Canada's Parliament

[Trevor3]

Originally Posted by BretttheRiderFan

I love our Parliament Buildings and compared to many other countries, considering how young we are it's a great facility. We should avoid expanding the House to too many seats, and obviously need to start discussing a House composition beyond this atrocious FPTP system.

This is getting a bit off topic, maybe it would be worth having a mod create a thread to discuss this if it proves worthwhile, but the FPTP system isn't all that bad. Proportional Representation sounds like a great idea but it has led to voter apathy in New Zealand, probably because of an inability to secure a majority government under the system. PR leads to a greater number of parties being represented for sure, which is a great way to incorporate the preferences of the voters, but it's difficult to maintain a majority government so there are more elections, and the initial rise in voter turnout is undone and returns to its low level. In Canada we have some serious issues with voter turnout and I don't think PR is a longterm solution to that problem.

If PR is where our future lies, and it could be, we have to figure out a way to increase voter turnout first. Or at the very least have a plan of some sort in place to keep voter turnout high past the initial elections under a PR system.

[1overcosc]

I like the system Scotland uses. Scotland is divided into 8 regions, and in turn each of those regions is divided into about 8-10 constituencies.

Within each region, the constituencies are elected by FPTP. But each region has, in addition to its 8-10 regular MPs, a total of 7 'region-wide' seats elected by party lists. Those region-wide seats are allocated to parties in a manner to try and correct distortions created by FPTP within that region. So if one party has a smaller share of the FPTP seats in a region than its share of the popular vote in that region, it will be given a greater share of the region-wide seats to offset. The country in total has 73 constituency MPs, and 56 region-wide MPs for a total Parliament size of 129.

Because the FPTP correction only applies within each region where the total number of seats is limited there's still a discrepancy because of rounding, which means that the nationwide popular vote and the nationwide seat count can still be about about 5-8 points off, and it's possible to get a majority in the mid-40s. I think this is a good compromise between the sh*tstorm and wasted votes that pure FPTP creates, and the impossibility of majorities that pure PR creates.

On a tangent, I've heard anecdotally from my Scottish relatives that the MMP system was created by Westminster on purpose to stop the SNP from ever winning a majority and calling a referendum on independence. Lol.

Ontario had a referendum in 2007 on adopting a system that would have been identical with one major difference--no regions. Instead the party list correction system would have worked province-wide, meaning that popular vote & seat count would have mirrored almost perfectly.

[The Chemist]

I still think that STV (used in Ireland) is the best form of proportional representation as you are directly voting for every MP - there are no lists. I wish the referendum in BC had passed, because it really would have kicked democratic reform into high gear in Canada. FPP is such an antiquated system and it really needs to be changed.

[1overcosc]

The Ontario government is allowing STV for municipal elections beginning in 2018; so the ball is starting to roll.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

The Ontario government is allowing STV for municipal elections beginning in 2018; so the ball is starting to roll.

I thought it was for preferential ballot, and is it all of Ontario or just Toronto?



Were it up to me, I'd fill the Senate by proportional representation (from party lists) and the Commons by preferential ballot (no party affiliations on the ballot and no party funding of candidates - just individuals standing for election on their own stead). Ideally the Senate would be a single nationwide constituency (e.g. ~100 senators for the entire country, so 1% vote = 1 senator) but it may be politically necessary to break that up into regions or provinces (i.e. so the vote share in any region/province is reflected in that region/province's senators).

Governments would be formed in the Senate, not the Commons, allowing the Commons to revert to what it once did in England: hold the Government to account. Question period would be a phenomenon for the Senate, but MPs would have the power to question ministers at Committee, or, in extraordinary circumstances, in the Commons itself (Committee of Whole).

[1overcosc]

^ I thought STV and preferential ballot were the same thing--you rank candidates and then the votes are moved around based on the preferences until somebody has a majority.

And it's an Ontario-wide option, any municipality can adopt it if they want.

[Dado]

That's kind of right. They're similar as far as the ballot that the voter sees is concerned, but differ in how counting proceeds because of how representation in ridings is dealt with.

In preferential ballots, votes for candidates at the bottom are removed and the 2nd, 3rd etc choices used until someone has more than 50%. It preserves the 1 member - 1 riding system we're used to.

In STV, there are multiple seats being elected in each riding. A quota is established to win a seat, which is generally 1 vote more than the percentage share for each seat (e.g. if there are 4 seats, then the quota is 20%+1 vote). You can actually think of preferential ballot as a special case of STV where there is only one seat up for grabs: 50%+1 vote.

So any candidate in STV that exceeds the quota is elected. They then have an apportioning method to deal with their "excess" votes by looking at their 2nd, 3rd, etc choices. If that results in another candidate meeting a quota, then that runs through again until it exhausts itself.

