Fair Vote Canada / Electoral Reform

Which exact flavour of PR does Fair Vote Canada propose and support?  Because as I understand it, that will make the difference between whether they're forward-thinking guardians of democracy, or stooges who hate Canada.

And saying "I support PR", without specifying which flavour, is like saying "I support the eating of plant matter".  Lettuce?  Deadly Nightshade?  Which?

Citizens who cherish democracy are proponents of PR. Interesting to see you note that those with power on the right would rather it were never mentioned. But many small 'c' conservatives cherish our democracy too, even as the Conservative Party and their corporate sponsors do their best to undermine it - and these grassroots conservatives are waking up to the havoc caused by their malicious leadership.

An opportunity is developing....

I don't disagree at all. When it was on the ballot, I voted a very enthusiatic "Yes", and I encouraged others to do so too.

At the same time, I can't help noticing that many proponents of PR seem to divide their time equally between insisting that we need PR, and insisting that "the other" flavour of PR is worse then FPTP and Satan. It seems to me that the biggest enemies of, say, STV are not the FPTP supporters, but the MMP purists, and vice versa.

I am beginning to think that the problem is mainly one of perception by the average voter. As such, the language used to describe PR and FPTP is probably more important than substantive information. For instance, in a few recent posts, I used the term "false majority" to describe the situation where a party gets less than 50% of the votes, but more than 50% of the seats, and 100% of the power. I'm sure I got the expression from someone else here or on another web site. It strikes me that this is a very powerful potential tool.

What if the mainstream media could be convinced to use this term regularly to describe what Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff are trying to achieve? What if instead of saying that a polling result of 42% puts the Conservatives into "majority territory", they said "false majority territory"? Ordinary voters would soon begin to think that there must be something wrong with a system that often results in "false majorities". I'm sure there are other similar examples where the language used to describe the situation is a very powerful determinant of how people perceive it.

So, the question is, what can be done to inject expressions like "false majority" into the everyday usage of Canadians, and particularly pundits, in discussing politics?

610! Despite my previous sarcastic remark that is good growth, but still a very small number. If you are reading this, why not take 2 minutes to spread the word to friends and family?

As I followed the links I noticed the mmp ballot example had a ranking system for the constituency vote, this would not be the case with a federal MMP ballot in Canada if I recall the Law Commission recommendations correctly?

I like the idea of regional list MMP. We need regional power prices in the North, too.

800! :)

One of the things that is unfair about the way elections work in Canada is that voters in the 2 big cities, Toronto and Montreal, are denied a true choice of parties.

The Conservatives are not able to win seats in the 416 or the 514, and this denies voters the choice of candidates from all parties.

The media in both cities encourages people to only vote Liberal and NDP in Toronto and only vote Liberal and BQ in Montreal.  In fact, in the last couple of elections in Quebec, there has been a conspiracy between the pro Liberal and pro BQ media in Montreal to prevent the Conservatives from electing any MP's in the city.

This is wrong and denies voters the choice of choosing between all the available options.

Electoral reform has to have support of at least two of the three mainstream parties in order that enough Liberal or Tory supporters vote for it in referenda in meeting or exceeding the 60% supermajority hurdle to PR decided on by Liberal governments in B.C. and Ontario. 

 I think STV and MMP referenda were suppported by greater percentages of NDP voters than either of the other two in B.C. and Ontario. If the other parties refuse to endorse a modern electoral system, then their voters won't either.

And Layton's NDP proposed a motion to restart the federal study on electoral reform in May of 2007. Liberals and Tories voted it down.

Okay, I have to admit I am partisan (drinker of the orange kool-aid and all that) but there are times I get more than a little tired of "non-partisan" groups like FVC tying themselves into knots to avoid pointing out that it is the two old time main line parties that are preventing the discussion from moving forward. Time for them to be a little more honest in their appraisal of who is preventing any progress on achieving a higher level of proportionality. Their attempt to be "fair" ends up painting those who want proportional as "partisan". Someone should take the gloves off at some point.

I vote in Toronto, and every time I have, all parties have been listed, and each has a little circle that I can mark with my 'X'.

Maybe you're just having trouble reading the ballot?  Or is it the 'X' that's got you flummoxed?

Oh, wait.  Do you mean that since it's unlikely that the Cons will win, even if you vote for them, you feel that you're being denied a choice?  If so:  Hahahahahahohohoahahaha!  Whew!

I don't think that's the majority of people who support PR or Fair Vote members - but I totally agree with you about the purists who would rather see no PR than something other than their favourite PR system.

I also think that there's a certain amount of cynicism among people who don't really want to support PR, but don't want to be seen not supporting something more democratic and fair.  So they'll say things like, "Oh, I agree with PR!  But I'm not voting for it in THIS referendum because I don't like THIS kind."  When the truth is, they really don't like ANY kind that doesn't guarantee them a phony majority.

