June 17, 2022
Dear Prime Minister, I see your continued opposition to Proportional Representation and your continued stated support for "ranked voting," referring to Instant-Runoff Voting. Perhaps you don't know that there is a PR system that uses ranked voting, so you can have both. That system is Single Transferable Voting (STV). If you brought that in, you could provide the PR that many want while still getting the ranked voting with its help to the Liberal party that you desire. STV is easily brought in. You just need multi-member districts, have the voters maintain their single voting that they do now, and bring in ranked votes, which mainly means changing the style of ballots and educating voters that, if they desire, they can mark back-up preferences. The multi-member districts could elect three to ten members, in city-wide districts wherever a city has three to ten members (the case for most cities across Canada) or districts covering a half or third of a city in the case of major metropolises with more than ten MPs. Being based on city boundaries, such districting would not arouse charges of gerrymandering. Under district-level PR (STV), gerrymandering has little effect anyway, because it would produce fair results in each district, however they are drawn. Due to single voting in MM district, no one party could take all the seats in the district. so balanced, mixed representation would be elected in each STV city, and thus in each province. Such an electoral system would: - ensure that most votes were used effectively to elect someone. giving each voter the respect that our political culture says they warrant. - abolish the present artificially-created regionalism by ensuring that each district, city and province elected a mixed group of members. - soften the present polarization because each election contest would not be a zero-sum game, Both Conservatives and Liberals could be elected in the same district; both NDP-ers and Liberals could be elected in the same district, and so on. STV would be easily adopted. Three components are required. One of them we already have. Multi-member districts, although not used anywhere in Canada currently in federal or provincial elections, were once common. Every province at one time or another elected all or some of its legislators in multi-member districts. Quebec did so prior to Confederation; all others did so after 1867, a couple as recently as the 1980s. Ten federal ridings elected multiple members at one time or another. MM districts are used in many city elections across Canada currently. (There each voter casts multiple votes so that negates any possibility of consistent balanced representation/PR). Some wide-ranging rural districts may be considered too large to be combined with others to make multi-member districts. They could remain as single-member ridings. STV could produce fair results elsewhere where district size more easily allows the combination of three or more current ridings into one MM district. But note that a third of our present ridings are larger than 3000 square kms in size. Almost all the others (about 200 of our present ridings) are smaller than a third of that size. so where three of these smaller district touch, they could be combined into one MM district, electing three MPs, and MPs there would not cover more territory than a single MP does elsewhere. If one MP can represent that much area, surely three MPs of a variety of parties could cover that same size area. Of the cities that elect at least three MPs, Ottawa is the largest in area. It elects nine MPs and covers 2800 sq. kms, so it is the smaller in area than is represented by a single MP in more than 100 ridings. Nine Ottawa MPs of a variety of parties should be able to represent an area that is represented by one MP elsewhere. Thirteen cities in Canada elect three or more MPs. Altogether those 13 cities compose about 19M of Canada's voters. These cities are Toronto (25 MPs), Montreal (22 MPs), Calgary (10 MPs), Edmonton (9 MPs), Ottawa (9), Winnipeg (8), Vancouver (6), Quebec City (5), Hamilton (4), Kitchener (4), London (3), Saskatoon (3) and Regina (3). They are scattered across most of the regions of Canada, being located in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC. Just having balanced representation in those cities would address the regionalism artificially created by FPTP while also ensuring that the people living there had fair, balanced representation. And if some of the rural ridings, as already indicated, are combined to make MM districts, then even more balanced representation is attainable. Aside from the forming of multi-member districts, consideration should also be given to the voting system that is used. Single transferable voting means just that and can be achieved by these two mechanisms: Single voting - Each voter already casts just one vote in provincial and federal elections so no change is required that way. Ranked voting necessitates a change in style of ballot and a public education campaign to instruct voters in marking back-up preferences. Election officials would have to be trained to conduct vote transfers as and when required, due to STV's ranked voting. But vote transfers are relatively simple and were conducted successfully as far back as a hundred years ago, long before computers or electronic calculators. (These changes would have to be done under the ranked voting/IRV system as well.) I believe that marking of back-up preferences should be optional so actually no more work would be forced on the voter under STV than currently. Even if voters mark just one preference (just marking the most-preferred candidate) and mark no back-up preferences, the district’s representation would be more fair and balanced under STV than it is under the FPTP system. Due to MM