If they're still short of winners, they then start dropping the bottom candidates and looking at their subsequent votes.

It's confusing as hell and is done by computer.

So again, preferential ballot is a special case in that it skips the middle step of apportioning the first winner(s)' votes and goes right to checking the losers' 2nd choice votes.

[Boris2k7]

I like our Parliament building, and the location overlooking the Ottawa River is spectacular, but I find the grounds rather dull.

Parliament of Canada

The Nation's Capital by RemotelyBoris, on Flickr

U.S. Capitol

Le Capital by RemotelyBoris, on Flickr

[1overcosc]

Understood. So basically as you said, the ranked ballots that Ontario is proposing is basically STV with one seat per riding.

That multi-seat STV system you described is exactly how Ireland does its elections. Are they currently the only anglosphere jursdiction to do so? I know that Australia uses ranked ballots but I'm 99% sure it's one seat per district.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Understood. So basically as you said, the ranked ballots that Ontario is proposing is basically STV with one seat per riding.

That multi-seat STV system you described is exactly how Ireland does its elections. Are they currently the only anglosphere jursdiction to do so? I know that Australia uses ranked ballots but I'm 99% sure it's one seat per district.

Australia uses both systems.

The House of Representatives operates on a preferential ballot. The Senate operates on an STV system. In that case, each state is a 6-senator riding but each state has 12 senators with overlapping terms, as in the US.

Most of Australia's states are bicameral, and we see a mixture of systems in place. In general the lower house uses a preferential ballot and the upper house operates on STV or proportional representation systems. Tasmania flips that with PR in the lower house and preferential ballot in the upper house, while Queensland has no upper house. The capital territory (which is a sort of combined city-state government) is unicameral using STV while the Northern Territory is also unicameral with preferential ballot.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Boris2k7

I like our Parliament building, and the location overlooking the Ottawa River is spectacular, but I find the grounds rather dull.

There were plans drawn up by the designers of Central Park in NYC for something a little more interesting, but the architect of the first Parliament in Ottawa opposed anything that would take away from his masterpiece.


http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/colline...-1916-eng.html

[eternallyme]

I strongly oppose any kind of party list system. If MMP was implemented in 2007, all parties would likely choose downtown Toronto-based party hacks to represent them on the lists through backroom deals. It is just a recipe for party cronyism.

It was only supported in 5 ridings in 2007 - all in downtown Toronto. Everywhere else rejected it, in most cases strongly.

[BretttheRiderFan]

I've always just liked basic proportional representation like the Dutch do it...you vote for a party, they get their national seats based on the national vote (with a minimum threshold of maybe 2-5% or something).

A system like that would certainly force cooperation in government between parties, quash a lot of the regionalism that all parties subscribe to, and reflect the true views of Canadians. The argument for keeping Members of Parliament confined to a riding is really weak given the uniformity and party discipline we see.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-esX2BM_DDI...s+Prop+Rep.jpg

[J.OT13]

I would support First Past the Post for the House of Commons and Proportional Representation for the Senate, if it's not completely abolished.

[jmt18325]

FPTP has worked pretty well for Canada overall. I don't see the need to rush and change it.

[vid]

Originally Posted by jmt18325

FPTP has worked pretty well for Canada overall.

How? We've only had a majority government represent a majority of the population three times in 41 elections! In one election, we had a majority of the voters left in the opposition as the losing party took 66% of the seats!

When it comes to representing people, FPTP in Canada fails spectacularly. The fact that our government is set up to give a majority government an effective dictatorship makes things even worse.

[BretttheRiderFan]

Yep. Canada is a pretty great country and all, but chalking that up to our extremely outdated electoral system doesn't exactly make sense.

[jmt18325]

How can you dismiss the very system that we've used to form governments as a central reason for our success? Other countries haven't been so fortunate. What works well isn't somrthing that people will be in a hurry to change.

[jmt18325]

The real aim of democracy is to provide a stable transition between governments that doesn't involve violence. It allows people to choose government and create the transition. FPTP has done that very well for Canada. It has forced major parties to adopt policies of broad appeal in order to get broad support. It has also prevented governments from being beholden to fringe views. You're going to have a hard time making the case that we need change based on some made up concept of subjective fairness.

[niwell]

I can't speak to federal politics, but working for a provincial government in a minority government situation is awful. Nothing gets accomplished and there is substantially more waste. Majority governments are much more stable and can actually work towards accomplishing their agenda. As mentioned above it generally does remove fringe elements to gain popularity.

That being said, a majority government you don't agree with can do some awful things. In my case the other major party would probably cut my job as they are against the province being involved in planning. So yeah.