From that thread, some observations:
Oh, I wish federal cabinets & Supreme Court justices were appointed by direct election in the US, but they’re not. State-level, a lot of offices are, which is good.
Point.
This is interesting. I’ll have to think about the mathematical implications to judge it, but it’s interesting.
I just returned from Alberta, having worked a short contract for Syncrude as an engineering consultant. Word on the street (haul roads?) is that known oil reserves in the oil sands constitute about five times the known reserves in Saudi Arabia.
For what it’s worth.
My point was, it appears some of you Canucks are talking about copying one of the two stupidest, most archaic, most undemocratic surviving elements in the U.S. Constitution! (The other being the Electoral College.) If you’re going to have a Senate at all, better to leave it an unimportant, ceremonial, rubber-stamp body like it is now; Canada (and the UK, for that matter) seems to be doing well enough with what is effectively a one-house Parliament. Better still you should scrap it. Better still we should scrap our Senate; we’ve had threads on that.
The Senate is incredibly important in the U.S. Without the Senate, you’d have the tyranny of the majority. The most populous states could run roughshod over the smaller states. People living in Montana and New Hampshire would have almost no say in federal affairs.
One of the big dangers of democracy is that small, isolated communities of citizens will be trampled by the majority. A strong senate protects them. If you don’t have that Senate, you start getting all kinds of regional strife and dissatisfaction.
That’s what’s happening in Canada, and it’s one reason why the spector of separation is always hanging over our heads.
Remind me again which country had a civil war?
The problem with your theory, aside from the usual fact that you’re basing it on just two countries and the automatic assumption that everything in the USA is hunky-dory and everything here sucks, is that it’s simply not true in Canada that “Small, isolated citizens will be trampled by the majority.” The country’s most heavily populated province, Ontario, doesn’t get anything that the other provinces don’t and in fact gets LESS; as I am sure you know, Ontario and Alberta are the two provinces being drained of cash for the other eight.
On the other hand, Newfoundland, which has a small population and is geographically isolated from the rest of the country, is literally being promised equalization payments even after they’re equal.
Alberta has four million people and, like Ontario, gets to pay out the nose. On the other hand, Prince Edward Island, with a population less than my subdivision, gets treated like gold.
If in fact it were true that the small, isolated communities were being stomped by the majority, then we should see that the federal government should be treating the lightly poplated areas as colonies of southern Ontario and Quebec and the other big cities. They should be practically stealing potatoes from PEI to ship them to Calgary and Vancouver. And yet that is quite the opposite of the case; the big cities are net PAYERS to Ottawa, and rural Canada is a net welfare case. There’s no connection between province population and payout, either; eight provinces get more than they pay, and two don’t, those being the most populated and the one in fourth place.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Saskatchewan recently become a “have” province?
:rolleyes: You are basing this on several unfounded assumptions: that states/provinces are culturally and economically homogeneous communities, or, for that matter, communities of any kind; and that people’s economic interests and political views/beliefs/desires will always or usually follow state/regional lines. (If the famous “red/blue” map of U.S. states from the 2000 or 2004 election is broken down to the county or precinct level it blurs into flowing shades of purple – and that’s just on the single question of which of two candidates should be president.) In political terms, a Republican in an overpopulated state has more in common with a Pub in an underpopulated state than with a Dem in his own state; but in electing the Senate, his vote counts for relatively less.
It bounces around the have / have not line from year to year. IIRC, it was a have not in 2004.
Whether Saskatchewan is a have or have not depends on the price of oil. In 2004 we were on the have side, and we will be again this year. And, for that matter, quite possibly until our fields begin to dry up, as it’s beginning to look like these high prices are here to stay.
Agreed. In spades.
Getting back to the OP, I’d still like to know RickJay’s objections to PR, at the national, provincial or local level; and anybody else’s arguments, pro or con.
My opposition to PR primarily consists of three major points:
1. I don’t see what the point is, really.
The basic thrust behind PR, according to pretty much every person I’ve read or heard advocating it, is that it will cause the popular vote percentages and seat-by-party percentages to match.
So what? There’s an automatic assumption that that’s a good thing, and I’m not convinced it is. I see no reason whatsoever to believe that the governance of our nation would be improved in any way. Furthermore, Parliament at present is, at least, perfectly represented in the sense that each riding has a MP who finished in first place; so while the makeup of Parliament doesn’t match the vote by party percentage, it perfectly matches the list of people who were elected by their ridings. Why’s the former any better than the latter?
