Electoral reform Submission – Brian Graff
Introduction
I am glad that the provincial government has shown some interest in reforming our political system and has created this process to look into redesigning our electoral system, but unfortunately there are issues that are outside of the mandate that should be addressed, namely:
- How our system is funded (currently there is too much reliance on corporate and union funding, and the tax credits for individuals mean that the system is skewed towards parties that can raise money from people with higher incomes).
- Parliamentary reform (There is too much power in the hands of the Premier, and it is possible that we should have looked at other reforms such as adding a second chamber, or moving to a system like that in US states where the Premier is elected directly by voters and does not sit in Parliament. In our current system, people get one vote, rather than 3 separate votes, that covers the elect local representation, party policy and Premier).
- Mandatory Voting. Advocates of PR often argue that PR would increase turnout. If turnout is such a problem, we should adopt an Australian style law which requires that people vote, though more accurately, the system would only require that people show up to vote, as it would give them the opportunity to Abstain or to Decline to Vote, as if someone is genuinely undecided or ignorant of the candidates and issues, we should provide an alternative to them picking a choice at random.
- Direct Democracy. New technologies (the computer and the internet) make it far more possible for people to be directly involved in creating laws and policies and this is not something that is being fully explored in this electoral reform process.
Also, I do not find the selection of 8 values to be a meaningful way of organizing my thoughts. For example, the issue of “Effective parties” takes for granted that we want parties to play a large role, rather than to have more emphasis on choosing individuals who do not parrot the party line during the campaign or once they are elected. And if we are going to have parties playing a large role in our system, we need to do more to encourage more people to be active in the parties (I am one of the small minority who is a paid member of a party) but also to ensure that the parties themselves are run democratically, particularly since they receive public monies directly or indirectly through the provision of tax credits for donations.
Another concern is that the rules governing the possible structure of Parliament are skewed to guarantee over-representation by the residents of Northern Ontario by setting a minimum number of ridings regardless of the population. Our system is supposed to be based on the concept of “equal representation”, normally thought of as “one person-one vote”. However, skewing the ridings so that Northern Ontario is over-represented violates this idea.
The North
There are several legitimate problems with having the ridings equal in terms of population because of the extremely large size of Northern Ridings and the dispersed population, in that it is very difficult to effectively campaign over such large areas and long distances, and once representation is chosen, the large size of the ridings, combined with the distance from Toronto, makes it difficult for the MPP to effectively serve the constituents.
There is a fair solution that I will call “weighted representation”. The number and configuration of risings in the North, or in other non-urban parts of the province, could be determined on a basis that would see some ridings have much lower populations than others, but when it came to recorded votes in the Legislature, the weight of that MPPs vote would be based on the number of constituents so that, for example, a Northern Riding with 60,000 constituents at the last Census would have a weighting of 60,000 points, and an MPP from a riding in the GTA with a population of 100,000 would have 100,000 points. Because of computers, this system is practical now when it would have been logistically difficult in earlier times when it was not possible to stick a couple of buttons on each desk in the Legislature and to get a result in seconds.
With this system, areas like the North would be over-represented in terms of “bodies”, in the legislature, and this would ensure that the concerns of the North would be heard, and similarly, this would also apply in terms of committees where the weighting of MPPs by the number of constituents would not apply.
Women and Minority Representation
It is unfortunate that in our provincial and federal elections, the people elected are not completely demographically representative of the underlying population. Clearly women are under-represented, and also aboriginal people, visible minorities, members of some religions, people with disabilities and other various identifiable groups might be under-represented.
However, I think it is also racist to presume that just because someone is not the same sex, religion or race as someone means that they cannot properly represent them, and that we must therefore impose some sorts of quotas that will affect the demographic makeup of the candidates or the elected officials. In particular, I think it wrong to do something such as to require that 50% of all MPPs be women, or to require that parties must have 50% of their candidates be women.
The same idea would apply to any idea of setting aside any seats specifically for aboriginal peoples.
Electoral System
One of my concerns with this process is that the need for Electoral Reform has been driven by groups like FairVoteCanada and by smaller political parties like the NDP and Green Party specifically because they want to implement a system of “Proportional Representation”, and that as a result there will be an over-emphasis on devising a system that is mainly intended to achieve a goal of make the party representation in the Legislature more statistically consistent with the popular vote. An MMP or mixed-member system (similar to Germany) is usually advocated as the best answer.
I have debated this issue with people on various websites and some people are fixated on improving proportionality without realising the actual implications of the change specifically, that a pure or mixed system of PR will itself change voting patterns. Another problem is that some people are fixated on trying to find some perfect system to better achieve the goal of proportionality, but in the end system is so complex and arbitrary in itself that it would be incomprehensible to most voters, like the STV system proposed for BC.
One of the problems with many PR or mixed systems is that they tend to assume that the most important thing to a voter is the choice of the party, and in doing so, it diminishes the ability of voters to decide which specific person they want to represent them, despite party affiliation. The British Parliamentary system, upon which our system is based, initially did not have political parties – but it was inevitable that representatives
PR systems also have a major flaw in that independent candidates are given short shrift in any system like MMP which has fewer directly elected representatives and then apportions some seats based on party.
What PR systems like MMP do is to hand more power to people active in political parties without necessarily increasing the number of people involved in party politics. In a system like MMP some of the “proportional” members might be drawn from party lists, rather than be chosen directly by voters themselves.
