Still believe the NDP doesn't support electoral reform?

How about, instead of reforming, they call the the destruction of the bourgeois government and a working class government be built in it's place?

That way we avoid any future civil war and make the transition in a peaceful and reflective manor.

(From another thread not on electoral reform.)

On second thought I don't think the NDP and Liberals should ever back down to the BQ on this crucial issue. If it comes to it, the NDP and Liberals should force the issue by making legislation on fairer voting a motion of confidence. Would the BQ force an election over preventing fairer voting? One reason many Quebecers support fairer voting is because their province now has 4 1/2 established  competitive parties. Quebec election results are even more skewed then the rest of Canada's because preverse electoral results happen whenever a 2-candidate electoral system is imposed on multi-party politics and the more parties within a political system the more FPTP skews the results. It's ludicrous that the BQ has a lock on at least half of Quebec's seats with only 1/3rd of the votes. All fair minded Quebecers and Canadians should demand a fairer electoral system. Hopefully the Quebec's Court of Appeal will shortly strike down FPTP in Quebec. (Rabble: Court challenge of 'first past the post' in Quebec buoyed by intervenors).

A referendum on electoral system reform should clearly describe the issue being decided. A referendum on electoral reform should ask the voters two simple questions that get to the heart of the matter:

1 - Should we have a majoritarian system or a proportional system?

2 - Should we have a two-candidate system or a multi-candidate system? 

This kind of referendum would produce one of 4 possible decisions:

1 - A two-candidate majoritarian electoral system, namely  FPTP, but more accurately known as Single Member Plurality (SMP).

2 - A multi-candidate majoritarian electoral system, namely the Alternative Vote (AV), AKA the Instant Runoff Vote (IRV).

3 - A proportional system using a two-candidate electoral system at the constituency level, namely Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) using FPTP at the constituency level.

4 - A proportional system using a multi-candidate electoral system at the constituency level, namely Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) using AV at the constituency level. (This is the kind of system the BC Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform was looking at before it made the huge mistake of choosing STV.)

The voters should not be forced to decipher the intricacies of electoral systems. Most peoples' eyes glaze over with all the talk over the relative strengths and weaknesses of FPTP, SMP, AV, IRV, MMP, AV+, etc....  Voters should be be given a referendum that asks the questions that get to the heart of the matter:

- Do you want to maintain our majoritarian electoral system or do you want a proportional system?
- Do you want to maintain our two-party candidate electoral system or to you want a multi-candidate electoral system?

If the voters choose FPTP, a two-candidate majoritarian electoral system, the parties should comply with the voters wishes. In practice that means the NDP, Liberals, and Greens should merge as the Conservatives have already done when they merged the Alliance and PC Parties.

Hopefully, if given the chance the voters would not choose our current two-candidate majoritarian system. Hopefully they would choose a multi-candidate proportional system like the one the BC Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform were seriously contemplating and, in hind sight, the system they should have chosen.

That is great to see, thank you OO.

Of course those with their own agenda, as we can see from Bob Rae's actions, do not want the Canadian people to know the NDP are STILL  moving on PR.

It is more than a bit annoying that there are those who come here and try to deny truth, apparently in order to get people to "vote" for their party, as they say there is no differenece even with much evidence to the contrary.

I think most Canadians support a prorportional system in general, or could easily be swayed to support it by their party leaders. The problem is that not all parties support modernizing our obsolete electoral system. 57% support for any party would be considered a landslide victory of monumental proportions, and yet the B.C. Liberals defeated STV with an absurd double supermajority barrier to reform. From Wilf Day's blog:

Polls results from  2001, 2003 and 2004 and 2010 reveal that Canadians in general are more democratically minded than the two big money parties which Canadians are indicating they don't want to trust either of with phony majority dictatorial rule. And I think that if just one of the two oldest political parties were to support PR, we might stand a pretty good chance in a national referendum. But there should be a political will among all parties and not just the NDP and Greens to want to modernize our electoral system and democracy overall.

Some people can't take yes for an answer:

http://mrsinistergreg.blogspot.com/2011/03/to-hell-with-senate-referendu...

Cheap shot, Greg. You know (or should know, if you're so smart) that abolishing the Senate takes a constitutional amendment supported by every province. So, if you're going to build public support for that, you need to go over the heads of the provincial governments. It will take considerably more than a non-negotiable bottom line in a coalition or minority government negotiation in Ottawa.

By the way, why do some lefties seem to think the only muscular negotiation is to adopt a non-negotiable bottom line? It ends negotiations more often than it starts them and means that other objectives risk not being achieved. I dare say if all their unions followed that strategy, they'd be out on strike forever. Sheesh.

I like Mr. Sinister Greg, but he's being a bit silly on this one.

Then why have any voting at all?  Why not just assign everyone an MP and an MPP and that will be their representation.  We will all be their consitituents, whether we voted for them or not.

Right.  By the same token, if people were apoointed an unelected MP as their representative, they would have "taxation with representation, though maybe not elected representation".

Do you figure you could sell it?

Anyway, the term "taxation without representation" is most strongly associated with U.S. independence.  What do you suppose *they* meant by it?  That they voted for Ye Greene candidate, who lost?  Because I always thought they meant that they had nothin'.

Finally! Some life in the NDP on democratic reform. This is log overdue, and very, very welcome.

Why would they write this motion so that its doomed to failure by mixing senate abolition with PR, though? The Liberals will never support abolishing the senate, and without their support the motion is sure to be defeated. Was that the intention - to make sure that the other parties formally voted against PR? That would seem to move the cause of electoral reform back a step in Canada, rather than coaxing it forward.

Regardless of the NDP asking for too much with this manoeuver to be successful at it, Canadians will appreciate that someone is seems to be starting to move on PR. Will this be a 1-off or part of an election platform?

Sure.  Even an appointed political representative is more than nothing right?

Is voter choice just an implementation detail, or is it more important?

We seem to place high value on geographic representation.  That may have been more useful in the past.  Now, with our generation gaps and fragmented mass cultures, people are being left without representation.

One million people voted Green and got nothin.

