We call for PR.
What we want could be expressed as "a system that will give us representation as proportional as the circumstances allow and where most votes are used to elect someone"
below I give my rationale for saying this.
on what Canada's PR might look like
It seems clear that the constitution says each province will have so many MPs, and that they are to be elected by votes cast in the respective province.
I have said that MMDs (province-wide or smaller) must be used, with members in each eleted by list PR, STV or SNTV.
But I should have mentioned regionalized MMP where the top-up regions are each not larger than any one province.
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These seem to be the only PR formats possible in Canada (without a constitutonal challenge:
district list PR, where district not larger than province
provincial-level list PR
district STV, where district not larger than province
provincial STV
regionalized MMP/AMS (where top-up is sub-provincial regional or provincial at largest)
RUPR (mixed member STV/FPTP with list PR top-up -- top-up at sub-provincial regional or provincial scale at largest)
(for more details on what PR might look like in Canada, see my blog
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Constitutionally, votes cannot mix from province to province so that excludes NZ's MMP, at least not without changes.
But I wonder if the consititution calls for members to be elected in districts as it does, if two layers are possible constitutionally - districts and top up regions - as would be needed in MMP or RUPR.
the constitution (BNA Act 1867) obviously left it open for later Election Acts to change the number of members and the districts. and perhaps as well whether a two-layer election system can be used.
for MMP to come in, we need that leeway unless a constitution change is part of our future. let's hope we can avoid that.
I think we need not anticipate need for constitutional change if we simply go for MMDs and fair voting in each district (list PR, STV, SNTV), even if single-member districts are used where necessary (Territories) or where desired such as sprawling northern areas.)
the judge's statement visa vis PEI and its over-representation, in recent court Charter Challenge against FPTP, is indicative of a couple things:
- the judge seeking reasons not to have PR
- how people expect PR to be perfect so the imperfection of the rep. of small PEI is thought to be an obstacle to PR.
and that leads us to the question "what is PR?"
Canada's "PR", when we do get it, will not be perfect but it will be more fair than the present system and thus worth having.
PR will not be perfect and we will see that from:
- a certain portion of votes cast not used to elect anyone (perhaps 20 percent or 5 or 10 percent if we are lucky) - party seat shares will not be perfectly in tune with vote shares.
These untidy but not disastrous failings are nothing compared to the
failings of FPTP where
- as much as half of votes cast are not used to elect anyone - party seat shares (looked at in relative terms or in absolute terms) are not perfectly in tune with vote shares for most or all parties the leading party gets much more seats than its due the second-most-popular party gets more than its due (or visa versa for those two things as we see today in the HofC)
or the most-popular party gets most seats than its share and all others get fewer other parties but top one or two get fewer seats than their due, far fewer than their due, or none at all, or
a small-ish party with strong support in just one or two provinces (BQ, the Reform Party in Alberta) gets more than their due a less-popular party gets more seats than a more-popular party. a party takes a majority of seats with less than a majority of votes. our PR will not be perfectly proportional due to these factors: - 338 (or 341) MPs means each member theoretically represents 51,000 votes. say this is quota - each 51,000 votes should give a party a seat .but less than that, as rough rule, is not enough for a seat. so there are wasted votes there. - say five main parties in ten provinces means likelihood of 50 different places for votes to be lost through the un-used fraction of a quota. - if sub-provincial districts are used as seems likely in at least Ontario and perhaps any province with more than ten or 20 MPs, then you have unused fractional quotas in each district cast for each party. (MMP top-up might mop up some of these) - the disproportionality enshrined in the Constitution (PEI's four MPs when it is due one or two - total votes cast in the average PEI riding is less than winners alone take in other ridings. theTerritories' three members). Plus we will have "technical wastage" through: - exhausted votes under STV, - whole parties not getting representation due to electoral threshold under list PR or MMP. these wastes expected under Canadian "PR" are nothing compared to FPTP's waste of votes as mentioned above, so I don't point these out to belittle PR as a goal.
judging satisfaction by the vote cast we judge a voter's intent and satisfaction by how they vote.
but under closed-list PR, the voter does not vote for a candidate but for a party, and we can say that that vote was an effective vote if it went to help elect a party member
under STV the vote is cast for a candidate or a succession of candidates and we count it an effective vote if it elects a member, or perhaps if one of its top five preferences in a five-seat district elected someone. (some might say only the first preference is true sentiment of the voter but that is more strict than normal definition of effective vote under STV.) under open-list PR, some indicate candidate of choice, some indicate just party of choice. assessment or proportionality/fairness
no matter what type of PR used, votes cast for each party or each party's candidates can be compared to the party's seat share.