The issue isn't who is Prime Minister, Snert.  The issue, is which party is in power.  It's not fair for a party to have 40% of the vote, and yet 100% of the power.  It's really that simple.

BTW, after the post before last of yours, it's kind of rich to lecture someone else on being "needlessly snide" don't you think?

I saw a new member complaining that the Conservatives, under whose filthy thumb we're all currently living, just can't get an even break! And that Conservative voters are being denied CHOICE. So ya, I laughed, because nobody is being denied a choice, and because frankly, using the party in power to illustrate the unfairness of the system is absurd.

I'm not sure what I said that was similarly off the mark or absurd, but otherwise yes, guilty as charged. And if someone complains, say, that white men also can't get an even break, I might laugh then too.

I agree. But the original claim was that FPTP denies Conservatives in Toronto of CHOICE. Well, it certainly didn't deny them any power, did it? So I assume we must be talking about local MP. That's the only thing that FPTP is currently denying any Cons.

Conservatives and Liberals everywhere must have PR to be represented properly. Those two parties and their supporters should embrace the concept of advanced proportional democracy. One Canadian should equal one vote.

Yes, it's true that the electoral landscape would look different if we had PR instead of FPTP.  But that is a different issue than was raised above.

It was stated that voters in Toronto and Montreal are being prevented from electing Conservative MP's because people are telling them not to.  That is not the case.  Voters there can vote Conservative in larger numbers, but they don't want to.

Toronto used to be more Conservative until the collapse of the PC's in 1993.  Since then the more right-wing Conservatives have not appealed to Torontonians in the way the old PC party did.  The same goes for Montreal.  There is not a conspiracy between the Liberal and BQ media to stop the Conservatives from winning there - it's just not a very Conservative city to begin with.  Never has been.  Even during the Mulroney landslides in Quebec in 84 and 88, most of Montreal stayed Liberal.

The PC's were able to elect a few MP's in Montreal (one of them being Jack Layton's father) but the new Conservative party has less appeal to Montrealers than the old PC party.

Signed! Thanks Wayne. "Canada’s antiquated winner-take-all voting system denies citizens their democratic rights to equal votes, fair election results and legitimate majority rule"

One Canadian one vote now! 

That came through loud and clear in the BC STV referendum debate.  The NDP was technically neutral but it became pretty clear that they'd rather take their chances winning a phony majority than having to share power with those upstart greens.  Meanwhile, STV was getting support from people like Andrew Coyne.

Parties that will consistently gain seats through PR support it and those that have a chance at a phony majority don't. 

Democracy schemocracy.

The easiest way of explaining it that I know of is through simple questions, like this:

With PR voting, a Canadian party that receives 50% of the total vote would be awarded 154 seats in Parliament, or half of the total of 308. Do you agree with this? One-half is an easy proportion for people to understand.

Sounds simple, doesn't it?  And yet in real life, it turns out that a handful of political insiders are able to control the debate by focusing on minutiae of how the new system operates, while completely ignoring what it does and why we need it.  Go figure.  Also, it turns out that if someone is say, a Liberal supporter and the system gives them more seats than they're entitled, the Liberal supporters are not all that upset.  Go figure squared.  In fact, it turns out that they have all sorts of rationalizations and excuses to excuse this patently unfair system.

To understand the problem properly, you need to see FPTP for what it is - a form of systemic discrimination against a minority.  History shows that the majority that benefits from said discrimination is rarely eager to change it.  And they always have rationalizations, however pathetic, to defend the flawed system.

And that is why unless we want to wait for the fortuitous historical circumstance to bring at least one of the major parties onside, we need direct action.  In the courts or in the streets.  Earlier, we discussed a 'spoil your vote' campaign.  If we could get decent co-operation, that might be a decent start but it's likely to take more.  Perhaps mild civil disobedience like picketing a poll.

I know I'm belabouring the issue but one last point.  There is a divergence between how our parliamentary electoral system is designed to work and how people think of it when they vote.  Most people vote for a party not an individual.  When they talk about who won the election, they're normally talking about the party, or worse, they say the leader won the election.  As everybody here knows, the way it's supposed to work is that you elect a local individual who represents your area and the formation of parties is just a way of organizing the individuals.  The reason this is important is that FPTP is only defensible from the standpoint of how the system is supposed to work.  And that would presumably be the court defense.  You're entitled to a regional representative and you have one.  I'm not a lawyer but I would say the key to undermining that defence of the current system. is to show the system simply doesn't work as it's designed.  And Harper's display of disdain for parliament is pretty convincing evidence of that.

I wonder how Liberal Party supporters feel about having fewer Liberal MP's in Ottawa than they would have by a fair voting system?

