Electoral Reform (Senate, Commons, & Gov Gen)

[a_majoor]

So if Trudeau wins the election, reduces the Senate to a quorum filled with his appointees, you'd be fine with it?

Harrigan

That is actually 2 different questions:

I would rather a more modern means of appointing senators were created, rather than whatever people the leader (any leader) picks, so I am not fine with this, but alternatives are blocked or severely constrained.
As Brad says, we need people who are sharp on policy and common sense, diversity be damned

2a: would the Young Dauphin be able to pick people who are sharp on policy and common sense (the evidence isn't very comforting so far)

2b: Would the Young Dauphin go against "convention" and choose people for their abilities regardless of their geographical location (i.e. he picks you to become senator for the North West Territories despite your current residency becasue you are the best person for the job. Start packing and keep all your receipts this time....)

Like I said upthread, Governance is the art of the possible, while Politics is a means of allocating scarce resources.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>So if Trudeau wins the election, reduces the Senate to a quorum filled with his appointees, you'd be fine with it?

Yes.  First, the country has survived a Senate dominated by Liberals before.  Second, if his appointees aren't all Liberals, I give him the benefit of the doubt that he would not appoint cretins.  Third, his approach and selections might generate some movement on Senate reform if people are dissatisfied.

 

[Harrigan]

>So if Trudeau wins the election, reduces the Senate to a quorum filled with his appointees, you'd be fine with it?

Yes.  First, the country has survived a Senate dominated by Liberals before.  Second, if his appointees aren't all Liberals, I give him the benefit of the doubt that he would not appoint cretins.  Third, his approach and selections might generate some movement on Senate reform if people are dissatisfied.

Fair enough, if you would support Trudeau for doing the same as Harper, I don't see how anyone can fault that.

Harrigan

 

[Edward Campbell]

For want of a better place to put this, I'll use this constitutional thread. The linked report says that we have all shared in a major milestone ...  , Ma'am, and  :cheers:

 

[Kirkhill]

For want of a better place to put this, I'll use this constitutional thread. The linked report says that we have all shared in a major milestone ...  , Ma'am, and  :cheers:

The Queen!

:cheers:

 

[Edward Campbell]

It is, now, after midnight in London, so Queen Elizabeth II is, now, the longest reigning monarch in British history ~ 63 years and several months. Her Majesty is 89 years old.

History ...

 

[cavalryman]

God save the Queen 

 

[McG]

Daniel Westlake makes a case for PR.

Why are our elections so small minded
Daniel Westlake
The National Post
08 Sep 2015

The 2015 Canadian election is shaping up to be a boring election. From the Conservatives’ home renovation tax credit and opposition to a Netflix tax, to the Liberals tax credit for teachers’ school supplies, to an NDP private members’ bill that would subsidize microbreweries, many of the promises the parties have made lack the wide-ranging scope one would hope for in an election. This is the result of the combination of technology that allows parties to engage in micro-targeting and a first-past-the-post electoral system that gives parties an incentive to ignore many voters.

Parties rarely have an incentive to appeal to all voters. Each party has limited resources and a limited number of policy commitments it can make. Parties have to choose policies carefully so as to maximize the seats they win. They have no incentive to make additional policy commitments to win the support of voters who already support them, nor to try to appeal to those they know will never vote them. The Conservatives are unlikely to choose policies designed to win votes in rural Alberta, nor are they likely to chase NDP voters in Vancouver. Because swing voters are most likely to change their votes, election campaigns become focused around the issues that are important to them.

The advent of micro-targeting has allowed parties to even more carefully tailor their campaigns to swing voters than they have in the past. Parties have a large amount of data on voters, which they can use to determine the policies that are most important to swing voters and mediums through which they can most easily be reached. A party that finds out a group of swing voters are home-owners and watch the six o’clock news, can develop a policy to cater to homeowners and make sure it is advertised during the six o’clock news. The same is true for a party that thinks teachers or microbrewery owners are trying to decide between voting for it and another party. Parties can now run very narrow campaigns focused on those voters who are most likely to determine the outcome of elections

