Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system...

[afransen TO]

So the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform has arrived at its first proposed voting system. They have chosen a class of voting systems and will iron out a specific proposal in a couple weeks. They will also choose another system and flesh it out a bit later before comparing the two proposals and arriving at one to put to referendum.

If you're wondering what MMP is, it stands for Mixed Member Proportional Representation. It usually has some proportion of representatives (60-70%-ish) elected in ridings in some manner (first past the post, for instance), and the remainder elected from party lists to make the makeup of the legislature more closely approximate the share of votes each party received.

Here's an excerpt from this page:link




"An early consensus. The Citizens Assembly voted on Sunday on their first preferred alternative system. They plan to design two, and then choose one.

Mixed Member Proportional - 78
STV - 8
Parallel - 6
List PR - 3
Alternative Vote (IRV) - 2
Two Round System - 0

That’s a lot stronger consensus than most expected.

On Saturday they settled their three key objectives for system design, after breaking out into five group sessions. Chair George Thomson quipped “you’re making my life easy†when all five groups chose the same three:

“The number of seats a party wins should closely reflect its vote share;â€

“Each MPP should represent a geographic area of the province;†and

“Voters should be able to indicate their preferred party and candidate†separately, that is, have two votes, one for the party, one for the local candidate.

The groups explained their reasons for proportionality: fairness, no wasted votes, each vote should go to electing a representative, and it “reflects Canadian values.†A teacher quoted his grade 9 student as saying “it just makes sense.â€

A PR-sceptic had “misgivings.†He wanted the objective to be “more closely reflect its vote share†but it said “closely.†The member from Temiskaming was fast with his rebuttal. “To say more (proportional) than we have now is ridiculous, ’cause, you know, throwing darts at a door is better than we have now, so let’s get real . . . just to say “more than we have now†is, you know, jeez, why are we all here.†(Applause.) Still, how closely is a decision for the design stage, as the Chair pointed out.

Next step: preliminary design of the first alternative (MMP) on the weekend of March 3 and 4. Apparently that’s two-vote regional MMP."

 

[spmarshall]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

Considering that we had 130 MPPs, reduced to 103 (and now up a bit since), adding 30-40 members based on representation is not out of line population wise compared to all other provincial assemblies.

It will result in more minority governments, though, but it will guarantee at least 2-3 Green Party members (maybe even more), perhaps one or two from other small parties as well.

 

[afransen TO]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

Anything can happen, but one such system (with 139 MPPs) had 4 Green members and a more balanced Liberal majority as a result when using votes cast in the last provincial election. Of course, a different system changes the motivations for some voters, so we have to take this with a grain of salt. I doubt any 'new' party other than the Greens would win seats.

 

[garden of evil]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

There are 2 big questions I have on this.

Lets say for argument sake that 70% of the seats are elected using the current first past the post system. 30% would then be assigned based on the % of total votes that party gets in the election. How are those 30% of the seats assigned? Lets pretend that the Libs, Tories and NDP all get exactly 33.3% of the vote, irregardless of the first past the post results. Does that mean that 1/3 of the 30% (10%) goes to each party, or does it mean that the assignment of that 30% goes to equal out the total seats by party %? So, if the liberals get 30% of the vote, but 40% of the seats, does that mean they get less of the 30% proportional representation, as to bring the first past the post #'s more in line with the overal percentage, or does the 30% of the seats go soley based on the party percentage?

Second question. Who gets these seats? Would each party come up with a list of candidates listed first, second, thrid etc who would be assigned a seat for the proportional section? This could create huge issues. Party insiders would be appointed, not individuals that the public may want to see making important decisions.

Or, would the party have to give those seats to the candidates who were not elected, but came the closest to being elected? If so, then there could be over-representation for certain areas of the province, and neglect of others.

 

[spmarshall]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

Second question. Who gets these seats? Would each party come up with a list of candidates listed first, second, thrid etc who would be assigned a seat for the proportional section? This could create huge issues. Party insiders would be appointed, not individuals that the public may want to see making important decisions.

Pro-PR groups like Fair Vote Canada claim that these lists would be used to help shore up representation of women, minorities, etc, who could get choice spots at the top of lists. Party insiders often get preference at riding nomination meetings anyway - how does a loser like Maloney keep running for the Liberals in Ottawa Centre otherwise?

Having a list should hopefully reduce the ugly nomination meetings, and ridings actually represented by locals, not parachute candidates and leadership hopefuls (here's looking at you, Iggy).

 

[cacruden]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

My concerns with a PR system is that our parliamentary system is more of a party based system than an individual representative based system. i.e. MPs are strongly encouraged to vote the party line (if you don't vote party line -- you are marginalized, and sidelined within that party). All plum assignments on things like committies etc are controlled by few (often one) people.

Introducing a PR system, will lead to most of the elected governments being minority governments. This would not be a problem if MPs actually represented their ridings, and not the parties, but this is not the case. The PR system will lead to the lesser parties exerting more influence than their popular vote should entitle them to.

If the system were changed to a system where parties did/could not exert as much influence, then it might work.

If a PR system is just patched onto our existing system, the system itself will become more undemocratic in nature than our current system.

