Could Canada be more democratic?

[ToadBrother]

We don't have a democracy, we have an elected aristocracy. I'm not sure anyone has suggested a better alternative, though.

You know, I look at most MPs, and honestly, the first thing that pops into my head isn't "aristocracy".

[Bryan]

Still think run off elections are the way to go. You couldn't get 50% the first time drop everyone but the top two and find out who 50% of the people support. I worry my party would suffer but I don't like having a MP 35% of my ridding chooses. Give me a run off.

In theory, I like that idea a lot. I wonder about the practicalities of it though. The logistics and expense are one concern, but the biggest one, IMO would be getting people to actually DO it. We have enough trouble getting people to come out to vote. If we ask them to do it twice per election, I fear turnout might drop even further.

[ToadBrother]

In theory, I like that idea a lot. I wonder about the practicalities of it though. The logistics and expense are one concern, but the biggest one, IMO would be getting people to actually DO it. We have enough trouble getting people to come out to vote. If we ask them to do it twice per election, I fear turnout might drop even further.

I can see runoff elections for singular posts like president, but for legislative representatives, it would be expensive, and as you say, you're starting out with pretty low turnouts and they'd just keep getting lower.

If run-off style votes is what you want then some sort of preferential ballot system like the AV system the LibDems are promoting in the UK makes more sense. It allows you to effectively run a "virtual" runoff election with the same ballots.

[eyeball]

Yeah, democracy is such an inefficient pain in the ass. We'd be better off just using technocrats informed by polling firms.

Malcontents who don't feel like participating or getting involved could just register with the do-not-call-registry.

Edited April 11, 2011 by eyeball

[punked]

I can see runoff elections for singular posts like president, but for legislative representatives, it would be expensive, and as you say, you're starting out with pretty low turnouts and they'd just keep getting lower.

If run-off style votes is what you want then some sort of preferential ballot system like the AV system the LibDems are promoting in the UK makes more sense. It allows you to effectively run a "virtual" runoff election with the same ballots.

It would save money I think because it would lead to more majority governments. As for turn out it would go down I agree which sucks but democracy is for those who participate it is not for everyone.

They do it in some states it seems to work ok and that is after they also have primaries so it can't cost that much. Lets do it and get MPs that people want not what we have now.

[ToadBrother]

Yeah, democracy is such an inefficient pain in the ass. We'd be better off just using technocrats informed by polling firms.

The point is at the end of the day you can't overdo things so much that you cease to be able to produce stable functional governments. I think places like Israel are indeed examples of why, while in theory, more extreme versions of PR produce more democratic results, they ultimately create a situation where minor parties can have so much influence that the voice of the majority is ultimately drowned out. It's likely this is the major reason you have the stable coalitions in places like Germany and Ireland, where the same parties tend to form governments, so that you basically get meta-parties like the CDU-FDP alliance in Germany.

Would you actually want a system like Israel, where the Marijuana Party or the Heritage Party, despite being fringe parties, could actually gain cabinet seats and substantial influence far greater than the vote percentages they achieve?

[ToadBrother]

It would save money I think because it would lead to more majority governments. As for turn out it would go down I agree which sucks but democracy is for those who participate it is not for everyone.

They do it in some states it seems to work ok and that is after they also have primaries so it can't cost that much. Lets do it and get MPs that people want not what we have now.

Yes, they have primaries which effectively function to narrow down the choices.

As to voter turnout, one of the chief reasons for moving from FPTP, I thought, was to increase voter turnout, not to reduce it. If we're reducing voter turnout by a new system, then I say it's failed. We might as well stick with what we have at that point.

[expat voter]

NDP is fourth place, and has never made a legitimate push to even be opposition, let alone government.

In popular vote, ie, in number of Canadians who cast a ballot for the NDP, they are firmly in third place.

FPTP rewards concentration of votes, not numbers of votes.

Many votes go unrepresented, while others are overrepresented. A partial PR system such as mixed-member proportional (MMP) would address this imbalance.

[Bryan]

In popular vote, ie, in number of Canadians who cast a ballot for the NDP, they are firmly in third place.

