How to Understand Electoral Reform and Act on it June 26, 2022
Led by FVC (Anita Nickerson) and Associate Professor Dennis Pilon
(This is summary produced by Tom Monto, Edmonton)
Main Presentation by Dennis Pilon
Voting systems have three main aspects
Ballot design – X or ordinal (ranking)
Districting – single-member districtst or multi-member district(s)
Formula (declaring winners );
Plurality,
Majoritarian: two-round (France); Alternative Voting (Australia)
Proportional (in districts or as top-up or both)
These three choices produce three kinds of voting systems used generally today.
Three kinds of voting systems
Winner take all: FPTP/Single-member plurality (SMP), or Alternative Voting
Proportional Representation (PR): Party-list PR, STV, MMP
Semi-proportional: Limited Voting, Cumulative Voting, SNTV; Mixed Member PR, Parallel systems Japan, Italy
Three historic types of PR:
Party-list PR Sweden, Norway (and many more)
STV Ireland, Malta Australia (Senate) [also Nepal]
MMP Germany, New Zealand (and many more)
Two ways to judge voting systems
Preference approach - what things do you want to see in the system
Democratization approach (used by Pilon himself)
How much democracy do you want to see
If we use the preference approach to judge SMP:
Four values used to defend SMP:
Simplicity
Stability
Representation
Accountability.
Simplicity
SMP is simple, and the common claim is that PR is complicated
While PR is complicated to count, it is not complicated to vote under it.
We can see that PR is not too complicated for votes because vote spoilage rate is low, about the same as the rate under SMP.
SMP is simple to vote but it is not simple to understand.
The answer to the question how did Ford turn 44 percent of the vote into a majority is not simple.
And if it is simple, it is due to not understanding the system. Many think that a majority government means that a majority of voters support it but that hardly ever occurs.
Stability
People think SMP is stable because they usually have just one single party holding power, while PR systems usually produce minority and coalition governments.
But in fact coalition and minority governments under PR are stable.
One way to judge is to see if PR countries have more elections than Canada – most haven’t had more elections than Canada over the last few years.
Representation
Defenders of SMP speak of terrific importance of local representation
About 40 percent in survey said that local representation was important but when it was asked how important local rep was when the local rep was not of the party you support, only 4 percent said it was still important.
And we see that local representation is not very important because candidates with only local prominence hardly ever win, and when they do, it is almost always the case that they are connected to a political party.
And there is the claim that there is possibility of small or extreme parties having too much power under PR
Accountability
Some claim that SMP offers a great deal of accountability – voters know whom to blame.
But Pilon says that approach is kind of weird because it does not recognize how voters make decisions. Most voters vote along party or ideological lines so they would not boot their local member out of the seat even if they are mad at him or her.
If anything, PR offers that accountability because the voters have a choice of more than one candidate from the same party. [I think this is reference to STV or other system that uses multi-member districts or to open-list party-list PR because closed-list party-list PR does not allow voters to show preference for one candidate over another - you either vote for the party list or you do not.]
These four values are actually fake values as compared to the real values of voters :
as judged by what votes say and do.
Analysis of elections shows us that voters vote for party.
Parties act as information short-cut for voters
The lack of political parties in local elections is a great contributor to why voter turnout is so low in city elections.
If people are upset at the power that parties wield, the solution is not to get rid of them but to make them more accountable to voters.
Do we need a referendum to have electoral reform?
Actually referendum have been used in last couple hundred years to stop democratic reforms. Extension of franchise to women, working people and blacks in the U.S. was stalled by need for referendum
Most of the countries did not bring in their present voting system through referendum
Only Switzerland brought in PR in 1918 after a referendum and then New Zealand joined that country when it brought in MMP after a referendum in 1990s.
All the other countries brought in their present system without referendum.
In Canada we have seen ten electoral reforms at the provincial level and none came about after referendums.
Those who demand a referendum actually have partisan motive to call for referendum.
Such as Conservatives.
As well, they have confidence they can rig the game.
Demand 60 percent minimum for any change while the system- even the government itself - did not have support from 60 percent of the voters.
and result of referendum is usually just reflection of the standings of the different parties.
[How much democracy do you want to see?]
Of all the values we have discussed, electoral reform is basically just about representation.
Referendum question on electoral reform is basically the question - do you want a system that is more inclusive, that gives more fair representation, more inclusion?
How can we get electoral reform when governments are opposed?
We can look at how other places achieved it and how we achieved it at other times.
Pilon: We must pitch it as democratic question.
Only by putting more and more pressure, only by contributing to the legitimacy crisis that the present system is suffering from, can we create the conditions where it would be difficult for the elites not to move forward.
Taking advantage of unpredictable events
Keep people focussed on the most important thing, which is changing to some form of PR
Breaking the back of these phony majority governments, which are responsible for many of the ills that people are unhappy with. [32:57 in video]
Opening the political system to a more genuinely competitive, democratic system
To a more competitive system.
Change the political system and bring it more in line with our social values.
Anita: there is no magic way to get around the politicians.
We just have to keep growing, keep active and take advantage of every single opportunity.
And that is why FVC exists, to organize people to use those opportunities such as the recent Ontario election.
Pilon: when NZ accomplished its electoral reform, it was accomplished over a period of 30 years and it was accomplished in part by a series of flukes and accidents and unpredictable events.
There is no road map and what are doing is to establish base so we can take advantage of those opportunities when they emerge. [34:42]
For MMP, how many list seats are used?
Pilon: PR means the system is open to new political players so it responds to emerging problems better than SMP.
PR countries moved more quickly to get fair representation for women. Not due to values but due to political system being more competitive.
