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Stéphane Dion proposes P3 voting system
April 24, 2012 - 9:18am
Calling Wilf Day! Help!
This op-ed by Stéphane Dion appeared in various media yesterday (maybe Sunday):
Stephane Dion: Canada needs a new voting system
A more full description (in French only) is reprinted here.
I'm not suggesting Dion is a very influential thinker, even within the Liberal party. I'm just wondering what this is about. I have a hard time understanding voting reform proposals and speculating on which ones are "better".
I'm looking at Wilf... helloooo....
I'm glad you are already mentioned that about Dion's limited influence. There is an understatemet.
I'm not going to speak at all to the technical analysis of his proposal.
That is worth what it is. But I'm going to make the case that this is the same old distraction over debating different forms.
The consenus over ONE form of PR to propose is what matters. By extension, there is a continuing debate on how you get there.
But eggheads throwing in their latest back of a napkin idea is just a distraction.
And of course Dion would be doing that. It is a big part of the reason he is ignored, and deserves to be.
Whoa, don't be so mean to Dion, Ken. You may not agree with him about much (I don't), but he won my admiration when he ignored his own political fortunes to sign a coalition deal with Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe. Jack praised Dion's sincerity and principles back in 2006. That didn't hurt Jack in Québec, any more than the coalition deal did. When Dion, Ignatieff, and Rae have things to say, I'd much rather listen to Dion, because even if he's reading from a script, it's generally his own.
Here's Dion explaining his proposal at an electoral reform forum hosted by MP Carolyn Bennett. He called it "alternative vote" but it has elements of proportionality. Could be a good starting point for future discussions with the NDP after Mulcair becomes PM.
You give him way too much credit.
Dion never understood anything about his political future. You cant award him with going against what was good for that, when he generally didnt get it.
But as far as that goes, remember that he had quit. The Coalition was his chance to go from that to being a PM! Even a fool knows he'd have little to lose in trying that.
And that is a REALLY low bar saying we should listen to him because he is more likely to speak something truthful and sensible than Rae and Ignatieff.
It appears his "P3" if described accurately is a species of Single Transferable Vote. We could have had STV in BC if the NDP hadn't wanted their preferred PR system. STV is not liked by the parties because it takes a fair bit of the control of who gets elected out of the hands of the backroom wheelers and dealers and gives it to the electorate. If you use 5 member ridings then at best you would expect three or four parties to be elected with the results mirroring PR in numbers. If it is less than 5 then it is not friendly to small parties. 5 seats means an effective 20% threshold for a seat. Most PR systems use a lower threshold number.
Thanks for the comments - I don't generally follow PR discussions, not because I don't wish for PR, but because I don't understand them. And Ken, if it will make the discussion flow better, I retract any positive thing I said about Dion. I hate him, I despise him, I scorn him, I fart in his general direction. His mother was a hamster and his father smelled of elderberries.
I find it is hard to tell how bad their breath is in the cartoon strip.
http://www.gocomics.com/theelderberries/2012/04/24
I dont follow the discussions of different PR schemes very well either. I can probably do a workable job of where they are at- like why the consensus seems to be settling towards MMP, and whats wrong with some of the other ideas.
But I dont know enough for eample to recognise similarities in some new idea thrown in- like Dion's.
Honestly- I let the people who follow it closely work out the 'details'. I'll support whatever they seem to settle on.
So why pay any attention to something a doofus throws into the ring?
But to be fair, I probably would just wait to see what others said on it, even if the latest PR tweak suggestion didn't come from a doofus.
That would be true with the Hare quota. According to the Droop quota it's a bit less than that. Although of course that includes redistribution of second and subsequent choice votes. Most MMP and straight PR systems use a much lower threshold, true.
As far as Liberals go I have more respect for Dion than most, but should we be surprised that Liberals are now interested in PR now that they are the third party? Lol, I think not. Still, it's the right idea, I just hope Mulcair doesn't follow the countless examples of provincial NDP leaders before him who jettison any idea of electoral reform when they smell power.
