The Economist is a pretty well respected 170 year running publication.
Okay. To put this clearly. The representation of our Parliament does not match with the representation of votes.
The voters who have no representation in Parliament are the ones being disenfranchised. These people vote, but their local candidate doesn’t win thus they have no representation in Parliament.
I like “The Economist,” but the extent to which Canadians are crowing about the USA’s drop of 0.07 in a rating system most of them have not even read the full article about is kind of silly. In another thread one poster is repeating this as if it’s a matter of absolute black and white fact, with “full democracies” and “flawed democracies” being two completely different things differentiated by ironclad truth rather than over the dividing line of an arbitrary number in a subjective scale.
No matter what system is used, a large number of voters won’t have effective representation of their views. Under a proportional representation system, for example, you still need only 51% of members to pass a law. The views of the other 49% are irrelevant.
That’s clear but silly. There’s always going to be losers in an election. Calling them “Disenfranchised” is a complete corruption of the term.
I didn’t say it had anything to do with proportional representation. I said it had to due with an extended period of lack of trust in democratic institutions (there are other reasons but that’s the main one). I also said Canada doesn’t seem to have that problem at this time, but other voting schemes can improve the faith in the legitimacy of the government. I agree that what should be concerning for Americans isn’t that they are now in some new arbitrary classification but that there has been an extended lack of faith in the democratic institution. If people get too disillusioned with liberal democracy they tend to replace it with something that isn’t liberal democracy.
I understand the frustration with FPTP, but I think experience has shown that PR results in fringe parties being included in coalition governments and gaining influence far in excess of their popular support. Personally, I think a change of this magnitude should go to a national referendum.
In recent years the word “disenfranchised” has bene perverted to mean “My party lost the election.”
[QUOTE=BeepKillBeep]
If people get too disillusioned with liberal democracy they tend to replace it with something that isn’t liberal democracy.
[/QUOTE]
I full agree.
What I don’t buy - necessarily - is that the system of voting has a lot to do with this, unless it’s just stupid, and FTPT is not stupid. One can have a long argument over it, but it’s an argument of philosophy, not an objective thing you can prove through some application of public choice theory. The philosophies behind FPTP and PR are both perfectly sound; the question simply is which you value more:
- Local representation?
- Political parties?
Both voting systems deliver fair results. The question is what kinda fair results you want.
Of course they have representation, it’s the guy who won.
And if they were to approach their representative on a constituency matter their representative would say “How can I help you?” not “Did you vote for me and if not piss off?”
Exactly. It has been my experience that if a constituent asks for the MP’s assistance, the MP will do their best to help, if it is a reasonable request*, and regardless of the constituent’s political beliefs. MPs are remarkably good at cutting through the red tape constituents can encounter when dealing with government bureaucracy–income tax, military records, employment insurance, and the like. If they can succeed, great; but if they cannot succeed in getting what the constituent wanted, they can often explain why better than the bureaucrats. At any rate, they are available to all of their constituents; not just those who voted for them. Hardly “disenfranchisement.”
- Unreasonable requests would include doing something about UFO aliens, the need for tinfoil hats to deflect the neighbour’s mind-rays, and how to access the secret government bank account from the number on the back of a birth certificate.
The government’s ‘Mydemocracy.ca’ poll probably had a lot to do with the rapidly declining support for electoral change, because it had some horrifying options in it, such as allocating votes in proportion to ethnic identity. I believe Trudeau canned the person responsible for that, but the damage was done.
You raise good points and I agree that local representation can suffer with some alternative voting methods but not all of them. For example, with instant runoff (IRV) allows both the potential for every vote to matter and local representation. Mixed member proportional (MMP) also allows for every vote to matter (the proportional part) and local representation. Although we would need to restructure the counties or increase the number of MPs.
The ideal is to have every voter mattered. Every election I hear so many people say “Why should I vote, my vote won’t count?” Now for some people this is because they don’t view any politician as being any different from any other politician, i.e. that that none of them represent the people’s interest. But for some it is a sense of smallness, I think alternatives to FPP help here. For some it is because their party can’t win in their locale and so they don’t bother. I hear this all the time. Whether I agree with these people or not I do want their voice to be heard so they feel that they are a part of Canadian society.
And again, I don’t think feelings of governmental illegitimacy is widespread in Canada. But wouldn’t it be nice to have higher voter turnout and better feelings about election outcomes? I think that alternative voting methods can help get the vote out and so we can have a gov’t more representative of us all.
