatory voting since 1924 like Australia,
it would already be part of our culture. Australia has 96% turnout. You get a $20 fine if you don’t vote.
Let’s solve the “unknown variable” Let’s include the 40% who did not vote before we decide to make changes.
Thank you for considering Mandatory Voting.
References:
http://www.revparl.ca/english/issue.asp?param=168&art=1140
“uninformed citizens” are compelled to serve on juries with potentially more serious consequences. Elections Canada has worked diligently to inform and educate voters, and these efforts will continue as an important element in a mandatory voting system.
Finally, mandatory voting would mean that voting will again become a civic duty in Canada, but not a very demanding one. Thanks to safeguards to ensure voter awareness, equality of access and the possibility of exercising one’s right to vote, the bill will establish not only our right, but also our civic obligation to take part in the democratic process.
I disagree with you, Amanda. I consider voting as a moral duty that shouldn’t be imposed. I would prefer to see a clear “abstention” (or blank vote) choice on my voting paper, since the main problem is for me that not enough ideas have the opportunity to be defended in our parliement. This is why I support the idea of a proportionnal vote, but I also support the preferential vote as it give a better picture of what the citizens really wanted when they voted.
I really think some people don’t vote because they aren’t interested, and that ideally all the people would be interested, but making this mandatory would only push a crowd of unsure and possibly misguided people. I do not insult their intelligence. I’m only saying that if they want to vote, it’s because an issue (or many issues) is important enough to get them support one candidate or one party for this candidate to adress the situation by a law.
My main concern is that it would cease to be a choice. I’m all for a better participation in elections, but it has to be sincere, not forced.
Aha. A liberal in the Liberal Party, may this become normal. Liberals are about freedom of choice within generous legal limits. The rest is personal taste, not a matter for law and government.
To wish to compell people to cast a ballot likely to elect nobody is a form of bullying anti-democratic coercion which should bring shame on its advocates.
Allow citizens a ballot which elects them a representative of their choice in Parliament, every time out without fail, and this false problem of poor attendance at the polls disappears or becomes irrelevant.
Democrats in the Liberal Party (I know you’re out there), please come to the Ottawa convention in January and make your presence known. Stand by for a contact e-mail address. Below find the resolution around which we will rally.
Democratic Voting
A proposal by policy director John Deverell and the Honourable Dan McTeague, president of the Pickering-Scarborough East Federal Liberal Riding Association, to put Liberals in government by 2015
Whereas the defeat and replacement of the Harper Conservative government at the earliest opportunity is of utmost importance to the character, reputation and future of Canada
And whereas that goal cannot be guaranteed with the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Green Party campaigning independently, but could be achieved by specific active cooperation among them
And whereas rivalry and mistrust among the opposition parties can be allayed, and a temporary and partial electoral alliance against the Conservative party can be justified, only by a commitment to overcome the democratic deficit and advance the fundamental democratic rights of Canadians
Resolved that henceforth the Liberal Party of Canada will take the lead on democratic reform by advocating equal effective votes for Canadian citizens and proportional representation in Parliament by the MPs and parties for whom they vote.
Further resolved that any government in which the Liberal Party participates will enact democratic proportional representation by making the necessary changes to the Canada Elections Act within one year of taking office.
Further resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada will cooperate with other political parties willing to enact equal effective votes for Canadians and representative democracy for Canada including, as and where necessary, pre-election negotiations in swing ridings with the objective of nominating a single candidate to defeat the Conservative and help elect a democratic coalition government representing a majority of Canadians.
John
I agree with and support your resolution, John. It is clear that if those of us not on the right continue to divide ourselves so that Harper and his no longer progressive Conservatives continue to conquer, the will of the great majority of Canadians will continue to be thwarted.
A sour note now, to counteract the sweetness above. Taking literally your description of what “real Liberals” must by definition think, that would imply that our party must in principle stand foursquare behind the Conservatives’ scrapping of the long form census – and that we in fact would have done it ourselves ages ago. It also implies that we would be against compulsory jury duty, again on principle. I’m sure that others can thing up of many other things that such a broad and uncompromising principle would affect, if applied in the same way as you propose for the civic duty of voting.
I agree with your “sour note”, Christopher. Of course, I don’t see myself as a “classic liberal”. As I’m studying partly in philosophy, I can see that liberalism is a major tradition and has many branches, sometime in conflict. I would personally class me in the “social-liberal” branch, without being too interventionnist. I support the long census, I’m against the tough on crime and I think we have to look for equal opportunities in our lives (meaning I want some social programs, but not a total control over the economy). In sum, I want an equilibrate approach.
I’m for a free choice in the vote and for a vote system respecting the will and ideas of the people, and this is why I think we should change our voting system. I have to add that I also want to modify the Senate, but not like the conservatives want it, and nor by abolishing it like the NDP is advocating. I would like to have a Senate resembling to the german bundesrat.
John… Really, that is music for my ears. This is exactly what I want. I want collaboration among politicians, I want cooperative governments and all the changes you are advocating in your proposal. And I don’t want the death of the LPC, an alliance with the NDP doesn’t mean that. It means that we recognize we have some ideas in common and that shouldn’t be a shame. We shouldn’t just conspire against our adversaries, we should criticize them when there is something to criticize. And a critic can be constructive.
Of course, once we will be out of this XVIIIth century voting system, we will have more occasion to collaborate and we will be able to be against those who are similar to us and to communicate with our opponents in the aim to share with them our best ideas.
This is not only a matter of “taking the power”, this is a matter of making our democratic system better and able to represent what truly believe the majority of the Canadians.
You have an inconditionnal supporter for your proposal.
I often wonder how much of “low voter turnout” is because we over-count voters on the voting list. I moved to Texas in 1999. If Canada still used door-to-door enumeration to create the voting list then I wouldn’t have been on the voters list for the 2000 election or the 2004 election because I was no longer living in Sudbury. When I moved back to Sudbury in December of 2005 I called the returning officer to get myself on the voters list for the 2006 election and found out that I was still on the list and all I had to do was change my address.
Why was I on the voters list when I had no ability to vote in Sudbury? How many more people were on the Sudbury voters list who were either dead or moved to another country or how many people have moved within Canada and are listed twice in two different ridings in Canada? I voted in the 2004 election by absentee ballot. Does that mean I was counted twice?
The last time we used door-to-door enumeration to produce the voters list was 1988. Voter turnout was 75%. It has dropped to below 60% since we stopped using door-to-door enumeration. I think that if we were to go back to producing a proper voters list that we would see voter turnout get back up to the 75% level.
Elsewhere in the forum I recently floated different ideas for enforcing or encouraging higher participation. One way was to use a flat, income-independent tax credit, which someone pointed out could be seen as “bribing people with their own taxes”. Another alternative was to make the SIN card renewable at intervals of every few years, just like passports, drivers’ licences and health cards and require a proof of having voted for anyone to get their SIN card renewed (failing which, they would be ineligible to receive certain government services).
Adopting a requirement like this – or even making transfer of annual tax return address information to Elections Canada – would go a long way to ensuring an up to date electoral list.
As far as mandatory voting is concerned, I think that fining people for not voting could be seen negatively and spun negatively enough by our main opponents to continue to stick the Liberal party with a however unjustified label of “nanny-statists”. One need only think of the long gun registry and census spin.
Far more effective than the stick is a carrot: a *substantial* inducement via a refundable, income-independent tax credit that would attract voters across the spectrum, not just the well-heeled. We could even consider something like this for the long form census if it came to it.
Offering a financial incentive to vote can still be spun negatively, particularly as it may be viewed as bribing people with their own money. I know a lot of would say that if someone doesn’t care enough to get off their butt and vote as is that we really shouldn’t care what they think. I’m not saying I’m opposed to this; I’m just saying it could be portrayed in a negative light. I do agree though that it should be spun as an incentive to vote rather than a punishment for not voting though.