 

[EnviroTO]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

There could be two choices to make on the ballot, (a) the name of the candidate chosen to represent the riding, and (b) the party preferred to govern. Each party riding association would put forward one candidate in each riding as they do now with some candidates running as independant. The independant candidates would need to win in their riding as they could not be proporationally elected, but the system would give good independents a greater chance of winning their local seat because the voter could vote for the independant local candidate but still choose to vote for a party. The riding seats would be filled first and then top vote getting per riding (percentage based) but unelected party candidates would be used to balance the vote to make it proportional.

Lets say there are 110 riding seats plus 40 proportional seats. During a fictional election party A gets 75, B gets 24, and C gets 11 riding seats but the vote split was 55% for A, 25% for B, 15% for C, and 5% for D. Based on the vote split party A should have 83 seats, B should have 39, C should have 22, and D should have 7. The 40 proportional seats would attempt to resolve the seat to vote ratio as much as possible. So 8 members from party A which were unelected but top vote capturing would become proportional representatives, 15 from party B, 10 from party C, and 7 from party D.

So a vote which could have been skewed based on the first past the post system plus regional preferences to have a vote of 68, 29, 10, and 0% is corrected to match the vote of the province which was 55, 25, 15, and 5%.

 

[prometheus the supremo]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

so basicly having the public vote on the level where currently the riding association is voting? like the nominations?

 

[EnviroTO]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

No, the riding associatings could work exactly the same as they do now.

Currently the voter chooses a riding representative with a party attached which leads to making an evaluation of the person running in the riding a secondary importance, with the focus being on selecting the party for most people. So the first strike against the current system is that the candidates winning aren't necessarily truly endorsed by the electorate. Secondly the current system ends up with a house that isn't proportional to the total vote.

The MMP system could have two ways of winning for each riding candidate chosen by the party. The first chance at winning would be to get the most votes in the riding... these wins would be the normal riding candidates. The second chance at winning would be to have not lost by very much in the riding so the proportional balancing would end up using the candidate to fill the balance of seats.

The voter would vote for the riding candidate and the preferred party separately, so a voter could choose a Liberal candidate to represent the riding but choose the NDP party as their preferred party to govern. The party votes would be used to determine the proportional split, and the candidate votes would be used to determine the most qualified candidates.

 

[prometheus the supremo]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

just an eample: say every riding elected an ndp MP but every riding elected a conservative PM, parlament would be full of ndp MP's and we'd have a conservative PM?

 

[cacruden]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

Which comes back to my point, in a three+ party system, where there is always a minority voting for the party in power, the smallest party then weilds enormous powers that it should not have. It will not weaken the party system.... it will likely strenghten it .... there will be no room for independants.

 

[EnviroTO]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

just an eample: say every riding elected an ndp MP but every riding elected a conservative PM, parlament would be full of ndp MP's and we'd have a conservative PM?

No, the propotional seats are suggested to be between 30 and 40 percent of the house. So there would be 60-70 percent NDP seats and 30-40 percent Conservative seats in that scenario. In most cases the proportional 30-40 percent seats would fully balance the house but in extreme cases the system would focus on representative quality rather than party quality... which is probably how it should be. It is hard to imagine perfect representatives screwing up the country. It is probably far more likely that in the current system bad representatives under a good party platform would screw up the country.

 

[EnviroTO]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

the smallest party then weilds enormous powers that it should not have.

What do you mean powers it should not have? If the smallest party got 5% of the vote it should have 5% or the power shouldn't it?

It will not weaken the party system.... it will likely strenghten it .... there will be no room for independants.

Not so. People would be more likely to vote for a good independant when their first vote can choose the independant but their second vote can put the party in power they choose. Right now the lack of party affiliation means independants are having votes taken away by people worried about the balance of power rather than the quality of local candidates.

 

[afransen TO]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

Enviro, I think what he means is that a situation with two leading parties having 45% vote shares and a third party have 10% vote share would give the third party the balance of power, and the right to decide what legislation will pass and what will fail. This fails to consider that if the third party is being too unreasonable, the two leading parties will vote together. Actually, many bills pass the House with both the Liberals' and Conservatives' support, especially in a minority situation.

I think I'd be fine with MMP on one condition: the representatives elected in each riding are elected by preferential ballot rather than FPTP. Having riding reps be elected by FPTP retains a lot of the dysfunction we have now in terms of having to vote strategically (Dippers voting Liberal in ridings contested between Liberal and Conservative), whereas with preferential balloting, the optimal way to vote coincides with your ranking of favourite candidates. The idea that prefential balloting is too complicated for voters to understand is bunk. Voters can choose a subset of the candidates to rank, including just one (which is equivalent to marking an X). Counting is more complicated, but it's not untenable. It's practiced in many countries, after all.

 

[cacruden]

Re: Ontario Citizens Assembly comes up with a voting system.

^ Exactly

- You will end up having the governing party,
- The official opposition (which typically will oppose legislation, just because it is their job to be opposition)
- And a third party having the balance of power.

The problem with this is that our system is a party based system (as opposed to the American system which was designed to work without parties), and party discipline is very strong. You have representitives that represent their party in parliament instead of their local constitutants (more often than not). Having individuals elected, independant of the local riding, to represent the party in parliament -- it will be even worse. But now -- you will have the smallest parties having more power in parliament than their percentage warrants. So you have the worst of both worlds.

I want the person elected from my riding to represent the people of my riding in parliament. My riding is different than other ridings in Quebec, in Alberta, in Nova Scotia. But that all gets diluted in a strong party discipline based system since they are only representing the party line in parliament.