Electoral reform in Canada? lol

[VCrakeV]

So, Justin Trudeau promised to reform the first-past-the-post electoral system. That was a few months ago, when he was trailing behind. He ended up with less than 40% of the vote, but almost 55% of the seats; the NDP received nearly 20% of the vote, but only 13% of the seats; and Elizabeth May received 3.5% of the vote, and a whopping 0.3% of the seats.

Do you really think he'll do any good to the electoral system? Does he think he just got lucky? Or will we get something similar to the "fair" elections act?

[The Intransigent Faction]

Possibly. While the Liberals won through the current electoral system, their share of the popular vote increased. They also won more of the popular vote than any other single party. The Liberals also like to portray themselves as the "big tent" that best compromises between different factions of bourgeois interests. However, there is still logic to the argument that a party which won a majority through the current electoral system will not be inclined to change it.

That's saying far too much about this, though. It doesn't matter how the cards are dealt when the game is still rigged. All this talk about percentages of seats and popular votes fits snugly into the "horse race" narrative in which people are encouraged to rally behind their favourite team/colour/person. Meanwhile, discussion of the narrow range of choices within the system and the absolute inherent inadequacy of policies of a bourgeois government for resolving the inherent problems of capitalism is sidelined.

So the question isn't really "How will the election results affect Trudeau's promise of electoral reform?" Rather, it's "Why spend our time giving a fuck about how bourgeois leaders are chosen rather than organizing an organic, democratic alternative to replace their regime?" At the very least, questions which weren't asked in the election campaign about Bill C-51 and the TPP need to be asked now.

[VCrakeV]

Yeah, that's my big two as well. I just wanted to know what everyone else thinks. It's not that an electoral reform would be great, or even useful... It just makes me think more and more that Trudeau is not who he claims to be (even on the bourgeois level).

Speaking of which, what do you predict will happen with his other promises? The "big two"?

[blake 3:17]

I'm in favour of electoral reform in Canada and I do think it's a possibility.

One of the problems for a purist proportional representation is an inadequacy to represent to represent the regions.

The Ontario Liberal government did offer the Citizens Assembly which resulted in the referendum on MMP, which I strongly supported, but it got defeated overwhelmingly. A huge part of that was that the proposal did seem confusing, and most people are not up the weirdness of our electoral system.

One thing that came from the Citizens Assembly that I thought was good thinking, was that in order to accomodate the popular vote you could just add a few extra seats.

So just for example -- let's say a party gets over 2% of the popular vote without winning a riding, they'd at least one seat.

[blake 3:17]

The true test of Trudeau’s new politics? Electoral reform
Will the Liberals take on Parliament Hill’s version of Dungeons & Dragons?

Evan Solomon
October 28, 2015

Nothing on Parliament Hill says “Screw you” better than the words “Democratic reform.” That’s why there’s a curious mix of optimism and cynicism surrounding Justin Trudeau’s promise to make the 2015 federal campaign the last first-past-the-post election.

The current winner-take-all system has few defenders. After all, the Liberals won a little more than 39 per cent of the popular vote, but took 184 seats, or almost 55 per cent of the House of Commons. It was no better under Stephen Harper’s majority. Trudeau himself, who just benefited from the old system, has long argued that there should be a closer alignment between popular vote and seat count. So, what will he do?

The Trudeau promise is either a crafty ploy to solidify power or a genuine desire to work with other parties to fix a broken system.

Let’s be cynical for a second, set aside those sunny ways, and follow path one. Call it payback time.

Liberals could ram through a new electoral system that would put the Conservatives adrift on the political tundra, gnawing on their boots to survive while waiting to be discovered by a Franklin-style search party. That system is called the Ranked ballot, and it just happens to be the one Trudeau prefers.

In the basic ranked ballot system—also called “alternative vote” or “preferential ballots” (there are multiple variations)—you mark down your first, second and third choice of candidate. If a candidate gets 50 per cent of the vote, they win outright, but if no candidate gets 50 per cent, then the candidate with the lowest vote total is knocked off the list and their vote is split to the others according to each voter’s preference. That happens until one candidate reaches the 50 per cent threshold.

It’s no great surprise why the Liberals like this system. “Given that the largest block of voters in Canada is now Liberal-NDP switchers, they are the parties that would most benefit from any ranked ballot system,” says Darryl Bricker, the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs. “The Conservative party would likely suffer from their lack of second-ballot support.” In other words, in this system, Liberals could solidify power and still fulfill their democratic reform promise. For a party with no natural allies, like the Conservatives, it could be a fatal blow. (Worth noting, however, looking at the 2011 vote, the Liberals were not second choice on most ballots, so it doesn’t work all the time!)

Conservatives already sense the trap. At a recent post-election gathering hosted by Maclean’s, the Conservatives’ former spokesman Kory Teneycke thundered on about the need for full public consultation in the form of a referendum. To be fair, many supporters of a more robust proportional representation system agree that a referendum or plebiscite making any major change to the electoral system is essential.

