In Defense of Proportional Representation in Canada
Politics?! On MY TECHIE BLOG?!
Its more likely than you think!
Not the usualy content I produce, but it's been a long time coming! About a whole year in fact. Let me explain!
For a long time now I've been wanting to make a handful of video centered around the Rural-Urban Proptional (RUP) proposal (sometimes going by it's more accurate name “Flexible District”) Classic CGP Grey Voting Video Style. A style of Proportional Repsentation that takes aspects of other voting systems to make something that might be suitable for Canada. Call it a a homage or a rip off, it's something I've wanted to do for a while.
That's been put ont he back burner for now as I feel like I need to retool the script a bit, and I've just been lazy with asset generation / procuring. It will probably be awhile before I actually sit down to make that video. However, Im getting a little ansy and want to talk about it a long with some related topics.
Before I even make posts about RUP or even a more obscure Proposed system called Local Transferable Vote (LTV), I want to have preliminary blog about my case for why PR is one policy Canada should impliment in its electoral system. This blog will outline this case and Explain some of the more well known Systems.
What is Proportional Representation And What Does It Try To Solve?
Proportional Reprsentation is to have a democractically elected body, such as a Lower or upper house of legislature, is reflected proportionally to the electorate. In simipler terms, this means that the elected body should be relitively close to the popular vote as resaonably possibly. This is usually achived through Multi-Member Districts which have more than one seat is assigened to a district, and multiple winners can win each seat that can be from both or the same poltical party.
This is in contrast to Plurality or First Past The Post Voting in which there is one seat via a single vote and is award to the person with the most votes. Many times underneth and actual 50% + 1 of the votes. This often leads to the goverment not being proportional or represtents accurately how the populous votes. This often leads to unsatsfied voters, and political apathy as voters feel as though there vote does not matter.
By having PR try to closely match the seat on governing body to the popular vote, this helps in ensuring that every vote counts to a more representive body. Some PR systems such as STV, and Free List even try to improve Voter Choice to further voters satisfaction as well similar to that of more Majortain proposals such as Instant-runoff, score, or Approval voting.
The Most Know Systems of PR
There are quite a few systems for PR but these 3 are there ones that are the most known or aleast proposed:
Party List PR (Closed and Open/Free)
Party List PR elects representatives based on a ranked ist of Cadidandates usually chosen by the party. In it's most simiplist form (Closed List) when you go into vote you are voting for a party, not an individual candidate. Who wins what seat as a whole or in a district is based on that list, with the canadiate on the top of the list award the first seat, then the second candidate the second seat, and so on.
There is also the option of Open list. This allows the voter to choose a prefered candidate amongst the different party lists with in a district. However, the Party list is still in play, so in many cases a threshhold has to be met in order for a prefered cadidate to out rank a list ranked cadidate.
The most Open variant Free List or more commonly refered to as panachage. In where you can vote for as many candidates as there are seats to fill, and is non partisian meaning you can vote for cadidates in different parties. In some cases the vote can even be weghted to give higher preference to a particular candidate. Which ever cadidate have the most votes win a seat in order of the popular vote until the seats are filled. ( Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland )
Mixed-Member Proportional
Mixed-member proportional (MMP) is a mixed system of FPTP, and Part List System. There are Single winner districts where voters vote for candidates locally, and then regional district of Cadidates based on a part list. The arrangement I have observed is usually 60% local Seats and 40% Regional Seats.
You are given two votes, one for your local candidate, and one regionally for the party. These two votes can be indpendent of one another, so you can vote for a candidate on team Blue, but regionally on Team Red as a whole. Seats are then determined locally, and then.
The Regional list can be Closed or Open list, but when trying to communicating the idea of MMP Close list is used as an easy way to get idea across.
One interesting varient of MMP is a No-List System, or “Best Runners-Up.” Under this Varaint of MMP, You only get your local vote and the party you voted for gets carried over to the regional popular vote. The proporionally best performing candidate in a region wins the Regional Seat, instead of a party list.
This is one of the proposals from Fair Vote Canada
Single Transferable Vote
Single Transferable Vote (STV) is the multiwinner version of the popular Majoritian Ranked Choice Vote (RCV) or Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV). A Voter will rank candidates on a range of choices on ballot from parties and independents of a given voting district. When it comes time to count the votes, everyones first preference is counted first. To win a seat, the candidate must reach a threshold depending of how many seats are available in a district (percentage depends on the caluclating method used, but lets say 5 seats or 20%). Once a cadidate reaches that threshold every vote after that is a surplus* for that candidate that will then be distributed to the voter's next preference. If there are seats still to fill the lowest performing candidate will then be eliminated to the next choice. Repeat until all seats are filled or you run out of candidates.
