Alternative Voting
In theory and in practice, in most cases AV elects the same candidate as would be elected under First past the post.
Thus AV does not address these unfortunate effects of FPTP:
- leading party's windfall of seats
- artificial one-party sweeps of regions
- strategic voting (voters' bending of votes from their most preferred choice)
and more.
In fact, AV may make these problems even worse.
The Liberal party in Ontario is promising to change prov. elections to AV saying it will
"make things better for all of us", put power back in the hands of voters", "elections that are more optimistic and less polarizing" and "reward voters that find common ground and speak to voters' hopes not their fears".
But the Fair Vote Canada webinair The Alternative Vote: A solution to the democratic deficit? tells us that the evidence shows us that AV does not produce these benefits.
This is in part because AV actually mostly elects the same people who would be elected under FPTP. It uses the same single-winner districts used in FPTP so each district gives all the seats (the one seat) to just one party and does not give any representation to any other party or voting block in the district.
The webinair says that AV
- does not produce proportionality;
- does not ensure representation of third or smaller parties;
- does not produce less adversarial (more co-operative) politics;
- does not end strategic voting,
- does not lead to PR.
It does benefit one party over others.
Why does AV not produce the good things listed above?
For one thing, it makes few changes to whom would be elected under the notoriously-unfair FPTP.
AV always elects the same candidate as would be successful under First past the post if any candidate has majority of the vote.
In about a third of the federal ridings in 2021 a candidate did have a majority of the votes in the district.
And in other elections at least that many candidates are elected with a majority of the vote. (The number of majority-winners is far too few by itself to ensure proportionality or to prevent mas waste of votes.)
AV would never change the winner in these districts.
And AV usually elects the same candidate as would be successful under First past the post if no candidate has majority of the vote.
if no candidate has majority of the vote, vote transfers are conducted to eventually consolidate a majority of votes behind one of the leading candidates. Usually in historic AV elections the winner is the same as was leading before the vote transfers.
Vote transfers can never benefit the least popular candidate who is immediately eliminated, followed if necessary by slightly more popular ones. The best outcome that supporters of these parties can hope for is to help elect a candidate who is more preferred over another of a choice between two or three, none of them being the voters' first choice.
Under AV, there is no attempt to elect members proportionally to votes cast or to represent all parties fairly in proportion to votes cast.
Historical examples of minority-winners
In the 2021 federal election, 219 seats were filled by candidates who did not have majority of the vote. A majority of elected MPs in every province (except Alberta) were elected by a minority of the votes in their districts.
In the 2018 Ontario election, about three-fifths of the MLAs were elected without receiving a majority of the votes in their districts. (A majority of the votes in these districts were wasted.)
(for more info on 2018 Ontario election, see my Montopedia blog
The Disproportionality of the 2018 Ontario Election Overall the 2018 Ontario Election disproportional to voters' support for parties. Many MPPs not have majority su...
Historic AV contests usually elected the same as under FPTP
The high incidence of minority winners under FPTP in the 2021 Canadian election and other elections would indicate that change from FPTP to AV might produce large change, but actually in historic use of AV, AV contests usually elected the same as would have been elected under FPTP.
So switch to AV would produce no change in proportionality of representation
Alberta
Alberta used AV to fill most of the seats in prov. elections from 1926 to 1955.
Seat-winners different from FPTP winners (leading candidate in first count)
1926 2 (government lost one and gained one)
1930 (all winners same as under FPTP) (one seat later changed through recount)
1935 (all winners same as under FPTP)
1940 2 (government lost one and gained one)
1944 (all winners same as under FPTP)
1948 (all winners same as under FPTP)
1952 (all winners same as under FPTP)
1955 4 (government lost four)
Manitoba
Manitoba used AV to fill most of the seats in prov. elections from 1927 to 1953.
1927 2 (Government (Progressive party) gained two seats) (one other seat later changed through recount)
1932 1 (turn-over in St,. Boniface - Cons. leading in 1st Count, Labour won in end)
1936 1 (turn-over in St,. Boniface - Lib.-Prog. leading in 1st Count, Labour won in end)
1941 (all winners same as under FPTP)
1945 (all winners same as under FPTP)
1949 (all winners same as under FPTP)
1953 1 (Minnedosa turn-over - Lib-Prog leading in 1st Count, SC won in the end)
===========================
With so few "turn-overs," there is no surprise that the AV vote transfers had little impact on the dis-proportionality produced by FPTP.
The FVC webinair says that AV
- does not produce proportionality; - does not ensure representation of third or smaller parties; - does not produce less adversarial (more co-operative) politics; - does not end strategic voting, - does not lead to PR. AV does benefit one party over others. Australia AV in use in Australia for more than 100 years. its record there not good. in the webinair at 17:30 Australian AV elections produce wrong-winner elections. [my opinion is that any election system that uses lots of districts separates and splits the votes so produces dis-proportionality.) 20:14 Harold Jansen in his research on use of AV in Canada found that AV did not produce more fair representation for small parties. It encouraged more parties to run but still the large parties took as many seats as they had under FPTP - or even more than that. AV is expected to benefit Liberal party so should be spurned out of general fairness as well as its general failure to do what its proponents promise. at 23:00 the webinair shows that Liberals would have taken more seats federally in recent elections if election had used AV. at 24:00 the webinair shows that AV would have given Liberal party more seats in recent Ontario elections. at 36:59 and 37:48 - Australian reformer Anna Keenan (sp?) published her views that Australian AV produces almost same result as under FPTP so has little effect on strategic voting, does not endure proportionality, does not strengthen smaller parties or does not prevent massive swings from left to right and resulting wasteful policy lurches. (other important points were made - watch the webinair for yourself!)
PEI in the webinair at 1:24:00 Anita in the wrap-up of the webinair points to the more decent electoral reform taking place in PEI where Citizens Assembly is being activated to form popular alternative to the present system - a much more fair process than the Ontario Liberal's "AV or nothing" effort. =================================== At least that is what I got from the FVC webinair. "Moral of the story": FPTP is not good.
Change is needed.
AV does not change enough or even makes things worse.
Liberal party looks greedy by working to bring in system that benefits only itself if it was to get government.
Instead of switching to AV, I suggest PR through single voting in multi-member districts or some system of top-up (MMP) or both.
Tom Monto, Edmonton
montotom@yahoo.ca
===============
2021 federal election
The provincial break-down:
majority vote winners minority-vote winners
NF 2 5
NS 2 9
PEI 1 3
NB 4 6
Quebec 33 45
Ontario 35 86
MN 6 8
SK 8 6
AB 23 11
BC 5 37
119 219
===========================================
===========================================
コメント