What if Liberal Party insiders were to project nothing but mediocre to abysmal voter turnouts from here on out, and minority governments the way for some time to come? Will they be happy playing second fiddle to the Conservatives?  Canada's Prime Minister could have been a Liberal today if they hadn't nixed the deal with Layton and Duceppe. Still their best hope is to replace the phony minority conservatives and hope the vote distortion favours their party next roll of the electoral dice. In which case, Liberals will need to forge alliances with NDP and Greens if they want to increase voter support. Because they must realize now that propping up the Tories is getting them nowhere fast. Liberals are running the risk of becoming a redundant conservative party, and they understand there is no future in that.

Carolyn Bennett Offers to Distribute Letter

Just a humble view from my armchair.

..a few years back the liberals were in political trouble. to help save their sorry butts they promised to bring in pr. the liberals ended up winning the election and after stalling finally for a group of people from the community to go around bc and talk to people about pr. they did and from all the possible pr forms they came up with they recommended the worst of them. still it was better than fptp.
..the referendum took place and i think it was around 57% in favour of pr. unfortunately the liberals had required pr to achieve 60% where everything else that happened needed only 50%. the vote was so awesome that the liberals had to bring another referendum forward the next election. of course the liberals and the business community opposed pr but surprisingly so did some cupe locals and a few other unions and worked to defeat the referendum. the ndp during the campaign was quiet. if there was some who were for it i didn't hear.
..i believe that the provincial ndp thought it could win under james so wanted no part in pr. i also believe that the unions who opposed it did so on behalf of the provincial ndp. i have no evidence to prove this. now the liberals don't have to bring pr back for a referendum seeing as it was defeated twice. pr was sabotaged. now what?

Different provincial NDP organizations are not enthusiastic about proportional representation.  The two prominent organizers of the NO STV campaign in BC were NDPers--Bill Tieleman and David Schreck.

Agreed, the NDP isn't doing much to earn the support of voters. Layton could respond to Fair Vote Canada's letter to him for a start. I haven't heard much from Layton lately (but for his generous offer to give Harper a get-out-of-jail-free card to restart Parliament on the 25th). That's all we need - Harper back in power ASAP to gut the public service and sell crown assets to the plutocracy to finance the structural deficit he created with his tax cuts for the plutocrats.

What percentage of BC NDP voters supported STV in the referendum, and what percentage of BC Liberal voters? Apparently, support for STV increased among BC Liberal Party voters only after the 1996 election when the NDP formed a phony majority government with just 39% of the votes to the Liberals 42%.

In the 2007 Ontario election, support for MMP increased in several NDP ridings

After the 2007 election, McGuinty's Liberals won 22% of the registered vote(42% of actual vote), 66% of legislature seats, and 100% of political power. It's no wonder there was little support among old line party  supporters here in Canada's largest province. The last time Ontarians elected a government with a true majority was 1937. It's no wonder we have the paternalistic governments we have today when they can simply ignore a large majority of the population the way they do.

More evidence that FPTP is good for nothing

What slays me is that for a referendum on breaking up the country, the threshold was a slim majority of 50%+1 in PQ. But when it comes to democratizing our electoral system, the threshold for change must be set even higher with double supermajorities in ridings that choose PR as well as the percentage of total vote. They're right on the ball when it comes to entrusting democracy to the working class slobs. But Balkanizing the country is no sweat.

I'm changing my tune a bit on the lessons learned from the 4 failed referendums. While each lost for particular reasons, in total, we now have millions of Canadians who have voted for proportional representation. That can only be a good thing in the long run. There is a thirst for fundamental change in the political system in this country. 

The timing of Fair Vote Canada's annual meeting and conference on May 29 couldn't be better!

With the continuing political drama in Ottawa and the exciting May 6 election in Britain, that will all but certainly give the balance of power to the Liberal Democrats, who are calling for proportional representation - we will have a lot to discuss!

Register online and get agenda details at www.fairvotecanada2010.eventbrite.com and also confirm your attendance on our Facebook Event page.

We hope to see you in Ottawa on May 29!

Fair Vote Canada

26 Maryland Blvd.
Toronto, ON M4C 5C9
Canada

I think the UK election results could have a very significant impact on Canadian views of both coalitions and electoral reform.  It might finally be possible to move foward with something after our next election.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for a referendum on STV.

Labour is calling for a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV).

The Conservatives want to keep First-Past-the-Post.

In the current election there is a chance that Labour could win the most seats while coming in third place. So people have said that the UK's electoral system might have to be called "Third-past-the-post"

Many Labour and LibDem supporters have said that they could compromise with each other and support "AV plus". AV plus is a form of MMP that's proportional.

AV Plus or "AV top-up" was recommended by the Jenkins Commission.

I don't think electoral reform should be decided by referendums. Electoral reform should be implemented like all other major policies.  If a party supports electoral reform, they should go ahead and implement it as they do all other important policies in their election platform.