Let's be like EU - PR now. European Countries use PR let's do that too, I beseeched Prime Minister Carney

I sent this to PM Mark Carney (slight changes made later after sleeping on it):

Dear Prime Minister,

At a time when Canada is finding a place in the European Union and pressure within Canada is building for much-needed electoral reform, I think Canada should follow the example provided by most of the EU countries and make the move to Proportional Representation.

Most EU countries use Proportional Representation of one form or another, to elect all their members in most cases. Only Italy, France, UK and Hungary do not use PR, and the UK Prime Minister promises change in UK soon.

Many in Canada ask for reforms, too. Our single-member districts do not allocate seats on any kind of scientific basis. MPs are elected with widely varying number of votes, and the votes-to-seat ratio for some parties is much higher than for other parties. The myth that one member can represent all the people in a whole district is becoming more and more ridiculous - a member should not have to pretend represent people who did not vote for them in the first place.

We need a system where each member is asked to represent an unanimous constituency, a group of voters in which each person actually wants to be represented by that member. This can only happen (or would happen most easily) when we use multi-member ridings say of three to seven seats each; where each voter has one vote; and that vote is a ranked ballot, where back-up alternatives are available to allow the vote to be transferred  if needed. 

These elements compose the Single Transferable Voting election system, used successfully to elect some MLAs on the Prairies from the 1920s to the 1950s.

We have had multi-member ridings in the past -- the Halifax riding elected two MPs from more than a hundred years. I believe such is perfectly constitutional as long as ridings do not cross provincial borders.

Having each voter cast one vote means no one group can take all the seats in the district, which would be clearly unfair when no one party takes more than about two-thirds of votes at the most in a district.

Using ranked votes is no big burden on voters. Irish voters have used STV for more than a century happily. Voters in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg used ranked votes in multi-member districts (STV) for provincial elections for more than 30 years. As long as the voter is not asked to mark preferences for  more candidates than he or she wants to, there is no big ask made of the voter under STV. In many cases none of the back-up preferences will be used anyway - single voting in a multi-member riding will do most of the work of producing fairness and balance.   

Multi-member ridings can easily be produced in medium or large cities. Just use city corporate limits and allocate as many seats as are now elected in that city. Cities that are large enough to elect more than seven MPs can be divided into two or more ridings of 5 to 7 seats each.

Less easily, multi-member ridings should be constructed outside the cities. Using counties as building blocks to form ridings makes sense on the ground. Perhaps ridings of just three MPs each (say populations of about 270,000 each) could be easily drawn, and the balanced representation that will be elected in each new riding would be major improvement over the one-party sweep of whole countrysides that often occurs today. With three seats in a district, each third of the riding's voters would elect their own representative, and if the voters in any third of the new riding marked preferences for local candidates only, they would have representation of their portion of the riding. It would be up to each voter whether local consideration or party loyalty was most important.

Each third of the voters in a three-seat rural riding would elect a member and there would be nothing the other voters could do to prevent it. Each seventh of the voters in a seven-seat city riding would elect a member and there would be nothing the other voters could do to prevent it. 

If the ridings are allocated seats in accordance to a roughly consistent population-to-seat ratio, the effective threshold in the riding should contain about the same number of votes, whether it is a three- or a seven-seat district. 

That threshold would be less than one-340th of votes cast across the country, so giving small parties a chance to get seats. 

It would also be fair to Liberal and Conservatives as the large number of wasted Liberal votes on the Prairies and the large number of wasted Conservative votes in Toronto and other cities would finally have chance to elect long-overdue representation. The actual effect of the change on parties' fortunes is hard to predict as voter turnout would increase as people would realize their vote would finally count for something -- this is not the case now for many. 

But it is not likely tht the voters in a three-seat district will divide nicely into thirds, or a party will take exactly two thirds. and some votes will be wasted. When a candidate is eliminated as often happens to facilitate a vote transfers often it is found that some votes have nowhere else to go. these are labelled as exhausted (or nontransferable) and are not used to elect anyone. (of course a preference marked on that ballot may already have been elected so the voter may be satisfied by the result even if his or her vote was found to be exhausted.)

Therefore the number of votes held by winners may be more like a quarter of votes than a third. In fact the quota used in STV today is about that fraction. in a three-seat district, one vote more than a quarter is taken as quota (threshold); in a seven-seat district, one vote more than an eighth is taken as quota (threshold). (This is the Droop quota invented back in 1800s.) That still means only a quarter or an eighth of votes cast not used to elect anyone, much better than the three-quarters or so not used to elect a local member under the first part the post system used today in Canadian elections.

Under STV, about 75 to 88 percent of votes cast in each district would be sure to be  used to elect someone, instead of the wide range of 25 to 70 percent we see today under FPTP.

The adoption of STV means the result for political parties' fortunes may vary from  past elections, but under multi-member ridings and STV, each party would get as many seats as its share of the votes cast. This is only fair and is how things are done in most of the EU countries.

I realize such a reform would be a large step. But firmly believe it is in line with your concept of "a Canada for all."

Thank you for your attention,

Tom Monto 

a voter in Edmonton-Strathcona

creator of the electoral reform blogsite Montopedia