December 2019 Quebec government announced that Quebecers would vote on a referendum on electoral reform in conjunction with the next provincial election to be held in 2022.
The referendum will decide whether or not the province will discard the FPTP system and replace it with a mixed proportional system.
Although the final wording of rhe referendum is not established, it looks like the new system if adopted would create two types of MNAs:
80 representing ridings "elected by universal suffrage (the traditional system)" that is, FPTP, plus
45 listed candidates, that is, party-list candidates, who would be elected based on the overall score of the party in each of Quebec’s 17 administrative regions.
There will still be a total of 125 representatives in the legislature.
Voters will be handed two ballots,
one to elect an MNA for their district (apparently still elected through FPTP)
and another bearing a list of regional candidates proposed by the party or an independent who decides to run.
But there will be a restriction on which parties can run candidates for the regional seats - a clause of Bill 39 states that to be allowed to run list candidates a party has to have obtained at least 10 per cent of the vote province-wide in the previous election. This would bar the Green Party from having candidates for the regional seats in 2026 unless in 2022 it receives more than the two percent it received in 2018.
The Pro-Rep lobby, the Mouvement Democratie Nouvelle, said it expects the new voting system to improve representation of minorities in the legislature. But is disappointed that Legault did not abide by his party's promise to bring in the new system by the 2022 election. While Legault said it is too big a reform it bring in without a referendum, a referendum - and the four-year delay in implementation it causes - was not part of the 2018 inter-party agreement.
From Montreal Gazette (Sept. 26, 2019): Mouvement vice-president Françoise David, a former QS MNA, blasted the CAQ government for lumping the electoral referendum question in with the general election, which she said is a sure way to confuse people.
If a referendum was thought necessary, the Quebec government could have planned to hold a referendum in 2021 that would have given enough lead time to use the new system in the scheduled 2022 election as the agreement envisioned.
David also criticized Legault and LeBel because they did not spell out in any detail how the referendum will work. Although it seems straightforward -- a count of votes across the province with the majority sentiment being the ruling.
in May 2018, Legault signed a pact with the other parties pledging to put a mixed proportional system in place.
An agreement between all the parties not in power was signed in 2018.
The agreement reads:
"Whereas all political parties made a promise during the general … of 2003, following the Estate General on the Reform of Democratic Institutions to abandon Single Member Plurality due to the glitches it generates that interfere with the equitable representation of citizens.
Whereas any electoral system chosen to replace our current one must adhere to the following six basic principles:
Reflect as closely as possible the popular vote of Quebecers as a whole
Ensure a meaningful link between the electors and the elected
Give each region the political weight to which it is entitled
Promote government stability through measures limiting non-confidence motions
Offer a system that is easy to understand and engage with
Contribute to better representation of women, young people and minorities;
...
Referendum is to read: “Do you agree with replacing the first-past-the-post system by mixed electoral system with regional compensation set out in the Act to establish a new electoral system. Yes/No."
A majority of Quebecers — at least 50 per cent plus one - will be required for it to pass.
So that is the story as I figure it at this stage.
How effective a system electing only 45 listed candidates "based on the overall score of the party in each of Quebec’s 17 administrative regions" will be at producing proportional representation remains to be seen, even leaving aside the tens of thousands or more votes cast for smaller parties that will be ignored. 45 in 17 regions means fewer than three in each.
Will there be more than three parties under-represented in each region? Possible. If so, only three of them could be given one more seat each. Depending on the degree of under-representation, this one sat may do enough or not enough to address the disparity.
A simpler way would just have multi-member districts where each voter casts only one vote, transferable as in STV or even non-transferable -that would produce at the district level roughly proportional representation. This district-level proportionality, conflated across the province, would produce proportional representation in the Quebec National Assembly as a whole.
However, the party-list system does evoke the European flavour that is Quebec - almost all countries in Europe use party-list pro-rep.
Two - Ireland and Malta - use Single Transferable Voting, the only form of pro-rep used in Canadian history - having been used in Alberta and Manitoba to elect MLAs in 17 provincial elections.
We'll see if Quebecois vote for change, and then see how that change is implemented, and how it works in practice.
It will be interesting.
But I believe it is too bad that the choice for Quebec involves a system never before tried in Canada!
Thanks for reading.
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