2. It’s not the right solution.
Arguing that we should change the way we elect the House of Commons, while we have an unelected, appointed Senate and an unelected head of state, is so mind-bogglingly idiotic that I cannot believe any carbon-based life form would suggest it. It’s like watching your house burn down and, instead of calling the fire department, saying “Geez, we really need to trim those hedges.”
If we’re going to expend Constitutional sweat and tears, why would we expend it on the part of our government that’s the MOST democratically representative? Why not change the parts of our federal government that aren’t representative of the people’s will at all?
I know it might seem like I’m creating a false dilemma, but I’m not. Constitutional change is not easy, and only so much can happen at once. If we are going to change one thing, changing the way we elect the House and not changing the Senate would be stupidity of the most astonishing sort.
3. It creates as many or more problems than it solves.
The only possible advantage PR presents is that minor parties will get representation in the House and major parties will be more accurately represented.
On the other hand, you also reduce the local accountability of MPs, since we either have to have fewer riding-elected MPs or reduce their responsibilities - we can’t fit many more people into the House. We’d further complicate elections, under most plans I’ve seen. As I mentioned before, we’d have more fractured minority governments, more potential for gridlock of vote-buying spending sprees and less potential for legitimate leadership.
That’s my take, anyway.
I’m not aware that we have to go into the Constitution to change the system for Parliament – I think it can be done by simple legislation. As long as Quebec keeps its 75 seats I think we’re fine. The Senate is of course trickier.
I don’t support a strict national %=seats system but then I don’t think that’s in use anywhere in the world. I like some of the “big riding” systems I’ve seen where 5 or more people would be elected from a riding – you don’t force someone to support a candidate they don’t like from a party they do, and someone has a number of representatives to go to for a beef. There are other systems though, and they don’t have to disconnect an MP from his or her region or riding.
The goal of PR as I see it, is to make sure every one’s vote is as equal as possible. More people voted for Conservatives in Quebec than in Saskatchewan, yet that translated to 0 seats in the first case and 13 in the other. It’s an extreme result, but that’s the point.
But it’s not an extreme result at all. More people voted Conservative in Quebec because there’s eight times as many people in Quebec. The reason it translated to zero seats is that the Conservatives ran an extremely distant third in Quebec, getting only 8.8% of the vote, and an easy first in Saskatchewan, getting 41.9 percent. The Conservatives earned the 13 seats they won in Saskatchewan because they came out ahead, as the choice of the people, in 13 ridings. They were not the choice of the people in any riding in Quebec.
In no way whatsoever does this make a Quebec vote “less equal” to a Saskatchewan vote, or vice versa. There’s also this weird uncurrent of sentiment that you’re somehow disenfranchised if you don’t have an MP from the party you voted for from your province. You hint at it, but some have just said it outright. Well, I just don’t buy it. The 8.8 percent of Quebec voters who voted CPC are not less “Equal” because they lost. Their party LOST. Sometimes the party you vote for wins and sometimes it loses. Having a vote means you get a vote; it’s no guarantee of partial victory. There is no issue of equality here at all.
What’s really at issue here is where we want the percentage of votes counted. For some reason I cannot fathom, it’s now fashionable to count up the percentages at the provincial level and then declare things unfair because they’re being counted at a riding level. But why is it logical to base things on a percentage of the provincial vote, and NOT on a riding-by-riding basis?
Well, that’s just where we differ, Rick – in our conception of what’s “fair” when it comes to democratic decisionmaking. In this thread – “What do you think about proportional representation in the US House of Reps?” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=261571 – (which is worth reviewing, as it hashes out a lot of issues directly relevant to this thread) we had the following dialogue:
As for whether, from the individual voter’s POV, I am “disenfranchised” when I vote for a loser – obviously, that is unavoidable when I vote to fill a single office, such as governor or president. Of course, it is still the case that if I do vote for a loser I might as well have stayed home; after the election my vote counts for nothing, in terms of direct influence on public policy. But, as I said, that’s unavoidable. We have to make a choice acceptable to the majority and get on with it.
