NB Election Results and Why FPTP is Outdated

[Smallc]

There's almost always a couple that have at least 50% support.

[eyeball]

That sounds far too messy. I'm not in favour of changing a system that works well because people don't think it's fair.

That's not what they think, most think it's ancient, outdated and just plain ridiculous.

[cybercoma]

There's almost always a couple that have at least 50% support.

Yes. 16/49, I said.

[ReeferMadness]

Actually that happened in the U.S. in 1968, 1992, 1996 (I think), and 2000. And I think in 1980. It's not uncommon.

Imagine that. And yet, people still defend FPTP. It's a wacky world.

[ReeferMadness]

Here's the last election I voted in:

A federal conservative voter in Toronto is represented by conservatives in Ottawa, and his/her local Liberal MP.

I don't see how you can represent everyone's "core values" in a riding unless you send all people who got votes to Ottawa. If you just send multiple MPs from every locality then it's meaningless.

Somebody has to lose. It's not grade 3 soccer.

No, it's a major league f*** up.

It isn't supposed to be about winning and losing, it's supposed to be about representing the people. And PR does a much better job of representing the wishes of the voters than FPTP.

[ReeferMadness]

That's not what they think, most think it's ancient, outdated and just plain ridiculous.

Exactly.

It isn't about being fair to the parties. It's about being fair to the voters. And giving them the government they vote for not one that "wins" because of people feel there have to be winners and losers.

[ReeferMadness]

Yep, my bad. I was thinking Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), in which voters also rank candidates but still only elect one person per riding. STV just combines that idea with multi-member super ridings.

If you feel that regional representation is important then STV isn't a good fit for Canada. It would work well in urban areas because 10 ridings can easily be joined together to form a super riding, yet still exist in one region. However, outside of larger cities, super ridings would have to cover such a massive area that all regional representation would be lost.

For that reason I think MMP would be a better fit.

So, you would choose someone you couldn't stand who lives on your street over someone you deeply admire because they live 300 miles from you. Is that what you're telling me?

[eyeball]

It isn't supposed to be about winning and losing, it's supposed to be about representing the people. And PR does a much better job of representing the wishes of the voters than FPTP.

Sortition would probably work just as well too.

In politics, sortition (also known as allotment or the drawing of lots) is the selection of decision makers by lottery. The decision-makers are chosen as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates.

In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the primary method for appointing officials, and its use was widely regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy.[1] It is often used today in forming citizen groups (e.g citizens' juries, citizens' assemblies) to provide input to policy makers and is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common law-based legal systems.

[overthere]

You might shrug, but I suggest that it's a significant problem. This means that in 2/3 of the ridings, more people voted for someone other than the MLA who was elected. It would be good for our politicians to remember this as they take office. They're supposed to represent ALL of their constituents and in most cases the majority of their constituents voted for someone else.

It also means that in 100% of the ridings, constituents elected the person that was the most popular in that constituency. Nothing in that suggests that a politician does not represent all the constitutents. It's a secret ballot, he or she does not know who specifically voted for them. Voting for or against the winner does not gain you more or less representation from that winner.

[Mighty AC]

So, you would choose someone you couldn't stand who lives on your street over someone you deeply admire because they live 300 miles from you. Is that what you're telling me?

No. However, regional representation seems to be important to most people that discuss this topic.

[Mighty AC]

No, I won't go there. "Wastage" "Distortion" "Fairness"... stop using loaded terms to discuss this. I'm not stupid and I'm not going to engage in a discussion unless you accept equally distorting terms from me.

Under FPTP the power of a vote changes depending on the political views of your neighbours, what word would you like to use to describe that?

Votes cast for a losing local candidate in a 'Winner Take All' system, like FPTP, do not create any representation. The commonly used term for that practice is wastage. What term would you prefer?

The difference between the proportion of seats allocated to a party in parliament and the proportion of the votes received is commonly referred to as distortion. What term would you prefer?

The Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) System dramatically improves on all three of these points, no matter what word you would like to label them with.

Show me how local representation is strengthened - and by that I mean numerically - while we get more PR. It's impossible, as far as I can see. Those are the numbers I asked for.

I said we get more local representation from MMP specifically, not PR in general. This point was clearly explained here:

Since, MMP allows people to vote for the local representative separately from the governing party it removes the incentive to vote strategically thus freeing voters to choose the best local candidate. Voters wanting a conservative government need not support the local conservative to help achieve that. Hence, local representatives become more beholden to their constituents while list representatives are beholden to their party's platform.

