Dude, this is the big problem with FPTP voting in the first place. People get elected that don’t have the corresponding popular support.
Because the only thing keeping cannibals down is that fair voting system?
Well, as people have pointed out, FPTP allows parties to win a riding with less than a majority. It does allow for local accountability for MPs and I think if a STB (effectively an instant run off) system was put into place it could evolve into an effective system that is not as radical a departure as NortherPiper’s PR system.
Mind you I almost like the idea of the pool of PR candidates but I think it might be too confusing.
As for western frustration with Liberal supporters in Ontario, I suggest you plow through this thread
Correct me if I’m wrong but it takes about 40% of the vote to win a seat, on average. It can flucuate, but I would say that is an average (no cites tho, I’m lousy at citing, so I suppose it means nothing, but I’d still bet its close to the way it is). To me, this is fairly large porportion of popular support. What I meant was more fringe parties who get a best 5% of the vote gettig 5% of the seats. Do we really need this? Does everyone really need to be heard? I don’t think so. I’m willing to not listen to a very small minority of my fellow canadians. I suppose this is a slippery slope type of thinking, but hey its still what I think.
Yes it is whats keeping Cannibals down. Lack of a strong political party.
I am not sure how those things differ. 
I am not sure that that’s entirely true. If you accept the premise that the views of the electorate are represented by the degree to which party representation in Parliament matches the province-wide (or nationwide, depending how you set it up) popular vote, then it’s true.
But if you take voter preference as being represented by which individual candidate wins each individual riding, then in fact the FPTP system is nearly perfect. (Preferential ballots might change a few results, but I suspect not many, and in any event they’ve got their own problems.)
What I am not being sold on is why a system based on representing the overall popular vote across a province, or the nation, is better than a system that represents the opinions of each riding individually. For one thing, it’s not necessarily true, IMHO, that this will in the long run reduce regional bitterness. It’s still theoretically possible for Ontario to utterly dominate the voting; perhaps not to the same extent in terms of total seats, but as measured by standard deviations we’ll still have the same power. It is in fact possible under a PR system for a party to get the most votes overall while carrying the most votes in fewer RIDINGS than an opposing party. Like the hapless Atlanta Braves in their 1992 World Series against the Blue Jays, you can now score the most runs and still lose most of the games. I would hate to see Ontario’s 106 ridings outvote the other 202 because we voted 65% Liberal one year.
The position of Northern Piper’s OP is, when you boil it down, “total FPTP is no good either, so a mixture of both would be better.” I’m not convinced that’s the case. If you plan on adding mixed PR to the House, you’re either going to have to
- add more MPs, or
- Take MPs away from the FPTP system and add them to PR.
I don’t like either solution; we don’t need more MPs and increasing the size of existing ridings will only serve to reduce the connection between MP and riding, and will increase inequality between ridings in terms of their size. You’re reducing the opportunity for independents to win seats, too, which wouldn’t be a great tragedy I guess, but…
… well, it just seems to me that the purpose of PR is to benefit certain parties. I mean, I don’t think any intelligent person thinks Jack Layton and the NDP are gung-ho about PR because they think it’s more moral and ethical system; they like it because it would give them more power. And I’m inherently skeptical of any system that appears to serve the interests of PARTIES, not the government or the people.
I’m also frankly not thrilled with the idea of the parties deciding which X number of people get to go to Parliament. At least now you vote directly on each head. To use a local example, if we had a PR system, it is near-certain Olivia Chow would be an MP now, since she’d be #2 or #3 on the NDP list. Like it or not, she had to stand on her own and the voters in her riding decided they’d rather send Tony Ianno. Allowing parties the opportunity to safely tuck the party elite at the top of the PR list will, it seems to me, inevitably create a party royalty immune from the input of the people. I know the cynics will point out the royalty usually gets elected anyway and that there is little justice when a worthless bastard like Tom Wappel can get elected, but it’s still up to the local voter. I am a big fan of anything that keeps things simple and in the hands of the local voter.
And sometimes they do shock you. Tony Clement, Tory insider but in person a colossal jackass, doesn’t get to be in the CPC caucus now.
Anyway, it seems to me a more logical place for PR would be the Senate. Let each province elect ten MPs based on PR. You’d have to do some heavy rounding, but this would have the benefit of giving preventing parties from sweeping seats when they only get 47% of the vote, while still requiring a decent amount of support to elect a Senator. Leave the House the way it is - voted locally. That way you appease voters both ways, plus you create a real check on both houses and maybe make the Senate a more valuable contributor.
