Did NDP-Liberal vote-splitting deliver the PCs a majority in Ontario?

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Parties use ranked ballots for leadership becuase there can only be one leader and they boil it down. It makes no sense to do this if you want a representative legislature.

Parties do this based on a personal chocie of a single party's leader. It is not at all the same as an open election between people of different parties and ideologies.

Aren't all the candidates nominated by all the parties chosen by multi-round elections? I think single-round FPTP ends up being used only in nomination elections when there are just two candidates in the running. I think all the parties use multi-round voting because they all feel it is imperative that the candidates they nominate represent the will of the majority. Because of this they would never use single-round FPTP elections for their own elections.

Within parties don't the candidates running for nomination also have different ideologies? For example, if the NDP used FPTP for their nomination elections instead of multi-round voting, wouldn't people who support ideologies such as Marxism have a better chance at getting nominated by the NDP? Isn't multi-round voting used over FPTP in order to ascertain the will of the majority? Why should the country be represented by Members of Parliament who don't represent the majority of their ridings when the parties themselves are unwilling to nominate candidates who don't represent the majority of their members in those ridings? Does it ever make sense to allow the will of the minority to ovveride the will of the majority in an election?

SocialJustice101 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I did not say that vote splitting never happens but to affect a result is extremely rare -- and the myth part is the part where people assume that all the voters of one party would have the same second chocie which we know is not true.

You can't know the effects for sure unless you actually have a ranked-ballot/run-off system.   But based on the polls, the ONDP was the most popular second choice of both the Libs and the PCs, in this particular election.

The PCs would probably have gotten the most seats, but not a majority, allowing the NDP to govern with the OLP.  

 

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

The biggest reason is that there is no reason to have this second choice voting since you can have a proportional legislature -- you cannot have a proportional single leader.

Some people critisize PR for creating Pizza legislatures, with too many single-issue parties and often no clear election winner.    If we can't get PR, why not consider a semi-PR system with ranked ballot?

BECAUSE -- as has been explained a million times on this site -- ranked ballots consolidate votes and create as result as bad or worse when it comes to being proportional. This is not and will never be a replacement for PR or a compromise. It seems like it will always be a bullshit sideshow promoted incessiently by Liberals who oppose PR and want to convince people that this is a compromise.

Kindly read the many posts on this topic before advancing the same unsupported stuff.

-- As for the first paragraph you clearly left logic behind. My point was that you cannot make assumptions -- you reply that you cannot know. Well Duh. That is the point. So stop making assumptions about votes moving en masse from one party to another. That is another Liberal entitlement thing.

progressive17 wrote:

The ironic thing is that the right has unity, which is supposedly a leftist value, and the left has competition, which is supposedly a right-wing value. 

The question is whether the Liberals can recover to contender status, or stay in the basement for a century as happened to the British Liberal Party. For now the Ontario Liberal Party is around the same levels of support of the British Liberal Party. If this is the case, the Liberal vote will be more or less irrelevant, and the war will be between NDP and Conservative.

If the Conservative government is characterized by corruption, waste, inefficiency, and incompetence, then voters, no matter where they are, will pick the opposition party no matter what it is.

Another bullshit Liberal thing: The left is no more united or divided than the right. The three biggest parties are all different - not interchangeable. The argument that the NDP and Liberals is the left is just as bogus as the one where the Conservative and Liberals are the right.

These are three parties -- different histories and ideologies. The only way the left is some thing that is split is in the figment of the imagination of some Liberal or a person totally clueless about politics. It is very popular as an idea among those who want one of the three parties to disappear but it is total crap.

Whenever Liberals are found wanting here the poster is attacked for being a Conservative or a right-winger by a certain small cabal of Liberal posters.

who else is tired of these pathetic smears!

SocialJustice101 wrote:

It appears that Sean in Ottawa does not know how to argue without personal attacks.  Did you spend too much time on some right-wing forum?

SocialJustice101 wrote:

cco, if run-off elections are pointless, should NDP switch to first-past-the-post for  leadership races?

The NDP has one leader at a time. Everyone who doesn't win the leadership race loses it. I ranked Singh last on my ballot, but I did rank him, so it's as accurate to say he has my support (and the support of everyone else who put him even in last place) as it does to say he has majority support, because we stopped eliminating once it was down to two.

