The Big Story podcast "What would Electoral Reform in Canada Look Like? (October 2021)
Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story.
Interview of Max Fawcett
[Reviewed and critiqued by Tom Monto]
Max Fawcett says he supports electoral reform. He pushes for change to Alternative Voting (IRV) but I believe there is not basis for his claim that AV would have produced a different outcome in 2015 if AV had been used.
Max repeated a common mantra:
"And then what happens always happens is when the party that proposes [electoral reform] actually gets into power, they look at how they got into power and say, well, maybe we shouldn’t change the system too much."
This disheartening prognosis is actually wrong. If this happened always, all governments would still hold elections the way they always have.
But instead in the case of government in the real world, things do change - sometimes.
Governments see the crisis their democracy and governance is in and take action. or see the crisis that their democracy and governance is in, run for election on a promise to change it, are elected and then take action.
The first is what happened in Winnipeg in 1920. That is how and when the Liberal government brought in electoral reform allowing Winnipeg voters to vote under PR-STV.
The second is what happened in Alberta in 1921 when the United Farmers of Alberta ran on a promise of electoral reform and then were elected. Three years later, before the next election, they brought in PR-STV for voters in Alberta's major cities and Alternative Voting (Instant-Runoff Voting) outside the cities. Voters used ranked votes under both systems. The systems ensured fair, balanced representation in each city and that a majority of votes would be used to elect the winner in each district outside the cities.
New Zealand changed its election system in 1996. The specific conditions that occasioned the change were very similar to the present election results in Canada today. "Elections in 1978 and 1981 saw the National Party win a majority in Parliament with less than 40% of the vote and a lower overall share of the vote than the opposing Labour Party." (from the Wikipedia article "Electoral reform in NZ"). (Both false-majority governments and wrong-winner elections are common in Canadian history.)
The present Liberal government is product of a wrong-winner election. The Liberal government is not winning majority governments but only near-majority governments, and it is intermittently acting as if it has a majority or holding un-necessary elections in order to try to grab a majority of the seats.
So my point is, electoral systems do get changed despite those who say parties care only about their own selfish party interests.
Max then defends the Trudeau and his Liberal government for not fulfilling the promise of electoral promise under which Trudeau party was elected majority government in 2015. Despite what Max says, Trudeau had a clear mandate to make the change and a clear constitutional right to change the system. He had as much right to change the system as he had to maintain the current un-democratic one, and he had a clear mandate to change it.
Unfortunately the NDP and Green at the time may have called for a referendum. But not now. Now the NDP is saying make the change and after a couple elections under the new system hold a referendum. So referendums are not demanded by that party anyway in advance of change.
Referendums can fail as Max points out.
Max says
"We’ve had these referendums before. I’ve been part of them in BC, where we’ve had, I believe at least two of them, maybe three, and they don’t tend to go very well."
The third referendum - the one he is iffy about - would likely be BC's first referendum on electoral reform, held in 2005, when a majority of voters did vote for change but the government ignored the result.
So that is unfortunate result sometimes - that even if people vote for change, government ignores it.
But change of electoral system does not require referendum. At no time did the people of Canada vote for the present First Past The Post single-winner-in-a-district election system. Canada has not always used FPTP across the board. For a hundred years a handful of districts elected two members each and each voter cast up to two votes. (Block voting). Usually the largest single group (sometimes just a minority of the voters) took both seats.)
The system we use now was just thrust upon us. So why require a referendum to change it?
Max did go on to outline the options for change.
Max: "So the two main options are something called ranked ballots,
[he means Alternative Voting, AKA Instant-Runoff Voting]
which is what all the major parties use to elect their own leaders right now. So we’re very familiar with that in this country. We already use it in many respects, and I’ll sort of circle back around on that in a second.
And a proportional system where it’s not winner take all, where the seats in Ottawa more accurately reflect the popular vote. ...
The system that is generally proposed is something called mixed member proportional, which they just used in Germany to elect their latest government there. It’s used in New Zealand, a Commonwealth country with very similar institutions to our own. And it’s sort of a hybrid of a proportional system and the first past the post that we have now....
So you would get an outcome that more closely mirrored the popular vote. It wouldn’t purely mirror it, but it would be much closer than our current system. So it’s sort of a Goldilocks solution. It tries to be the best of both worlds"
Goldilocks? Perhaps he means Frankenstein or The Fly as portrayed by Jeff Goldblum - the look of a man but the strength of a fly.
Unfortunately the First Past The Post system has such blemishes that to my mind it should not be continued in any new system, especially when change to multiple-member districts is so easy. Take all thet he said and simply change it so in each district multiple memvers are elected through a fair voting system, then add top-up members to smooth out the districts' result - that is the mixed member sytem used in Denmark and it would work fine in Canada.
Multiple-member districts have been in use in Canadian federal elecfions and in elections in one or more provinces from the 1860s to 1990s.
Fair voting through STV was adopted in 1920 in Manitoba and in 1924 in Alberta Balanced election results were secured through Limited Voting in Ontario provincial elections in 1886 and 1890 in Toronto.
