I think fairness, efficiency, and effectiveness are all reasonable goals for governance, and you have to consider the tradeoffs between them.
I think the current first past the post system is less fair than some of the PR options but produces more efficient and effective governments.
Bad policies still = inefficient because they usually require several years and excess costs to reverse. I'm not saying that one party making decisions for the rest of the country always results in bad policy, but FPtP can still result in inefficient governance.
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The other reason I don't like PR is the concept of party lists. Having the option to vote against an individual candidate who sucks is a good thing, and makes our democracy more representative.
On the flip side, maybe the CPC runs less Aaron Gunns if they have to appeal to a wider audience.
1. We have a CPC party that continues to move further and further right every election, yet still captures at least 35% of the vote.
2. Do you think it's reasonable that the BQ gets 25-30 seats every election when they get 5% of the popular vote? Do they represent the majority of what most Canadians want?
BQ is an interesting case. They run (obviously) in in a single province. Their share of the vote in Quebec lines up exactly to the percentage of seats in Quebec they won. They are the very definition of proportional representation when looked at purely from a Quebec perspective.
Personally I don't like proportional representation, I feel it would lead to further fractionation of parliament. Something more along the line of a single transferable vote or a ranked ballot would be my preference.
BQ is an interesting case. They run (obviously) in in a single province. Their share of the vote in Quebec lines up exactly to the percentage of seats in Quebec they won. They are the very definition of proportional representation when looked at purely from a Quebec perspective.
Actually, they were bang on for the national percentage, too. Usually not the case. Kudos to them.
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Personally I don't like proportional representation, I feel it would lead to further fractionation of parliament. Something more along the line of a single transferable vote or a ranked ballot would be my preference.
STV and ranked ballots are generally considered variations of PR.
I think it'd help the Liberals overall and no doubt they have a majority right now and unless the Conservatives shift to the centre, the Liberals would have a majority forever.
Edit: this comes across as me wanting the Liberals forever, when what I want is the CPC to move centre, same with the NDP as they could form government too
I think as some point in time you need to balance ballot complexity.
The real problem with PR is that it is not a representative based system, you aren't in a specific district with a specific person who in theory represents you. That is where the MMPR idea comes in, where you go to 200K districts instead of 100K, and give the other half of the seats to the popular vote, but there is weakness in that system too, there would be need to be some form of internal machinations in the parties to decide who gets the PR seats, and from a current North American standard it would at the very least feel undemocratic, and it causes parties to stagnate, guys like Singh and Poilievre would not have had the opportunity to lose, because they would have just gotten the first seat from their party, I think it's a good thing that these guys can lose and get shuffled out for new people to set in.
In the RCB system you end up with high ballot complexity, leasing possibly long voting lines, and people who don't know who their 2nd / 3rd / 4th choice is. It becomes undemocratic in the way our school boards currently are. In city elections I have no idea who any of the school board nominees are, it's basically just check marking a random name on a list and seeing what happens. Likewise on Monday, I had 3 independents on my ballot, I put about half an hour of effort into learning about them. One was a doctor who thinks the government could spend their money more wisely, he's probably right but I don't know if he would be capable of coming up with better solutions that currently exist. One was a self professed conservative, but not the type of conservative we currently have in Canada, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, I guess? but I don't know if he is the good PC kind of different conservative or the bad PPC kind of different conservative. The 3rd independent I could not actually find an internet footprint for, really strange that you take the effort to get your name on an elections Canada Ballot, than don't even bother to buy a website with a short bio and a few photos of yourself. I would be utterly incapable of ranking my riding beyond a top 2, and I must be in the upper 5th percentile of informed voter.
This is why I really like the most acceptable choice option, check mark every candidate that you find acceptable. whoever gets the most check marks wins. If you have 75% and someone else has 80% the group consensus is that we would rather have the other guy, you are a great candidate, but the other guy is better, and we want the best.
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In the RCB system you end up with high ballot complexity, leasing possibly long voting lines, and people who don't know who their 2nd / 3rd / 4th choice is. It becomes undemocratic in the way our school boards currently are. In city elections I have no idea who any of the school board nominees are, it's basically just check marking a random name on a list and seeing what happens.
Yep. Ranked ballots are favoured by highly engaged wonks. But if we want a system to be democratic, it has to be easy to understand and make choices for the average low-information voter too. Complexity presents its own barrier to fairness.
