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Tom Monto

15 percent supplemental seats not enough

Updated: Jul 10, 2020

In writing a different post on how BC could have/should have conducted its 2018 electoral change referendum, I first re-interpreted the question to be:

Do you want BC to add supplemental seats (about 15 percent of the total) based on regional party percentages yes or no?


-Do you want BC to add supplemental seats (about 40 percent of the total) based on overall party percentages yes or no?


This had the advantage of parsing the options down to basic questions for voters, instead of lumping two different systems together in each of the options for voters to vote on.


However I see now that my re-interpretation (and I think the original question) does not show understanding of the limits of elections conducted in BC and across the country.


There are just not enough representatives to hope to get any real benefit out of the small number of supplemental seats allowed under such proposals.


Regional supplemental seats - about 15 percent of the total.


Thus in a region electing as much as 20 seats - that is, a more than 20 percent of the total 87 seats used in BC elections - probably an unusually large region - there would be only 3 supplemental seats. If these seats are based on "regional party percentages," then a party would have to have a quarter of the region vote to take a supplemental seat. This is using the same quota as used in STV -- if three parties each take one vote more than a quarter of the vote, they would each have more votes than any other party so would fill the three seats.


With the few supplemental seats involved, there would be no representation allowed for a party that may get 20 percent, 15 percent or 10 percent of the regional vote. Even though it seems very fair to provide such.


Regarding "supplemental seats (about 40 percent of the total) based on overall party percentages", the same limitations apply.


40 percent of 87 is 35 seats. So a party has to receive about 3 percent to be eligible for even one supplemental seat. Even a party received 11 percent of the vote but won no FPTP contests, would get only 3 seats, instead of the 9 it is due proportionally.


Meantime the districts would be larger to free up these supplemental seats - if the number of MLAs is not increased. Elections in these larger districts, if still using FPTP, would be even more un-proportional, as larger minorities would be hidden by single victories of the leading candidate, whether he or she has a majority support in the district or not. It is rightly said that under FPTP the only way for a minority of voters in a district to have representation is if it wins the seat, which of course produces its own unfairness.


If the 2017 BC election was held using supplemental seats, the result may have been

2017 Est. 2017 election, with supplemental seats

FPTP District vote Overall supplemental seats Total

(p.c. of votes) party

seats

87 seats 52 35 seats 87 seats

Liberal 43 26 15 (40.4) 41

NDP 41 25 14 (40) 39

Green 3 1 6 (17) 7

Conservative 0 0 (1) 0

Independent 0 0 0 (1) 0.


So other than the Greens getting a few more seats, the different electoral system does not seem to change the complexion of the legislature.


The Greens are still under-represented (their 17 percent of the the votes should have given them 15 seats), as are the lesser parties.


The two leading parties still over-represented.

The Liberals and NDP are estimated to get 26 and 25 of the 52 district seats.

(I used the percentage of seats in the 2017 election, where the Liberal got 43 seats out of 87, and assume at least as much windfall to the leading party, then

Liberals would receive 52 X .4942 = 26 seats.

NDP 52 X .4712 = 25 seats,

leaving just one district seat for the Greens and none for others.)

But the most popular parties may do even better in the district elections in a system that has supplemental seats, due to the use of larger districts.


A way to make the regional vote count for more is to have just two or three regions in a province.

Say in BC just two regions: Vancouver and the "rural" area. Say if "Vancouver" included Surrey and Richmond, Coquitlam, Westminster, that would give the region 40 seats producing 6 supplementary seats, and any party with 15 percent of the vote would be due one representative at least.


This would leave 47 seats in the "other" region, with roughly equivalent supplementary representation. 15 percent still seems inadequate.


If the proportion of supplementary seats was increased to 40 percent, it would do more to provide proportionality for small parties.


Say Alberta could have three regions: Edmonton, Calgary and the rest.

Edmonton currently has 20 seats, Calgary 26 and the rest 41.

40 percent top-up would mean 8 supplemental seats in Edmonton, where any party with 11 percent of the city vote is due at least one seat.

40 percent top-up would mean 11 supplemental seats in Calgary, where any party with 8 percent of the city vote is due at least one seat.

40 percent top-up in the rest of the province would mean 16 supplemental seats, where any party with 5 percent of the regional vote is due at least one seat.


This has some virtues but STV in city-wide districts is the better option in my opinion.


Pro-rep achieved by party list has the shortcoming that voters do not directly elect the winners of the supplemental seats. STV does allow voters to choose candidates directly, which is more in step with British tradition. STV does allow a voter to say if I can't have my first preference i will get behind a different one.


Two voters backing separate (but similar) parties under party-list can see both their votes wasted, while under STV one or the other, whichever belongs to the least popular party and whose candidate experiences elimination, can move his or her vote behind a candidate of the other party, providing chance to get some benefit for both voting blocks through merging of the two voting blocks.


Thanks for reading.

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