STV is more fair than LV (and much more fair than FPTP) and each time it proved itself by producing mixed balanced representation at the city level. Any system that uses multi-member districts and Single voting (each voter casting just one vote) produces fair balanced representation - at least more fair and balanced than the present FPTP system. And STV's vote transfers put the polish even on that result.
MMP top-up seat can do only so much to overcome the problems of FPTP district elections. The combination of multi-member districts and fair voting is an easy way to get mixed representation from the get-go.
When coupled with ranked ballots it produces PR-STV, which proved itself to be a perfectly workable and effective system during eight elections in Alberta and nine in Manitoba.
As well PR-STV was used by 20 cities and municipalities in the 1917-1971 period. Each election producing fair, balanced representation across the city or in multi-member wards where used. (The only exception - a one-party sweep of a district's seats - was a ward election in Winnipeg where only three seats were contested.)
PR-STV at the district level can be combined with MMP top-up seats if you want even more fairness. But I think the important thing is to have fair district elections, perhaps in city-wide districts, perhaps in multi-member wards, but whether or not taking in whole cities, the important things is that the contest elects multiple members- and that each voter casts only one vote.
If that one vote is transferable - if voters can mark back-up preferences - the district elections would be PR-STV, but if the votes are not transferable, then you have Single Non-Transferable Voting - a perfectly effective, if crude, form of PR.
In fact usually under PR-STV vote transfers make little or no change from the result if they had not been transferable at all. Usually the front runners in the first count are elected in the end under PR-STV. and the front runners in the first Count would be who would win under SNTV.
The winners under FPTP are very different than under PR-STV or SNTV - only one is elected in FPTP so you do not have balance in the district representation, and when a city is divided into several districts, the one-winner straitjacket usually means that the same party can win all the seats in a city with only a minority of the votes. A thing never possible under STV or SNTV. (Vanuatu's elections show how under SNTV each district produces mixed, balanced representation.)
Max goes on to say:
"Ranked ballots are a little different, and caveat emptor, they’re the ones that I prefer because they are the closest to our current system. They don’t require major change. They’re not confusing, which tends to be a challenge with electoral reform, but they allow people to rank as many choices as they want."
When he says ranked votes he means their use in single-winner contests -- Alternative Voting -- This despite the fact that PR-STV uses ranked votes.
Unfortunately, the Alternative Voting system used in London Ontario's city election in 2018 - the only time ranked votes have been used in government elections in Canada since 1971 - voters were limited to marking only two back-up preferences. With as many as 12 candidates running, many votes were exhausted as a result.
So voters should be allowed to mark as many choices as they want.
And the result in the election of mayor and the aldermanic elections in London in 2018 was all the same as if the election had been held using FPTP. The single front runner in the first count was elected in every case after any vote transfers were done. Now if the aldermanic election had been held using PR-STV, the result may have been very different -- more balanced and fair. We don't know but it is likely.
Is grouping the present districts that complicated?
I don't think so --- especially when we change district boundaries every ten years anyways.
Using city boundaries as the boundaries of a city-wide district prevents any gerrymandering. Using a whole city as a district means that the turn-out and vote tallies are averaged out and compared fairly over the whole city. This alone creates fairness.
In the 2017 Edmonton city election ten of the most-popular candidates in the city were not elected. They had more votes than the least-popular successful candidate (he was elected in a different district where the turn-out was low.) But in every sense of the word they were more popular - and hence more deserved of election than that one individual who was actually elected.
And when a city is split among different districts, some voters are blocked from voting for some candidates, Some voters cannot vote with their neighbours.
And the present districts -- often a twelfth or tenth of a city -- are too large for any real local representation. The districts often do not reflect any cohesive reality on the ground. Not big enough to have balanced representation or specific enough to have local representation, they are artificial creations and their passing would not be missed by most voters.
As defined by districts, voters vote alongside one group in federal elections, in another group in provincial elections, and in city elections in still another. Edmonton is divided into 12 city wards, 20 provincial constituencies and eight federal ridings (or seven and a half!).
If there is local representation, it must be a very different thing in the three kinds of elections.
But city-wide elections or districts covering half the city would be organic, mean something and could be used in all three kinds of elections -- simply vary the number of members in the district as appropriate.
Max goes on to endorse Alternative Voting (ranked votes as he calls it).
He points out that Liberals are second choice for many voters so would benefit from it but also it is good overall because it frees voters to vote how they want knowing that their second choice might be used.
He says it would be good for the NDP
Max: "I actually think that a ranked ballot is really good for New Democrats because as it currently stands under the first past the post system, Liberals cannibalize call it 20% to 30% of the NDP vote every election. I’m convinced of it. You saw polls showing that the NDP was polling upwards of 20%. Where did their vote end up? 17%? That’s a drop of about 25%."
Actually a drop of 15 percent. (It could also be that the poll was wrong or that people lied when they talked to the pollster or that something changed in between the time they were polled and election day.)
