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Poll: Potentially Achievable Reforms


  

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FPTP needs to go. Every vote needs to count.
Every vote does count.

Whenever Canadians experience a minority government they get tired of it pretty quickly. Most people have no interest in a system that produces perpetual minorities. The exceptions are those parties that have no chance of getting power except in a minority situation.

Edited by TimG
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I would like to see two things. First, I'd like to see parliament have more control over the leaders, and second, I'l like for true rep by pop to be instituted, so that provinces with perpetually lower populations wouldn't always be at an unfair advantage in terms of seats. PEI has too many seats, and even Manitoba, for the next decade or so, does too.

EEE is either a take it or leave it thing. It might work, it might be okay, but I'm not sure.

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Every vote does count.

Whenever Canadians experience a minority government they get tired of it pretty quickly. Most people have no interest in a system that produces perpetual minorities. The exceptions are those parties that have no chance of getting power except in a minority situation.

Mathematically, at least, you're wrong. FPTP is probable just about the least representative system. The counter-argument, however, is that other electoral systems encourage instability, horse-trading and/or perpetual coalitions, which in the case of countries like Germany and Israel, really just mean you end up with "meta-parties" that will inevitably work together if the senior party is elected, and only really split up during an election.

I'm of two minds on electoral reform. On the one hand FPTP is patently unfair if your speaking in strict terms of vote allocations. On the other hand, I find coalitions and minority governments disturbing.

Edited by ToadBrother
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Mathematically, at least, you're wrong. FPTP is probable just about the least representative system. The counter-argument, however, is that other electoral systems encourage instability, horse-trading and/or perpetual coalitions, which in the case of countries like Germany and Israel, really just mean you end up with "meta-parties" that will inevitably work together if the senior party is elected, and only really split up during an election.

I'm of two minds on electoral reform. On the one hand FPTP is patently unfair if your speaking in strict terms of vote allocations. On the other hand, I find coalitions and minority governments disturbing.

I find lefties very hypocritical when it comes to FPTP. The lefties I am forced to associate with were crying for proportional representation when the CPC won the federal election. However not one mention of PR this morning after the Manitoba election in which the NDP beat the PC by 2% yet scored 18 more seats.

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I find lefties very hypocritical when it comes to FPTP. The lefties I am forced to associate with were crying for proportional representation when the CPC won the federal election. However not one mention of PR this morning after the Manitoba election in which the NDP beat the PC by 2% yet scored 18 more seats.

Huh? When the last STV vote was held in BC, the support for it seemed to come from all political stripes, and those decrying it came from all camps. The divide wasn't ideological, it seemed rather to be that those not in favor it were from the two main BC parties, the two that would have the most to lose by moving from FPTP.

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Huh? When the last STV vote was held in BC, the support for it seemed to come from all political stripes, and those decrying it came from all camps. The divide wasn't ideological, it seemed rather to be that those not in favor it were from the two main BC parties, the two that would have the most to lose by moving from FPTP.

Read my post again. I gave an example of left wing hypocrisy.

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And what, the Right isn't brimming with hypocrites? Come on lukin, there's a point at which partisanship becomes indistinguishable from madness.

True, there is hypocrisy everywhere. My point was a tangible example of what I noticed with regards to the federal election, and the Manitoba election. Why is PP only talked about when conservatives win, yet not when the NDP win. I accept the system we have. I don't like the NDP...but they have 37 out of 57 seats with only 2% more vote. I'm not crying for PP like my lefty colleagues were after the federal election.

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I ask this question often when the topic of electoral reform comes up:

What problem are we trying to solve ?

All of the options (except 'other', which I chose) amount to reshuffling how parliament would work - but to what end ? To me, they would all seem to result in more politicking in the old manner, and I doubt people want that.

To me, the question of reform has to start with "What is government to the people ?".

The answer to that question is: services. Government does do other things - address big questions of justice, world peace, and the environment but for the most part government allocates resources towards services such as health care, infrastructure, internal security, economic programs, social welfare and so on.

To my mind, we should be focusing reforms on service delivery. The problem is that it is a mundane and dense topic which alternately bores and mystifies even the most informed citizen. This happens because there is no 'public' which is engaged at looking at the details of government operations, and because there is no information out there which is accurate, timely and accessible.

We can't have a debate without information, and without a public that is engaged in debating that information. Instead, we debate identities. MLW is proof of that.

This issue crosses left/right boundries. I urge MLW members to look at organizations like the Sunlight foundation, who are trying to untangle the webs of bureaucracy to answer the question we really need to be debating: what is government doing ?

http://sunlightfoundation.com/

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I ask this question often when the topic of electoral reform comes up:

What problem are we trying to solve ?

The problem that, mathematically, FPTP creates a situation in which once a candidate crosses a line, all the remaining votes are basically junked. In effect, some proportion of the electorate are basically disenfranchised. In a very literal sense, they might as well not have shown up at the polls.

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The problem that, mathematically, FPTP creates a situation in which once a candidate crosses a line, all the remaining votes are basically junked. In effect, some proportion of the electorate are basically disenfranchised. In a very literal sense, they might as well not have shown up at the polls.
This rationalization drives me nuts because it is narrative that only makes sense if you assume that people elected as representatives do not represent those that did not vote for them. This is false. The representative is supposed to represent everyone in the riding.