I just don’t see value in making the House a mixed bag of local and provincial interests. I am of the personal opinion that provincial interests have no place in Ottawa; that’s why we have provincial governments. But if they must be there, let’s designate the Senate as such and make the House what it’s supposed to be - a collection of REPRESENTATIVES. Perhaps a true bicameral system would allow for more MP freedom…
Well, I agree with most of your points regarding the negative aspects of PR. However, I remain rather confused as to why you’d see it as tied in any particular way to provincial interests. It wouldn’t change the significantly the weight of the vote in any province.
I’m also hard-pressed to articulate how you could think the outcome in Saskatchewan results in an accurate transmission of SK voters’ wishes to Ottawa. I mean, Brad Trost won Saskatoon-Humboldt with a rousing 26.7% of the vote in that riding. That’s not exactly an overwhelming mandate. While FPTP certainly does have advantages over PR (local accountability being the most significant to my way of thinking, but there are others as well), I think the results here clearly demonstrate its most significant weakness.
For the record, if preferential voting had been in place, I expect 3 outcomes (Palliser, Regina-Lumsden-Lake Center, Regina-Quapelle) would almost certainly have been different, and 3 others (Blackstrap, Churchill River, Saskatoon-Humboldt) would quite likely have been different. That’s a very significant portion of our 14 ridings, and there are even a couple others that would have had an outside shot at going differently as well. That’s not to say of course that preferential voting is perfect, but it would have resulted in a group of MP’s who would have been able to represent the diversity of opinion here, unlike the group we actually have.
I would agree the Conservatives got lucky in Saskatchewan this year, but as I’ve said, I’m not as concerned with getting PROVINCIAL numbers straight as I am getting the NATIONAL numbers straight, and the outliers will tend to balance themselves out. We’re electing federal MPs, not provincial ones.
My problem with preferential ballots is… well, frankly, I think the potential for people to get confused is high. The potential to drive people away from the polls and decrease voter turnout is high. Making the process of voting a more difficult experience is not a good thing in and of itself; you’re going to vastly increase spoiled ballots, voting errors, and voter frustration.
And I’m not enormously convinced that deciding a race based on people’s second or third choice is any better than FPTP; it would also, it seems to me, encourage parties to be even safer, vaguer and less clear in their platforms than they already are.
It just seems really obvious to me that the structural problem with Canada’s federal government is not the way we elect the House of Commons, it’s the fact that our executive branch and our Senate are unelected stooges with unclear roles. Farting around with the way we elect MPs isn’t going to change that, and the Law of Unintended Consequences will surely crop up 10-15 new horrible problems.
So here is my solution. I propose we continue to run elections precisely the way they are currently run for the House of Commons.
However, at the same time these elections are run, all registered parties are required to submit to Elections Canada a list of twelve Senate candidates for each province. No person on the list can be running for the House and each candidate must be on only one list. Territories do not get Senate representation. The list of twelve candidates must be submitted within 48 hours of the election call and shall be immediately publicized.
The general election is held. When the FPTP voters are announced the take in each province is added up and the 12 Senate seats are assigned proportionally, rounding off as need be. If the total doesn’t add up to 12 after rounding you assign the remaining seats to parties in order of who got rounded down the furthest (or up the least.) If it adds up to more than 12, take seats away depending on who got rounded the furthest. So if the vote in British Columbia went like this:
Conservative Party - 41.7%
Liberal Party - 30.7%
New Democratic Party - 19.1%
Green Party - 7.6%
Marijuana Party - 0.1%
Family Coalition - 0.1%
So the twelve Senate seats go to 5 Conservatives, 4 Liberals, 2 NDPers, and 1 Green candidate.
If you had done this for the 2004 general election, the results would have been:
British Columbia - 5 Conservative, 3 Liberal, 3 NDP, 1 Green.
Alberta - 7 Conservative, 3 Liberal, 1 NDP, 1 Green.
Saskatchewan - 5 Conservative, 4 Liberal, 3 NDP.
Manitoba - 5 Conservative, 4 Liberal, 3 NDP.
Ontario - 5 Liberal, 4 Conservative, 2 NDP, 1 Green.
Quebec - 6 Bloc Quebecois, 4 Liberal, 1 Conservative, 1 NDP.