FPTP rewards concentration of votes, not numbers of votes.

Many votes go unrepresented, while others are overrepresented. A partial PR system such as mixed-member proportional (MMP) would address this imbalance.

But FPTP rewards local representation. A million people scattered across the country with one shared representative wouldn't actually have any representation at all. What's important to farmers is different from what's important to city dwellers. You expect them to share the same representative, and call THAT more democratic?

[islander]

Be patient, perhaps after another three or four $300 million dollar elections in quick succession the need to reform our system will start sinking in.

You do realize if we get stuck with some form of PR, we will have endless minority governments and 4 - $300,000,000 elections in 7 years will become the norm and not the exception. And it could turn int 7 elections in 4 years. Be careful of what you wish for.

[expat voter]

some stats for 2008 election (using data from wikipedia, due to rounding and very small parties, doesn't total 100%/308, but close enough to give an idea):

% seats rewarded to party vs. % national total of votes cast for party

Con 46.4% of seats won with 37.6% of vote

Lib 25% seats won with 26.2% of vote

NDP 12% seats won with 18.2% of vote

BQ 16% seats won with 10% of vote

Grn 0% seats won with 6.8% of vote

the number of seats that should have been rewarded to each party using national popular vote, and the number of over or under represented seats they had in the last parliament.

Con should have had 116 seats, instead received surplus of 27 seats due to FPTP

Lib should have had 81 seats, instead received deficit of 4 seats due to FPTP

NDP should have had 56 seats, instead received deficit of 19 seats due to FPTP

BQ should have had 31 seats, instead received surplus of 18 seats due to FPTP

Grn should have had 21 seats, instead received 0 due to FPTP

The government should have consisted of a coalition of 81 Liberal, 56 NDP, and 21 Green MPs, or 158 seats representing 51.2% of the popular vote.

Instead we had a near-majority Conservative government that 62.4% of Canadians did NOT want, and now they are trying to scare the country with the spectre of a coalition including a 'separatist' party that only won 38.1% of the vote within Quebec.

Again, FPTP rewards concentration of votes, not number of votes. The popular will is not being represented well enough in this system.

[expat voter]

But FPTP rewards local representation.

Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) would still have local representatives. (that's why it's called "mixed")

A million people scattered across the country with one shared representative wouldn't actually have any representation at all.

A million people scattered across the country with NO representative would have even less representation.

What's important to farmers is different from what's important to city dwellers. You expect them to share the same representative, and call THAT more democratic?

In an MMP system,there would be more than one 'PR' representative. So it would make sense that rural voters would have one PR MP, and urban voters another.

But actually with FPTP, rural voters have far more clout than urban voters, since urban ridings have far more voters per MP. A principle of democracy is one person one vote. FPTP gives a rural vote more weight than an urban one. Look at the numbers.

Your arguments consist of flailing at a straw man. You have to actually look at how MMP would work before criticizing it. Here's but one link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_member_proportional_representation

Edited April 11, 2011 by expat voter

[expat voter]

Con should have had 116 seats, instead received surplus of 27 seats due to FPTP

BQ should have had 31 seats, instead received surplus of 18 seats due to FPTP

Did someone mention parties punching above their weight?

[expat voter]

We don't have a democracy, we have an elected aristocracy. I'm not sure anyone has suggested a better alternative, though.

I think the intent of this thread was to discuss degrees of democracy. Where does Canada stand? A lot of the discussion is on the quality of how we elect people for representative democracy, but I agree with you, we also have to look at ways to implement more direct democracy

I think we need a way of electing representatives who are more, well, representative of the popular will. In addition, some direct democracy mechanisms are needed. For example, to initiate binding referenda and plebiscites.

But there is no democracy if money rules. That's called plutocracy, more and more of what Canada is becoming, especially with the tar sands.

[expat voter]

Still think run off elections are the way to go. You couldn't get 50% the first time drop everyone but the top two and find out who 50% of the people support.

Another option is the alternative vote, which will be voted on in a referendum in the UK in early May.