- *Note that there are quite a few ways of answering the question of what to do with surplus votes. That's beyond the scope of this blog post but I will link a few methods. Most Noteworthy ones are hare, hare-clark, and the gregory methods and its variants
A Quick Note on Thresholds
All propotional systems rely on a threshold either through legal quota or mathmatically to decide seat elgibilty. Legal Threasholds are party wise are typically 5-8% of the vote, with individual cadidates to override a Party List can range from 5%– 25% (50% in norway) depending on the country.
Mathmatical or “Natural” Thresholds are most evident in STV, where only people past the threshold of votes are eligible for seat. The exception is if the highest candidate remaining after all the votes have been counted is still some how underneth the threshold.
Thresholds can be a tool used to miminize extremist fringe parties from taking a seat.
Common Grounds with Purality and FPTP Defenders
Now many people still defend First Past The Post for a number of reasons. However, I feel that in many cases that Defenders of FPTP, Majoritian, and/or Purality Voting are actual on the same page as a lot of things, at least those that support for ProRep to come to canada.
The Importance Local Representation
When Proporional Representation is brought up is the fear this will remove Local Representation as Multi winner districts will be enlarge usually to keep the number of seats a chamber has. While this can be the case for certain systems that use ProRep as with closed list systems, most who support ProRep in Canada still reconize the important of Local Representation in Government. Most systems proposed rely on Local Rep in some way like with like with MMP and STV, and still allow us choice. Districts reccomendations, Though not concrete as offical lines would have ot be made by (iinsert the orginization here)
After all, it would still ultimately be unrepresentive to have all Cadidates raigning from only the major cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Calargy, Vancover and so on. While Most of the population lives there, there are still those who live in rural and less populated areas who should be represented accordingly. Parties will have to internally correndnate the best Local Representation for a given district.
While Proportional Representation is to combat gerrymandering, it is important to keep Local Representation in mind in District Design, and Party candidate selection so voters can feel there's spot on canada is properly represented.
The Importance of Individual Candidates And Choice
An issue usally brought up in refference to List, and MMP in particular is the concern in losing the option to chose an individual cadidate. This is actually an important concern of mine as it why I've been a proponent of Instant Runoff and Single Transferable Vote personally.
Similar to Local Representation, there is an importance to choosing which party should represent us, but also which candidate would be best to do so. A voter my have many reasons to choose one candidate over the other for many reasons besides party affleation. This can range from Background to expierence to previous work to even which issues matter to them on a personal level.
Perspective is one of the reasons I think candidate choice is so important. Political Orginizations are made of all kinds of people from different walks of life, experience, and cultures. As an example, A NDP (or any party just NDP happen to come to mind) from background of Chronic Illness is a voice that is important to have in the House when disscussing Healthcare Legislation.
Parliment means to speak, or speaking and while Representives do currently lack atonomy to vote freely in most curcumstances without risk of explusion or discipline, having a wide verity of perspectives when making desicions on law is ciritcal in a democracy.
At the moment, I find there is a lacking of choice in a FPTP. One reason is that cadidates usually only person perparty in a given district giving you effectively a more of choice of party and not people unless you're an indpendent voter. While the Cadidate personality, and bakcground can influence your decision, you are still pigeon holed by the party's overarcing platform.
The other reason is more prominate is good old gerrymandering. Parties that dominate certain ridings are tough to vote. This forces to you have choice between one of the two highest performing candidates whichs leads many voting against who ever they don't want in. Anything else is pratically a protest vote. This is inauthentic voting, and is often used as a scare tactic to vote for the lesser of two evils in the mind of a voter.
It is for these reasons, that I think the focus is often placed on a form of STV or MMP often with an open list as the second vote. Both still allow a voter to choose candidates while also offering more choice and control over who gets seats, not just which party. Even in a pure open list system, Voters can still choose which candidate(s) is prefered to take the seat for a given party.
Given another point to STV, Tasmania impliments a countback rule if a casual vancncy comes up. A recount of the Reprsentives ballots assuming the representive never ran. As a result, this means that a party is encourged to have more cadidate opitions than just the number of seats, though in practice I only see one extra candidate per riding.
There is, of course, the whole other issue of our country's leader being closely tied with how many seats are won by a party which also influences the decision of a voter. This is an inherit feature of a Parlimentary System which has its pros and cons. Proportional rep does not devorce this dicodemy on its own, nor does it directly change the power of Prime Minister currently has. However, by having voters vote more authentically about who they wish to represent them within thier district, and a wider choice of the party's mps you can choose from, the power of the PM can be moderated a bit given the (current voting patterns of Canadians) and can still stier policy making in a better direction if only slightly without additional measures.