New Brunswick - 5 Liberal, 4 Conservative, 3 NDP.
Nova Scotia - 5 Liberal, 4 NDP, 3 Conservative.
Prince Edward Island - 6 Liberal, 4 Conservative, 1 NDP, 1 Green.
Newfoundland & Labrador - 6 Liberal, 4 Conservative, 2 NDP.
Party total:
Liberal Party - 45
Conservative Party - 42
NDP - 23
Bloc Quebecois - 6
Green Party - 4
… for a total of 120. The benefits here are quite obvious, though so are the drawbacks:
- The regional party gets it right in the pants.
- The Green Party now has a place in government, which in all fairness they should given their level of broad support.
But as you can see, because we did PR by province, the total seats won don’t always reflect the national vote. Conservatives have 6 more seats than their national vote take would suggest - so apparently they are not as regionally based a party as one would expect. Most of the discussion has centred around how they’re overrepresented in MPs in Alberta and Saskatchewan, but remember, they’re underrepresented in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes.
The NDP has 5 more; the Bloc has only 6 seats when they should probably have 13. I’m thrilled with any system that sends fewer traitors to Parliament so I’m okay with that.
The end benefit, as Northern Piper wanted, is that the purely regional party, the Bloc, get hammered, while the national party that was completely shut out, the Greens, get to send someone to Ottawa (in about the right number.)
Now, what powers should a Senate have? That’s another thread in itself. I do not believe it should be just another Parliament.
Really? That’s interesting. Completely trivial datasets have really distorted outcomes under plurality voting.
-> means “is preferred to”
6 votes for A->B->C
5 votes for B->C->A
4 voted for C->A->B
A wins the plurality vote, no question (40% first-ranked). But C is preferred to A by 9 voters (60%, not just a plurality but a majority). You don’t find that letting A be the winner, then, is distorted enough to be worth caring about?
Usually, I think it means parties compromise in government rather than in elections, letting them speak more of their mind. I may be wrong about this, though.
I am unclear how the system you outline is FPTP. Maybe I’m missing some nuance.
Eris, it’s not. I’m proposing PR for the Senate. I don’t suggest we touch the House at all.
No, I see that you want proportional representation, but what I’m missing is whether this is a seperate vote, or if it is based on the same vote in the commons, or what the deal is. Sorry I wasn’t more clear on what I was missing.
Well, yes, I agree for the most part. Except that an MP from my preferred party one riding over is a lot more likely to speak to my interests in Parliament than an MP from my preferred party from Ontario or Nova Scotia. Who can I look to for a non-Conservative voice on issues specific to Saskatchewan? It’s nice to have the numbers balance out, but a democracy is supposed to be about the people having a voice in government, and FPTP stymied that here in this particular election.
I can’t agree. Rank ordering candidates isn’t confusing.
And yet, this is how party leaders are routinely chosen. It’s just that they use multiple ballots to ascertain second and third choices.
This seems quite reasonable, and yet modifying the electoral system seems more likely to actually happen than changing the Senate, hence my interest in it.
It most certainly is. You’re gonna have to trust me on this one; you will baffle people. You’re also adding to the choices they have to make. And what if there’s seven names on the ballot and they only list two preferences? Do you spoil the ballot?
Look, I used to work for a management consulting firm. Once exercise we tried to make work for years and years was using preferential lists to get people to prioritize issues… you’d get them to agree on what issues the company faced, and then ask them to rank them in importance from 1 to X. The lists ranged in length from 5 to 15 issues.
In any group larger than three people, it was absolutely certain that a quarter or so of the group would, instead of ranking them from 1 (most important) to X (least important), would rank them from X to 1. It did not matter how many times you explained it. It did not matter how clearly you explained it. It did not matter if you wrote clearly worded instructions on a form; some people invariably, without a single exception in any group I ever saw, would mistakenly rank them in reverse order. We eventually gave up on the exercise. It was truly amazing.
Remember that thousands of people had their brains scrambled by the butterfly ballot.
It’s not “just” that they use multiple ballots - that makes ALL the difference in the world. It’s just a totally different process. Asking people to pick their favourite is easy; the party conventions just do it multiple times. Asking them to make those decisions in advance is a totally different ball of wax.
erislover, from my post:
I’m suggesting just one vote be cast.
Does this concern you that one vote is trying to cram too much decision into it? For myself I already think votes have compressed too much information in them; I’d never even consider exacerbating matters.