In terms Amanda’s points, we can do both. You point to Australia as an example, but I think it’s worth noting that their preferential voting system as well as their proportional representation in the Senate may have contributed to the 96% voter turnout as well.
More broadly, I think as a matter of principle if we as a society are entitled to expect people to vote, voters are entitled to expect their votes to be counted fairly. The current system is not fair to voters at all.
Of course, a spin can be thought up for anything. Witness how the Liberal party, in the past two elections, has been attacked for standing clearly for something and then also simultaneously accused of standing for nothing.
Another kind of incentive is just as possible, neither a “nanny state” fine nor a financial incentive (“bribe with taxpayers’ money”). It could be put into law that a SIN card needs to be automatically renewed at four year intervals, and that to do so, a voter would have to present proof of having voted in the last general election. “Personal responsibility” types could hardly object to making benefitting from publicly provided government services conditional on the simple effort of participating in the democratic process.
In any case, this is just fine-tuning to a side issue. The real issue is whether a preferential ballot (especially on its own, without any other parallel changes to the system) is a good proposal.
Pure preferential ballot systems (“Alternative vote”) on their own are *known* to distort results no less than our current Single Member Plurality system, and sometimes even worse. They are yet another mechanism for forcing voters not to vote for what they believe in and to be represented in proportion to the numbers that believe and vote that way, but to herd them arbitrarily into voting for someone and/or something they don’t really support. That is just undemocratic.
The only family of voting systems that fully respect the democratic principle are Proportional Representation systems. PR does *not* mean forcing everyone to vote for closed party lists selected by party establishments. We already get that kind of thing happening at the riding level in any case. Nor does it mean that MPs are beholden to their party establishments any more than they are right now. It does mean that parliaments and governments will reflect the will of the electorate far better than now, compared with the current picture where too many ridings are represented by a party antithetical to the views of most voters, and false majorities that (when won by a party at either extreme of the spectrum) govern in a way diametrically opposed to what the vast majority of voters wanted.
Serious proponents of PR in Canada have always argued for systems that balance effective local representation with a House whose seating reflects the actual vote percentages. One of these systems integrates preferential voting with multi-seat ridings. This kind of system is much more responsive to what voters overall actually want. Pure, single member alternative/preferential vote systems avoid this and force a choice on voters that they don’t necessarily want. That’s top-down voting, not bottom-up.
It’s a bit of a stretch to say that AV will always produce at least as bad results as FPTP Chris, though I do agree that it doesn’t do anything to solve the real problems.
Here’s a fun fact you might enjoy though. There are 10 countries in the world with a higher GDP per capita than Canada. Of those ten, 6 also have lower levels of income inequality than Canada. What do those 6 countries all have in common?
They all use open-list proportional representation. That’s a pretty powerful argument in favour of us adopting an open PR system ourselves if you ask me.
Ryan –
Of course, I wasn’t claiming that. I was just saying that AV, while superficially attractive (when you don’t give other voting systems due consideration), doesn’t improve all that much on SMP when you consider the big picture, and that includes the way it, too, can lead to gross distortions when applied to single member elections.
As for the correlation between social equality and proportional representation, much as I find it intriguing, it is actually a weak argument unless you can demonstrate that it is proportional representation itself that encourages a dynamic that leads to more egalitarian policy. It could just as well be that proportional representation, being the most egalitarian and democratic principle for translating votes into representation, is the system naturally chosen by politicians who put in place egalitarian and democratic social and economic policies.
The real arguments come from the democratic principle itself and the insufficiency of other alternatives, such as single member seat alternative/preferential voting, as ways of efficiently translating the voters’ will into a maximally representative seating in the parliament or legislature.
I agree totally. A majority government should have the support of a majority of voters – that’s just democracy. I do think it strengthens the argument to bit to say that more democratic systems tend to work pretty well though.
Yah, it’s always tough to establish causation rather than just correlation. I believe there has been some theoretical work that does so within this framework (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veto_Players). I think you can make the argument too that the adoption of these more open and democratic systems has historically preceded rather than followed these periods of economic growth and reduction in inequality.
There’s also a pretty noted tendency for countries using open-list systems to outperform their regional neighbours. For example in Eastern Europe, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are the countries that use open-list systems. In Latin America, Costa Rica, Brazil and Chile are the only countries to use open-list systems. These countries are all outperforming their peers.
To those of you who are supporting this resolution, I invite you to support our resolution as well on Democratic Renewal (Resolution named Democratic Renewal under LPC Governance). Not only must we enhance and maximize our democracy through changes to our electoral system, we must also practice this commitment to democratic participation within our own Party. Please vote at: http://convention.liberal.ca/lpc-governance/18-democratic-renewal/ and for more information please visit http://www.lpcrenewal.ca .
It seems to me that while some of the suggested methods of accomplishing a more democratic system is positive , most are too complicated for many eligible voters to really understand . Thus I propose a system wherein that candidates that get the most votes in a riding can vote in parliment but his/her vote is weighted to only the percent that he/she won of all eligible voters . Not by the percent of actual votes won .
This gives considerable urgency for parties and candidates to get out the vote . This can be accomplished in several ways which I’ll not go into here . This system creates considerable incentive to reach out to the 40% that do not go to the voting booth .
Personally I’d vote to make voting manditory – similiar to Australia . Staying away because they have lost failth in our present system would no longer be an option .
I’d also support that all MPs vote the will of the riding they represent and that a loss of a vote by a majority party not cause an election or fall of that party . The electorate sends them to Ottawa to govern – not to play political games as they now do . The MPs are there for 4 years whether they like that or not . Death and major sickness plus criminal conviction would be ways to escape doing duty as an MP .
This system allows that a proposed law might work for the West but not for the Martimes and thus would have to be rethought or not apply to the Maritimes . If Alberta wanted to continue to drill and contaminate it’s ground water , it would be free to do that with some constraint while the Maritimes may choose not to do that .
Christopher and Ryan – Are we not getting way ahead of reality ? Our party can’t change anything until the LPC makes the huge changes required so that there is created the possibility of actually winning an election ? Spending a lot of time drilling holes in each others bucket isn’t productive . It seems that those on line all realize that how MPs are sent to Ottawa must change but that is a long ways down the road .
Instead we shd put all our energy into changing the LPC so that it has some mass appeal to eligible voters . We need to heed the overall message of the Occupy movement . The Grass roots have to drive the party – not the other way – the present way – in most ridings that I hear about . Until that happens we are all just wasting our time in a conversation that isn’t getting anything done . There must be a way that Liberals can have a real say about what happens in the riding associations . Having a few old timers in charge doing same old same old is a sure way to oblivion . We read in the Agenda for January that Mr. Ignatieff will speak – that’s sending a message to Canadians via the media that nothing has changed – not even attitudes . I expect there will be posts shooting the messanger but none of them can change reality . By the end of January 2012 there will still be too many with heads in the sand – refusing to listen to ” we the people ” .
A political party is a machine for gaining power, yes. In corrupt political systems, that’s all it is, and a way for expanding the power of individual leaders, dynasties, or entrenched cliques. In a healthy democracy, a political party cannot be just about gaining power; a party must be a means for citizens of like mind to discuss, debate and adopt proposed policies in hopes of putting them in place in the event the party gains power.
Have you seen or heard the criticisms floating around that say the Liberal party for “stands for nothing”? That is why (to borrow a term from a foreign political tradition, like you do at the end of your post), we must”let a thousand schools contend, let a thousand flowers bloom”. That is why we are holding a ***policy convention*** and why we are having ***policy discussions*** on these forums. There is no jumping the gun here. Without policies, arrived at on the basis of evidence and democratic consensus, we might as well all just pack up, go home, and distribute our assets between the other existing parties for *them* to contend on policy.
The people who are debating policies here *are* “the people”. I’m not a party apparatchik, and I’m pretty sure nearly nobody else on the forums here is. We are engaging in grassroots activism to help build a platform that shows vision for what a better Canada can be.