Sooo...what I'm hearing in the room is that even if

• you didn't vote for your MP
• your MP is ideologically opposed to working for your interests
• you share nothing in common with your MP beyond proximity of residence

then that's still adequate, lawful, democratic representation.

Suppose I'm firmly of the belief that I should receive government services, but that I should pay $0 in taxes.

• Whatever candidate I vote for is likely to lose, if I'm going by closest alignment with my "no tax" beliefs
• Whatever candidate does win is sure to support taxation as a means of revenue generation for the state
• I share nothing in common with that MP beyond proximity of residence

Are you suggesting that I'm somehow being denied?

Denied *what?*

The Liberals are sullenly attacking the NDP's proposal (again). The NDP's moves have given Liberal bloggers lots more to write about then their own party's lately, it seems.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/silver-power...

Silver's argument is that we can't open up the constitution for anything ever again, because it might embolden the separatists, so we shouldn't even try.

Pretty lame argument from someone who is usually a bit smarter than that.

Anyways, Greg criticized the idea of using a Committee, but in fact I think that's a good avenue for getting people preparing briefs, covering the issue, and talking about the issue again. Keeping it in the news, and engaging with some communications professionals to revamp the sales pitch.

The cause of electoral reform picked up some prominent advocates since the last election - including Paul Wells and Chantal Hébert. It would not be a bad thing to get the commentariat ramped up about it again.

If the candidate in a riding gets 32% of the vote, can it be said that that person "represents" the riding. Surely that person should have to gain some kind of support from 50% + 1 of the voters before they can claim to represent the riding. The same holds true for governments. Governments can only claim to rightfully represent the people when they have some kind of claim to having the backing of more then half the voters. With FPTP we have governments representing little more then 1/3rd of the people not the 1/2 that would be required under a true democracy.

It seems to me that a lot of people lose their common sense when discussing electoral systems. In real life people don't allow minorities to override the majority as FPTP does.

Here's an example: A group of people are trying to decide what to watch on the telly.

4 people want to watch the UFC fights.
3 people want to see a drama.
3 want to see an action film.
3 want to see a slap slapstick comedy.
2 want a romantic comedy. 
2 want to see a chick flick
and 1 wants to watch a documentary.

If this group selected the tv program the same way we select our politicians under FPTP, everyone would end up having to watch the UFC fights eventhough most in the group detest the UFC. Many people would complain that they paid their share for the cable bill, beer and popcorn but are stuck watching a show they hate. They would complain about taxation without representation or in this case taxation without television.

Of course, in real life, people never use FPTP to make decisions that require more then 2 options. The political parties themselves never use FPTP within their own organizations because of its unfairness but are happy to saddle society with it because it favours their partisan political ambitions. Who needs a fair system when citizens can be so easily fooled into watching UFC 692, featuring Steven "Raging Bull" Harper  vs Michael "the Iraqi War Shiek" Ignatieff?

Fortunately, in real life people make choices using strategies similar to the Alternative Vote and much more often PR.

Using a stragety similar to the the Alternative Vote, the group could select a consensus movie of choice. In my opinion the King's Speech would not be chosen but it would definitely beat out UFC 9876, St. Pierre vs Gorilla Monsoon.

But the group would be most satisfied by a wide margin if they used a stragety similar to PR. PR, being a more robust, yet complicated system of choosing things, would supply the people with 7 huge HD TV screens so everyone could watch the exact film they want.

57% did support STV in B.C. STV was actually more popular in that referendum than any of the phony majority government or opposition parties. And to be fair to the Lieberal government, they did put more of an effort into that campaign than our Liberals did with the MMP campaign here in Ontario. Campbell's STV public info campaign was well run in the first campaign compared to the MMP campaign in Ontario. Wilf Day can tell us everything that went wrong with the Ontario campaign, and there were significant things that just didn't happen leading up to the election and referendum.

I would have to conclude that a greater percentage of British Columbians understand STV than there are Ontarians who understand MMP very well. There were stories about voters here not knowing what to think of MMP the week before and even on the day of the referendum. I think if you ask most people a simple question about representation, like,

 Do you think a party that wins 50% of the vote should receive 50% of the seats in Parliament?,

some large percentage would probably agree with the idea in general. What we need is to have all parties agreeable to the idea of modernizing the electoral system and legitimizing Canada's electoral democracy in general. We need to impress upon Conservative and Liberal Party supporters in ridings where they get screwed with FPTP gross distortion of the vote and resulting in misrepresentation for them that there is a better way.

This issue is not about getting votes in the next election. Just because a vital issue doesn't interest most Canadians doesn't mean the NDP should not fight for it. Most Canadians don't care about election financing and spending laws, should the NDP not fight strongly for these issues? Most Canadians don't care about the rules in Parliament concerning the fair treatment of opposition party members, so should the NDP not fight against the governing party's attempts to set up parliamentary rules that unfairly treat members of the  opposition since most Canadians don't have any interest in the issue? Most Canadians also don't care about election laws. The list of vital issues for the NDP that the public does not care about goes on and on. These issues are vital for the NDP's very existance as a viable entity in Ottawa. That's why they have to fight for them. It seems to me the Conservatives are the only party in Ottawa aggressively fighting for structural changes that give their party a structural advantage. The Alliance-PC merger is the best example of this. The Conservatives are fighting aggressively behind the scenes for their long-term political advantage while the other parties only care about winning a few more votes in the next election.

The NDP has to react assertively to the structural changes that have permanently changed the political landscape in Ottawa over the last 20 years. The advent of the BQ, the PC-Alliance merger, and the Greens emergence as a player on the scene have structurally changed Canada's political landscape. Because of these structural changes, the structural balance of power in Ottawa has shifted firmly to the Conservatives. The best structural change the NDP can now support to counter the Conservatives structural advantage is electoral reform. If the NDP does not fight for this now, electoral reform will likely fall away as a viable solution to the structural changes that have changed Ottawa. If NDP'ers stick their heads in the sand and don't support electoral reform now, an unwanted NDP-Liberal-Green merger could suddently be the solution foisted on us.