Second, there are always considerable policy overlap between parties and most people disagree with some of the policies of the party they vote for. This means that one might agree with 20% of Party A and %50 of Party B and 80% of Party C's policies. This means that no matter who is elected then some of the policies you support will be implemented so it is false to say that you are disenfranchised because your 80% party did not get in.

Edited by TimG
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This rationalization drives me nuts because it is narrative that only makes sense if you assume that people elected as representatives do not represent those that did not vote for them. This is false. The representative is supposed to represent everyone in the riding.

Second, there are always considerable policy overlap between parties and most people disagree with some of the policies of the party they vote for. This means that one might agree with 20% of Party A and %50 of Party B and 80% of Party C's policies. This means that no matter who is elected then some of the policies you support will be implemented so it is false to say that you are disenfranchised because your 80% party did not get in.

I don't really see how that deals with the hard fact that FPTP becomes a vote tossing system past a certain threshold. I'm not necessarily defending PR systems, but let's not pretend for a moment that FPTP actually creates legislative assemblies that mirror voter intent.

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I don't really see how that deals with the hard fact that FPTP becomes a vote tossing system past a certain threshold. I'm not necessarily defending PR systems, but let's not pretend for a moment that FPTP actually creates legislative assemblies that mirror voter intent.

No, it doesn't, but I'm not sure how we're going to implement something like PR in a country such as this. It's huge with many unpopulated areas. Something like MMP...how would that work in PEI?

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I don't really see how that deals with the hard fact that FPTP becomes a vote tossing system past a certain threshold.
It is only a vote tossing system you assume the choices are mutually exclusive. In reality they are not. Very few people will find themselves in a situation where they disagree with everything the winner does. In fact, the nature of the system forces parties to cater to a broad audience which increases the overlap between parties so this outcome is not a coincidence.

The only problem is there are voters who are ideological. They simply hate the CPC/LPC/NDP no matter what and don't really care what the policies are. That is problem with the voter - not the system.

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No, it doesn't, but I'm not sure how we're going to implement something like PR in a country such as this. It's huge with many unpopulated areas. Something like MMP...how would that work in PEI?

Well, I've already stated that I don't think PR is a panacea. You either get the "meta" parties that I discussed or you get what I consider a pretty dysfunctional system like Israel, where what amount to small fringe parties having influence on governments well beyond any level of popular support. I'm just saying there's not getting around the mathematical problems of FPTP.

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I'm just saying there's not getting around the mathematical problems of FPTP.

I agree with you there, I'm just not sure (as I said in another thread) that we should consider democracy an end unto itself. If we can use democracy, that is a bit less representative to create an extremely stable system, that is proven to work well, I'm not sure that we should be willing to give it up in the name of being more fair.

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I agree with you there, I'm just not sure (as I said in another thread) that we should consider democracy an end unto itself. If we can use democracy, that is a bit less representative to create an extremely stable system, that is proven to work well, I'm not sure that we should be willing to give it up in the name of being more fair.

It's always a trade off. If you look at a lot of PR countries, as I said, what you get are "meta" parties, such as the Christian Democrats and the Christian Social Union, or the "Union" parties, who almost inevitably form a bloc within the German parliament. I fail to see any particular advantage to that. It would be like the Liberals and NDP teaming up after every election, but putting on a facade of competition during the elections themselves.

I think FPTP is a good balance between pure democratic will and stability. It isn't perfect, and no one can say reasonably that every vote actually counts in FPTP, but Canada, all in all, is an extremely well-governed country. I'm not advocating PR at all, but I am saying that the compromise does mean that a certain percentage of the ballots become pointless.

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I think FPTP is a good balance between pure democratic will and stability. It isn't perfect, and no one can say reasonably that every vote actually counts in FPTP, but Canada, all in all, is an extremely well-governed country. I'm not advocating PR at all, but I am saying that the compromise does mean that a certain percentage of the ballots become pointless.

I think that as a compromise between PR and FPTP, AV or IRV may be a system worth exploring.

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The problem that, mathematically, FPTP creates a situation in which once a candidate crosses a line, all the remaining votes are basically junked. In effect, some proportion of the electorate are basically disenfranchised. In a very literal sense, they might as well not have shown up at the polls.

This is the result of having an election, and anything other than direct democracy offers some variation on this problem.

If the point is to make the mathematics work perfectly, then direct voting on issues is your answer. Of course, PR advocates usually back off from that, and offer an alternative that's a little less mathematically "incorrect" for lack of a better word.

The point isn't to tune the system so that the math works, it's to tune it so that it makes things better for people. What is not working today for the people ? If mathematics can help us with that question, then we can introduce it later on.

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My first post seems to not have been addressed. I'm not whining here: this happens almost every time I introduce this topic, as far as I can tell.

Our government is not aligned with any kind of discerning public that is armed with information to make a decision: this is the DNA of democracy; this is our compass, and it isn't working.

We're making decisions on whom to vote for based on identity politics - advertising, images and fuzzy facts. We need to address that first. Rejigging the voting systems is like that old saying about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

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