We can do all we want to reorganise and rebuild the party, put it on a sound financial footing etc., but if we don’t have a sound set of policies and a vision for how we can help put Canada and the world on a sound footing in the future, then all the organisational details are for nought and the party will be nothing but an empty shell.
Discussions on building the policy side of the party’s reason for existence don’t take anything away from restructuring the organisation of the party, and restructuring shouldn’t be seen as the only important thing, to the exclusion of policy. The question of democratic reform in our voting systems is an important one: much of the disaffection with the current system probably comes from the way it systematically lets radical minorities grab power through our archaic, distorted election process and put in force policies that are the opposite of what the majority wants. We’re asking ourselves how we can change the electoral system to let the 99% have more meaningful input into how they are governed.
Donald,
I refuse to believe that Canadians are dumber than people in Tunisia or Malta or Ireland or New Zealand or Finland or Brazil or the dozens of other countries that use much more sensible electoral systems than us. If they can understand it, so can we.
The system that you propose would actually magnify the current inequalities. Smaller parties tend to win by much smaller margins than larger parties for fairly intuitive reasons. If we implemented what you propose, smaller parties like ourselves would be even more disadvantaged by the current system.
Counting may be a bit of a complicated process under single transferable vote, but voting is not. Anyone can rank their choices 1, 2, 3 and so forth. Even if the counting is complicated, I think if you surveyed a lot of Canadians you would find a decent number don’t fully realize the implications of how our votes are counted.
Open-list systems have a bit more complicated ballots, but how their votes translate to seats is easier to understand than even our current system. Under proportional representation, the percentage of seats a party receives is the same as the percentage of the vote that party receives. I’d be very impressed if someone could tell me how the percentage of votes a party receives translates to seats under our current system in 50 words or less.
These are intriguing ideas, and some of them I have toyed with myself in the past while exploring all the logical possibilities I could think of. However, it’s not clear they are necessarily desirable nor what the potential consequences of some of these proposals are.
“It seems to me that while some of the suggested methods of accomplishing a more democratic system is positive , most are too complicated for many eligible voters to really understand”
- Yet these systems work just fine in the countries that have PR or other voting systems less simplistic than ours. Compared to practically anything else, our current system is the only one that could have been dreamed up by the village idiot. What do people from countries with PR or other systems involving (only slightly) more complicated ballots say about our system compared to theirs? This evidence is only anecdotal, but I have only heard surprise that we would have such a misrepresentative system – no comments saying thank goodness our ballots are so much simpler. I wager that Canadian voters on average have the same level of cognitive skills as voters elsewhere and can also deal with slightly more complex ballots. Hey, if you can fill out even a *simplified* tax return…
“Thus I propose a system wherein that candidates that get the most votes in a riding can vote in parliment but his/her vote is weighted to only the percent that he/she won of all eligible voters . Not by the percent of actual votes won.”
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying in the second sentence. It seems to contradict the first one… (?) In any case, the way votes are counted in the House is specified in the 1867 Constitution Act:
49. Questions arising in the House of Commons shall be decided by a Majority of Voices other than that of the Speaker, and when the Voices are equal, but not otherwise, the Speaker shall have a Vote.
The provisions for Senate votes are similar. I don’t believe this is one of the sections requiring provincial consent, but still, since it would be a constitutional amendment, I imagine that once an amendment bill goes to that Other Place, the honourable Senators would lay off the liquor to give this one some extra hard second thought. I can imagine all kinds of consequences to such an amendment that would need to be explored. It may sound appealing, but it’s far from obvious that the unintended negative consequences wouldn’t outweigh any potential advantages.
“Personally I’d vote to make voting manditory – similiar to Australia . Staying away because they have lost failth in our present system would no longer be an option.”
- Again, this raises a number of questions that have been talked about by others. I do recommend reading those posts to get a sense of the debate.
“I’d also support that all MPs vote the will of the riding they represent”
- This was one thing proposed by the Reform Party over two decades back. Big practical problem: how do you determine the will of the riding? By polling? By regular riding-level referenda on each issue? If the latter, then there is no need for an MP in the first place, except to act as a riding ombudsman. What to do when there is a close to even split in opinion (say between 45-55% of voters)? If you keep the present “simple” system, voting for the “will of the riding” more often than not means that MPs elected with a mere plurality will be forced consistently to vote against the policies of the party they ran for. The only way such a proposal could make any kind of sense is under proportional representation. Certainly not under the present system, and not with single member alternative/preferential voting either, because it forces large numbers of voters to abandon their true preferences. The place for compromise is in Parliament itself, not by forcing artificial, mechanically imposed compromise on the voters themselves.
“[...] and that a loss of a vote by a majority party not cause an election or fall of that party.”
- There are good arguments against automatically triggering an election merely on a confidence vote. I find it rather nonsensical for the fall of a *government* (not a party) to automatically trigger an election. This turns on its head the principle that a government is responsible to Parliament, not the other way round. If a government falls, then it should be to the House itself, not the incumbent PM, to determine what happens next. And prorogation or dissolution should only be possible upon an address to the GG voted by a supermajority of MPs, not on the discretion of the PM. This is a reform I would support: writing into explicit law some of the constitutional conventions that have been distorted and weakened over the past decades, making the PM a modern day king and individual parliamentarians next to irrelevant for many purposes.
“The electorate sends them to Ottawa to govern – not to play political games as they now do. The MPs are there for 4 years whether they like that or not.”
- The game playing comes from the way two things interplay: our archaic, misrepresentative voting system and the fact that some basic constitutional principles are unwritten and too easily manipulated for undemocratic ends. As for the “four” years, I disagree. There is nothing magical about that number: we’re just used to it because the US system sets the term limit of Congress and the Legislatures at four years. Our Constitution states that the maximum life of a Parliament is five years, barring an emergency. I think we should return to respecting the five year rule and (as I said above) make early dissolution of a Parliament impossible except for the agreement of a supermajority of MPs.
“This system allows that a proposed law might work for the West but not for the Martimes and thus would have to be rethought or not apply to the Maritimes . If Alberta wanted to continue to drill and contaminate it’s ground water, it would be free to do that with some constraint while the Maritimes may choose not to do that ”
- What possible advantage could come of this? There is already room for flexibility in how legislation applies in different places for certain purposes. At the same time, there have to be mechanisms to ensure that the National interest is safeguarded, and the Constitution already allows for both.
Not going into much detail and legislative intricacies of any of the available and proposed voting systems, I would like just to conceptualize and present my wishes in a few words:
1) A balloting system should be understandable and as simple as possible;
2) Proportional representation is practiced in many countries, but I did not find any exemplary success case; it depersonalize the elections and cuts linkages betwen the MPs and communities: voters become unaware of their electees; probably it can be a good choice for new democracies.
3) Preferential balloting helps smoothening the electorate perceptions about candidates/parties and is much reasher in alternatives.
4) Supporting the preferntial voting system, nonetheless I disagree with all tactical/practical justifications that are brought in favour of the former: it might happen that in its current situation and ranking the LPC will be one of those who will gain most from PB introduction; however, our objective should not be winning elections by changing game rules, but winning elections by gaining voters’ confidence and preference. And preferential balloting is just a tool for better expression of the populations electoral aspirations and nothing more.
5) In an ideal situation, there should not be designated numbers of seats by provinces; however, the federalism is the cornerstone of the country’s constitutional profile and it assumes some mechanisms for fair representation of interest of all provines and territories.
6) Finally, a minor observation: we are free to bring forward any fresh ideas and promote them, but our mandate is limited to that only; the final choice will be made by the citizens.
Hi David,
Re: your points.
1) I agree in principle, though I think some people exaggerate the complexities of systems that work just fine in other countries.