NDP supporters who feel it is unimportant for the NDP to fight for electoral reform now shouldn't complain if the day comes when Layton, Broadbent, Ignatieff, Chretien, Martin, and May announce that they are all supporting a merger of their parties for the sake of Canada. If that day comes, a lot of NDP supporters will likely regret having not wanted the NDP to fight hard for fair voting.

From Wilf Day's blog:

Wow! B.C. voters are strongly in favour of a fairer voting system and seem to understand the issues fairly well. Organizers of that province's public information campaign must have done a good job informing people about modern voting systems. Perhaps we need a voting system designed to fit the geography of Canada.

I think recall of MPs for whatever reason constituents might decide is another policy altogether. Either there is mechanism in place for recall of underperforming MPs and MPs embroiled in corruption allegations or there is not.

But  surely under a FPTP system, MPs are typically elected by 40% of voters in a riding. That means 60% voted against them. With the current FPP model, there is never a chance for the large majority to recall their MPs who typically cater to a minority of voters who elected them. And sometimes those MPs even take their own support base for granted. MP accountability to constituents is not a strength of winner take all models.

Party B was the Liberal Party in Hamilton-Waterloo-Niagara last election. 28% voted Liberal and yet elected none of the 15 MPs from that region. I'll bet they are not happy. And I'll bet some unknown percentage of them will understand why they are unhappy.

If it's good enough for our dictatorial old line parties, it should be good enough for ALL Canadians.

Yes, regional rep is a big issue. I doubt that a CA or law society would recommend a preferential voting all by itself. Pro democracy groups would recommend some form of PR most likely. STV makes use of preferential voting toward PR. There are fair voting models that incorporate PV or even FPTP. STV makes use of PV in multi member ridings, and MMP utilizes FPTP for electing a local rep.

The BC Citizens' Assembly on Electoral reform almost got it right. Their second choice after STV was an open-list MMP system that uses preferential voting instead of FPTP. This system is more complicated then STV or closed list MMP so the Assembly did not have enough time to build a complete model of it before they had to choose between it and STV. Given the time to construct a complete model of an open list system using preferentian voting instead of FPTP, I think the Citizens Assembly would have chosen open list MMP with preferential voting.

The best way to go might be to have a public consultation process or even a citizens' assembly work within the confines of a parliamentary committee. There could be a give and take process between the committee and the public. Once the committee comes to a conclusion their legislation should be enacted. Referendums shouldn't be used to sabatoge the process but the public should be given a mechanism to convey their input. Referendums on electoral reform don't work in practice because most people are not interested in electoral reform.

Referendums on electoral reform end in two situations:

1 - Referendums held at the same time as general elections end up with most voters entering the voting booth interested in choosing the next legislature and next government but not in the issue of electoral reform. Most of the voters in these "dual elections" have little interest in electoral reform and end up voting on an electoral system they don't have a clear idea about. This hurts the chances of enacting electoral reform as people who don't have an interest in electoral reform can be easily be sold lies about electoral systems and also because people tend to vote "no" for change they don't understand. In this process the work of a citizens assembly that studied electoral systems is easily dismissed.

2 - Stand alone referendums would likely have very low voter turnout because people who have little interest in electoral reform would likely stay at home. The few people who would vote would have a very strong idea concerning the electoral system being proposed and would tend to be advocates of reform. In this case it's very likely the referendum would pass but opponents of electoral reform would claim that not enough people voted to give the decision legitimacy eventhough a citizens assembly studied the matter and recommended the electoral system being voted on.

The way to go is to have a parliamentary committee use public opinion in constructing the best electoral system and then pass it into law. The second choice would be to have a stand alone referendum where the issue of electoral reform isn't overwhelmed and convoluted during a general election.

I heard a similar kind of analysis of the choices presented in Ontario ... that "time ran out" to consider open vs. closed list on MMPR.

With due respect to Stockholm, my experience in talking to people at my then-workplace during the Ontario referendum (folks who were not really politically attuned, but wanted to vote responsibly when the time came), the "party list" issue was the absolute killer, and of course it was the issue exploited by the opponents of MMPR quite effectively during the brief referendum campaign.

So, this tells me two things. (a) If it's time that's required to come up with the right system to propose to people, then Layton is wise and correct to suggest the Legislative Committee, and (b) whenever a proposal to change the system is put to the people, it better be pretty specific, or it risks dying the death of a thousand cuts.

To update another point, Kady reports something I hadn't realized this morning: in fact the Tuesday Opposition Day motion that the government petulantly put off till Wednesday, was indeed pulled again, and allowed to be introduced today.

Thus you can tune into CPAC on the House of Commons online ParlVU service and watch debates on democracy to your heart's content until the end of business today!

I don't think a referendum will result in electoral reform (too many forces against it), unless the question is something like this:

Do you think that every voter, as much as is reasonably possible, should be represented by someone they prefer in Parliament?

Currently, only about half of all voters have a Member who they voted for (if someone likes doing stats, an exact number would be interesting). The other half is not being represented as they would choose to be represented. This is clearly a violation of Section 15(1) of the Charter (Equality) and the Supreme Court's statements about Section 3 of the Charter (Right to Vote).

If the public agrees, that every voter should be represented, then FPTP is out and STV and possibly open list MMP or PR would be in.

It is true that with MMP "you can't really decide on any single thing without knowing what the other choices are."  By not looking "at the systm as a whole" BC-MMP was at a distinct disadvantage when the time came for the Assembly to decide which system to choose. I watched the video of the Assembly's final debate on the different systems and it was apparent to me that many Assembly members were uncomfortable with the "half-baked" nature of BC-MMP.

The weakness of BC-STV was that it proposed to get rid of single-member constituencies and replace them with multi-member STV ridings that could have had as many as seven MLA's per multi-member STV constituency. Most BC'ers like their local single-member constituencies that give them a local MLA and most don't like the idea of replacing their local single-member ridings with huge multi-member STV ridings. BC-STV never made sense for a province like BC that has a huge land mass and a small population mostly located in a few densely populated urban centres. That's why during the Assembly's consultation process very few BC'ers supported STV. The vast majority of people who made submissions to the Assembly supported MMP. Unlike the first referendum, in the second referendum BC'ers found out that BC-STV would get rid of their local single-member ridings and replace them with huge multi-member ridings. At that point STV became a hard sell much in the same way party lists made closed list MMP a hard sell in Ontario. I tried selling STV here in BC and would do it again if I had to but it's characteristics make it a hard sell. Personally I actually would prefer STV over MMP. I like the idea of having large multi-member ridings. Unfortunately most Canadians don't. They're wed to their local single-member constituencies.