The incentive that parties have to focus their campaigns on certain sets of voters is increased by the first-past-the-post electoral system. Parties’ goal in elections is not to win votes, but rather to win seats. The more a particular vote contributes to winning a seat, the more parties have an incentive to compete for it. Just as there are a large number of voters who are unlikely to change their votes, there are a large number of seats that are unlikely to change between parties. The NDP are unlikely to lose ridings such as Vancouver East or Hamilton Centre, while the Conservatives are unlikely to lose rural Western ridings. In first-past-the-post systems parties do not have an incentive to chase swing voters across the country, they only have an incentive to chase swing voters who live in swing ridings. Winning over a swing voter is of no use if another party is almost certain to win the riding that voter lives in. The result is that parties in first-past-the-post systems are competing for a very small portion of the electorate.

The combination of parties’ ability to micro-target and a first past the post system is an election that is focused on a narrow set of issues only important to a small segment of the electorate. Small, targeted tax credits and policies are cheap ways to win votes. They impose few costs on the majority of voters, and thus carry little risk of costing a party votes. At the same time they bestow large enough benefits on the voters targeted to have a good chance of convincing them to vote for the party promising the policy.

The problem with these policy debates is that they are not good for Canadian democracy. Rather than elections being about broad national issues such as the environment, wealth inequality, or health care, they become about small tax credits or subsidies. This is not because swing voters do not care about large-scale national issues but rather because taking positions on national issues carries a greater risk of alienating voters. Large-scale national policies have costs. Increased social spending on broad social programs risks pushing voters who are concerned about tax increases away from a party while broad-scale tax cuts risk losing a party voters concerned about resultant cuts in social spending.

The combination of parties ability to micro-target and a first-past-the-post system leads to elections that are increasingly dominated by small-scale issues instead of those with broad national implications. In light of this, a change to a proportional electoral system is worth considering. Because swing voters do not have to live in swing ridings to affect results in proportional systems, the size of the electorate that determines the outcome of elections is much larger in these systems. This would give parties a greater incentive to focus their policy platforms and campaigns on issues that affect a larger number of Canadian voters.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Shifting the focus from a small number of swing voters in decisive ridings to the small number of swing voters in a larger context isn't much of a case.  And, it still doesn't address the elephant in representative democracy: why should a riding which heavily favours party A be allowed to have some of its votes influence results in other ridings?  Voters in a riding get one representative, not one plus part of another riding's representative.

 

[McG]

You are right.  Better would be a mechanism that encourages candidates (and parties) to maximize the breadth of their support (as opposed to targeting the fringe) within the ridings.  Instead of PR, we should be looking at preferential ballots.

 

[McG]

One Edmonton area independent candidate (former CPC) is campaigning for preferential ballots and a "decline all" option.  I like this.  It is much better than potential PR systems that seems to get more attention in the press.

Voters want a 'declined' ballot option
David Lazzarino
Edmonton Sun
11 Sep 15

Canadian voters face a number of choices next month, but some believe one choice should be added: none of the above.

On Oct. 19, eligible Canadians will be able to support a candidate, spoil their ballot through one of a number of avenues like voting for more than one person or writing a name on a ballot, or not vote at all.

The option left out, says local MP Brent Rathgeber, is the ability to cast a ballot and say none of the contenders are worth ticking a box for.

"People that are disgusted with the process or don't like any of the options will frequently spoil their ballot but I think that is an inadequate option because they're lumped in with the people who mistakenly fill out their ballot wrong," said Rathgeber, a former Conservative MP who is running for re-election as an independent in Edmonton-St. Albert.

Rathgeber is among those who believe voters should be given the chance to decline their ballot and, in effect, state that they are in support of no one. The difference, he says, is subtle but important.

"By declining the ballot, that would be a much clearer and much more unequivocal statement of protest," he said.

Declined, or refused, ballots are not an option in federal elections in Canada but have been allowed provincially in Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Federally, the rules are clear. Spoiled ballots are those which are handled by a voter and cannot be counted towards a candidate either because it has been damaged, marked for more than one candidate, had the voter's name written on it or handed in without being marked at all. The total of all those are counted together and included in the Elections Canada totals.