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Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
Yep. Ranked ballots are favoured by highly engaged wonks. But if we want a system to be democratic, it has to be easy to understand and make choices for the average low-information voter too. Complexity presents its own barrier to fairness.
That is what keeps bringing me back to the MMPR system. The ballot would be bigger than the ones we see today but not grossly so and the complexity is still pretty low as you would just need to mark 2 Xs.
Riding Representative:
Person 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Party selection for national proportional representation:
Party 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Even if the lists ends up with 10 or 15 names in each (which I think is highly unlikely in our political environment), I expect most people would select a riding representative from our 4-5 main parties and then select a proportional representative from one of the main parties, most likely the party that their riding representative is from.
However, the big appeal would be for anyone who feels like the riding part of the ballot is a waste of time because the riding is dominated by a party, they would now feel like the second part of their ballot would give them a voice.
In a democracy, the system should be working hard to give everyone a voice and make them want to show up to vote. Or we could always get Australian with a compulsory vote!
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That is what keeps bringing me back to the MMPR system. The ballot would be bigger than the ones we see today but not grossly so and the complexity is still pretty low as you would just need to mark 2 Xs.
Riding Representative:
Person 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Party selection for national proportional representation:
Party 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Even if the lists ends up with 10 or 15 names in each (which I think is highly unlikely in our political environment), I expect most people would select a riding representative from our 4-5 main parties and then select a proportional representative from one of the main parties, most likely the party that their riding representative is from.
However, the big appeal would be for anyone who feels like the riding part of the ballot is a waste of time because the riding is dominated by a party, they would now feel like the second part of their ballot would give them a voice.
In a democracy, the system should be working hard to give everyone a voice and make them want to show up to vote. Or we could always get Australian with a compulsory vote!
As a Green supporter in Calgary I love being able to view the official results and see that my ballot was the lone vote for my preferred candidate in the entire box.
So I totally understand the sentiment of people who say "why bother" despite the plethora of voices innundating us with "voting is your duty" "people died for you to do this" "you can't complain" etc etc.
I vote mainly because I think the process is pretty cool and the stations are always walking distance away, but I would seriously reconsider if I lived in the North for example and had to travel hours to do it.
A switch to some form of PR would definitely make this easier to swallow.
It's weird that Cliff makes this system sound like it's the beginning of anarchy and chaos. It's pretty much the default in most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Last I checked, they're still functional democracies and have much higher voter engagement than we do.
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It's weird that Cliff makes this system sound like it's the beginning of anarchy and chaos. It's pretty much the default in most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Last I checked, they're still functional democracies and have much higher voter engagement than we do.
I didn't think he made it sound like falling off a cliff. we were just saying that increased voting complexity presents it's own problems, and even for informed voters by the time you are getting to a 2nd / 3rd choice the quality of information you are voting with drops a lot.
Rank choice also is not a very common system, I'd guess fewer than a handful of places use it nation wide. unless you were talking about proportional representation?
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I didn't think he made it sound like falling off a cliff. we were just saying that increased voting complexity presents it's own problems, and even for informed voters by the time you are getting to a 2nd / 3rd choice the quality of information you are voting with drops a lot.
Rank choice also is not a very common system, I'd guess fewer than a handful of places use it nation wide. unless you were talking about proportional representation?
I believe in a ranked choice system that you're not required to rank the max amount if you don't want to. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though.
I think if I was making one change it would be open primaries. Yes it doubles the cost of the elections and probably increases campaign length but everyone should be able to pick one party each election to vote for candidates.
This way in Alberta we could choose to vote for the conservative primary and choose the most progressive candidate instead of just having to eat turd cookies. The current system of active party members selecting candidates leads to polarization.
I think if I was making one change it would be open primaries. Yes it doubles the cost of the elections and probably increases campaign length but everyone should be able to pick one party each election to vote for candidates.
This way in Alberta we could choose to vote for the conservative primary and choose the most progressive candidate instead of just having to eat turd cookies. The current system of active party members selecting candidates leads to polarization.
We sort of do. The NDP and Liberals both open up party memberships before leadership races. You're technically not allowed to be members of multiple parties, but it's not like they can actually enforce that.
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I believe in a ranked choice system that you're not required to rank the max amount if you don't want to. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though.
Well I guess you can make of a system what you want to make of it, if you are doing electoral reform.