Most people I know who have looked at electoral reform support open-list MMP. The Assembly's model where MMP would be coupled with preferential voting is the best system I know of to date.

Representation cannot be defined as "someone I chose got elected to represent me." That's a straw man argument. If you define representation as "someone I chose got elected to represent me" then we would need to expand the House of Commons to over 33 million members as presumably most people would prefer to represent themselves.

I don't necessarily disagree.

But if we don't define it that way, then it makes no sense to say that under FPTP, half or more of Canadians lack representation. As I noted much further upthread, they have an MP or MPP... just maybe not their first choice of candidates.

Exactly my point above (though I'll concede I'm having trouble expressing it lucidly).

If I make enough "choices" then by definition, one of my "choices" will be the winner, and we'll say that I have better representation than with FPTP because one of my choices won! Out of ten candidates, the one I ranked tenth -- because I despise his politics -- won, so I should be happy! Under FPTP he'd also have won, except that since I didn't "choose" him I lose.

Again I'll ask: if my rights are being violated by FPTP when my vote is "wasted" because the Totally Obscure party only receives 1000 votes nationwide, how would PR change that? Surely not by trying to convince me that as long as my tenth choice wins, my vote has some kind of meaning.

As a lifelong supporter of the Totally Obscure Party, I get it.

But what about me? Some flavour of PR will ensure you get the kind of representation you want, but how will it help me?

JKR,

I think we may have discussed this years ago. 

There was a huge communication problem in both BC referendums. 

As an Assembly, we didn't communicate our position very well.  This is in fact what we didn't have time or money to do.  Our final report "Making Every Vote Count" was written by professional writers.  We had quite a bit of input into it, but the title didn't clearly express why we were recommending STV and that's all many people saw.

During the Assembly we often encountered problems of perspective; political scientists & politicians vs citizen (us). 

For example, the phrase "Make Every Vote Count" should have been something more like "Give Every Voter a Representative they Prefer".  Not quite as catchy, but it avoids the word "count", which means something very specific to a political scientist (getting a representative you voted for) and something quite different for the voter (that someone sitting in the polling station doesn't run off with ballots before they are counted).

We also focused on voter choice, a concept barely on the radar of the political scientists and political parties.  They didn't really understand what we were talking about.

It's nice that you watched the videos. 

I watched the real thing, in the room, with people I knew by name and spent almost a year with.  Yes, there was difficulty in our early attempts to shape our MMP system, but by the time we voted, we had two very clear and reasonable well defined choices, BC-MMP or BC-STV. 

What particular details do you think are missing from our BC-MMP system which would have gotten half of the Assembly to change their vote?

There was a great deal of emotion in the room.  It was electric.  Some MMP advocates saw that MMP was not going to be chosen and I think this added greatly to the tension.  I expect that some were hoping to make last minute tweaks to BC-MMP to make it acceptable.  But really, there was so much wrong with MMP in general that it never stood a chance. 

This was essentially the most important vote (and moment) of the Assembly.  Members wanted to make absolutely sure they knew exactly what they were voting on.  We asked a lot of questions.  This happens all the time on important votes in all venues.    We voted when we were ready and we knew what we were voting on.

MMP supporters, almost all of them not on the Assembly, have created this myth that we selected STV because we didn't have time to flush out MMP properly.  They either can't understand how we could not support MMP (Adriane Carr's rant after the decision was a prime example) or they are simple trying to discredit our work so that MMP can get a leg up next time.

It's irresponsible to keep repeating this myth. 

We spent almost a year at this.  Not half a day.

I think MMP would have lost, even if we had had a vote before we designed BC-MMP and BC-STV.  I think our BC-MMP system was as good as MMP could be, and the design we had at the time of voting helped MMP to get more votes than MMP would have gotten before BC-MMP was designed.  I think BC-MMP showed MMP in it's best light.

During our final discussions, I do think there was quite a bit of surprise at how complicated MMP was and how relatively simple STV was.  This was a reversal of what we had been told initially.  Once you get what the counting is doing, STV is pretty straight forward and does a lot of cool things from a voter's perspective.  The more you go into MMP, the murkier it gets.  Wilf Day's submission to the Assembly (I think the best submission we got on MMP) showed quite clearly that MMP was not simple.

I expect that if we had had time and the inclination to fully develop both systems, BC-MMP would have garnered even fewer votes.  The deeper you get into MMP the more complicated it gets.  MMP sounds great for the first 10 seconds but after that look out.  The prospect of explaining MMP to voters had become more frightening than explaining STV partial transfers.  Read Wilf's submission to see why.

From March onwards, the more we looked at MMP, the worse it looked.  The more we looked at STV, the better it looked. 

On the final day, the only question was whether there would be a 55/45 support for STV, or a clearer consensus.

STV won by a three to one margin. 

With open-list MMP, the only cost would be that your constituency would be 20 - 33% larger then it is now. The only difference from FPTP would be that along with your current local MP, you'd be represented by a few regional representatives and you'd get to vote for your favorite party and favorite regional representative. From the perspective of the voter, open-list MMP is actually not that differnt from FPTP.

With open-list MMP the "Totally Obscure Bad Idas Party" would win no seats.

No electoral system allows every voter to have their first choice elected. But some systems our much beter then others. The more proportional a system is the more it allows people to have their first choice elected.

The ranked system you're alluding to, known in Canada as the Alternative Vote, is NOT proportional. Like FPTP, it is a majoritarian system. AV is a majoritarian system that's made for multi-candidate elections. FPTP only works properly in 2-candidate contests.

You're confusing the Alternative Vote with proportional representation.