districts, under STV, voters derive benefits in fairness and representation even if they don't mark back-up preferences. And even under IRV, back-up preferences are not used in many cases. Under both IRV (what you call "ranked voting") and STV, if a ballot is cast in the first round for a candidate who turns out to be elected, any back-up preferences marked on that ballot are not used at all. Under IRV, when a candidate receives a majority of votes on the first round, no vote transfers are conducted and no back-up preferences are considered so marking back-up preferences is just wasted effort. STV would provide fairness generally - each party popular enough would receive some representation in each district and thus get representation in each large city and in each province - but also it would benefit the Liberal party to some degree. Liberals, being in a central left-right position, would likely receive vote transfers from eliminated candidates from each side under STV, just as they would under IRV. In a MM district, where the election uses STV, if the last Green or NDP candidate is eliminated, where will their votes go? Likely to a Liberal candidate if there is still one standing (if the voters marked the ballots that way anyway). In a MM district, where the election uses STV, if the last Conservative candidate is eliminated, where will the votes go? If the last remaining choices are Liberal, NDP or Green, likely the vote would go to a Liberal candidate if there is still one standing (if the voters marked the ballots that way anyway). Under STV, ballots might be found to be generally marked in two main patterns: - one pattern where all Liberal, NDP and Green candidates are marked -- although in a different order on different ballots depending which one of the three parties the voter most supports - one pattern where all Conservatives are marked, perhaps with other non-NDP, non- Lib and non-Green also marked as additional back-up preferences, and the Liberal candidates marked as final choices. Under STV, the "blocs" would be represented in a STV district in due portion to their votes, perhaps often with a Liberal taking the last Lib/NDP/Green seat, being the most-popular remaining candidate of that bloc. And even a Liberal candidate would likely get benefit if the last three remaining candidates were NDP, Liberal and Conservative. If either the NDP or Conservative is eliminated at that point, the votes from them would likely shift to the Liberal candidate, if at all. STV could be considered PR light as voters would vote for candidates directly - parties would play no official role in the election contests. Based on candidates' success, a party would get representation based on popularity in each district, not overall. Most seats would be filled by candidates receiving quota, a logically-derived portion of the votes based on seat count plus one. In a three-member district, any candidate with 25 percent of the vote would be elected. This could be first preference votes or a combination of first-preference votes and votes transferred to the candidate from other candidates. Candidates with less than this might be elected at the end, when simple plurality is used to fill the last one or two seats. But those elected would be the most popular candidates in all cases. In a ten-member district, the quota drops to nine percent of the vote. Any candidate with nine percent of the vote would be elected. Thus any party with at least nine percent of the vote in a district would elect one member. and would elect additional members depending on how many quotas of votes it receives. Parties with support that is less than quota and if they are not leading in the end when the field of candidates is thinned to the number of remaining open seats would not elect members in that district. Marginal "extremist" parties with support spread evenly across the country would get no more seats under STV than under FPTP. And unlike FPTP, under STV a party would not be able to elect a member with just a plurality in a small district, perhaps with as few as 18 percent of the votes in a single-member district. Under FPTP it is possible to take a seat with just 4000 where as many as 980,000 votes were cast overall (2014 Toronto city election Ward 16). But under STV it is common for most successful candidates to get more than 20 percent of the vote in the district, with no candidate being elected with less than 12 percent of the total vote. Under FPTP, more than half the votes are commonly disregarded in a district and also overall. Under STV, 80 percent of votes are used to elect someone in each district. Although diluted by the presence of single-member districts, a higher level of effective voting would be the case across the whole province and country than is the case under FPTP. STV has been used successfully in Canada. It was used to elect MLAs in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg from the 1920s to the 1950s. It was also used to elect city councillors in 20 Canadian cities. It is also being used in national elections in Malta, Ireland and Australia. We know it works. More than half the countries in the world use PR of one sort or another. FPTP, with its faulty single-winner plurality criterion, has proven itself to be prone to delivering false majorities and unbalanced regional representation. As our political culture has grown from the two-party system, we should adopt a system that accords seats to parties in direct accordance to how the votes are cast. This much fairer process is within your grasp, Prime Minister. You can make it happen, and I believe you should. Inaugurating a Citizens' Assembly and speaking in favour such a reform would be steps toward such electoral justice. Thank you for your attention,
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