under closed-list PR, GI-type assessment can be done. That is where parties' vote share are compared to their seat share. Effective votes can be measured by reckoning the votes cast for parties that got no representation but whether voter is happy with individual members elected cannot be known.
if districts are used (all list PR systems except Israell and Netherlands), the GI might not tell us effective votes as a disproportiona result in one district might be counter-balanced against a disproportional result in another district. (we see this in artificially regionalized FPTP (the usual sort of FPTP result) where say NDP success in Edmonton is balanced by Conservative over-representation in rural areas, and the respective waste in each place balances out but does nothing for the great number of votes not used effectively in each) under MMP, only votes cast for parties that are denied representation are wasted. but that is assuming voter is satisfied with the order of candidates on the party list. under STV, the election can be asesssed by GI where votes used effectively in each district for party A are lumped in with votes not used effectively for party A, and the total compared to seat share
or under STV, one can look at just effective votes and say three full quotas and a partial quota for Party A in this district and one full quota for party A in that other district, and then total them up.
loose forms of voter satisfaction As well, a voter might be said to be satisfied (less disappointed) as long as his or her party elects at least one member. the Green Party voter is likely happy that at least one Green Party member was elected even if that member perhaps sits for a riding on the other side of the country.
And likely a Green party voter is less disappionted if a Liberal government is elected versus a Conservative government. or a People's Party voter is likely less disappointed if Conservatives do well than he or she would be if a Liberal government is elected. Success by a like-minded party mollifies own party defeats. as well, if we get MMDs, a voter is lilkey happier if someone of their favoured party is elected in the riding even if the voter's vote did not help in their election, or if a like-minded party gets representation in the district. these satisfactions are not measured by GI or by effective votes, but do make voters happy/less disappointed. they cannot be measured by overall assessments of proportionalities (GI).
The term PR is useful as short-hand for "more fair system," and a more fair system is what we want at the bottom line. although it must be admitted that Canada's PR system will not be perfectly proportional (nor will all votes be used to elect members), and promises made or assumptions made that it will be perfectly proportional are misleading and in some cases even produce obstacles, such as the judge's stated opinion about PEI, (where actually no such problem exists to any real extent).
Once we get a certain type of PR, we could start to use the name of the system as our preference as long as we don't get stuck with having to say "a hybrid system of open-list PR in cities, and Alternative Voting elsewhere with gender-zippered top-up in a regionally-balanced system."
is the term PR inadequate for what we want to say? no it works as good as any other term. the term in broad terms is well known and its goal is understood, even if in application it falls short of perfection, as it must.
old Richard Cartwright, a leading pro-PR MP in 1800s, described STV as proportionate, not proportional, (but he still wanted it,)
and that holds true I believe for any form of PR to a degree. Estonia with list PR had 20 percent of its votes not used to elect anyone, one time. NZ with nation-wide top-up has 4 percent or so of votes cast not used to elect anyone.
but we call them PR, because their goal and structure are proportional rep.
(the recent Alberta election accidently and through lucky chance produced roughly proportional results party-wise (GI) but massive waste of votes in Edmonton, Calgary and the rural lands, and disproportional results in Edmonton and the rural lands. so we can't say we use PR in Alberta even if the result party-wise pwas about same as PR would have given us - one strong reason not to do is low turnout. Due to FPTP, more than a third of voters did not vote in the Alberta election. that kind of assessment is left out of most PR analysis but is pivotal to overall voter satisfaction and to good government.
(Under PR, it is common for 80 percent of eligible voters to vote and for 80 percent of that to be used to elect someone, so in PR as high a proportion of eligible voters actually help to elect someone as the percentage of voters who even cast a vote in the last Alberta election. and in Alberta about half the votes that were cast were just set aside.)
when we say PR, we mean "PR as proportional as the circumstances allow" (some might think they have to mention party and
party seat shares are usually taken as measure of proportionality, but proportionality can extend to other things than party --- gender, race, ethnicity, etc. --- even to local representation, as long as voters are happy with the balance) "a system that will give us representation as proportional as the circumstances allow and where most votes are used to elect someone" covers our goals and aspirations even if wordy.
a conversation could go like this: "We want a system that will give us representation as proportional as the circumstances allow and where most votes are used to elect someone." "What do you mean?" "Proportional representation" "oh. yea I want that too.
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