Those public hearings were very unrepresentative. People like me who are interested in electoral reform were vastly overrepresented. People who are interested in electoral systems don't have as much affinity for local single-member constituencies as the general public does. A lot of electoral reform supporters are enamoured  with the multi-candidate ridings in places like Sweden and Ireland because they're more democratic then single-member ridings. But the general public in Canada does not want drastic changes to their electoral system. If a few politicians had been part of the Assembly process they would have understood that these public meetings were unrepresentative of the general public. These politicians would have advised the Assembly that the best way to get electoral reform passed in a referndum would be to etablish a system that closely resembles FPTP as much as possible. That system is open-list MMP. Open-list MMP was created as a system for people who like FPTP but want a higher level of proportionality. But the BC Assembly (and the Ontarion Assembly) chose a system that is radically different from FPTP. That's why so many outsiders were so shocked when they chose STV in BC (and when the Ontario Assembly chose closed list MMP with 20 extra seats MLA's in Ontario). The Assemblies in BC and Ontario were tone deaf to public sentiment because they heard mostly from electoral reform diehards and political scientists. Viewing things from out here in BC people couldn't believe the Ontario Assembly was naive enough to think that adding 20 seats to the Ontario Lagislature could win a referendum, let alone proposing party determined lists. When the BC Assembly announced their support for STV, it was obvious that getting rid of single-member ridings was going to be a hard sell. Why didn't the Assemblies see the obvious?

The BC NDP has MMP in their platform, so if they get elected we should expect them to act on their commitments.

I also think a charter challenge may be the best way to establish PR. Electoral reform needs a Rosa Parks to challenge FPTP. One million Green voters should have petiotioned the court after the last federal election.

One of the big confusions about the idea of "representation" is that we actually mean different things by the word, but continue to use the one word for these different things.

Some people are adamant that our MP provides everyone in the riding with "representation".  Well, that MP is available to everyone in the riding and that MP will try to provide what I call "omsbudsman-like" support in dealing with the government bureaucracy and administration. Some do a better job of this than others.  But this is largely non-partisan work.

The other kind of representation has to do with general policy and ideas about how government should work and what it should do.  The parties generally provide different points of view on this.  The NDP believe more in social justice and providing for everyone, while the Conservatives and the Liberals, seem, to me at least, to believe that government is more about the economy which seems to come down to supporting big business.  I happen to think that being properly represented with regards to my beliefs about policy and government function is important.  FPTP clearly leaves about half of us out of being represented in this way.

If I believe that better voting systems, for instance, are really important and my MP doesn't agree with me, then I am not represented by him.  While its not possible to have an MP who agrees with me on every policy issue, certainly, it is possible to get a much better fit for more people with a proportional voting system.

Like Craig, I was also on BC's Assembly.  STV actually won by 4 to 1 (I had to look it up in our report).  The MMP model we built, while it may have had the great promise of being one of the better MMP models, was more like a Rube Goldberg machine - a very complicated system to accomplish what we wanted.  STV was much more like Occam's razor - a simple way to accomplish so many goals simultaneously while not being easy to change and undermine our intended purposes. 

Unfortunately, it is a subtle system and explaining how it works wasn't easy.  Many of the myths about STV abound because people don't realize that the "obvious" behaviours of the system aren't how the system would work.  Of course, it didn't help that our opponents were able to use simple lies to mislead folks. 

Such as, your vote just "disappears"!  Well, no, it doesn't.  If I had voted in the recent  BC Liberal leadership race I would have known from the published results just where my vote went (assuming, of course, that I could remember how I voted).  If I had voted for either Christy Clark or Kevin Falcon, then that is where my vote went, it was never transferred.  If, on the other hand, I had voted for Mike de Jong then it would have been transferred after the first round.  If I had voted for George Abbot next then it would have been transferred again - with three possible outcomes: my vote went to either Christy or Kevin, or, thirdly, if I hadn't put down a third choice then my vote didn't help anyone win.  If I didn't rank Christy or Kevin then I disliked them equally and I let others choose between them.

Another big problem is that folks looked at the multi-member ridings and simply assumed that it would work like our municipal block voting does.  But, it doesn't.  With block voting everyone gets as many votes as there are seats and so a big population center in the riding could dominate who gets seats.  But, STV provides people with only one vote each - unless the large population centre contains most of the population, those in outlying areas will have enough votes to make their own choice.

As for the NDP motion - it was nice to see them do something.  But they mostly seem incensed with the Senate overturning some decisions of the House of Commons.  It seems to be more a way to pressure the Conservatives to consider how they are violating many of the unwritten rules of Parliament (and, quite rightfully so!).  But what can actually be accomplished?  What good would a yes vote to abolishing the Senate be?  Would that force all the various governments to work together successfully to change the constitution?

I would be happy to have a federal committee look at voting reform, but unless they are forced to listen to the voters, would they really come up with something that would work better for voters?  or would they come up with something like AV as they have in the UK - it might look like reform but without some proportionality it really isn't much of an improvement at all - its just window dressing.

JKR

So, if you don't have a problem with BC-MMP. then your argument that we didn't have enough time to develop our MMP system is moot. 

Actually the only organized pressure we got was from MMP supporters, especially from the BC Greens. 

Single-Member Plurality districts discriminate directly against the non-plurality, which is about 50% in any election.  This discrimination happens in every district and in every election.  In Canada, we simply do not live in a representative democracy.

The single-member districts also create a situation which makes it almost certain that political parties will discriminate against women and cultural minorities.  This is what happens when the Party Magnitude = 1.  So, women are less likely to gain their party's nomination, less likely to win constituency seats and therefore less likely to end up in the government, and less likely to end up in Cabinet. 

If you protect the idea of single-member districts, you do it at a great cost to fairness.  But more to the point, who does the single-member district Member represent?  Everyone in the District or only the half of voters who voted for them?  Obviously only half the voters. 

So, who represents the other half of the voters?  Well, a Member from a region which is much larger than any STV District would be.

With MMP, plurality voters get local representation, but their districts would increase in size by 40%, which, especially to rural voters, represented an unacceptable reduction in the quality of their local representation.  This is why many rural Assembly members couldn't support MMP; it made local representation worse, and it was already bad. For this reason, MMP would have been a very hard sell. 

Non-plurality voters get regional representation from someone they'll never run into. 