2) I’d recommend taking a look at the systems in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_list has an overview). All of those countries have are more prosperous and more equitable than us and operate with excellent electoral systems. That being said, I personally prefer the preferential proportional systems (STV – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote) in use in the Australian Senate and in Ireland. The reason I prefer STV is because it has proven to be more friendly to independents and more resilient to extremists than open-list pr or our current system.
In terms of a direct connection between voters and their MPs, that depends on the system. It’s a pretty valid criticism of systems where voters only get to vote for a party, as is the case in Italy and Israel. Those are pretty much the worst examples of proportional systems though. The better proportional systems allow voters to select both a candidate and a party, so voters get control both over the overall party standings and over who the MPs for each party are. STV has actually being criticized for having too much of a connection to local issues due to its competitiveness; MPs end up spending too much time making sure your crosswalks are safe and not enough time on foreign policy. That sounds kind of nice to me though.
MMP actually fully preserves the voter-to-MP connection as it is today. Under MMP, you vote once for the candidate in your riding as usual, and another for a party regionally. Regional seats top-up the results for parties that were underrepresented at the individual riding level. Under the MMP model proposed by the Law Commission (http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection/J31-61-2004E.pdf – I highly recommend this) parties would put forward a few candidates for those regional seats and voters would decide which of them is successful.
Agree completely with your other points. :) Cheers.
I think that Instant Run-off Voting (IRV, also known as preferential balloting) has increases a person’s franchise in our country while ensuring that the person elected has been selected by a vote, however far down the ballot, by at least 50% of those who vote.
IRV has the virtue of being a fairly simple system for the electorate to understand, unlike Proportional systems like Single Transferable Vote (STV) or Mixed Member Proportional (MMP). It also ensures that the issues of representation that many have with STV or MMP are handled.
It has the disadvantage of not really preforming any better than our current system though. I think you’re selling the Canadian people short if you think STV or MMP are too complicated too. If people in Ireland or New Zealand can understand these systems so can we.
And frankly I think MMP is simpler to explain that IRV or even our current system in a lot of ways.
But both STV and MMP have been rejected at the Provincial ballot box, for, among other reasons, not being understood by the voters.
That’s a fair point, but IRV was voted down in the UK recently too.
I’d point out that STV actually won the first time around in BC, but that’s besides the point. I think the issue that all of these referenda had in common was that the question, rather than the system, was complicated.
The question should be “should the number of seats a party receives be proportional to the number of votes it receives” as well as perhaps “should voters be able to rank candidates in order of preference and have their ballots counted accordingly” or something like that. Not perfect wordings, but you get my point – instead of using vague acronyms, ask voters about the big ideas instead. There is some polling from Angus Reid to suggest that kind of approach could be succesfull (33% against vs 47% for on the question of PR). The legislation can make clear that it would be implemented by a body like the Law Commission and that they would be bound to use an open-list system if that is approved, or STV if preferential and proportional are both approved.
From a more strategic perspective though, I view IRV as just a half measure. Is it a marginal improvement on our current system? Yes. It won’t get supporters of electoral reform excited though, while it will incite the ire of champions of the status quo. It’s the kind of compromise we’ve been doing too much lately – trying to please everyone and really pleasing no one. We need to go big or go home.
If a legislator is elected by 50 per cent of the voters, who represents the other 50 per cent? Is the other 50 per cent to be exempted from paying taxes, or are Liberals who support AV arguing for taxation without representation?
Neither MMP or STV solve the problem you are posing.
The entire nature of democracy is that the majority wins. A constitutional democracy provides for the protection of the minority in law. The person elected by the majority represents everyone in their riding. There is no system in the world that provides a representative in the house for every single voter’s possible preference.
Brian, I’m afraid you’re mistaken on this one.
Under IRV, each representative is elected by at least 50% of his or her constituents. Then the government is formed by whoever has the support of at least 50% of these representatives. Therefor you are only guaranteeing 25% of voters support the government. That’s better than have no guarantees as it is now, but still not that amazing.
Under a proportional system everyone gets represented, so the PM with the support of a majority of representatives has the support of a majority of voters.
What PR does is guarantees everyone a representative and that decisions are made with the consent of the majority.
The current system and IRV guarantee that large segments of the population do not get represented, and that decisions are made by the minority that happened to win the crap shoot of having their voters in the right places.
There’s a reason our turnout is so low – it’s because in our current system most people’s votes don’t really matter.
Ryan, there are two issues here. Representation in the house, and representation in government.
Under any system, government need only ever be 50%+1 seats, no matter how many parties make up that government. So no system guarantees that a greater percentage of overall people have voted for that government.
As to PR giving everyone representation, that just isn’t true. The ten people who vote Libertarian in my riding still don’t get to see a Libertarian MP. It gives people a better chance of seeing someone elected from their party of choice, but it is by no means a guarantee.
And it still has the issue of proper representation. If all five of the Green MPs who are elected through PR end up being from Ontario, how does that properly represent the green voters in BC?
That’s true enough Brian, but I still think a lower bound of ~48% is better than a lower bound of 25%. No system is perfect, but some systems are still better than others.
There are in fact some guarantees under STV though. For 1 member ridings (which is in fact IRV) you have one candidate who needs at least 50% of the vote, so at most 50% of voters go unrepresented. For 2 member ridings, it’s 2 candidates needing 33%, so a max of 33% goes unrepresented. If you had ~7 member ridings with STV you can guarantee that in each riding 87.5% of voters get someone they voted for elected. That’s not 100%, but it’s still pretty good if you ask me.
The comment about where the Green MPs is very relevant too, and depends a great deal on how the PR system is implemented. The more well-thought out systems I’ve seen put forward have generally proposed breaking things down along regional lines to ensure that sort of regional representation.
Democraticspace actually did a pretty decent model of what an MMP parliament and an STV parliament would look like using roughly 2008 election results. Here’s what they got:
MMP: http://www.democraticspace.com/canada2011/2011/04/what-would-an-mmp-parliament-look-like/ – Note that he assumes a 413 seat parliament for this.
The Greens take 5 seats in Ontario, 1 in Quebec, 3 in BC, 2 in Alberta, 1 in Manitoba and 1 in Nova Scotia. I’d note too that we would have 4 seats in Alberta – a healthy thing for our party I’d think.
Here’s what an STV parliament would look like (or a carbon copy of the Danish or Swedish parliaments). (http://www.democraticspace.com/canada2011/2011/04/what-parliament-would-look-like-if-we-had-a-regional-voting-system/) – Note that this has 308 seats in it.
There’d be 5 Greens in Ontario, 1 in Quebec, 4 in BC, 2 in Alberta, 1 in Manitoba, 1 in Saskatchewan and 1 in Nova Scotia. And again we’d have 4 seats in Alberta.
I think that sort of regional balance would be healthier for our political parties and our country as well. It does no one any good to have Quebec underrepresented in the Conservative caucus, western Canada underrepresented in the Liberal caucus, and Greens underrepresented everywhere.
I would like a button AT each policy discussion/contributor for me to vote yes – maybe – nope with comment section to each particular stream, sort of like linked in and facebook – rather than reading them ALL and trying to compose lengthy feedback, which may not be needed, to concur or challenge the discussion. I agree with compulsory voting; having followed Fair Vote and several other streams of dialogue on this over the past 20 years, some form of proportional voting makes sense.
I apologize if this is a repeat post. I keep getting an error message that seems to be blocking my ability to post. I sent an email about this problem, but I haven’t received a reply…
Very nice Pat. Last EDA meeting I attended, I suggested exactly that. I seem to think we can do quite a bit of the consensus building right here online with an efficient system of voting for or against various comments. Organize comments based on level of agreement. The more agreeable comments float to the top of a given thread. It would quickly become obvious where the sentiment of the membership lies.
It would require a smart matrix running in the background to organize comments according to topic (if google, yahoo, facebook can do it, I don’t see why we can’t). It will provide opportunity for our representatives to then address the pertinent points of view that are garnered from the various discussions.
