RE: National Post article Colby Cosh "The case that could prove Canadian elections were unconstitutional all along" (Sept. 25, 2020)
To start with, the Charter challenge being launched by Fair Vote Canada of today's electoral system will not prove that elections were unconstitutional - only that for them to continue into the future would be against our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Charter is interpreted to mean that all should have equal and effective representation. The First Past The Post system used today does not give us that.
Colby defends the present FPTP system by saying that it permits affirmative action to the extent of ensuring more than equal representation of sparely populated rural areas, many of which are muchly populated by Natives.
He says that all proportional representation systems have the credo “one man, one vote and the votes all count exactly the same”. But I don't know a single electoral reformer who would so completely leave out half the voters as Colby seems to think we do.
And to say that votes should all count exactly the same would be an unattainable goal under any system.
Dividing 16M votes into 338 seats requires a large degree of rounding off, for one thing.
Votes should have pretty much the same power though, all in all. A representation ratio of four rural voters to seven urban voters was found to be acceptable by the Manitoba Legislature in the 1950s. Thus 20,000 rural voters have a seat, then 35,000 urban voters would have a seat for themselves. It's a bit steep but works as a starting point.
It is certainly less of a discrepancy than the inequality we experience nowadays under FPTP.
I laugh when I hear rightists complain about not having adequate representation in the House of Commons or complaining about how it took however many votes - about 59,000 - to elect a Conservative MP compared to how many it took to elect a Liberal.
I laugh because they refuse to see the extreme inequality of how many more more votes it took to elect a NDP-er in Saskatchewan and Alberta - 235,000.
To elect a Liberal MP in Alberta or Saskatchewan is not even measurable as none were elected in those two provinces despite the party coming in second in the vote count in Alberta and third in Saskatchewan.
But I don't believe there is a reformer alive who thinks each vote can be counted exactly equally.
For one, many votes will be wasted even under the best pro-rep system. But it is unconscionable to continue wasting 40 to 60 percent of the vote in each election as we do now under FPTP.
STV is a district-level system of proportional representation. I prefer it to any other form of pro-rep for its flexibility, how it depends on building consensus behind most of the successful candidates, how it preserves local representation through districts, and more.
But even under STV, votes are wasted. Many fewer votes than under FPTP but still some.
In STV, the usual statistic is that the amount of the vote that will be considered wasted - not used to elect anyone - is about equal to the total district vote divided by one more than the number of seats. The exact number of votes that did not see their choice elected will be something south of that because many votes considered wasted actually saw their choice elected previously without having to use the vote itself. The difference between exhausted and "satisfied without use", you could say.
Party-list proportional representation systems see perhaps 20 percent of the vote thrown out out of hand when a number of small parties do not achieve the threshold required to have representation. I am fine with extreme parties not having representation but do feel their supporters should have a chance to transfer their votes to other candidates more widely acceptable and with better chance of winning. Such transfers are common practice under STV.
Colby makes the accusation that "the actual adoption of proportional representation would bring the curtain down on the whole idea of sparsely peopled Labrador or Nunavut or Churchill-Keewatinook Aski having the share in Parliament that they have now. The discrimination we now practice in favour of these areas, and their Aboriginal denizens, would become impossible."
But any electoral system that uses districts can have different-sized districts. In fact it would not be humanly possible to have the exact same-sized districts or to have the same voter-to-seat ratio all across the country.
All our rights and freedoms are tempered by commonsense and social goals.
If it is a social goal to have a fewer votes per seat in sparsely-populated areas, then that would be allowed.
The inequality that the Fair Vote's Charter challenge addresses is the unfairness of it taking 235,000 NDP votes in Alberta/Sask to win one seat when it takes only 34,000 votes to win a Conservative seat in the same provinces.
This is not about equal number of voters per seat as a requirement but the confirmation of the need to replace the FPTP system with one of the pro-rep systems now so well known and proven to be fair where applied.
The present system denies representation to the relative minority groups of voters while awarding seats to candidates who do not have the support of a majority of voters in their districts.
That is minority rule, and it is wrong. You could even say it is unconstitutional!
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Thanks for reading.
Check out my other blogs on STV, if you get a chance.
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The factoid "A representation ratio of four rural voters to seven urban voters was found to be acceptable by the Manitoba Legislature in the 1950s." was noted in Jansen, STV in Alberta and Manitoba, p. 221 (available online).
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