If, as you say, local representation is important (and I agree with you), then MMP doesn't do a very good job of it.  One of the reasons the Assembly recommended STV was that we actually thought local representation would improved greatly. 

Single-Member Plurality Districts don't provide good local representation.  Multi-Member Preferential districts do.

Single-Member Plurality (FPTP) is flawed to its core.  And I believe it to be unconstitutional as well.  Retaining it through MMP just doesn't make any sense to me.  Why elect Members through a flawed and discriminatory process and then try to correct the mistakes through a compensatory add-on? 

Why not give everyone a rep they prefer and treat everyone equally, which is what STV does. 

Yes, we could have chosen MMP against our better judgement, but that wasn't what we were asked to do.  We were asked to make a recommendation to our fellow voters what electoral system would be best for BC. 

That's what we did.

A good video from our new Premier (from the last BC Referendum):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhccpzI4lbQ

This is evidence that the Assembly was unrepresentative. MMP has stronger support then STV within academia, electoral reform advocavy groups, political parties, and the general public.

Following this logic many supporters of MMP would have been better off if they had chosen not to engage with the Assembly because their advocacy of MMP irritated the Assembly.

There were numerous accounts of Assembly members being irritated that so many people were advocating for MMP. Since the Assembly was part of a democratic process, why were they irritated that so many supporters of MMP advocated for their system of choice? 

The Assembly also wasn't "forced to listen to voters". Of the two, assembly members and politicians, it is the politicians that have to listen to the voters or face election defeat. Unlike politicians, an unelected Assembly is free to ignore anyone they feel like. The BC Assembly ignored the majority of people who engaged with the Assembly process and professed support for MMP. The assembly also chose to ignore the politicians who represent the people. The NDP and Green partys in BC both supported MMP while the BC Liberals seemed to support FPTP and, to a lesser extent, AV. The public and politicians did not support STV. So if "listening to the voters" is co crucual" then STV should only be supported if it gains a lot more support from electoral reform advocacy groups, politicians, and the general public. 

The Assembly was free to go ahead and favour a system not supported by the public. electoral reform advocacy groups, and politicians but that ended up leading to the failure to get electoral reform passed into law. The best way to go ahead with electoral reform is to get the public and politicians onside. That's why the NDP is correct in its assertion that the best way forward for electoral reform is to set up a Parliamentary committee that listens to views from the public and politicians and then passes electoral reform into law. 

Polunatic2,...  Exactly.

JKR,

I get that you prefer MMP.

But if you had been on the BC Assembly, there's a four to one chance that you would have ended up preferring STV too.

Some of us had a passing acquaintance with MMP at the beginning of the process and virtually no one had any knowledge of STV.

After a couple of weekends, I was almost certain that MMP was the right way to go.  Most of us thought this way, at that time. 

But when we learned more about the systems, and especially after attending the public hearings and reading the public submissions, it became obvious to 80% of us that MMP wouldn't fly in BC and that it really was a very inferior system when compared to STV.

I realise that you disagree, and that's fine. 

My basic point is that when you talk about the Assembly, you probably don't know as much about the Assembly, as Assembly members who were there for a year living and breathing electoral reform constantly. 

Several myths have been created by MMP supporters to try to explain why we recommended STV instead of MMP.  Somehow, the BC Assembly must have made a mistake. 

MMP supporters either need that the Assembly was negligent, or that there was a critical flaw in the process; like your initial assertion that we didn't pick MMP because we didn't have time to fully develop it (which you have not been able to validate by pointing to anything critical that our BC-MMP system was missing).

The other possibility (which is unacceptable to MMP supporters) is that the BC Citizens' Assembly recommended STV by a 4 to 1 margin because STV is a vastly better system.

I think that persistent believers in both STV and MMP (like us) should do a careful analysis of both systems with people who understand them. 

I am all for poitical reform in this country but it seems to me most of you are completely missing the mark.

2 party system? multi party system? IRV? MMP? proportional representation?

These are all ideas that do nothing but allow the government to continue as usual with the business of spending far more money than neccessary and taking more and more of our money to spend.

The real reforms we need are:

1)NO PARTY system! Everyone has to be independant of party affiliation to correctly represent the constituents that elect them. Any 'party' system allows for a 'whipped vote' whereby the member has to follow the party line which may be far from what the constituents of any one riding realy want.

2)Finance Reform! We need to make the recieving of donations from businesses and corporations illegal. Our elected officials are there to represent PEOPLE. A corporation is a nothing more than a piece of paper and cannot vote therefore deserves no representation but they certainly try to buy it with big donations.  

3)Lobby reform! Along with their big donations to the campaigns corporations also spend huge amounts on sending lawyers to our parliament where the people who took their money then take their advice on what legislation should be enacted for the benefit of the corporations.

4)Accountability. If you really think your MP or MLA is representing you and are accountable to you then you should seek professional help. the complete lack of any accountability is evidenced in a higher court ruling form Alberta. The quote from the judge is incredulous in a society that is supposedly run by a government that represents the people. Justice E.A. Marshall, Justice of The Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta [MP Wilton Littlechild v. Citizens of Canada, Court of Queen's Bench ofAlberta Docket No. 9012000725, Dec 10, 1990] "I know of no legal duty on an elected representative at any level of government to consult with his constituents or determine their views. While such an obligation may generally be considered desirable, there is no legal requirement."

If that doesn't knock you off your chair you are probably a politician.

We need to enact a law that forces our representitives vote on our behalf as we all believe they should.

Right now, once elected, they can do anything they please and we have no recourse.

5)Budget Reform! They should be forced to operate the government in a fiscally responsible manner. I only have 2 debts in my life, my mortgage and the $170,000 the goverment has run up in my name as a taxpayer and guess what...my mortgage is the smaller debt, especially when you consider there is another $170,000 for my wife and each of my 2 children.

We need a constitutional ammendment that prevents our government from having a deficit budget with a few limited exceptions like time of war or natural disaster.

The general, everyday business of running the country should never put the people in debt.