It’s a brilliant notion and would greatly speed up our democratic processes. This idea that it would take up to 2 years to build a consensus amongst members to implement Liberal constitutional reform would be condensed into a few months. It’s obvious the closet Liberals in this country would come out in droves to support the party if they knew they could exercise their democratic desires in real-time on this website.
Of course it takes money to implement and manage such a system. Many members aren’t necessarily savvy to technology. They need to have their voice heard as well. There would have to be a (wo)manned mechanism to input telephone comments, and comments by mail as well. The party would have to solicit a set amount from active participants to make it work. I’ve been toying around with a number the last few days. Probably a donation of $100/year with 100 000 participants would make it go. I personally would be honoured to put my money where my mouth is if I had such a system to contribute to.
Very nice Pat. Last EDA meeting I attended, I suggested exactly that. I seem to think we can do quite a bit of the consensus building right here online with an efficient system of voting for or against various comments. Organize comments based on level of agreement. The more agreeable comments float to the top of a given thread. It would quickly become obvious where the sentiment of the membership lies.
It would require a smart matrix running in the background to organize comments according to topic (if google, yahoo, facebook can do it, I don’t see why we can’t). It will provide opportunity for our representatives to then address the pertinent points of view that are garnered from the various discussions.
It’s a brilliant notion and would greatly speed up our democratic processes. This idea that it would take up to 2 years to build a consensus amongst members to implement Liberal constitutional reform would be condensed into a few months. It’s obvious the closet Liberals in this country would come out in droves to support the party if they knew they could exercise their democratic desires in real-time on this website.
Of course it takes money to implement and manage such a system. Many members aren’t necessarily savvy to technology. They need to have their voice heard as well. There would have to be a (wo)manned mechanism to input telephone comments, and comments by mail as well. The party would have to solicit a set amount from active participants to make it work. I’ve been toying around with a number the last few days. Probably a donation of $100/year with 100 000 participants would make it go. I personally would be honoured to put my money where my mouth is if I had such a system to contribute to.
What preferential ballot system in particular is being suggested? Keeping in mind the fluidity of the Canadian political scene. Accommodating a scenario with potentially 2 parties on the federal ballot, or maybe 4 (consider a surge in Green support) or maybe more in the future. What rules will govern the formation of coalition governments?
I think this lengthy and convoluted debate about PR is for the birds for the following reasons:
1. As matters stand the Liberal party will be unable to implement this type of resolution by an act of parliament unless it gets elected to a position of political power under a first past the post system. It is conceptually difficult to persuade people to vote for you under one electoral system when you promise to change the system upon being elected. I see the introduction of PR as a last resort to avoid civil war. No war in sight thank Goodness!
2. PR if implemented runs the risk of cementing detailed ideological positions in all parties. It elevates the policy differences as electoral motivator above that of individual personalitgies. Who cares whether or not Elizabeth May is a competent legislator? She is GREEN adn that is all that matters to her and her supporters but that does not help in making difficult choices for the country. The problem with policy formulation prior to an election is that upon achieving political power (after an election), newly elected parliamentarians will face a different world, calling into question the policies under which they were elected.
In my opinion the liberal party needs to define itself in broad policy terms that sets is apart from the Conservatives who are now playing their divisive ideological cards for all they are worth, not to create a better society but to satisfy their grass roots.
I support the implementation of a preferential balloting system.
E. Nyborg
On this final day of voting, to those of you who are supporting this resolution, I invite you to support our resolution as well on Democratic Renewal (Resolution named Democratic Renewal under LPC Governance). Not only must we enhance and maximize our democracy through changes to our electoral system, we must also practice this commitment to democratic participation within our own Party. Please vote at: http://convention.liberal.ca/lpc-governance/18-democratic-renewal/ and for more information please visit http://www.lpcrenewal.ca .
One of the things I don’t like about the voting system debate is that advocates of Proportional Representation claim that most voters are unrepresented in Parliament. If you look at the results of the last election you will see that 99.17% of Canadian voters voted for parties that are represented in parliament. If you look at the 2009 Israeli election you will see that 96.92% of voters voted for parties that are represented in parliament. To say that I have no representation in the Canadian parliament because my local MP is NDP is complete nonsense. Right now the Liberals who represent my interests happen to be from Toronto. In a proportional system the Liberals who would represent my interests would also be from Toronto. So what’s the difference? I think we gain a lot in the pursuit of good government by having representation at the local level. Proportional systems either dilute or eliminate the concept of local representation. Less so if you are talking about STV.
APPROVAL VOTING or a preferential system preserves the concept of local representation and both of these systems increase the support needed for candidates to get elected. The other misrepresentation is that the Conservatives had 39% of the vote and people claim that that means the Conservatives have only 39% support. If we had a voting system that allowed for more electoral choices in the ballot box then the Conservatives would have had considerably more than 39%. There was a poll that came out after the election that suggests that the Conservatives would have had the support of about 48% of voters had we been using APPROVAL VOTING and the NDP might well have had 58% support. It is likely that had APPROVAL VOTING been in place that we would have ended up with an NDP majority.
I would much rather have a voting system that produces more consensus candidates rather than the zero sum game where I vote for party X which means that I am against all other parties. I think most Canadians would vote for more than one party if they had the opportunity.
Claiming that 99% of voters are “represented” just because there’s at least one MP in the House of their party is just disingenuous. 39% voted for the Conservatives, but the rest of us have no *effective* representation because the Conservatives have a majority of seats.
If we had a PR system, each party would have at least have more of a say. Yes, it would likely require a coalition – I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Shouldn’t our government be about healthy debate and compromise between a majority of people?
The preferential system (AV/IRV/etc.) may allow each regional MP to have a greater support of the constituents thanks to collecting 2nd- and 3rd-choice votes – but doesn’t actually solve the problem of representation, and can – and does (see Australia) – skew voter intent as badly as First Past the Post. A party with less than 50% of popular support could still win a majority of seats due to regional distribution of support.
It should also be noted that the Law Commission of Canada (commissioned by the Liberal Party, in fact) proposed a PR system – Regional, Open-List MMP – that preserved the concept of a local representation (local MP elected the same way as we do now), yet preserved proportionality in the House. It’s a shame this wasn’t acted upon.
Most proportional systems still preserve that local connection actually. They do this either by using regional multi-member regional ridings (as in Sweden or the recent Tunisian election or as in STV as you mentioned), or through preserving single member districts as-is (as in MMP) and then topping up the totals proportionally on a regional basis. So Albertans who vote Liberal get Liberal MPs from Alberta to represent them.
In terms of approval voting and other alternatives, I did some digging and found this article very informative (http://www2.lse.ac.uk/CPNSS/projects/VPP/VPPpdf/VPPpdf_Wshop2010/Workshop%20Papers/duBaffy2010_Ritchie.pdf). This (http://www.newid-etholiadol.org.uk/article.php?id=59) and this (http://www.newid-etholiadol.org.uk/article.php?id=55) are worth looking at for comparison as well I think. To quote the second link, “[The Electoral Reform Society] Thas long argued that Alternative Vote is the best system when you’re out to elect a single winner.”
Approval voting works pretty well when every voter has perfect information and votes with perfect strategy, but then again, so does first past the post. The trouble is voters shouldn’t have to vote with perfect strategy to get their voice heard, nor will any of us ever have perfect information about each candidate’s strength when we cast our ballot. What’s appealing about Alternative Vote is that it greatly reduces the need for strategic voting (though it does not entirely eliminate it). You can vote your conscience and not get screwed at the ballot box. That’s not the case with approval voting, where by voting for someone who just don’t think will eat your kids can cause your favorite candidate to lose.