On one ballot, voters rank their choices. First choices are counted. If no one reaches 50% yet, then the last place candidate is dropped, and the second choices marked on those ballots are added to the first choice votes of all the others. The process continues until a candidate gets 50% + 1 ballot.

This would mean only going to the polls once. It would also prevent the scenario that France has faced since the rise of the far-right FN and the fractured left-wing vote. There, the top two parties making it to the second run-off round of voting were the right and the far right, although the numerous parties on the left had a combined total that would have provided a left-wing run-off choice for president.

[TTM]

This will be a long post, but bear with me. Some of this was posted on another thread, some of it is new:

There are several problems with the FPTP system, many of which are fundimental. The main one is that some votes are "worth" more than others. Here are some statistics from the 2008 election:

Party____Votes_______Seats

Cons____5,209,069___143

Lib______3,633,185____77

BQ______1,379,991____49

NDP_____2,515,288____37

Green_____937,613_____0

From the parties perspective, to gain 1 seat, they need

Party_____Votes

Cons_____36,427.06

Lib_______47,184.22

BQ_______28,163.08

NDP______67,980.76

Green_____infinite

From the voters perspective, 1,000,0000 votes gains you

Party_____Seats

Cons_____27.45

Lib_______21.19

BQ_______35.51

NDP______14.71

Green_____0

Clearly, in that election, a BQ vote was "worth' more than a Conservative vote, which was "worth" more than a Liberal vote, and so on. If all votes were equal, then parliament would have looked like this (ignoring independents, parties with fractional seats):

Party_____Seats

Cons_____117

Lib________82

BQ________31

NDP_______57

Green______21

When electing a representative, each vote is counted equally, one at a time. The problem is that once one candidate reaches a plurality (not a majority), the wishes of the remaining voters (often a majority) is discarded; they provide no input into the makeup of the government. Stated another way, in FPTP, all votes contribute equally to the process, however all votes do not contribute equally to the results. In a truly democratic system, both must be true.

The second flaw of FPTP stems from the first. In order to elect a candidate nationally, a party must concentrate the vote regionally. Take the BQ. All of their support is concentrated in Quebec, and therefore they are able to achieve very high seat counts, compared to their national popularity. The NDP has the opposite problem, in that it has a fairly broad national support, which is generally not concentrated in any one region. They are consistently underrepresented. Or take Reform/PC, before the two parties merged. In spite of achieving almost identical support (~19%) in the 1997 election, the regional Reform Party was rewarded with 60 seats, while the national PC party was rewarded with 20 seats. A national electoral system should not reward the regionallization of party policy or support.

A third problem with FPTP, or any riding system, is that the arbitrary political boundaries of the ridings can skew the results. Take for example Saskatchewan. SK for the last several elections, has voted in entirely right wing (Reform/Alliance/Conservative) representatives, with one notable exception. While right wing support is indeed very strong (~50% last election), the reason for this continuing (near) sweep is due to riding gerrymandering: the strong left wing support in the cities is diluted by splitting the large cities into multiple ridings, and then adding a sizable chunk of (right wing supporting) rural population. This is nominally done to keep the ridings down to a "manageable" size, but it effectively puts the left wing candidates at a significant disadvantage. Simply redistributing the ridings would consistently increase the number of seats that the left wing parties win in SK. The results of voting should not be affected by arbitrary political boundaries. This distorts voter representation. In addition, (and somewhat off topic) it is difficult for the elected MP to effectively represent the often very different concerns of the two groups.

A fourth problem with FPTP is that you are forced to cast a single vote for two often conflicting issues: which candidate will best represents my riding, and its specific issues, and which party's platform most closely aligns with my views for the country as a whole. People are forced to vote for a local candidate which they do not respect, in order to show their support for the national party, or conversely vote for a good local candidate, despite not supporting their party affiliation (I find myself in this boat). If this occurs, then no matter how you vote, it does not fully represent your wishes. It also leads to an number of other issues:

If you only vote mainly based on party affiliation (which I suspect the vast majority of voters do), then if your preferred party has next to no chance of representing your district, you are forced to either (a) not vote, ( "waste" your vote by voting for that candidate; that vote will be tossed, and will not contribute to the makeup of the Government, or ( c) vote for one of the candidates who does have a chance of winning. Included in this is the idea of strategically voting for the candidate most likely to defeat the front-runner. Any system which encourages you to vote against your actual wishes distorts the actual will of the population.