But sure Alternative Voting would free voters from voting strategically - that is, free them from trying to determine which among the candidates that they prefer has a chance of winning.
Although why he suggests that a voter who does not want a Conservative elected would mark a Conservative as their third choice eludes me. In fact, that is sometimes grounds for criticism of PR-STV -- if it requires you to rank all the candidates, it requires you to mark approval even as a last resort for someone you dislike.
In historic Canadian applications of STV, voters were never required to rank all the candidates. Elsewhere even those where you must rank many candidates, most allow you not to rank the last one, the one you dislike the most. So perhaps he is falling for old trap when instructing people to mark even those they dislike under AV.
And note that under Alternative Voting still as much as half the vote are ignored in AV district contests. That is all you can guarantee when only a single winner is elected.
While under STV, about 80 percent or more of the voters see their vote used to actually elect someone with a still higher percentage seeing one of their top chioces elected with or without the use of their own vote.
Max went on to say how NDP might pick up Liberal vote transfers in Alternative Voting contests.
"... 2015 where Thomas Mulcair was leading in the polls coming into the election, I don’t think the Liberals would have been able to swing from third to first the way they did. I think he would have been our Prime Minister in 2015 if we had had a ranked ballot."
But note back-up preferences marked on ballots are only used when the first choice cannot be used.
Transfers are not done party to party. They are done candidate to candidate.
The only time a ballot is transferred in AV are when the voter's most-preferred candidate is unable to be elected.
For the NDP candidate to pick up Liberal votes, the Liberal candidate would have to be eliminated, while the NDP candidate, being more popular, would still be around to pick up the transfers.
This would only be possible where no one takes a majority of votes and where the NDP candiate is more popular than the Liberal candidate.
These particular circumstances only happened in a relative few ridings.
I calculate that only 13 additional seats would have gone to the NDP due to vote transfers from Liberals under Alternative Voting.
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NDP candidates got more votes than Liberal candidates only in a relative few places in 2015:
Of course they did in the 44 seats they won.
And in:
Quebec: five: Lac St Jean, Beauport, Portneuf, Mirable, Riviere Du Nord,
Ontario: two : Oshawa and Sarnia-Lambton
Saskatchewan: NDP led over Liberal in many ridings including Moose Jaw; Regina Qu'appelle; Souri Moose Mtn Yorkton Melville
But in all the Sask ridings except those four, the Conservative would have won with majority of vote on the first count so no vote transfers would have been done.
Only in four ridings where NDP led over Liberal did the Conservative win with less than majority of the votes -- Regina, Prince Albert and two Saskatoon ridings.
also a few in Alberta such as Lethbridge, Peace River
NDP won in Edmonton Strathcona so had more votes than the Liberal there, and would have been even more certain of victory if Liberal votes had been transferred. but no transfers were done.
in all but one of the AB ridings where NDP got more votes than the Liberal, the Conservative would have won with majority of vote on the first count so no vote transfers wold have been done.
The only place in Alberta where the NDP might have won under AV and did not win in FPTP was:
Edmonton Griesbach. (The NDP did take this seat in 2021!)
BC -- only one riding where NDP would have won under AV and did not win under FPTP:
Kamloops
The Conservative winner did not get majority of vote.
NDP leading over Liberal.
NDP and Liberal candidates together had 60 percent of vote.
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The shift in 2015 caused by AV transfers of Liberal votes to NDP would have only given the NDP 13 more seats, bringing its seat count to 57 -- not enough to make Mulcair PM, despite what Max says.
Masx then makes good point though:
"advocates of proportional representation are right that, you know, under a proportional system, yes maybe fringe groups would be elected, but they would sit in the corner and be ignored by and large. That is definitely a reasonable criticism."
Not so sure about what he says here though:
"Proportional representation advocates remain their own worst enemy in the way they engage with the public and engage with other people."
If he is mad because an electoral reformer called him a liar, Well, sure, we could all be more diplomatic. Let's just say his claim about Mulcair in 2015 showed Max to be a purveyor of a creative untruth and leave it at that!
Max goes on to say
"The minutiae of how we elect people to our National Parliament, I think falls pretty far down the list. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything about it. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t a pressing issue for our elected officials. Sometimes their job is to see down the road and see the issues that haven’t risen to the top of the publics agenda yet, and do something about them before they do. I would argue that we failed that test on climate change. But I don’t think in terms of just pure transactional politics, it is going to be a pressing top issue unless one of the parties makes it pressing.
And I think that’s where the NDP can play a very valuable role here.... I think the NDP has to kind of come to Jesus on seeing the value of ranked ballots for democracy, for their voters, for their own ability to form a government one day and come to the table with that as their priority. And if they do, I think we could see something happen pretty quickly."
He gives electoral reformers credit for being animated but not for our elitism. Fair enough. Let's see if the NDP can push the game along. But despite Max's claim, AV will not do much for the NDP. judging by 2015. PR, despite being a hard road, is the correct road to travel on because it takes us to where we want to go! ======================
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