More fundamentally, approval voting favours the “least offensive” or “most tolerable” who offends the least people with their campaign. I’d submit to you that this in fact discourages candidates from raising tough issues and discussing substantitive policies. Sometimes tough decisions have to be made, and those tough decisions will upset at least some people. That’s why those decisions are tough. By trying to represent everybody, these candidates really represent nobody. We should have a diversity of opinions in parliament, not no opinions or just one opinion.
This is part of an email I sent to Bob Rae ….
Dear Mr. Rae,
As you are well aware many Canadians are frustrated with the workings of our Parliament. Many believe that their vote does not count and have “retired” from voting. I myself have voted for the last 40 years and 90% of the time my vote have never counted. We all know that their are problems with the current system that must be addressed to give back to Canadians some semblance of a democracy.
I have no clue who will form the next government and with all due respect I would say that you don’t either. It very well may be another Conservative majority and it is a strong possibility under our archaic first past the post system. For the good of the country this must not be allowed to happen and will not happen if both the Liberals and the NDP can rise above party politics for one brief election.
Let me explain. ONE COMMON LIBERAL/NDP candidate should be run in each Conservative held riding. Before the election each party must agree whoever forms the government whether, with a majority or a minority, must as a first priority, pass proportional representation, perferrably instant runoff (IRV) since its the simplest.
After the bill is passed by-elections can be run in the common candidate held ridings under the new system with the NDP and Liberals each running their separate candidates and then each party can go their own way.
This is part of an email I sent to Bob Rae ….
Dear Mr. Rae,
As you are well aware many Canadians are frustrated with the workings of our Parliament. Many believe that their vote does not count and have “retired” from voting. I myself have voted for the last 40 years and 90% of the time my vote have never counted. We all know that their are problems with the current system that must be addressed to give back to Canadians some semblance of a democracy.
I have no clue who will form the next government and with all due respect I would say that you don’t either. It very well may be another Conservative majority and it is a strong possibility under our archaic first past the post system. For the good of the country this must not be allowed to happen and will not happen if both the Liberals and the NDP can rise above party politics for one brief election.
Let me explain. ONE COMMON LIBERAL/NDP candidate should be run in each Conservative held riding. Before the election each party must agree whoever forms the government whether, with a majority or a minority, must as a first priority, pass proportional representation, preferably instant runoff (IRV) since its the simplest.
After the bill is passed by-elections can be run in the common candidate held ridings under the new system with the NDP and Liberals each running their separate candidates and then each party can go their own way.
I agree 100%. Under our broken, FPTP system, we cannot hope to improve our democracy without first cooperating with the NDP and Greens – maybe even the BQ.
I don’t want a merge – we need multiple voices – but we do need to accept that the “united right” is gaming the (broken) system, and unless we approach the problem of vote-splitting denying us all a voice, we can’t hope to enact electoral reform or any other goals. We have to work together for our mutual benefit.
Echoing in part my response to the similarly-worded #21:
Preferential ballots are ideal when electing a single representative – a leader of a party, or mayor for example. But it is not suited to electing members from multiple constituencies. A PR system such as STV or MMP is much better for these situations, and if the Liberals are serious about reforming our electoral system, we should join most other nations that have acknowledged the inadequacies of winner-take-all systems, and instead put our support behind a proportional one.
If we’re serious about reforming our democracy, it shouldn’t be about what system benefits Liberals, but about what system benefits *Canadians*. If we can’t accept that a PR system is a fairer system that would allow better representation of Canadians’ viewpoints than FPTP or AV, then I suspect many who have felt disenfranchised by our system will remain unmoved by the Liberal stance.
Also (echoing @Lawrence-Rochette’s sentiment), I feel we should co-operate with the other parties before elections to counter the Conservative’s gaming of our FPTP system; we have to avoid vote-splitting, otherwise we will have no voice.
Would you prefer lots more seats in the House, and no voice – or a few more seats in the House, but actually have a part in legislation?
Mike,
I really understand your concerns. You don’t want this vote to be a strategic one and you may be afraid that, if “AV” pass, nothing will be possible to do after in this area. But I think preferential ballot is a step in the right direction. True, this is not perfect, and I would prefer a proportionnal system which gives the possibility for all the MPs to represent at some extent someone. However, I cannot just say “no” at anything that is different than what I’m looking for. I came to think that this system could be complementary with a proportional vote, since it already gives a better picture of the situation.
By voting against such a motion, you could give the message that you don’t want a reform at all : this is what will appear in the results, if everyone who wants change act like you. Please, reconsider your position. “AV” is not that bad, it isn’t a kind of twisted false reform.
About Lawrence idea, that seems at first glance a good one, but I see some problems. We would have to be sure that the candidates won’t turn their back to their promises and decide to stay with whichever party that is closer than their ideas. During the election campaign, the Conservatives could also say such a thing is “illegitimate” and crush us all. I’m all for collaboration, alliance between NPD and Liberals, but that should be done more carefully. Maybe we could manage to not present a liberal candidate in the now conservative counties which were previously mostly NDP and they could do the same with us. But we shouldn’t “threaten” the country of another sort-of general election few weeks after the elections. Believe it or not, but some people don’t like repetively voting and could be pushed back by such a proposal.
A pan-canadian referendum on a general change, like proposed earlier here, could do the job. After that, we would have to live with the old system until 2019, but I would prefer than giving majority to the conservatives once more.
My issue isn’t so much about AV passing or not and what it would mean for getting PR – it’s the thought of the Liberals pushing AV as being their vision of electoral reform, which I think would reflect negatively on the party, because it’s demonstrably flawed.
Why not put up a motion that promotes Proportional Representation and give members a chance to vote for that instead? It’s frustrating to say “well, we need reform, this is maybe better than FPTP but not ideal, but that’s the only choice we’re giving you”. Sure AV will get lots of votes, because almost anything is better than FPTP. But it’s not the right choice.
The NDP and Greens promote PR systems, not solely because it would benefit them, but because it is the morally correct thing to do. AV can greatly skew results and result in 30-50% of wasted votes; PR systems can result in less than 5% of wasted results and a government that far better reflects voter intent. I think the Liberal party should embrace this, otherwise the push for AV comes across as largely self-serving (not to mention sows confusion about which system is ‘best’, which would only serve to keep us stuck with FPTP even longer).
I’m glad you’re open to the idea of working strategically with the NDP, however. Yes, it would have to be done carefully, but I believe many Liberal/NDP/Green voters are frustrated already with the system and would clearly understand why such a move is needed. Joint constituency meetings to nominate a candidate might be best to show ‘legitimacy’.
And yes – I’d agree that I’d not want the spectre of another election soon after another, but if a mutually beneficial partnership was created that gave the Liberals and NDP a voice in the House, I’m certain a stable working coalition for the session could be formed – during which they’d also enact true electoral reform.
In fact, Mike, it isn’t only strategic to favor preferential representation more than proportional representation. I once thought like you, but I realized something : while I myself doesn’t care so much about my ridings and votes far more for the party and its ideas than for the candidates (poor them, excuse me), this isn’t the case with everyone.
Plus, and more fundamentally, a MP is originally his riding representant. So he is supposed to bring to the Commons the particular visions and feedbacks that can have it citizens. I came to think that in a purely proportional system, we could vote for only a party and elect a bunch of people which lives all in the same street. Of course we can prevent this, my Bade-Wurttemberg proposal is for that, but I know this isn’t the best one and I know it won’t be approved by many people.
If I think about local representation, it is at the root of our current system. Historically, it’s the MPs that shared some common ideas and goals that combined their forces, creating a big coalition called a political party. With the years, this structure became more and more institutionalised, at the point that a MP is seen now mainly as a party representant and no longer as it riding’s representant. Thus I think the parties take the old MPs’ job to check the government, and for that we must have a stable coalition government system. My idea is that each party could check one another, their members could do so with empowerment and it would be, as in Germany, extremely rare to see a majoritary government (one in West-Germany history).