A recent decline-your-ballot campaign in Ontario managed to convince more than 31,000 people to do so, the largest number there since 1975.

Rathgeber said he chose to show his distaste for the available federal parties by running as an independent -- but not everyone has that inclination.

He said a declined ballot option is just the start of election reform he'd like to see, including a raked ballot that would give more weight to the popular vote by counting voters' second and third choices. But ultimately the real difference needed isn't in the voting system at all.

"How the members are elected, in my view, is really less relevant than what they do once they get there," he said.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/09/11/voters-want-a-declined-ballot-option

 

[ModlrMike]

I agree with a declined ballot, but not with preferential ranking. That's no more than the other side of the PR coin in my mind. There should also be scope for a write in candidate, so that someone without access to a big political machine might be considered.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Our system is basically: each voter gets one choice (vote) in one riding; the candidate with the most votes in each riding sits as an MP; the MPs decide for themselves who will form government and who will be PM.  Parties are a convenient way of expediting the processes but neither need nor deserve any further advantages.

All systems of PR proceed from the false assumption that the national vote share of parties is relevant.  It isn't.

Ranking is just a roundabout way of rearranging the system to favour "AB?" agitators - people who would gain political power by being able to exercise more than one choice (vote).  It's a solution with a specific political aim.  The "?" is inevitably a right-leaning party.

FPTP is criticized because a party can win a majority of seats with less than a majority of the total vote share (which, again, is irrelevant).  The criticism is "X% of people didn't support the governing party in the last election", where "X" > 50.  So what?  Turn it around.  Why shouldn't a party with 40% support form government 40% of the time instead of never?  Or, stated slightly differently, why shouldn't 40% of the people who favour a particular flavour of government see their preferences dominate 40% of the time?

For 60% or 65% of the people to control government all the time and thumb their noses (essentially, that is how political discourse is conducted now) at the remaining 40% or 35% would be socially unhealthy.

 

[McG]

[Preferential ranking is] no more than the other side of the PR coin in my mind.

How so?  Preferential ballot selects candidates with the greatest support of voters within the constituency.  PR lets parties select individuals to fill seats in Parliament.  If you want the thinking from the other side of the PR coin, there is this:

... why shouldn't 40% of the people who favour a particular flavour of government see their preferences dominate 40% of the time?

Ignoring for the moment that we elect representatives (MPs) and not governments ...
How is that nonsense any different than the idea of a party with 40% of the vote should be entitled to 40% of the seats?  How far do you push it?  The PR crowd will tell me that the party with 10% support should have 10% of the seats, but you will tell me that they should have majority sway over the country one year out of every 10 years.  That is foolish and (to steal your words) "socially unhealthy".

Fortunately FPTP does not, as you suggest, distribute governing authority proportionally over time.  It can, however, ensure that only one voice holds power for decades at a time; it can ensure a voice with only 35% support holds power over such a duration.  I can't imagine how you rationalize that as "socially health" while describing 65% rule as "socially unhealthy."

As noted earlier, we do not elect governments but, with a preferential ballot, the constituency gets the voice it wants most.  Under preferential ballot, we would not have seen conservative ridings represented by Liberals in the 90's because Reform and Conservative split the vote.

Yes, preferential ballots will reduce the number of majorities (so our Parliamentarians must learn to work cooperatively as opposed to antagonistically), but with single member ridings the fringe parties are still filtered out (and so to we avoid the fractured-parliament instability that comes with PR).

 

[Brad Sallows]

>How is that nonsense any different than the idea of a party with 40% of the vote should be entitled to 40% of the seats?

The difference is between the possibility of forming government and eternally sitting in opposition.

>The PR crowd will tell me that the party with 10% support should have 10% of the seats, but you will tell me that they should have majority sway over the country one year out of every 10 years.  That is foolish and (to steal your words) "socially unhealthy".

Theoretically, they might "deserve" to form a government for one term every 40 years.  But there is a practical cutoff.  Where does it lie?  Probably in the 35-40% zone.  I am satisfied with the practical outcome that factions which can muster support at or above that level can generally spread that share effectively enough to capture a meaningful number of seats.  There is always room for exceptions.  The BQ had very low national vote share, nevertheless captured a large number of seats where it ran candidates, and was never going to command widespread enough support to form government.