Ranked ballots are an acceptable system for choosing a single winner (like a party leader, or a mayor). Canada elects a parliament with 338 members. Proportional representation is a much better system for producing a parliament that reflects the votes of Canadians.

SocialJustice101 wrote:

It appears that Sean in Ottawa does not know how to argue without personal attacks.  Did you spend too much time on some right-wing forum?

hey put up what attack you are accusing Sean of. 

at this moment i see your accusation as a personal attack against Sean. 

So is saying "what you say is a logical fallacy".  But sometimes we have to say that.   Or sometimes we have to point out mathematical errors.  Or unjustifiable assumptions.  Or even evident bias.  None of these is an "attack".

I think that "personal attacks", in the context of babble policy, are a whole different thing.  Consider, as a potential model, rules of conduct from City council meetings, or the HoC.

Also, some people really ARE stupid.  How are we supposed to tiptoe around that forever?

SocialJustice101 wrote:

It appears that Sean in Ottawa does not know how to argue without personal attacks.  Did you spend too much time on some right-wing forum?

No just pissed off when people join discussions that have gone on a long time and do not bother to read enough of the previous posts so they introduce the same stuff that has already been responded to and debunked and then they ignore any responses all over again -- rinse and repeat.

when it from people who have been here awhile it looks more deliberate.

SocialJustice101 wrote:

I wouldn't make much of it, IF it was a one time occurence.  But if the same single poster constantly calls your posts "silly" or "illogical," it becomes a targeted personal attack, which does not add anything constructive to the debate.   It's a provocation.

This is also bullshit that has been discussed frequently. Learn the difference between a response to a post and a personal attack. Calling a post illogical or silly in no way is a personal attack.

Calling a person on this site a conservative is. One is about the person and the other is about what they say.

cco wrote:

Okay, I'll explain it again:

If my ballot has the choices:

Niki Ashton

Bob Rae

Paul Martin

Stephen Harper

Donald Trump

Adolf Hitler

and I rank them in that order, and after multiple rounds of elimination, Donald Trump ends up prime minister of Canada, the fact I prefer Trump to Hitler does not mean I "support" Trump, though Trump would undoubtedly claim I did. Furthermore, the Condorcet paradox and Arrow's impossibility theorem mean it is mathematically impossible to design an instant-runoff voting system, in an election with more than two candidates, that will produce a candidate a majority of voters would prefer to any other.

Given these facts, saying ranked ballots generate majority support for the victor is blatantly wrong. They certainly produce a result, and it's harder to explain why that result is unjust than it is to explain why FPTP is unjust. You need math, and stuff. But that doesn't mean the result is just.

Or if you're not fond of math, you could just look at the 1952 BC election, where ranked ballots produced a government with 27% of the vote, which even on the final count got only 30%, less than the CCF it defeated. If that sounds "semi-proportional" to you, you may wish to look up the definition of the word.

The one thing that ranked ballots do is ensure that the candidate who is the last choice of the majority of voters cannot win.

Left Turn wrote:

cco wrote:

Okay, I'll explain it again:

If my ballot has the choices:

Niki Ashton

Bob Rae

Paul Martin

Stephen Harper

Donald Trump

Adolf Hitler

and I rank them in that order, and after multiple rounds of elimination, Donald Trump ends up prime minister of Canada, the fact I prefer Trump to Hitler does not mean I "support" Trump, though Trump would undoubtedly claim I did. Furthermore, the Condorcet paradox and Arrow's impossibility theorem mean it is mathematically impossible to design an instant-runoff voting system, in an election with more than two candidates, that will produce a candidate a majority of voters would prefer to any other.

Given these facts, saying ranked ballots generate majority support for the victor is blatantly wrong. They certainly produce a result, and it's harder to explain why that result is unjust than it is to explain why FPTP is unjust. You need math, and stuff. But that doesn't mean the result is just.

Or if you're not fond of math, you could just look at the 1952 BC election, where ranked ballots produced a government with 27% of the vote, which even on the final count got only 30%, less than the CCF it defeated. If that sounds "semi-proportional" to you, you may wish to look up the definition of the word.

