Democratic equality -- "political representation" from a proportional representation perspective

The concept of "unanimous constituencies" is pivotal to the theory of Proportional Representation.

There are strong "gearing" effects in elected representation -

if FPTP is used, the voting blocks other than the plurality (or majority) constituency are not represented in the district.

if a party can be excluded from rep. in any one district, and that might happen in every district, that means that a party may not get representation in any districts at all and thus no voice in the chamber.

but under PR, if a party with say one percent of the votes is guaranteed to get at least one seat in a 100-seat chamber, then it has some representation in the chamber. 

say electorate of 1M, 100 in chamber,      practical threshold is 10,000 votes

a party with 10,000 takes at least one seat (unless some electoral threshold prevents).

even if electorate is divided into districts, under PR, if a candidate or party gets 10,000 votes in a district, it is guaranteed to get one seat in that district, and thus at least one seat in the chamber.

with overall top-up, as in list PR at-large (Netherlands) or NZ MMP, that 10,000 may be guaranteed to yield one seat even if spread across whole country.

(but not possible in Canada)

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say we have five parties under FPTP

A -- the most-popular party with plurality in 45-50 percent of districts (or 51 to 60 percent of districts)

B -- the second-m-pop. party with plurality in say 30 percent of districts

C -- "third party" with 20 percent of votes but plurality in only five-ten percent of districts.

D -- the least-popular party but has local concentration, taking less than five seats under FPTP

E -- the least-popular party.

(in real life there may be a couple Cs and Ds, and many Es.)

(in last election, NDP dropped from a C to  an almost-D, at least judging by votes cast, due to massive degree of strategic voting.)

won just seven seats.

under FPTP, chamber has many A MPs, some Bs,  a few Cs, one or two Ds, and none E members.

under FPTP, many kinds of districts:

A-majority or plurality districts     -- majority of seats or large plurality of seats

B-majority or plurality districts     -- say about 30 percent of seats

C-majority or plurality districts     --   say about 10 percent of seats

D-majority or plurality districts --       less than five.

in most districts, white male educated (white collar) middle- or upper-class are elected.

many or most are lawyers --- legal profession is massively over-represented.

under such a system, A would form majority government or at least putter along without firm need for coalition in part because early election is just a way to take chance to get more seats.

largest party dominates the chamber, more than even the B party, who dominates more than C or D or E.

A gets more debate time, more press coverage, total ability to pass their preferred laws and budget spending

media look at two-party contests, between A and B even if local contests see C or D actually win seats.

any party, even a D party, may get representation if it has plurality in just one district.

under FPTP, the D party or an Independent candidate sometimes gets more representation than it is due proportionally, but sometimes none at all.

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PR with MMDs

rep. is established in each district separately (unless some overall top-up or districts is at-large, such as in NSW Senate election) 

but generally any party with say 3 percent of votes overall will have at least one percent of seats.

any party with at least 20 percent of vote overall will have its due share of seats. (I am guessing)

no longer is there geographical representation, now each member is elected by its supporters and only needs to represent them if wants re-election. 

if does not care about re-election, then can do whatever he or she wants anyway, even cross the floor!

rep. in most districts might be:   6 parts A,   4 parts B,   2 parts C,   0 parts D,   1 part E          (if DM allows) 

.

in D-friendly areas, rep.  might be: 5 parts A,   3 parts B,   1 parts C,   3 parts D,   1 part E             (if DM allows)

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under PR,  the chamber has rep. for all five parties.

no one party has sweep of a province, or region, or even a city.

all (or almost all) parties will have rep in each province (at least it is possible if the party runs candidates in at least one district in every province)  

no artificial regionalism, which softens the polarization (and talk of separation and civil war)

class, gender, ethnic/linguistic, regional interests all will be represented.

due to various barriers, working class and women still under-represented.

The hope is universal rep. will act as release valve on class, ethnic or linguistic grievances, stopping an already occurring cycle of rage and/or preventing boiling into direct action, riots or civil war.