But I think the idea of many people making no 2nd choice because of lack of information actually throws gasoline on the fire of it being a system weighted towards the politically engaged. I think a lot of people musing about electoral reforms wouldn't mind this effect, but there is a fundamental antidemocratic bent to this hoping the unengaged participate less.
We sort of do. The NDP and Liberals both open up party memberships before leadership races. You're technically not allowed to be members of multiple parties, but it's not like they can actually enforce that.
I was thinking at the riding level for individual MPs not just the last leader level. The goal being to get less partisan people and less extreme people as MPs.
But also the leadership ones for the NDP and conservatives have been had fees associated with them.
I think if I was making one change it would be open primaries. Yes it doubles the cost of the elections and probably increases campaign length but everyone should be able to pick one party each election to vote for candidates.
This way in Alberta we could choose to vote for the conservative primary and choose the most progressive candidate instead of just having to eat turd cookies. The current system of active party members selecting candidates leads to polarization.
Join the party and vote. I think it is crazy more people do not do that.
The leadership races of most of the parties are decided by tiny margins most of the time.
Looking at the Conservative Party of Canada:
- 2020: O'Toole beat MacKay by 4800 votes on the 3rd ballot. I still believe to this day that if MacKay had won that leadership race that the Conservatives would have formed government.
- 2017: In the race before that, Sheer beat Bernier by less than a thousand votes on the second ballot (Bernier won the first ballot by 2500 votes). Neither option was really good but it is crazy how close the vote was.
- 2022: This race defies Canadian history of party leadership races. PP won by a landslide but with the allegations of foreign interference and the crazy inflation of the voting numbers, I find it hard to believe it is real. For example, the guy in 4th place in 2022 had 22K votes, which is more votes than anyone in the previous two leadership races. Lewis and Charest each had over 40K votes, which means each of them received more votes in 2022 than were cast in the previous two leadership races... and PP won with 295K votes.
Ignoring the one outlier, these leadership races are often super tight and it does not take much organizing to win. The provincial parties are even tighter.
This applies to non-leadership races too. Nixon tried to win the nomination in Signal Hill, and failed to win it because the nomination was contested and the party voted for McKenzie. Then the Conservatives decided to dropship Nixon into Confederation without contest and he managed to lose to the only Liberal in Calgary.
So again, join the party, pay attention to the nominations and vote when you get the chance to. If you see someone being uncontested in a nomination then you should wonder why no one else wants to run (or question why no one else is being given the opportunity to try).
Not enough people are involved so small amounts of votes make large differences which allows small special interest groups to spend small amounts of money and get large results.
Your proposed solution though is keep the status quo. I have voted for party leaders in all the parties but I can’t be bothered to figure out when nomination meetings are. An expectation that active involvement in an individual party is required to fight more extreme positions from getting elected is not going to be a solution.
Join the party and vote. I think it is crazy more people do not do that.
The leadership races of most of the parties are decided by tiny margins most of the time.
Looking at the Conservative Party of Canada:
- 2020: O'Toole beat MacKay by 4800 votes on the 3rd ballot. I still believe to this day that if MacKay had won that leadership race that the Conservatives would have formed government.
- 2017: In the race before that, Sheer beat Bernier by less than a thousand votes on the second ballot (Bernier won the first ballot by 2500 votes). Neither option was really good but it is crazy how close the vote was.
- 2022: This race defies Canadian history of party leadership races. PP won by a landslide but with the allegations of foreign interference and the crazy inflation of the voting numbers, I find it hard to believe it is real. For example, the guy in 4th place in 2022 had 22K votes, which is more votes than anyone in the previous two leadership races. Lewis and Charest each had over 40K votes, which means each of them received more votes in 2022 than were cast in the previous two leadership races... and PP won with 295K votes.
Ignoring the one outlier, these leadership races are often super tight and it does not take much organizing to win. The provincial parties are even tighter.
This applies to non-leadership races too. Nixon tried to win the nomination in Signal Hill, and failed to win it because the nomination was contested and the party voted for McKenzie. Then the Conservatives decided to dropship Nixon into Confederation without contest and he managed to lose to the only Liberal in Calgary.
So again, join the party, pay attention to the nominations and vote when you get the chance to. If you see someone being uncontested in a nomination then you should wonder why no one else wants to run (or question why no one else is being given the opportunity to try).
Why are you claiming there has only been a single outlier and only looking at Conservative leadership votes? Carney had ~85%, Trudeau had ~75% and Singh much closer but he still won by more than 30% points.