I was watching CPAC the other day and the house of Commons spent over 1 1/2 hours debating wether the people in the military who recieve medals actually own them and have the right to sell tham or pass them to family members, or if the government owns them and can require them to be returned upon ones death or charge these heroes with a crime for selling them. Talk about being an indian giver! What do you think it costs to run parliamnet for 1 1/2 hours. Does this not seem like a waste of our money. This is the kind of thing that needs to be stopped so we can save millions.

6)TAX Reform! We are supposed to be taxed in a 'fair and equitable' manner. Right now there are so many loopholes for the wealthy and corporations it is almost impossible to count them. I can write a new, FAIR tax code on 2 sheets of paper.

For individuals - 12% of everybody's income..no deductions, no exemtions, no tax shelters...just shut up and pay your 12% whoever you are and whatever your income. As an example of the disparity of personal taxes my income last year was $43,500 and I paid $13,000 in tax, my sister's family income was $481,000 and she paid $22,000. If you are comfortable with this.....

5% slaes tax across the board, including gas, liquor, tobacco etc. Everything but food.

For businesses - 15% of revenues...no deductions, no exemtions, no tax shelters, and certainly none of this BS about the company is from outside the country so do not need to pay. I don't care your corporation is registered in the Cayman Islands, if you operate a business in this country you pay your taxes here like everyone else.

This would actually increase tax revenues over the current, convaluted structure that allows so many deductions for those with enough money to invest and businesses to deduct everything form pencils to toilet paper.

7) Whle we are making all these changes we might as well rewrite a bunch of the Acts that govern our lives so we, the average people, can understand them and know what the law really is. I was trying to read the land title act recently and after 3 hours and many looks in my law dictionary the only section I could make head or tail of was "139: Air space constitutes land". and 145 which says they can tax it! I didn't say it made any sense I just said I could figure out what it said.

I would also like to ask the folks in Ottawa to return the 64 billion dollars, plus interest, they borrowed from the chartered banks last year in order to give the chartered bank a 75 billion dollar 'bail-out'. The intent of this, according to our Finance Minister was to "make loans and mortgages more available and more affordable for ordinary Canadians". In other words, so the average person can accumulate more debt.

I don't know about you but I see something wrong with that picture.

So, if you all want to talk about true political reform then let's open our eyes, smell the coffee, and get a government that actually represents the people and is accountable and responsible.

The people in Ottawa and our provincial capitals will fight us every step of the way because they like the current system where a few party leaders and their rich corporate friends tell us how to live our lives and make us pay for all their private jets and 2 week long, five star hotel 'fact-finding' trips to study the transit system in Tahiti.

It won't be easy, it won't be quick, but if we don't all stand up together soon and put and and to all this, it won't get any better!!!!

If I was able to unilaterally choose the electoral system for BC and Canada I would choose STV. If given the opportunity I would dictate that 7 or more seat STV be Canada's national and provincial electoral system. But that's not how things work in a democracy. To get electoral reform established and maintained over the long term it's important to establish a system that has broad support. That means the views of electoral reform advocacy groups, politicians, political parties, and the general public must be taken into account. In my opinion that precludes STV and closed list MMP because both systems don't have broad support of electoral reform advocacy groups, politicians, political parties, and the general public.

I would actually be very happy if the Supreme Court ruled in favour of 7+ seat STV. But is that likely to happen?

If you accept the proposition that approximately 1/3rd of Canadians favour FPTP and plurality voting and you respect their viewpoint and go from there and use Occam's razor to construct a fair vote electoral system, the system you end up with is open-list MMP, the system Wilf Day supports using free lists.

No Taxation Without  Representation was dealt with as far back as 1215AD and yes, at the time it referred to the monarchy. The Magna Carta was presented to King John in this year which, although some call it a constitution, was actually a contract between the free landholders and the crown. the landholders got a set of rights and liberties in exchange for "one fifteenth of all moveable goods". The deal was finally sealed at Runnymeade in 1225 and the king got his 15% tax and we all got our civil rights.

This principle was carried into the Declaration of Independance and the US Constitution which is where most people think the phrase originates. Canada has never had such a clause in any form, other than the Magna Carta, as we have always been, and still are, a colony of the British empire. The Constitution Act 1982 was not enacted by referendum of the people but proclaimed by the Crown, therefore unlike the DoI and Constitution in the US it is nothing more than the Monarch dictating law to the people.

As to our current electoral system, it is a complete farce and you are all being fooled if you think you are entitled to any representation at all. In 1990 Justice E.A Marshall, Court of the Queens Bench, Alberta gave this quote in a ruling "I know of no legal duty on an elected offical at any level of government to cunsult with his constituents or determine their views" He also quoted another high court judge in a different case who stated "It is the essence of our parliament system of government that our elected representitives should be able to perform their duties courageously and resolutely in what THEY consider to be the best inerest of Canada, free from any worry about being called to account anywhere except in parliament". They are not bound in any way to listen to us or represent our interests!

The case in question was brought by a group of his constituents, against their representitive, who claimed for damages becuase in 1985 they had submitted a petition to him signed by over 80% of the voters in the riding expressing they were against the GST. He voted to implement the tax.

As to the last question of where do we cut off the right to representation...? Well the answer is NOWHERE!! It is an individual right not part of some theory about a group. I recall the quote by Harry S Truman "By definition democracy can be 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for dinner", I wouldn't want to be the sheep, and another quote from the esteemed Thomas Jefferson "democracy is nothing but MOB RULE where 51% of the people can trample the rights of the other 49%". We all hold, and are to entitled to our rights as INDIVIDUALS.

I'd rather see fair voting established in my lifetime then wait for my perfect system to get established. Maybe they have STV in Hades?

My two top priorities for an electoral system are proportionality and ending the problem of strategic voting. There are other aspects of electoral systems that I think are important but they are not deal breakers. My first choice is 5 or more seat STV but I'd be just as happy with a relatively proportinal version of open-list MMP and I'd also be ok with free-list party-lists.  Over the short term I'd even be happier if we switched to the Alternative Vote during an interim period before fair voting could be established. I think it would be great if the Instant Runoff Vote was established in the U.S. and if the Alternative Vote wins the referendum in the UK.

PoliticalNick, ...   With respect, you don't seem to know very much about STV or the BC Assembly.