Ranking is the only PR variant I have seen which I do not dismiss out of hand, but its practical effects render it less desirable than FPTP.  And, it still has an undisputed imbalance: some voters get more choices counted than others.  If a scheme were proposed in which all first choice votes counted as 3, all second choice votes as 2, and all third choice votes as 1, I might reconsider.

 

[McG]

Ranking is the only PR variant I have seen which I do not dismiss out of hand, but ...

Not to insult your intelligence but rather to confirm we are not talking past each other, you do understand that "PR" is not a synonym for everything other than FPTP, right?  Ranking may be used in a PR system (the form of PR to do this is single transferable vote), but it can also be used in single member constituency systems.  Preferential voting usually implies instant-runoff voting (AKA: alternative vote, transferable vote, ranked choice voting), but can also cover the Tideman method, the Schulze method or the contingency vote; it produces a single winner for a single constituency.

Mr Rathgeber (through the quoted article) indicated support for a preferential ballot system, and I endorsed.  You countered with some generalized statements against PR systems and that nonsense about power being distributed proportionally over time.  I went down your rabbit hole, but I should have called you on it because preferential voting is not PR.  Now I wonder if we've spent two posts not talking about the same thing.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I use "PR" as a weak catch-all for reforms which attach importance to either parties or ranking, so I am too sloppy with my use of terms.

Sticking purely to preferential methods and disregarding practical effects in any Canadian context, the shortcoming - which is not addressed by any of the systems of which I am aware, and exists in all them - is the mathematical advantage the "not-X" ("anybody but this person") voters have over the "X" ("this person, and only this person") voters.  In effect, the former get to cast multiple votes in their attempt to achieve their aim.  The latter do not.  Forcing or even merely allowing a voter with a strong single preference to participate in a preferential scheme does not eliminate the mathematical disparity.

I have never, and doubt that I would ever, support a voting system which encourages or rewards "anybody but" voting.  Similarly, I do not support any voting system which yields systematic advantages to parties over independents* or dilutes the relationship between voters and candidates (eg. party list versus riding).

*I acknowledge that simply by virtue of the existence of parties, independents are at a disadvantage, and that there are privileges accessible to parties (eg. parliamentary standing) that are not available to independents.

 

[McG]

Perhaps you should look at some pairwise comparison methods (the Tideman or the Schulze) that concurrently consider every voters approvals as well as disapproval.

If a scheme were proposed in which all first choice votes counted as 3, all second choice votes as 2, and all third choice votes as 1, I might reconsider.

That would be a  variation of the Borda Count or Nanson method.  It might surprise you, but this method improves the chances of similar parties competing for the same spectrum and it gives more weight to those who would cast an "anti-vote."  It is like an inverse of vote splitting.  Both instant-runoff voting and various pairwise comparison methods are unaffected by the presence of "clones" on the ballot. 

 

[Brad Sallows]

All ranking methods, though, ultimately suffer from the defect I described previously.

I also value integrity and simplicity rather more highly than achieving some arbitrary condition of concensus or fairness.  People have to trust the system, and results must be easily verified manually.  Computer-based systems provide greater opportunities for fraud, and a manual recount must be something that can be completed in not much more than a couple of days.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Jeffrey Simpson considers the possibilities of electoral system reform change if either the LPC or NDP form a government in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/jeffrey-simpson-majority-governments-may-soon-be-a-thing-of-the-past/article26635466/

Majority governments may soon be a thing of the past

JEFFREY SIMPSON
The Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Oct. 03, 2015

Quite likely, without being aware of the fact, Canadians might be seeing their last majority government. Not for the next four years, but forever.

Three parties – New Democrats, Liberals and Greens – are pledging to replace the existing voting system (first past the post) with something else. Whatever that something-else system turns out to be, it would be more difficult to produce a one-party, majority government of the kind Canada has usually had since Confederation.

The so-called “smack of firm government” of a party with a majority in Parliament would be over. No more friendly dictatorships. Government by bargaining and internal compromise would replace government with the unilateral ability to decide.