Dion's been talking about this for a while. It sounds pretty asinine, having parties run three candidates each per riding, then having people rank the parties and subsequently rank the candidates. I doubt the results would much better reflect the votes of people than even the first past the post system, never mind a more proper proportional system.
His system is a little different although I have not actually read a clear breakdown of the technical details. STV is similar and actually the results come close to proportionality. The Australian Senate and Tasmania have used variants of STV as has Ireland.
Having to rank the parties, and then rank multiple candidates that each party is fielding within the one riding, sounds way too cumbersome and complicated to me. The line ups at the polling station during busy hours would be even more painfully long.
Some people decide how they're going to vote before they actually have the ballot and pencil in their hand. Their line would move faster.
Imagine you're stranded in the desert with your family because your car broke down. A Ford mini-van pulls up to offer help. You say, "no thanks, I will only accept a ride in a Chevy". That's my simplistic analogy of the reaction of those who would claim to support PR but prefer the status quo to a PR model that's not their first choice.
And yes, it may be true that voting might be a little more complex than marking a single "x" on a ballot that will end up being wasted under the current system. But that's no reason to continue using an undemocratic, 19th centure voting system that leaves more than 50% of voters unrepresented.
Thanks, Pol2, that's the message I was trying to get across as well, though I couldn't find an irony emoticon to accompany my post.
P2
Thans for that as that is probably what turns more people off PR than any other point.
He is their critic on Democratic Reform, Intergovernmental Affairs, Official Languages, La Francophonie, and the Privy Council Office.
The useful thing about Dion's article is not his P3 model, but what he says about winner-take-all and about the Liberal Party policy for the Alternative Vote (preferential ballot.)
So he has launched an opening gambit in what should become a serious discussion among the opposition parties about voting reform. Best news of the month.
True.
As for his P3 model, note that he says:
"I may not have come up with the best formula, and I do keep an open mind. However, it is in this spirit that we need to work to improve our democracy. . . My hope is that the LPC, and all other political parties on Canada's federal scene, will one day adopt these views, if not the proposition that I submit for discussion."
His model is not STV: it is Swedish-style list PR, but with small regions like Spain's but even smaller.
To learn more about its merits and defects, here's the whole story.
Thanks for replying to my plea for help, Wilf - wish I'd seen your blog before!
Now I have to settle down to some serious reading. Worse yet, some serious thinking. You'll appreciate that this doesn't come easy to some of us...
With Dion's P3, you wouldn't rank mulitiple candidates; you vote for one candidate only. First, you rank the parties.
That's not the problem with Dion's model.
The problems are, first, no local MPs for the 55% of us who live in single-MP communities. It would never pass a referendum. Except maybe in Quebec, where they are fond of their 17 administrative regions. A few communities would be pissed off, like Joliette, Saint-Maurice, Drummondville, the Beauce and Gaspesie, and maybe Saint-Jerome and Saint-Hyacinthe. But in Ontario, look at all the smaller cities and counties that would never vote for this. In Nova Scotia, look at Cape Breton and everyone south of Halifax like Kings-Hants. And so on.
Second, with five MPs per district, it takes 17% of the vote on the final count to win a seat. Less than 17%, your party drops and your second choice of party gets your ballot. With four-seaters, that's 20%. With three-seaters, 25%. My simulation ends up with an average district magnitude of 4.16 over 73 districts with 304 MPs. (The three territories and Labrador keep single MPs.) Very poorly proportional. Where the NDP is now the second party, we'd do well, but the Liberals often would be eliminated, and the Greens have no chance. Even some NDP voters would find, on the votes cast last year, their ballot counting only for their second choice: Newfoundland outside the Avalon peninsula, South Nova Scotia, Vaughan etc., Winnipeg South, and Calgary North.