But it is possible to avoid that outcome when I vote to elect members to a multimember policymaking body, such as a city council, state legislature or Congress. If a PR system is used, then even if I vote for a minority ticket, there’s somebody in the body who represents my point of view. In other words, my vote always counts. No matter how I voted, after the election, my vote still makes some difference. Good reason to turn out to vote.
In a winner-take-all single-member-district system, OTOH, I am “represented” by a member for whom I might or might not have voted, and who is “my” representative only in the sense that he/she represents the district in which I happen to live. Am I alone in finding that unsatisfactory? Where I live is not, IMO, the most important thing about me when it comes to deciding matters of public policy.
Because it’s fairer, more democratic, and more conducive to a healthy civil society; see above.
It is the right solution to a completely different problem. What you’re describing is not a problem at all. As I understand it, the Canadian Senate and head of state (whether you mean the Queen or the governor-general) have practically no effective political power; so what difference does it make whether they are elected or appointed?
Well, look at the evidence. Every democracy in Europe, except for France and the UK, uses PR in one form or another, and it has not paralyzed their governments – not even when they combine PR with a parliamentary system, usually necessitating a coalition government of several minority parties. The notable exception is Italy, which has had (I think) at least 50 governments since WWII, but I think that says more about Italy’s political culture than its constitutional system. The rest of Europe does just fine with it. As for the English-speaking world, New Zealand switched from SMD to a mixed-member-proportional system in 1996 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_New_Zealand#Legislature), and its government since then has done just fine, thank you. (South Africa also has used a PR system since apartheid ended, but that was rather a special case – it was a necessary political compromise; whites being a minority in every region of the country, an SMD system would have frozen the white parties out of Parliament entirely.)
As for “reducing the accountability of the MPs” – bear in mind, there are several forms of PR and most of them preserve the principle of geographic representation in some form. E.g., in a multi-member-district system, several ridings would be merged into one big riding electing a delegation of several members. Israel uses a straight party-list system where the whole country is treated as one electoral district, but that makes sense considering how small the country is.
No, you are not. It’s simply not a debatable issue; that is not what “disenfranchised” means.
To be enfranchised means to have one vote, out of however many there are. It does NOT mean that your representative must necessarily be the one you personally voted for. A democracy is not a children’s birthday party where everyone gets to take home a goody bag, and the franchise is not a guarantee your chosen candidate will win.
This “I am disenfrachised if my candidate loses” sentiment, aside from being simply wrong, is, I believe, a fairly new one; I don’t think anyone said this 30 or 40 years ago. It furthermore has a rather dangerous other-side-of-the-coin effect in that members of Parliament might start feeling they don’t have to serve anyone who didn’t vote for them - and sure enough we have recently seen a few isolated instances of that sort of thing happening, whereas it never used to.
But that is simply not the case. You are conflating membership in a party with representing your point of view - which is no more logical, in the real world, than conflating geography with point of view. Indeed, in Canada, I’d say geography might be a more potent force.
Unless you’re an absolutely brainless party hack it’s actually quite unlikely any existing political party is a geniune reflection of your views. One of the problems we HAVE in Canada is that so many people feel no party accurately represents them. It’s certainly my current dilemma.
Well, that obviously is not true either. It’s actually extraordinarily unlikely, unlikely in the extreme, that your vote will make a difference.
As a matter of fact, PR may actually make it LESS likely.
Consider this; in Canada we elect 305 MPs. Last time out I believe approximately thirteen million people voted.
Were you to apportion all MPs according to popular vote and PR, a party would receive one MP for every 42,623 votes received (rounding up or down, of course; it would be possible to get 21,312 marginal votes and get an extra seat, or get 21,311 and not.) The odds, therefore, of YOUR vote being the one that tips a race either way and decides if a party will have X MPs or X+1 MPs is about one in 42,623, given that level of voter turnout.
Within your riding, however, you probably have a better chance of being the vote that changes who represents your riding; some ridings are blowouts but some end up remarkably close. The average difference between winner and runner-up in a riding is sure as hell on 42,623. It can’t be. The average riding only got that many votes in total.
I see a problem here: no one here has proposed a system that treats Canada as one big riding, and I’ve specifically argued against that. It’s a red herring to even suggest it. Most people are suggesting a system something similar to what BC voted on, where the system of voting itself changes.
I don’t see how the BC system will avoid the same basic result; that, most of the time, your personal vote won’t change the makeup of Parliament. It’s preposterous to think you can design a system where one person always makes a difference - I mean, gimme a break. Unless you plan to expand the size of the House to millions, that’s just part and parcel of living in a country of 32,000,000 people.