By having an electoral system that emphasises voter choice, and a respect for the preferences of the public at large, we can push towards a democratic system that values individual MPs not just the parties they assocate with.
What About The Independent and Non-Partisian Vote
I'll be honest, I don't know how many Canadians care about this compared to the first two (might be a different coversation if it was US we were talking about), but is something that I consider important. In a similar vain to why giving the voter choice of electing prefered Candidates of party is imporant I think it is equally as important that Independent voices also have chance to have representation.
Independents are rare for Canada. Usually rarely voted in and usually a result of being expleed from a party. One of the recentish examples being Jody Wilson-raybould but her reputation did give her the ablity to win her seat as an independent in the 2019
In STV the possiblity of independent seats are not only stronger but clear. We only need to look at Ireland for such an example.
This is a little harder in Party List or MMP systems given the focus on mostly parties regardless of how open the lists are. However, there still ways to have smller or indenependent candidates take place in these systems through Electoral Alliance and Fusion.
This can be done in a few ways.
- Apparentment in which parties can award their surplus under a List System to Alligned Candidates
- Be part of a Joint Ticket like in Austrlia's Senate. This might take the look similar to that of or australia's Minor Party Alliance. I would imagine this doing well in ranked systems or those that have Best Runner up Systems.
- Formally a form a Poltical Party / Political group like in the case of Oregons Indpendent party and the Alliance Party of the United States
This concept isn't even unfamiliar to Canada with parties such as None of The Above or even the Marjuana Party (NO I'M NOT KIDDING!). Perhaps it is not ideal but so long as Canadians have this is mind, or even find other solutions to this, Indpependent seats can still with in a Canadian parliment.
It's Not About Winning
One thing that I think about now and again is something I heard when I was around an alternative video sharing site called VidMe but 2016. This person made a statment to those who were upset about the results that “That this isn't about winning, it's about having your voice heard.”
While I vitimately disagree with what he was defending, The United States's Electoral College, I think that statement holds a kernal of truth. Democracy, espeically representive democracy, should not be about which ever big tent “wins”, it should be ensuring that the nation's government reflects that of the people under it, and that the collect voice is heard.
However, I do not think that all canadians are represented equally. Many feel as though their vote will be wasted, or they are forced to vote against the bigger of the two evils, not voting authentically. It should be no surprise that many are apathetic, or vote straegetically.
More over, I think it a fair to say a party should only have the majoirty of a given house without proper support from the populous. I'm very pro ruled by consent.
There are two ways to view this. One way is that this will promote more cohilitions and cooperation between parties. Another way is that it provides a counter balance to party domanice that we have seen in the last couple of elections.
What PR Will Not Solve
Proportinaly Representation, regardless of the form it takes, should be viewed as one tool with in a set rather than I sigular solution for all of canada's Democratic Defienctes. PR Alone does not fix MPs Merely towing the party line, else fear of being displined or even expelled from the party. Nor does it solve a Prime Minister that has way too much power regardless of the party holding the most seats with a lack of counter balance. Wether that power be through appointments (Senate, Govenor General, ect). And that very Leader of a Party still is only really voted on by the internal members of a party, thus still having the issue of choosing a good local cadidate but a leader you might disagree with. There's so many more policies that we as a country can impliment to improve our democratic freedom, consent to be govern and the confidence of the people.
Even just allowing more thna one day to vote, even allow the days to be a national or civic holiday, and emphesis accessablity (while still having accountablity of course) to maximize the voices of Canadians. These should be all reforms that we consider to help improve voter turnout and ensure every voter can be heard if they so wished.
But we should not be content with merely structural reform either. We should also consider the tools of Referenda and Recall Elections as None Of The Above (Ontario Party) and Direct Democracy Party. (Federal Party) place their foundation on. This way we can help put pressure and accoutnablity on already in power, instead of having to wait until the next election to. Why if we really wanted to get radical we could even have negative vote (aka Against a Candidate).
Proportional Respresentation, especially if well designed, can be also be a tool to ensure a level of accountablity as well, as there would be less of a reason of Stragetical voting. But as the point of the this paragraph, PR is one tool with in the tool box towards a better democracy.
Closing Thoughts
Aside from my other Tech/video game hot takes, I will be doing a few articles on PR and other policies I find interesting through the coming months. I'll have a static page where readers can get to them all easily. Eventually I'll make that video on Rural Urban Proportional and post it to here as well, but for now I'm going to post a polished up OG Script on Rambles Well Written for now.
A Nemes Content Blog 2022.