It is why although I liked the concept of STV it is really only proportional when the minimum seats in a district is 5 and the majority of seats are 7. Tasmania which has the smaller districts of 3 to 5 seats usually only has three parties in its House.
I think that it would be a better system for municipal elections for councils especially if done city wide. In Burnaby I don't like the municipal FPTP system we use although I do note it has given our left leaning government back to back council sweeps and decades of majority dominance.
Thread drift, continued here.
Question
if our FPTP like 167 CON, 102 NDP, 34 LIB, 4 BQ, 1 GRN and
PR like 122 CON, 95 NDP, 59 LIB, 19 BQ, 13 GRN
and now what it look like STV ?
I kinda like France voting system but i more toward MMP.
I can't say what the result would be under an STV model since we don't have one proposed. STV with four-seaters is quite different from STV with seven-seaters.
My interpretation of Dion's model shows an outcome of 128 CON, 115 NDP, 47 LIB, 18 BQ, 0 GRN, rather than the full PR outcome of 126 CON, 94 NDP, 59 LIB, 18 BQ, 11 GRN.
Here's what the MMP result would look like.
It's harder to tell. MMP is completely proportional. STV (or some other multi-round voting system) depends on strategic voting around second choices. "Okay, if my first choice doesn't win, who should I choose? Should I choose anyone? Should I rank my second choice first to make it count sooner?"
This editorial looks at multi-round voting, using "second choice" polls.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-would-harper-fare-in-a-...
According to the editorial, it's a French scenario. But since it's based on polling data, there wouldn't be a two week campaign before the second round of voting like there is in France. That makes it closer to a true STV system, because the voters wouldn't have perfect knowledge of the top two choices before they were polled. The second round happens automatically, in an instant runoff (aka STV).
First Round: 107 CON, 36 NDP, 2 LIB, 0 BQ, 0 GRN (ridings where someone clears the 50% mark)
Final Round: 142 CON, 118 NDP, 46 LIB, 1 BQ, 1 GRN (cons don't get a lot of second-choice support)
Again, keep in mind the two big problems with the polling data: first, polls aren't the same as elections. Second, the polls are based on the current FPTP system, and peoples' opinions might change if they had to consider the strategy of a multi-round voting system.
I favor MMP too, personally. A lot of the debate around electoral reform is whether it's better to accept a half-way reform (STV), or if accepting a half-way reform would effectively end the campaign for electoral reform and leave us short of a truly proportional system (MMP).
The instant runoff system is also known as the Alternative Vote (AV), not STV. AV is what was resoundingly rejected in the UK referendum last year, and also resoundingly rejected in the New Zealand referendum that voted to keep MMP last year. AV is used only in Australia. STV is a proportional system used in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Tasmania.
AV (or preferential voting) is currently favoured by the Liberal Party of Canada, but as Stephane Dion says "Preferential voting . . . does nothing to correct the distortion between votes and seats and the under-representation of national parties compared to regional ones. Other changes are needed to find a voting system that best fits the Canadian context."
He's right. Liberal voters in Quebec are under-represented. They elected only seven MPs, not the 11 MPs their voters deserved.
AV/IRV would have cut them down to five MPs. Justin Trudeau and Marc Garneau would have lost to the NDP, thanks to Bloc and Green voters' second choices.
Worse than FPTP. Not a half-way to anything.
I think that's a matter of perspective. When I look at the results from a two-round alternative vote, I see something that prevents the "false winner" scenario that's previously allowed the Cons and the Libs to win huge landslides due to a divided opposition. I like that. But I can't deny that it's pretty unkind to third parties, and forces them to pick between the top two choices. That's probably why the Liberals like it so much. I have mixed feelings, but I'm not sure you can say unequivocally that it's worse than FPTP.
I should know better than to argue with someone who is obviously very well informed on the this issue. At least we can agree that MMP is the best option, and the one we should pursue.
AV/IRV: It's no solution for the democratic deficit.