Of course, I may be misterpreting your specific point, but BrainGlutton insists I explain my opposition, and unless someone provides a specific plan for PR, I have to just guess at what PR system I’m supposed to be opposing.
The notion that PR will make your vote “Count,” where it allegedly does not “count” in FPTP, is purely an illusion. If there are X votes and Y seats, your vote will count for Y/X influence; it doesn’t matter if you tally the votes at the riding level, as per FPTP, or at the federal level, or at the provincial level, or if you switch to a weighted ballot.
Brainglutton:
Why is it fairer? Fairer to whom? Politicians?
Why is it more democratic? What does that mean?
Why is it “more conducive to a healthy and civil society”? Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean? I was not aware Canada was an unhealthy or uncivil society. So most of Europe has PR; so what’s your point? Some democracies have PR and some don’t. Do you have some sort of objective evidence PR democracies are better governed? Am I supposed to believe that what the majority of countries do must be correct?
It’s your claim that FPTP results in a legislature that’s not representative of the people, but you’re not clearly explaining why that’s the case in Canada. In fact, the legislature is pretty close to what the people wanted, and the way it’s currently functioning in practice, it’s taking on the issues that the majority of Canadians seem to want it to. Switching to PR would have not made any substantial difference to the makeup of the House, save giving a few more seats to the NDP and Greens and a few less to the Bloc, and probably would not have changed the dynamics of Parliament at all.
It continues to boil down to the fact that you place all of the notion of “representation” on what political party an MP belongs to. I admit to a level of personal animosity to that concept; I don’t like political parties, and I find that those who belong to them are, with astonishing consistency, a pack of mendacious, drooling simpletons, who in very short order abandon reason and logic in favour of rationalizing whatever the party platform is at a given moment. So that’s my bias.
But I honestly don’t see why party trumps geography. For that matter, why not allocate 51% of all seats in Parliament to females? Surely gender matters as much as party, or should. What about race? Socioeconomic status, too - surely to Christ you’d agree being rich or poor has a heck of a lot to do with your views. And in Canada, you can bet your ass language matters a lot - possibly more than anything.
Why not just give the people the opportunity to directly elect 305 MPs? We’ll divvy the country up geographically, and let people vote directly for the local rep. If dominant or secondary parties emerge from that system so be it; the power will remain in the hands of the people.
Oh, wait, that’s what we have now.
I also think it’s preposterous to think we can’t improve the system that we have now. I think the BC plan is a start, there are things about it that I like a lot, which I have already stated, though I can’t help but wonder if the vote counting process can’t be simplified. Changing the voting process itself is a must in my opinion, in any system we change to. Eliminating strategic voting, or at least reducing it from what it is now, should hopefully be a result from this. How many people would hold their nose and vote Liberal in an election even though they’re disgusted with the Gomery business, but don’t want to end up accidentally electing a Conservative? How many might vote for a Conservative, but think the guy they put up in their riding is a complete jackass (my situation)? There are systems to fix both.
If you’re asking what we can eliminate from the discussion, then I think we can eliminate from discussion “straight” PR where national % = # of seats – again, almost no one is seriously proposing this system.
But don’t you understand that your existing party system (and our) is a product of the first-past-the-post single-member-district system? In the U.S., at least, our two major parties are “big tent” coalitions of a broad range of views who really would not be working together at all, if they did not have to participate in one of the major parties in order to play in the game. A party that includes, Al Sharpton, Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller really does not make any sense. Neither does a party that includes George Bush, John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The third-party option is effectively ruled out by the system. A PR system promotes a multiparty system – in which there are more parties and they are smaller and more ideologically coherent, and there’s bound to be one that does accurately represent your views. See this old (now locked) thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=269169
Don’t forget, I’m talking about PR at all levels, including local and state/provincial, where the calculations would be different. Also, I’m not proposing a national party-list system for Canada or the U.S.; for a big country, a multi-member-district system would make more sense. The principle of geographic representation is preserved (who really wants to give up porkbarrel? 
), and your individual vote can still make a difference in your consolidated superriding. I believe FairVote Canada (see OP) proposes MMD, or a mixture of MMD members and SMD members (the “mixed-member” system – that’s what Germany uses).