The one thing that ranked ballots do is ensure that the candidate who is the last choice of the majority of voters cannot win.

And that is why they are appropriate if the result desired must be boiled down to a single choice. Like one leader.

When electing a parliament desired to be representative -- it is not helpful at all.

It is an electoral process designed for consolidating a result NOT for creating a representative result.

PR is designed to create a representative result.

They should not be confused in process, intent or result.

Frankly I like what Australia does. A bicameral legislature with the lower house elected by ranked ballot and the upper house by proportional representation. That way you tend to get majority governments that put forth an agenda, and "real" majorities at that - ones who can at least say 50%+1 of the population prefers the party in power to the next runner up. Still, you get feedback from smaller parties elected proportionately who may be able to defeat legislation in the upper house if they band together. Also compulsory voting for both.

MapleInTheEye wrote:

Misfit wrote:

If someone came up to me and told me that I had to vote Liberal, I would tell whoever where to go and what to do with him/herself.

I am a New Democrat and I respect the history of the New Democratic Party  and most of the platforms it has put out. 

 I am sure that most diehard  Liberals  are proud of their party and the values it promotes.  I'm sure many of them did not appreciate the suggestion that they compromise their values and vote for another party that they don't believe it. 

The people who voted for Doug Ford  are responsible for this majority government and they will be responsible and need to be held accountable for the damage  That Many fear is going to happen.

---

Are you saying that if we had preferential balloting, that you would refuse to opt for a second choice should your preferred party not win the vote in that riding? And if you did choose a second party, it wouldn't be the Liberals?

I thought Wynne made enough mistakes that she didn't earn my vote this time, I thought Horwath was a good choice. But I would have put the Liberals as the second choice on my ballot if we had preferential balloting. I am pretty sure most Liberals would have gladly marked the NDP choice as their second option should their party not form majority.

If you're talking about the need for electoral reform, you're right.  

The answer, then, is to run the next election as a "democracy coalition"

Get both parties to assess the situation, riding-by-riding, in the run-up to the next election.  Whichever party looked stronger in each riding would get to nominate the "democracy candidate".  If a majority of seats were won by "democracy candidates", the provincial legislature would meet for a period of one year.  The FIRST piece of legislation taken up and passed by this legislature would be an electoral reform act establishing some form of pr or pr/fptp hybrid. At the end of the year, a new election would be held, using whichever reformed electoral system had been passed.  Problem solved.

W

Ken Burch wrote:

MapleInTheEye wrote:

Misfit wrote:

If someone came up to me and told me that I had to vote Liberal, I would tell whoever where to go and what to do with him/herself.

I am a New Democrat and I respect the history of the New Democratic Party  and most of the platforms it has put out. 

 I am sure that most diehard  Liberals  are proud of their party and the values it promotes.  I'm sure many of them did not appreciate the suggestion that they compromise their values and vote for another party that they don't believe it. 

The people who voted for Doug Ford  are responsible for this majority government and they will be responsible and need to be held accountable for the damage  That Many fear is going to happen.

---

Are you saying that if we had preferential balloting, that you would refuse to opt for a second choice should your preferred party not win the vote in that riding? And if you did choose a second party, it wouldn't be the Liberals?

I thought Wynne made enough mistakes that she didn't earn my vote this time, I thought Horwath was a good choice. But I would have put the Liberals as the second choice on my ballot if we had preferential balloting. I am pretty sure most Liberals would have gladly marked the NDP choice as their second option should their party not form majority.

If you're talking about the need for electoral reform, you're right.  

The answer, then, is to run the next election as a "democracy coalition"

Get both parties to assess the situation, riding-by-riding, in the run-up to the next election.  Whichever party looked stronger in each riding would get to nominate the "democracy candidate".  If a majority of seats were won by "democracy candidates", the provincial legislature would meet for a period of one year.  The FIRST piece of legislation taken up and passed by this legislature would be an electoral reform act establishing some form of pr or pr/fptp hybrid. At the end of the year, a new election would be held, using whichever reformed electoral system had been passed.  Problem solved.

W

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While this sounds interesting, it is too idealistic. Getting Liberals and the NDP to work together and agree to not run candidates against one another depending on the riding is just not going to work. You might as well merge the parties, but that isn't happening nor do I wish for it to.