However, what happened last spring in Quebec made me change my position a little. I believed until that time that the MPs had no longer any power and were here only to vote what the party wanted them to vote. I think it’s mostly true, but they can also leave this party if they don’t agree with it, which cannot reasonably do someone which has absolutely no popular legitimy because he was chosen by a party which gave it its votes.
So my ideal solution is now something like a proportional and preferential system which somewhat give a root of personal legitimity to the MP.
Yes, MPs can act independently, so there is potential value there for that… but really, it comes down to party votes (esp. as role of party leader has grown more powerful in the past few years), and so parties should be represented fairly.
I do think that the idea of a regional representative is a good one, certainly. And I have issues about MMP where the regional member is chosen by a simple plurality vote; but MMP’s provision of enough seats to ensure proportionality does at least offset things, particularly if that system also uses regional lists. Something like “AV+” actually sounds better to me, but not its original proposed incarnation, where there were few extra seats provided for proportionality. Meanwhile, a system like STV provides a high degree of proportionality while still providing regional representation as well.
So on that area, I agree – it’s good to have local representation, and how those MPs are elected should be fairer than what we have now.
My issue is that right now, the Liberals aren’t seen as pushing for proportional representation of any kind, and instead the “big idea” is ‘just AV’. I feel that we should be pushing for PR first and foremost – push for the right outcome rather than these piecemeal measures that don’t address the real problem.
Moreover, maybe we shouldn’t be pushing for one particular style of voting at all – push for an ideal instead, and let something like the Law Commission work out the implementation that aims to reach that ideal. Because otherwise it’ll just foster confusion and frustration among potential supporters who really want electoral reform and view the Liberals as not being serious, and thus lose us votes.
MMP, STV, AV+, whatever – all are better than FPTP and AV. The point is, we should be aiming for PR first.
BTW Mike, Simon (and anyone else who’s interested)… John Deverell’s been trying to contact proportional representation supporters going to the convention to see if we can get something voted on there. If you’re interested, could you email me your contact info and I’ll pass it along? My email is ryanmatthewcampbell@gmail.com
Hi Ryan
Please let me know how the support for PR is going. I certainly am behind PR on a number of levels. First and foremost it is good for all Canadians and good for our great country. This a chance for our party to put the country ahead of party interests. Hope to see you in Ottawa.
john_mcculligh@yahoo.com
I like PR IF their are no lists.
Step 1) Popular vote by population to determine how parliament will look
Step 2) Party Conference to elect those who will fill those seats
Hi Dave,
I’d highly suggest taking a look at the open list system that the Law Comission proposed (http://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/J31-61-2004E.pdf). I think you’d like it. It does along the lines of what you suggest, but puts things in the hands of the voters themselves on election day instead. I’m not a fan of closed list systems either.
Hi Ryan:
Downloaded the document from the Law Commission. I am not sure how official amendments work but are you up to putting one forth. After review I would certainly be open to backing one you appear to be capturing the concerns of the many. This resolution as pointed out in the comments is flawed.
Australian Style STV also works for me. The only ones wanting the Riding system are the The Harper CPC
This is a great proposal – long overdue.
We are the party of evidence-based decisions. So let’s look at some evidence, shall we?
Canada has used the preferential ballot only once: BC in 1952, after their Liberal-Conservative coalition fell apart. The plan was, even though Liberals and Conservatives were running against each other, their voters would give second choices to each other, to defeat the socialist CCF. But they outsmarted themselves. Many voters were mad at their old partners. There was a brand new “None Of The Above” choice on the ballot: Social Credit.
In nine seats the preferential ballot worked as planned. In four, enough Liberals gave the Conservative their second choice to beat the two left parties. In five, enough Conservatives gave the Liberal their second choice. In one high-income riding, the result was the Liberal dream: CCF second choices helped the Liberal defeat the Conservative.
More often, in 16 ridings the Conservatives gave enough second choices to the new Social Credit brand to defeat the Liberal and the CCF. Worse still, in 14 ridings many voters for the new Social Credit brand were so mad at both the old Coalition partners that they gave enough second choices to the CCF to let the Left defeat the Liberal and the Conservative. And in one riding, 8% of voters had no second choice, letting the CCF slip in.
In the UK, Lord Jenkins’ Commission on the Voting System looked at the preferential ballot and found “its effects are disturbingly unpredictable.” No kidding. It depends who voters are mad at.
The preferential ballot does nothing for Liberals most short-changed by the voting system: all of Alberta and most of the West, as well as most of Quebec and parts of Ontario. Where Liberals most need a voice, it will just help elect NDP or Conservative candidates. The only place that uses it is Australia, where it has killed off other parties and left them with only two choices: Labor or Liberal/National. Do I need to remind you that we are the THIRD place party these days?
We are the evidence-based decision makers. So We tasked the Law Commission of Canada (now dissolved by Harper) to study voting reform. Their recommendation: a mixed-member system with open lists, not the closed province-wide lists rejected in the Ontario referendum. We still elect local MPs. Voters unrepresented by the local results top them up by electing regional MPs. The total MPs match the vote share. “Two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons should be elected in constituency races using the first-past-the-post method. The remaining one-third should be elected from a flexible list system that provides voters with the option of either endorsing the party “slate” or “ticket,” or of indicating a preference for a candidate within the list.”
I will reply to that : and?
Really, this is about democracy, not about “people will vote for liberal automatically”. I don’t agree with the later idea, but I agree with the fact that the people will be able to express themselves more and more freely if we have this kind of votation system. If they are mad about us, we just have to don’t give them a reason to be so.
The preferential vote system is not my preferred one, but what happened in Australia nearly happened in the UK until a few years, where the only parties able to take power were the conseervative one and the labour one. I don’t see the votation system as something that encourage bi-partism (this, the FPTP system already do) nor radicalism, for people who would vote that way are currently only frustrated that they cannot do that under our FPTP system. Eventually, they would learn to restrict their vote, I believe, since they could really count.
Maybe i am missing something by adopting the Law Commissions system, would we not be growing the House by about 110 seats. That is the big concern I have with their recommendations.
Duh, I quoted the bit right after the real answer.
The answer is at p.103 of the Report, just before they state Recommendation 4.
“As stated earlier, a reformed electoral system for Canada should not require a significant expansion of the membership of the House of Commons, although additional seats for the territories should be included in the new system.”
So the Law Commission recommended keeping the number of MPs per province unchanged, but add 3 MPs, one for each of the territories.
See also p. 96:
“Because the number of single-member ridings in our model is reduced by one-third, their average size will automatically grow by a similar figure, creating some constituencies with populations upwards of 175,000.”
thanks jenn, I missed that makes more sense now.
No. The overall number of seats would not change, although ridings would become slightly bigger, to incorporate space for the regional candidates. At least, that’s my understanding.
Recommendation 4
Two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons should be
elected in constituency races using the first-past-the-post method, and
the remaining one-third should be elected from provincial or
territorial party lists. In addition, one list seat each should be allotted to Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon.
Jenn thanks: Another item on my list before the convention, will have to read the Law Commission’s report over again. At first blush I came up with the conclusion that with the 308 seats the House presently has(even with combining some of the ridings)and adding the 1/3 list members (indicated in the report) the House would have to accommodate between 390-400 MP’s. I just skimmed through the report so maybe my conclusion is in error.
Actually, this has an upside all by itself, as even with the extra seats for BC Alberta and Ontario, our ridings are much larger in terms of population. So these new seats could become our regional ones and leave the ridings more or less as is, while other provinces would increase their population in ridings to incorporate the regional MPs, bringing everyone somewhat closer in terms of riding size (by population).
The Liberal Party should commit to holding a national referendum on electoral reform. The preferences of the electorate are highly divided on whether a “Preferential Ballot“ or “Proportional Representation“ is best. I think most Canadians will not want a `Preferential Ballot“, but would support some form of “Proportional Representation“. I think it is unwise to commit the party to supporting one system of the other at this time; rather commit to a referendum on the issue.
