I hope that a majority of voters see the need for electoral reform. But actually the maintenance of our electoral system or change to the electoral system we use does not require any properly measured public sentiment.
Unfortunately most people that I speak to about it just don't seem concerned, or are more concerned about the many other problems we face today, more than the periodical, obscured and hidden, elections we experience, (But many people do see the need and many more have an un-defined feeling that things are not as they should be in politics.)
Elections are often presented/reported in one of these three flawed ways:
-- overly simple/excited/sensational fashion (sports-style landslides, shut out, victory/defeats) style
-- inarticulate or uneducated (without use of proper technical terms - use of term ranked voting to mean IRV, STV meaning IRV, majoritarian meaning FPTP,
-- description of PR or STV as more complicated than it actually is
Examples (I am sure all of us can provide our own)
Encyclopedia Britannica saying that STV involves weighing of different rankings so is so complicated it needs computers.
almost everyone saying that STV means ranked votes and no mention that its basis really being each voter casting just one vote in a MMD.
Ignatieff saying he does not know what PR is - any encyclopedia or dictionary would tell him what it does if he cares.
Encyclopedia Britannica is good enough to say:
"proportional representation, electoral system that seeks to create a representative body that reflects the overall distribution of public support for each political party."
This implies party-based PR so does not cover STV.
Some of you out there might be fine with that, but I now see the need for a definition of PR that includes STV.
How about this?:
PR is family of electoral systems, each of which produce a parliament that reflects the way votes are cast, where most voters directly elect a member to sit on their behalf, where parties are allocated seats in rough proportion to their vote shares.
This is done by these mechanisms:
-- most votes are used to elect someone, if not the first preference, at least someone the voter prefers over others.
-- each member receives about the same number of votes, therefore each party secures the number of seats that its vote share warrants and no party takes much more seats than its vote share warrants (as happens under FPTP and other non-proportional systems)
-- Although some PR systems are candidate-based and others are party-based, the rule that the same number of voters elect each member means that each party is represented fairly, in proportion to their vote shares.
Candidate-based:
-- STV or SNTV where each voter casts just one vote in a multiple-member district (not just in single-member districts as under FPTP)
Party-based:
-- Party-list PR -- where overall party vote shares are calculated and seats are allocated to parties in the same proportion
-- Mixed Member Proportional where most members are elected in single-member districts but other members are elected so the overall parliament produces representation that is proportional to party shares as in proportions of votes pooled together (wider grouping of votes as cast in the single-member districts).
That is how I would define PR anyway.
under my definition, PR is not the "Pseudo proportional" result where Liberal regional sweeps in some eastern provinces is used to counteract Conservative sweeps in Prairie provinces to create a HofC where each party is represented "proportionally."
PR as I see it means that most votes are used to elect someone, not at all the result in a chamber made up of regional-sweep winners.
The low proportion of effective votes of FPTP can be presented this way:
Ottawa Centre 2021 federal election
Votes as cast Effective votes
Naqvi Liberal 33,825 Naqvi Liberal 33,825 elected (46 percent of valid votes)
MacEwan NDP 24,552
Clemenghagan Conservative 11,650
Keller-Herzog Greens 2115
[and more ]
Thus the vote-to-seat conversion process is wonky under FPTP.
Now here's the same kind of presentation for an STV-PR election,
showing high proportion of effective votes.
Edmonton Alberta provincial election 1944
five to be elected valid votes: 37,834
Votes as cast Effective votes
Manning SC 14,271 Manning SC 6306 17 percent
Roper CCF 5253 Roper CCF 6306 17 percent
Page Independent 4603 Page Independent 6333 17 percent
Williams 3532 Williams (Vet. & Armed Forces) 5535 15 percent
Caine Independent 1400
James SC 781 James SC 5397 14 percent
[and a few more] TOTAL 80 percent
Thus the vote-to-seat conversion process is not wonky under STV.
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PR produces elections that reflect the votes as cast. Usually today, no party takes a majority of the votes so under PR no party would take a majority of the seats.
May not major parties oppose PR because it makes it difficult for them ever to have majority of seats? While consensual government, if brought in, would break down their resistance because majority government for anyone would be a thing of past.
Thinking of New Zealand, we see less polarization between Labour and Green cause they co-operate (run coalition government s together) while the National Party is still much at odds with those parties.
Perhaps major parties can be made to get on board if they see they would suffer from injustice and unfairness (FPTP) just as much as they (occasionally) benefit from those evils.
for every party that gets false majority, there is one party or a grouping of parties that is deprived of power truly based on majority support.
I have not seen how parties stood in regards NZ's two ER referendums in 1990s.
But reforms, as far as I know, only required support of majority of voters (referendum) and support of party in power (or support of majority of MPs), not support of all parties.
obviously a single party changing electoral rules by itself is questionable - But that is how it was done in Alberta in 1924 when STV/IRV was brought in, (although the four Labour MLAs also backed the change pushed through by the Farmers, which held majority of seats)
and that is how Alberta's change to FPTP was done in 1956 - no other party supported the change that time.
It seems scary but electoral reform is constitutionally within power of government.
In this as in many policy areas, the government will do what is best for country/province (usually as public sentiment stands) or best for itself. (there re limits to its power due to custom and to power of the press and public clamour, (gossamer threads that restrain drift to authoritarianism)) just mere election on promise of electoral reform should be considered mandate to bring in such a change.
A major party may support PR if it knows that under PR
it will not be deprived of majority power in cases where it gets majority of votes.
and
if it will take (pretty much) exactly as many seats as its vote total makes it due
and
if no party takes majority of seats, it may be able to get support from caucuses of enough small parties to lead coalition or working group that would have majority of seats, one that truly has support of majority of voters.
And even if a major party does not believe in PR, it may not be able to hold back ER progress if a different party (the one in power) believes in it.
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