I have a funny feeling that the next election is going to be pretty venomous and the outcome no matter what it ends up being is going to create a lot of hurt.
I think we fetishize voter turnout. Frankly, I don’t want the uneducated and apathetic voting on issues they don’t understand. If someone doesn’t want to pay attention to politics, that is their right. If they rationally conclude that voting would be a bad idea given that they know nothing about the issues, that’s just fine too.
One of the options in that mydemocracy.ca poll was mandatory voting. What a horrible idea.
Too right.
Would be so much better if enfranchisement was based on inalienable and proven criteria like say white, male, ivy league etc. In fact there should be a pre-enrollment political elite examination and those who pass cum laude get two votes. I’d expect you would nominate yourself as an invigilator to supervise that exam.
At what point does your “uneducated” disqualification become simply applied to those people who disagree with you?
I never said they should be disqualified or disenfranchised. Everyone has a right to vote. That doesn’t mean they should be forced to vote, or that we should go out of our way to try to entice them to vote.
Eh, seems to work for Australia and Belgium. I don’t think it is necessarily better ( I can see arguments for and against ), but “horrible” seems a bit stong.
This is mostly unrelated to the mandatory voting aspect, but don’t hold Australia up as a good example. The voting system is a nightmare. Last time I voted, the ballot was a three foot piece of paper you had running up both walls in the voting booth.
Australian ballot photo. please number them 1 to a 107 in order of preference.
Behind the scenes, votes are bartered between the parties so if Party A doesn’t get enough votes, they transfer them to Party B, and then to Parties Q, H, and Z. There’s almost zero transparency.
It’s a bit scary that when someone asks you if you voted for the Nazi party, you can’t honestly say “no”. The best you can say is “maybe, but they weren’t my first choice.”
Also the penalty for not voting is a $20 fine. Which can be waived if you email them saying you were sick. People with no interest in voting don’t vote. Compared to the near-identical nation of New Zealand, compulsory voting adds 5% to the participation rate.
(It’s not really that bad, since most people vote for the bigger parties - but there’s still senators elected representing the Shooters and Fishers party and the Motoring Enthusiast party despite getting near-zero first choice votes)
Holy hannah! That’s enough to turn me off any kind of ranked ballot.
As things currently stand in Canada, elections at both the federal and provincial levels will have maybe five or more names on them: there will always be a Liberal, a Conservative, and a New Democrat; and there could be a Marxist-Leninist, a Communist, an Independent or two, Christian Heritage, Bloc Quebecois, and so on, depending on where one lives. Just mark an X in the circle opposite your candidate, and there you go.
I’d go into the voting booth in Australia knowing who I’d like to vote for, and how to rank maybe three at most. Can an Australian voter stop at three, or is it necessary to fill out a ranking for every candidate?
:smack:
Of course you can be definitive.
You can either vote “above the line” i.e. at a party/group level and if you don’t include “The Nazi Party” (were such an entity to be registered) and all the candidates you did vote for are eliminated then your vote exhausts. You’ve cast no vote for “The Nazi Party”.
The AEC’s recommendation is to vote for at least six candidates “above the line” in the order that you want your vote to flow. If you vote for less than six candidates, it will still count this as a valid vote, as long as there is nothing else wrong with the ballot paper.
You could always be definitive by voting “below the line” and specifically putting any “The Nazi Party” absolutely last or unwinnably low. It’s simpler now because you have to number a minimum of 12 candidates “below the line” (rather than numbering them all) for your vote to count and if “The Nazi Party” isn’t one of those 12, your vote exhausts. Again you’ve cast no vote for “The Nazi Party”.
That is the Senate ballot paper, the House of Reps ballot paper is usually 3-8 candidates.
The Senate paper has been unwieldy since minor parties worked out you could game the system and have an remote chance of picking up the last spot and a parliamentary pension. The latest reforms have largely kibboshed that.
But it’s always going to be oversized, it’s a feature that if the NineLineMan Party wanted to stand nationally on a single issue platform they can do so; provided they meet the eligibility criteria of a registered party.
For HoR ballots, most of the 150 electorates have 6 or less candidates.
With preference voting (or single transferable voting) how many votes that are needed to be marked to constitutes a valid votevaries between states.
In most states optional preference voting is valid e.g. in Tasmania it’s 3, NSW it’s 1. Queensland recently voted to restore compulsory preference voting having previously allowed 1.