If a riding tends to vote mainly based on party affiliation, then local representatives tend not to actually represent their constituency, and simply become mouthpieces of the party they represent. It is difficult to run as an independent, because the party candidate has the party machinery, party money, and party exposure at a national level. Any candidate (or sitting MP) that attempts to voice an independent opinion faces the possible loss of party membership, and the difficulties of an independent campaign.

Obviously no system beyond a Direct Democracy can entirely cure these flaws, but FPTP is pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it comes to electoral systems.

Edited April 11, 2011 by TTM

[Bryan]

Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) would still have local representatives. (that's why it's called "mixed")

A million people scattered across the country with NO representative would have even less representation.

In an MMP system,there would be more than one 'PR' representative. So it would make sense that rural voters would have one PR MP, and urban voters another.

But actually with FPTP, rural voters have far more clout than urban voters, since urban ridings have far more voters per MP. A principle of democracy is one person one vote. FPTP gives a rural vote more weight than an urban one. Look at the numbers.

Your arguments consist of flailing at a straw man. You have to actually look at how MMP would work before criticizing it. Here's but one link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_member_proportional_representation

I'm well aware of how MMP works. You still end up with elected members that don't actually represent your region. Parties can assign a member from their list, without even running an actual candidate in your riding.

Your analysis of FPTP with regards to rural vs. urban "clout" is exactly backwards. Ontario has far more say than Saskatchewan, and far more MPs, specifically because there are more people in Ontario.

[expat voter]

You still end up with elected members that don't actually represent your region.

And you still end up with elected members who DO represent your region.

Your analysis of FPTP with regards to rural vs. urban "clout" is exactly backwards.

I think we can both find examples to support our positions. In either case, it shows that FPTP compromises the "one person one vote" principle.

[expat voter]

FPTP is pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it comes to electoral systems.

TTM, thanks for that post and the number crunching.

[[email protected]]

TTM, thanks for that post and the number crunching.

The Atlantica Party endorses STV, single transferable vote, it gives PR results but every representative is directly elected. It also encourages independents and smaller parties to take part. Plus the voter choice is more interesting so it will tend to higher turnouts.

[g_bambino]

In addition, some direct democracy mechanisms are needed. For example, to initiate binding referenda and plebiscites.

A plebicite is not the same as a referendum. But, your proposal would likely require costitutional change, since you're talking about shifting executive authority away from the Queen-in-Council to the majority of whatever number of registered voters that decide to participate in a given referendum. The idea just leads to more questions than solutions.

[c/e]

Edited April 11, 2011 by g_bambino

[TimG]

FPTP is pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it comes to electoral systems.

That is an opinion that depends on how you view the purpose of a democratic system. If one feels that the purpose of a democratic system is to provide a means to peacefully change government while providing local representation then FPTP does this very well.

[Tilter]

One basic step towards Canada becoming more democratic would be that the 35% of Canadians that don't bother to vote ---- EVER--- did. They are likely the ones that turn up to pep rallies as happened at the G20.

[Tilter]

And you still end up with elected members who DO represent your region.

I think we can both find examples to support our positions. In either case, it shows that FPTP compromises the "one person one vote" principle.

In our federal AND provincial systems, no matter what system is used, we end up with a system that only represents the riding in which the PM ran no matter what party wins.

In Ontario I have never felt represented by the McPremier government mainly because the McPremier speaks with his second tongue and is known to lie every time he does speak.

In truth-- the Liberal party of Ontario should be renamed The Prevaricators as that has been the main party platform for the last 7 years.

Edited April 11, 2011 by Tilter

[Michael Hardner]

One basic step towards Canada becoming more democratic would be that the 35% of Canadians that don't bother to vote ---- EVER--- did. They are likely the ones that turn up to pep rallies as happened at the G20.

I need a cite for that one. What is implied is that 65% of voters that don't vote would produce a far different end result if they voted.