When one party said they were going to make eletiong women a priority, it created a contagion effect due to the competition within the PR system.
Liberals would back Alternative Voting (but AV is no PR system).
Anita: Australia, the only OECD country to use it, used it recently and the government was elected with 33 percent of the vote.
[The 2022 Australia federal election was held using Instant-runoff Voting. Labour took 77 of the 151 seats in the Australian House of Representatives, with 33 percent of the first-preference vote overall. The 77 seats were won with a majority of the votes in each of those districts. In all but six of those districts, the Labour candidate was leading in the first count - so would have won under FPTP anyway. IRV made little difference in the result although it did give Labour enough seats to have a majority of seats. (Against those six Labour turn-overs, the Labour candidate in Fowler (NSW) led in the first count but did not win in the end.)]
Israel having lots of elections – why? Is PR to blame?
Pilon points out that Israel has used PR since its founding in the early 1950s.
From the 1950s to the 1980s it was dominated by one party - the Labour Party.
Until recently Israel had fewer elections than Canada.
PR does not mean that a country will not have political crises.
We in Canada experienced that in the 1960s, in the 2000s and recently. - under FPTP.
In Israel we have only seen a succession of elections very, very recently. (Israel was very stable for most of its 70 years of using PR.)
Real Lavergene asked: how can we get politicians to realize they are in conflict of interest when it comes to electoral reform. How do we accomplish this shift?
Pilon: we must make claims about how the system is not working right, how many people are not being represented in our elections, the election results do not match what voters are saying with their votes.
Regarding citizens assembly, We are saying commit to a process to bring about change.
We need to call out a system that is patently un-democratic.
In no other sphere of human activity would we accept such a wacky system.
When new governments sit down to work out their political system for the first time, how many countries choose single-member plurality? Zero.
Spain, Portugal, former Eastern bloc countries, etc. - none chose FPTP.
Current FPTP are only hold-overs from pre-democratic or anti-democratic regimes who want to maintain power under these new “democratic” conditions.
Media in general concerning Electoral reform
2007 Ontario referendum on PR – the No campaign was basically the media.
Media have lined up beside the Conservagtive party and the Liberal party and reported every kind of false claim against ER that you can imagine.
After the recent Ontario election, Toronto Star has endorsed PR.
Voter turn-out
In Canada it was 80 percent in 1950s and now it is 50 percent.
PR may motivate those who did not vote under FPTP because their vote was likely to be wasted but on the other hand, PR de-motivated those who voted just because one vote or just a few votes could (conceivably) make a large difference under FPTP.
Minority government under FPTP are much more unstable than minority government under PR.
Because FPTP can allow a party with just 35 percent of the vote to take 55 percent of the seats so there is incentive to take the gamble and call an election.
Under PR it is highly unlikely that there will be a massive change so there is no reward for calling an election [and asking for a new deal of the cards].
In comparison across western industrialized countries, the PR countries have had fewer elections than Canada.
Anita: in Ireland two big parties plus Green signed a 81-page 5-year deal to co-operatively run a government.
This is something we don’t expect due to our FPTP political culture
There, people want to see parties work together and get things done.
[PR expects minority governments. coalition governments are normal. Parties within the coaltion do work together]
How did other countries get to PR?
Pilon: we need to look at countries that share similar political or economic conditions with Canada - Benelux, Sweden, Nordic countries, UK, Ireland, Australia, like that.
Most of them changed their voting systems around WWI due to pressure of democratization - the change to responsible government (where executive is under control of the legislature) or broadening of the franchise extension of the vote to working-class men and to women as well.
Battles were going on and rioting in the streets,
PR was adopted as conservative strategy to try to prevent the people from taking overwhelming control.
PR was brought in for pretty un-principled reasons but it turned out pretty principled results.
Germany and Italy had PR then they went un-democratic. Democracy was re-instated after WWII and PR brought in once more.
France brought in PR in 1980s then was got rid of.
Corruption in Italy and in Japan in 1990s…
Sometimes things totally unrelated to voting reform move voting reform forward.
Exposure of corruption in Italy and Japan led to PR.
PR is about how power is shared or not, and the political class has to reform sometimes just to retain credibility.
Anger [57:40]
There is a rise of populist parties across the West.
But the difference is under PR you only get what you vote for. You can’t turn those votes into a false majority, etc.
Under PR after the election, you have to make a deal and some angry types just do not make it into the deal.
Under FPTP an angry party can have a dis-proportionate amount of leverage or influence.
Large umbrella parties under FPTP were to secure minority rights but in Canadian history that is not how it worked
Retraction of south Asian voting rights for 40 to 60 years.
Indigenous voting rights were blocked for many years.
Voter suppression in the U.S. is like those who oppose PR.
We say PR is needed to let people into the system and those opposed say keep them out.
PR would be a more inclusive system because it would make votes count no matter where they are cast. People would not be denied representation solely because of where they live. [frustrated Liberal and NDP voters in Saskatchewan, for example]
PR would make an incentive for parties to make some effort to speak to people all across the country.
If we learn anything from the women’s movement, the politics of presence matters.
Having more women in a legislature actually does make a difference.
What type of PR?
The most important fact about PR is that the representation elected will be broadly proportional.
It will more effectively represent the diversity of views and the diversity of people that exist in a polity.
It will break the backs of phony majority governments that dominate and control power without majority endorsement.
Most important thing is that no one party can gain total control.
There are innovative systems out there but there are off-the-counter models - MMP, STV - that would work quite well in Canada if we craft them to our specific conditions.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF_6C44bUwU)
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