A real problem with PR systems is that rarely will any party be able to garner 50% or more of the vote and therefore majority governments will be a thing of the past. Only if there were 2 major parties capturing over 95% of the vote, as is the case in the US, would a PR system result in frequent majority governments, but in that situation, PR is unnecessary because the results vary so little from a FPTP electoral process. If we want PR and we want majority governments to be reasonably common, then the solution would be to massively re-engineer various aspects of our electoral system so that it effectively discourages anything other than having 2 major parties, again, as the US system does.
With PR and with perpetual minority governments, in order to form the government, the largest (or possibly second-largest) party will need to create a stable coalition with other parties that manage to elect MPPs. The result is actually very un-democratic, because the coalition will typically be built through backroom deals that are negotiated in secret, so that the “government” party will be able to count on the support of 50% to 55% of the MPPs. This still means that 45% to 50% of the votes are “wasted” in the parlance of supporters of PR.
So what will result will typically be a government coalition that consists of one party with fairly wide support, and a number of small single issue parties lending their support. The price will be that these single-issue parties will get their pet projects implemented, even though there is no consensus for them and even though they might be widely unpopular. The example of this is Israel, where conservative religious-based parties have been able to get their policies enacted.
This will not be like the deal enacted between David Peterson and Bob Rae in the 1980s,
Which resulted in an accord that was extremely popular with the public, because a PR system will itself lead to further fragmentation of the party system into smaller parties with narrower agendas. PR will see parties like the Green Party gain seats, but in addition, new parties will spring up, possibly representing regional interests (Urban, Northern, Rural). What is more worrying is that given the massive immigration and ethnic diversity of this province, we could see parties based on ethnic, racial or religious identities develop - a Sikh party, an Evangelical Christian Party, an Aboriginal Party, and so on, which will only serve to create or deepen ethnic tensions rather than uniting all Ontarians as members of one society.
Therefore, I believe many types of PR or mixed systems are undemocratic and divisive. What is needed is a system that tends to encourage greater consensus.
Stability is important, and consensus is important. For example, on issues like Rent Control it seems that whenever a new party forms the government, major legislative changes are enacted that are opposite to those of the previous party in power, with the result that much time and effort is wasted passing laws on the same issue and this is unproductive in terms of its impact on landlords and on renters alike.
So, how do we create a system that eliminates some of the disadvantages of SMP/FPTP the PR advocates complain about without creating the problems inherent in PR systems?
One answer might be to have runoff elections like France, which would guarantee that each MPP who sits in the Legislature has garnered at least 50% of the vote. However, this would mean having a second day set aside for elections, and which adds to the cost of the process and has other disadvantages, such as the fact that when people’s second choices are considered, the candidate in 3rd or 4th place might actually be the consensus choice, much like Stephane Dion, Dalton McGuinty or Joes Clark (in 1976) were able to win their leadership contests.
Well, my answer is the “Alternative Vote” (AV). This system has many advantages and few flaws, and it not far from the system many political parties have used to pick a leader through a series of ballots until one person wins with 50% of the vote, so it is one that should not be all that difficult for Canadians to understand.
I advocate sticking with single-member constituencies, as it avoids some of the complexity of having transferable votes with multi-member constituencies, which was the type of system rejected in BC.
AV can easily be implemented using printed ballots and electronic readers similar to the ones used in municipal elections in Toronto and elsewhere across the province and in parts of he US. Simply, a voter can pick their first choice, and if they want, pick their second and or third and or fourth choices, and so on. There might be a limit of 5 choices on the ballot, which means that if in a riding there are more than 5 candidates running, some voters might find that all of their choices have been dropped off before the winner was chosen and that therefore their vote is set aside, but this will likely only happen in a very tiny number of instances and only when a voter intentionally avoids voting for mainstream parties or candidates.
This system treats independent candidates equally with major party candidates.
A second variation on this system might allow for each party to have more than one candidate on the ballot – so that voters can more directly which person from a specific party their want as their MPP rather than just being limited to the candidate selected by party members at a meeting attended by a handful of card-carrying party members.
The number of candidates a party might be allowed (or required) to run might be based on the percentage of registered voters supporting that party. Alternatively, the rules might be designed to reduce the influence of parties so that candidates effectively run as individuals, and the role of parties is limited in elections largely to deciding how to distribute money - deciding which candidates will receive money, and which ones won’t, but not being able to stop anyone from running under the party banner as long as they are in good standing with that party.
A third variation might be to have a 2 stage election, that is, to have a primary election to select the candidates for the parties, and this primary would require a longer period for the election so as to accommodate both the primary and the final elections. The advantage here would be that instead of requiring people to join parties, they would register their affiliation and this would be noted on the voters list. In this way, more people would be involved in choosing the candidates, which avoids some of the current problems some parties have where members of one or more ethnic groups vie to stack a candidate nomination meeting in order that someone from their ethnic group becomes the local candidate.
These different variations of AV are all worthy of consideration, as long as we stick with single member constituencies.
So, in conclusion, I believe we should:
- For recorded votes in the Legislature, weight the vote of each MPP based on the number of constituents they represent.
- Institute “mandatory voting” with the option to abstain.
- Switch to an “Alternative Voting” system, like Australia uses.
- Make other changes to make the choice of party candidates more directly democratic, such as by having some sort of “Primary” vote to choose candidates or let each party run more than one candidate.