The Conservatives, of course, favour the existing voting system. If they were to win a majority government on Oct. 19, the status quo would remain. Their chances of recapturing power with a majority, however, are slim. A minority on election night is possible, but it would be unlikely to survive in Parliament against the combined forces of the other parties.

The NDP has long favoured what is called a blended system of proportional representation, whereby voters cast two ballots, one for a constituency and one for a party list. The NDP promises to replace the existing system with proportional representation early in a mandate. Variations of the system they prefer exist in Europe (notably Germany) and in New Zealand.

The aim of the many types of proportional representation is to match a party’s share of the votes with its share of parliamentary seats, the argument being that this is more “democratic.” (The Greens also favour proportional representation because whatever its theoretical virtue, it gives them the best chance of being part of a government.)

In a multiple-party system, such as what now exists in Canada, one party seldom takes half the votes. (The Progressive Conservatives did so in 1984). As a result, no party would enjoy a majority of seats in Parliament under proportional representation. Coalition governments would become the new governing norm.

The Liberals have promised that Oct. 19 will be the last election under the existing system. They have not settled on an alternative. It could be proportional representation along the German or New Zealand lines; it could be a single-transferable vote as used in Ireland; it could be a preferential ballot, as is used in elections for Australia’s lower house. Preferential voting does tend to produce majorities.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has spoken favourably about the preferential system, in which voters take the list of candidates and rank their preferences in order. But he altered his position to say that widespread public consultations should occur before a new system would be proposed in Parliament. He has repeated, however, that first past the post has to go.

Changing the electoral system would be a dramatic shift from almost a century and a half of political practice. It fires up political scientists as a fit subject for graduate student seminars. Pressure groups such as Fair Vote Canada lobby for change. Within the three opposition parties, members agitate for change.

The general public seems not much interested in electoral change, judging by how little the parties who want change have mentioned their ideas in the campaign. With their omnipresent focus groups and internal polls to guide what to talk about, parties follow rather than lead public opinion.

If the voters were charged up about system change, the parties would be talking about it incessantly, as they do about the economy. Or, if they thought change might be a wedge issue, they would be all over it as the Conservatives are about women wearing a niqab at citizenship ceremonies.

No party has committed itself to letting voters decide in a plebiscite, maybe because they fear change might lose.

When tested provincially, voters opted for the status quo. British Columbia and Ontario established constituent assemblies of citizens. The assemblies held hearings, debated the issue with intensity and recommended change, only to find their ideas rejected by voters, although the first time around in British Columbia, change almost acquired the required 60-per-cent threshold.

Quebec and New Brunswick began legislative studies into proportional representation, but both initiatives petered out. In PEI, 92 per cent of voters rejected PR in a 2005 plebiscite.

Canadians, when asked, have preferred the first-past-the-post devil they know to the PR devil they don’t. The opposition parties, however, are gung ho for change. If they succeed, one-party majority governments would be a thing of the past.

Despite being unnecessarily provocative in his opening sentence, Mr Simpson does understand that "The general public seems not much interested in electoral change ... [and] ... Canadians, when asked, have preferred the first-past-the-post devil they know to the PR devil they don’t."

I agree with Mr Simpson that "the opposition parties ... are gung ho for change."

The question is: what sort of change?

I think any government will have a hard time selling any kind of PR that does not respect local or, at the very least, regional constituencies. Simple, national list systems are out; our parliament will not look like Israel's.

Some sort of preferential ballot system might be easier to sell, but it doesn't satisfy those who, like Mr Simpson, want a guarantee of a permanent, soft left of centre to centre-left regime in Ottawa.

How high a priority is this, for anyone?

If the CPC forms a government then the notion is dead. If the Liberals form a government that is anything "better" (in their view) than a weak minority, then I suspect this goes to the bottom of the priority list. Even the NDP, if they get a good share of the popular vote, may lose enthusiasm because, here in Canada, with a system of three national parties and one fairly strong regional party a majority government can be had with 38+% of the popular voter. (Jean Chrétien won with 38.4% in 1997, efficient vote "harvesting" might make a slim majority possible with an even smaller percentage of the popular vote.)