If you are interested in the Assembly, electoral reform or STV, you might take a few minutes and check out the Assembly's website:

http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public

Does the NDP want electral reform? Yes

Does the NDP want the replacement of the bourgeois Government with a workers Government ? No.

How does reforming the bourgeois inequitable representative form of government bring freedom to the working class?

How does giving up your rights to someone else so that they can represent you bring you freedom and equality?

Why do I need someone else to represent me?

Don't I really just need the facts and the ability to voice my own opinion for each proposal?

Can't I just join in when I feel I need to join in and not join in on subjects I feel I don't care about?

Why would I want to reform a governmental system that was designed by rich white guys from England hundreds of years ago?

politicalnick, under PR-STV, when you rank a candidate 3rd, you are saying that *if* your candidates ranked 1 and 2 can't get elected (because the other voters won't have it and you can't do anything about it) than you prefer that #3 should be elected. If there is a candidate that you don't want elected under any circumstances then you don't rank him and your vote will never move to him.

What's unreasonable about that?

Doug Woodard St. Catharines, Ontario

Doug - I did not say it was unreasonable, I said I do not agree with the system or splitting votes into pieces after they are used to elect someone and having 'quotas' instead of majority victory. If the population of a particular area requires 3 representitives to be fair then split the riding into 3 where they get 1 rep each. I know this would require reassessment of the boudaries each election but I believe it would be more fair to the voters. Feel free to disagree with me but someone cannot get 50% of the vote has no mandate form the masses and that simple majority should be the minimum threshold for anyone to win an election. I will always hold that appointing our representitives through random lottery draw is far more fair and better than electing by vote.

All that said, If you read all my posts here (especially #79) you will see that I really don't care how we vote as much as I care what we are voting for. Until we get the reforms I ask for in government you can vote however you like and it won't make a bit of difference. You are still electing people into a corrupt and flawed system of governance.

By definition Democracy can be 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for dinner - Harry S. Truman

Democracy is nothing more than Mob Rule where 51% of the people can trample the rights of the other 49% - Thomas Jefferson

Political parties often have several ballots to come up with a leader who has more than 50% support from members/delegates/whatever.

The BC Liberal party just went through a leadership race where party members voted for at least two candidates in preferred order. Their votes were weighted so each of 85 ridings had identical influence.

Next month the BC NDP will have a preferential ballot leadership vote as well.

Then both parties will fight a first-past-the-post provincial election some time in the next 2 years or so.

Absurd.

A plurality of support for a party leader is insufficient. But it is ok for general elections?

This simply has to stop.

Those who blame non-FPTP systems as being inherently unstable need to see that the earth hasn't stopped spinning for the almost 7 years that Canada has been without a majority government. While some don't like the lack of ease of legislation, I like how parliamentary committees mean something now and that debate and votes suddenly matter like never before in recent memory.

Democracy is a muscle. We've been exercising it for most of a decade and we're starting to get good at it. I think we need more practice. And I think parties need to start entrenching progressive, democratic and truly representative electoral systems so our whole democracy gets a boost of efficacy.

Our declining voter turnout certainly indicates the need.

It's time for leaders to act.

Craig

First let me tell you that my political stance is 'fiscally conservative liberal' so getting anyone to represent me entirely is almost impossible given the views I hold. I am usually left with choosing either a 'right wing radical' or a 'bleeding heart liberal'. There has been much more movement toward 'centerist' candidates in the last decade but to find one who embodies the things I hold dear is tough.

You make a very compelling argument but there are still a few flaws I must address.

You say you do not have the time or expertise to make competent decisions and are willing to turn this over to some you choose but there is no guarantee they will be competent either. I would rather live by my own bad decisions than someone else's

Your statement about not wanting to remain vigilant demonstrates to me that you feel you do not want the resposibility to govern and maintain your own life and rights. That's fine if it is your choice but it is not mine. Getting to know what your neighbor is doing means getting to know your neighbor and that makes for a much better sense of community and brotherhood.

Our current SMP is definitely flawed on may levels but replacing it with a MMP is really only slightly better. Now we have the probibility that if there is an even number of members in a riding they will cancel each other out and the entire riding has no voice so you would have to have an odd number in each riding to overcome this. This brings much added cost to smaller ridings who now would need a minimum of 3 representitives to avoid the stalemate.

Can a single member reresent everyone? Definitely not, but can you represent every voter by adding 2 or 3 more? The answer is still no. The representation may be more balanced but the only way to represent every voter is to let them vote for themselves.If they don't want to vote well, thats a vote in itself This may be an unattainable Utopian society but I can still believe in the concept and hope to get there. My other big issue with this is I take the position that we need to cut the cost of our government, not increase it by adding more MPs or MLAs and all their staff and offices etc.

Your black & white characterization of some serious issues does not really hold water for me. I am anti-abortion for my own family but pro-choice for those that want it. I know some that are staunch advocates of abortion laws but are willing to allow some for certain circumstances, and others that believe not even if it endangers the mother. There are usually many shades of grey in between the 2 extremes on any issue even the most serious ones you raise.

Your argument that your system will give everyone some representation is not quite correct either. There will always be some 'fringe' members of society who no elected candidate will represent because these people hold views very different from the norms, and of course, as I keep repeating, right now there is no obligaton for any elected official to listen to or consider any of their constituents after being elected. Until this is changed no change in the voting system will ever give you 'representitive government'. As long as they can vote on the issues on their own behalf or on behalf of some 'party' affiliation or corporate donor you and I are not represented at all!!

PS: I'm so glad I found this site. Some very stimulating debate by some obviously intelligent people. So many forums out there are full those who blurt out anything without any logic or factual basis.

Craig

3 things -

1)I agree a representational government is apropriate, if they actually represent us, the people, not their corporate donors

2)You still won't speak to the glaring issues I raise of forcing the reps to be accountable, by law, to represent their consituents instead of following a party line or corporate sponsors. I have to assume you are ok with them not representing you as long as the election was done by STV

3)I would never run for office...I am not Satan and claim to rule over no man. If we had a lottery draw I would do my duty but I am not gonna go out there and lie to people about what I would do for them, rather go and and tell them to do for themselves.