But a senior Liberal speaking to me on background said there is actually no need for a referendum. The Liberals ran on changing the system, they have promised to strike a multi-partisan committee and come back with an answer within 18 months. That would be the required public consultation. Then they could, if they wanted, legitimately put forward legislation and change our system.

It might not go down this path at all, but the Conservatives’ paranoia that this is all about political payback is a kind of delicious irony. Blame the cynicism on their own work, beginning with the now infamous fiscal update on Nov. 7, 2008. On that day, the Conservatives announced a plan to end the $1.95-per-vote subsidy.

Immediately, the opposition parties pulled the fire alarm. Under the guise of democratic reform, Stephen Harper’s gang (who, to their credit, had a better organized and energized donor base) were cutting off the federal subsidy to which the Liberals, NDP and Greens had become addicted. The vote subsidy actually served to somewhat level the playing field of the wonky first-past-the-post system. Parties that gained high levels of popular vote, but could not translate those votes into seats—like the NDP and the Greens—actually used the subsidy to build their base. The Conservatives knew this. Cutting off the financial supply lines meant starving them all to death.

Uproar ensured. The confidence vote on that fiscal update precipitated high drama—the short-lived coalition to bring down the Harper government followed by the sudden prorogation of Parliament. Ultimately, after a series of opposition bumbles, Harper temporarily withdrew the idea, survived and went on to win a majority government. And then he cut off the subsidy.

Over the next four years, democratic reform became something of a Halloween prank, the kind where a mischievous kid—in this case, former minister of democratic reform Pierre Poilievre—would put the political equivalent of a paper bag full of dog dirt on the front porch of his neighbours, light it on fire and ring the doorbell. You could see him watching gleefully from behind a committee chair, as they tried to stamp it out, all the while getting covered in … well, you get the idea.

The prank escalated to an all-out war, when Harper weaponized his political drone, Poilievre, programming him to carpetbomb experts from Elections Canada during the fight over the Fair Elections Act. I recall watching the upstanding and modest head of Elections Canada, Marc Mayrand, almost reduced to tears after Poilievre’s public attack, which alleged Mayrand simply wanted “more power “ and “less accountability.” It was a baseless claim, especially after Poilievre had already wilfully misconstrued another report on the Fair Elections Act—this one by the stout, former B.C chief electoral officer, Harry Neufeld. Poilievre pushed the idea there was mass voter fraud occurring by conflating voter irregularities, such as a misspelled name, to sinister voter fraud. Neufeld repeatedly insisted Poilievre was taking his report out of context. The Fair Elections Act was, according to Mayrand and Neufeld, more than just a solution in search of a problem. It was a problem in search of a political wedge.

It’s understandable that in this climate, Trudeau’s suite of parliamentary reforms—from giving MPs more power to taking power away from the Prime Minister’s Office—are regarded with some wariness. But the most consequential reform will be ending the first-past-the-post system.

It is a hard system to defend. As Kelly Carmichael of Fair Vote Canada—an advocacy group for proportional representation—told me, more than nine million Canadians in this past election did not get to elect any representative.

“We have to get rid of these false majorities,” Carmichael said, referring to the fact that neither Harper nor Trudeau got close to a majority of Canadians voting for them. Should a government that gets less than 40 per cent of the vote get to lead as a majority? Shouldn’t the seat totals equate with the popular vote total?

Carmichael believes the ranked ballot is just the same first past-the-post cake, but with more icing sugar, a system that still favours one party over another at the expense of voter choice. “It really doesn’t solve any of the fundamental problems, and likely helps centrist parties such as the Liberals,” she said. “If they don’t have a full, public consultation and possibly even a real, genuine referendum—with a fair question and real public education—then it will all look like a partisan trick.”

Change isn’t going to be easy. As bad as it is, the first-past-the-post system is easy to understand. It’s almost like a long-term employee who looks horrible on paper—there is no logical reason to keep him based on the resumé—but he keeps defying the odds, performing reasonably well. First past the post has actually proven to be surprisingly flexible and responsive.

After all, since the 1990s, Canada has had more changes in government than Italy, the supposed example of unstable proportional representation. Is that so bad? We keep switching from majorities to minorities, wiping out some parties while resurrecting others. Our old battered system has actually been quite democratic … except, of course, it’s not been at all. As Fair Vote points out on its very comprehensive web site, in the 21 elections since the start of the Second World War, Canada has had only four real majority governments. Four! Most people never get their vote counted.

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-true-test-of-trudeaus-new-politics-electoral-reform/

[ChangeAndChance]

Keeping an eye on this: https://www.trudeaumetre.ca/

[Comrade Jacob]

Considering they got a larger portion of the seats than they did of the vote I think they will backtrack.

[Burzhuin]

I'm in favour of electoral reform in Canada and I do think it's a possibility.

One of the problems for a purist proportional representation is an inadequacy to represent to represent the regions.

So just for example -- let's say a party gets over 2% of the popular vote without winning a riding, they'd at least one seat.
I think the most logical electoral system would be mixed one: half of seats in parliament distributed between parties according to proportional system, and another half by classical (one MP from electoral district) one.