I do not think a discussion as to which systems best serves the Liberal Party is warranted. The only issue is democracy, and Liberal Party support for the system that best serves democracy.
Can I ask everyone here, whether liking this resolution or not, to join me on the Liberal.ca homepage to try to get the election of our table officers to a preferential ballot? This (where you are electing one individual to a position) is where preferential ballots should be used. Where you are electing a large number of individuals to a position (like a large board or a House of Commons) is where to use proportional. So can we get together on this and work to get proper and fair voting on this internal election?
With little study of the preferential voting system I preliminarily think the system good, it allows voters to eliminate the ones they want least by choosing them as their last resort. I also think politicians would adjust somehow and the system may not be totally representative either, so some sort of proportional representation along with it would be needed.
Of more import to me is that it has little relevance in this convention, or the next election. This convention is more about rebuilding the party and better respect for members, and policy for the next election. This should only become party policy after the next election, although part of the policy for the election might be an intention of making a fairer voting system of which this could be a part, ie form a committee that finds what Canadians want. An increased membership and number of people representing such amendments will give a better indication of what Canadians of all parties want in this regard. This has to be something that should represent the wish of all Canadians and would likely be served best by some sort of referendum. Plainly Canadians are tired of having things shoved down their throats, and I am pretty sure the CPC is doing a good job of that now, we have to be the alternative to that way of thinking.
History has proven that MPs often do not vote with the wishes of members who voted for them, but along party lines, or personal lines. We need to tell Canadians and our MPs that the LPC is going to represent them not what a small group of insiders want, and for now much of what is left are the insiders of the LPC, and they have to invite more of us in, and listen to us more.
For me we need to have some policy direction from this convention, a lot of proposals that an improving membership can vote on, and then in a year or two before the next election, some solid, this is the policy for the new LPC put forward for the immediate future. Our amendments now should be the ones that build the party, get new members, and shut down the insider, behind closed door decision making, or lack thereof.
I am a new member, and as you can tell fairly ignorant, and as such with other new members, we need to be educated, given things to think on and then we can be a productive part of the party. Doing too much too soon will only tell us that nothing has changed, except for a desire for more money from more of us, while keeping the power inside.
PAssed!! One step away from the archaic riding system!!
The preferential ballot / alternative vote will not lead to proportional representation. Besides, the preferential ballot will continue to keep power within the prime minister’s office. This doesn’t make Canada democratic.
If we have a FULLY proportional system, which means if Liberals win 20% of popular vote across Canada, they would win 20% of the HOC seats, I think this is unfair and discouraging voters. It’s like if Canada had only ONE seat with FPP, the Progressive voters would divide and Harper would win with a minority of the vote. What I would prefer is a binomial vote like in France where there would be a second round of voting in ridings where a candidade did not reach 50% of the vote, with only the two best candidates at the first round on the ballot.
How is winning 20% of the seats with 20% of the vote unfair or discouraging to voters, compared to winning 11% of the seats with 20% of the votes?
It’s nothing like if Canada had 1 seat (which is arguably what we have now).
It’s FPTP that’s splitting the progressive vote and leading to Conservative majorities. With a PR system, the Conservatives would get 30-40% of the seats (possibly even splitting to a PC and Reform wings again, as there’s not much benefit to a united right-wing party under a PR system). Liberals, NDP, and Green would get the rest – no party would get >50% of the seats unless they got >50% of the vote.
What you suggest in your second part is essentially what preferential balloting (AV, IRV) has built-in. This is arguably better in terms of regional representation, but can and does greatly skew voter intent overall (ie. smaller parties still get an unfairly low representation, parties can still get >50% of the seats with less than 50% of the vote, etc. In fact, had we had AV in 2011, I think the Liberals would still be under-represented in Parliament (although likely at least be able to be part of a coalition)
Fighting over what exact type of voting system Canada should have isn’t important – what we need to say is that FPTP *isn’t* working, and that we need something that offers proportionality and truly represents Canadian voters. AV doesn’t do this – a PR system does.
There are various ways to implement PR that balance regional representation and house allocations (eg. STV, MMP, even AV could be tweaked with a second ballot for regional list seats, etc.). But this is a solution that will doubtless need to be negotiated with the NDP and Greens anyway, as the first priority needs to be to prevent another false majority that would deny us any change at all, even if it means sharing power.
After all, any share in a governing coalition is better than zero. On this note, I also thing it’s essential that cooperation with the NDP and Greens is done in advance to limit the very high likelihood of vote-splitting under our current flawed system again awarding the Conservatives a majority.
Have you guys seen Stephane Dion’s plan for a Made in Canada solution?
http://ideefederale.ca/documents/Dion_ang.pdf
Thanks Jennifer. Yes, I’ve read it – I think Dion’s “P3″ idea is well-reasoned, and I’m glad he’s trying to promote a change to a PR system. I also agree with him that a “pure proportional” system isn’t ideal for Canada (but we do need some proportionality of course!)
My only real problem with Dion’s plan is that he’s focusing on his idea of an ideal voting system, and as such some people – even some in favour of PR themselves (just their own particular favourite) – are going to pick it apart and complain about particulars rather than the actual message. And that kind of division isn’t going to help anything (except the Conservatives).
We don’t need a fully fleshed out plan. We just need to commit to saying “we need a proportional voting system, and we will work with our allies in the house to reach that goal, and consult with experts and the public to form a Made-in-Canada plan which we will then implement before the next election”. (It should also be backed up with a willingness to cooperate with the NDP and Greens before the election to help maximize all of our ability get the changes needed!)
I just read the P3 idea, and I have some reservations with it, although I would probably back it if it ever goes in a national campaign. What I’m thinking is that there are two major flaws, with the FPTP system we have right now : MPs are elected without having 50%+1 of the vote in their ridings, as many as said, and ideas (ideally brought by parties) are not well represented, since parties doesn’t get the same percentage of MPs than they get the percentage of the vote.
Now, many think they just vote for a leader in a presidential system, which is worrisome and absolutely untrue. A proportional system is for me the end of MPs formal independance from their parties, and I won’t follow someone asking for a (purely) proportional system. MPs must stay at the heart of our political system, as badly depicted as they are right now. Dion’s answer seems for me to go too far in the submission of MPs to their parties, but it is perhaps impossible to do otherwise. The problem I find with it is that I don’t like the idea of voting for 5 person in my riding, I would like it if it could stay as much a personal link as it can be between the MP and its riding. So I support preferential voting, which is just an improved the two (and more) rounds system *improved*, without the problems of participation at the first round and the evident manoeuver one can do to ensure its election.
But this is not enough. Even if each MP is elected with 50%+1 vote, there are still distorsions, as a party may have difficulties to break the ceiling in every riding, but nonetheless have 20% of the national vote. So I also ask for a proportional system in which the candidates which had, in a designated region, the most voters supporting them, could be elected because their party had a certain amount of vote in all the region. Yes, there would be some ridings with virtually more than one MP, but those MPs would be there because a whole region voted for their party, and would still have a feet in their original riding since, without it, they wouldn’t have been elected at all. This is the German system, except that it doesn’t include the electoral party lists, which I found horrendous for MPs independance. And it exists in Bade-Wurtemberg. I should go there someday to see what it is like…
Andre – sorry to break your own warning here and go off topic, but I just gotta bend your ear. We need the ability to see French and English comments together! Some of us are bilingual and would like to see what all Liberals think, not just anglophones or francophones separately.
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It’s a rather tragic irony. Really, despite my pontificating about us having a government elected by only 24% of the electorate, dominant parties tend to do pretty well under first past the post.
The real issue is ensuring minority viewpoints get representation, and I don’t think the rights of minority groups should be put to referendum at all. They should be guaranteed by the constitution.
You see the irony, I trust, in expecting to use a simple majority to pass a system that is supposed to enfranchise a greater number of voters than 50%?