(sometimes reforms come too late or might only prevent even worse behaviour than occurs - a hard thing to measure)

still, the largest party (or a coalition led by largest party) dominates the chamber, more than even the B party, who dominates more than C or D or E, except for coalition partner C, D or E, which perhaps gets shadow prestige (I don't know about how this works in practice,  never having lived under a coalition government)

A or A-led coalition still has more time, more press coverage, total ability (due to power of majority in the chamber) to pass their preferred laws and budget spending.

but B, C, D and even little E party gets a voice, and thus at least theoretically a chance to amend proposed legislation, or perhaps through human contact in the chamber and in the halls and cafeteria, assert modulation of legislation even back at the writing stage.

and one or more of the smaller parties will have "shadow power" in the coalition.

IMO, even if cabinet is coalition or some proportional thing, not all points of view in cabinet can get their way.

diverse parties, not to mention diverse individuals, means different point of view, and not all can prevail.

but if chamber does not include C or D or E parties, they have no voice there

if no B or C or D elected in the Prairies or in Toronto, then there is no chance for Prairie Liberal, Prairie NDP, or Toronto Conservative voters (to be Canada-specific) to have voice in chamber.

(Conservatives elected on the Prairies and NDP elected in BC or Ontario can represent class-based interests of Conservative, Liberal or NDP voters on prairies/Toronto, but perhaps not quite the same, and certainly that does not soften the artificial regionalism/polarization.)

if cabinet not have B or C or D or E, they have no voice in the cabinet.

if no B or C or D elected in the Prairies or in Toronto, then there is no chance for prairie Liberals or Toronto Conservatives (to be Canada-specific) to have voice in cabinet.

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so gear analogy - or the terms "necessary but not sufficient" --  applies

"necessary but not sufficient"

with no elected representation for party E in any district, there is no way it can amend legislation.

but even if elected in one district, party E member might not be successful in amending legislation. (chamber does not need unanimous consent to pass legislation, only majority of members which does not need to include the party E member.)

even if elected to one seat in every MMD district, a party will not have necessarily have sufficient power to amend legislation.

under PR, any party that wins slight majority of seats in slight majority of MMD districts will have only about a quarter of seats and not power. that is fair -- it only had about a quarter of votes. [sorry if this is repetitious]

(under FPTP any party that wins slight majority (or plurality) of votes in slight majority of districts will have majority of seats and will have power in chamber.  that is unfair -- it only had about a quarter of votes or fewer.)

sufficient (guaranteed) under PR

any party with majority of votes will win about a majority of seats and  will have power (seldom happens in PR).

any coalition with a majority of votes between them will have a majority of seats and will have power.

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Arbitrary districts electing one each is not true representation

A so called geographic community is a geographic construct of people of various sentiments, and actually is not a community in any sense other than the arbitrary borders set up for the election.

They cannot be represented by one person in any real sense, and many or most of the voters there did not even vote for the elected member.

MMDs with fair voting splits voters into unanimous constituencies, and each can have its own member who actually feels the sentiments of the group's members. - a good thing in representative democracy!

voter turnout varies from district to district even if all efforts are made to have equal-sized districts.

and proportion of votes in the district received by the winner varies from 24 to 82 percent under FPTP, so great variance.

while in my PR model, 1M voters/100 seats, no matter the size of the district, the threshold is about the same -- at about  10,000 votes --. 

although the proportion of votes that that 10,000 makes in each district does vary depending on the size of the district (based on the number of members in the district).

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Arbitrary districts:

I mean the federal riding boundaries are not shared by provincial or federal electoral districts, nor county nor city boundaries,

each district consists of people of diverse opinion and party affiliation.

arbitrary that way 

They are not voluntary groupings of willing voters self-defined and self identifying,

 but are put in one group for federal elections, in another group for provincial elections, and in another group for city elections.

A single city divided into 8 ridings,  or 30 districts,

one Toronto riding being not much more than 40 city blocks, 

means ridings are arbitrary, despite any claims in the legislation.

votes don't vote where they work, or where they spend their time,

but have to vote where they sleep

even if they prefer a candidate running elsewhere in same city or perhaps even just across the street.

arbitrary like that

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