To further increase the power of local rep and reduce patronage, some MMP systems install list MPs by choosing the losing local MPs that received the greatest percentage of the vote.

By untying a vote for the government from the vote for a local rep, the MMP system lessens the ability of a local candidate from riding the coattails of a party. MPs that ignore local wishes in favour of party orders can be punished at the polls more easily. I'm not sure how to make that point numerically for you.

Currently, many MPs serve their parties and pay lip service to their local ridings. Can you show me, numerically, how much actual local representation we are receiving now?

[ReeferMadness]

Sortition would probably work just as well too.

Sadly, it would probably be better.

[ReeferMadness]

No. However, regional representation seems to be important to most people that discuss this topic.

Agreed. Regional representation seems to be a sacred cow when it comes to representative government but I've never seen a rational explanation for it. Most issues that are dealt with by the national government are not regional. They are at least at the provincial scale and above (and hey, we already have provincial governments to represent the interests of the provinces).

So, I'm inclined to conclude that it is simple, petty, primitive tribalism. We are social animals and the instinct to identify with someone from our own tribe is deeply buried in the primitive parts of our brains. It's behind our insatiable (and inane) devotion to sports teams, our species tendency to racism, our tendency to nationalism, religious wars and a great many other stupid and destructive tendencies. It could easily be the root of us bringing down civilization.

Luckily, we have the intelligence (many of us do, anyway) to look past the ancient traits that no longer serve us. We can see that our natural constituency is not simply a matter of geography, it's a matter of shared interests and shared values. Now that we have the technology, it is easy to reach out and build those constituencies across space and time zones. We just need to get past ourselves.

[cybercoma]

The issue that I have is that regional representation is sacred, yet they don't represent the region, are often absent from the region, have offices that are inaccessible when they are there, and ultimately follow the lead of party brass and not constituents wishes. Regional representation is a myth.

[ReeferMadness]

Here's the last election I voted in:

I don't usually respond to the same post twice but your map is a brilliant illustration of just how shallow and inane political analysis is.

Those vast swaths of uniform color present a uniform view of reality that the third grader in your soccer comment would recognize as patently false. Inside those great expanses of NDP orange are huge numbers of frustrated Harper supporters. Granted, they're probably not too bright but democracy demands that they be represented. Similarly, the stretches of blue hide hordes of intelligent, thoughtful people who loathe what Harper is doing to this country. Again, they should be able to feel that their views are being heard in Ottawa.

37% of votes = 60% of seats = 100% of power = anti-democratic.

[ReeferMadness]

Yep, my bad. I was thinking Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), in which voters also rank candidates but still only elect one person per riding. STV just combines that idea with multi-member super ridings.

If you feel that regional representation is important then STV isn't a good fit for Canada. It would work well in urban areas because 10 ridings can easily be joined together to form a super riding, yet still exist in one region. However, outside of larger cities, super ridings would have to cover such a massive area that all regional representation would be lost.

For that reason I think MMP would be a better fit.

IRV can produce even worse results than FPTP. STV sacrifices some degree of regionalism for proportionality.

You wouldn't normally join 10 ridings together because it isn't necessary. I'm going from memory but the optimum STV scenario is to join an odd number of ridings and 7 seems to be the optimal number. (As I recall, the increased proportionality of anything over 7 is minimal and it gets smaller as you add more). However, you can gain significant improvements in proportionality with as little as 3 representatives. In the BC-STV proposal, 79 BC ridings would have been reduced to 20, each with 2-7 members. If you have 7 members representing you, chances would be excellent that you would like at least one of them.

Finally, having grown up in a rural area, I can tell you there is no magical, uniform urban-rural divide. If you live on a farm, then it's a problem if your representative is from the town. If you live in a town, then it's a problem if your representative is from a larger town. if you live in the larger town, it's a problem if your representative is from the regional city. If you live in the city, it's a problem if your representative is from the suburbs. And so on.

Regionalism is an elusive, vanishing concept when you try to pin it down.

[jbg]

Exactly.

It isn't about being fair to the parties. It's about being fair to the voters. And giving them the government they vote for not one that "wins" because of people feel there have to be winners and losers.

Hopefully all parliamentarians represent all peole in their riding, of whatever party? I would hate to think that Nita Lowey is not representing the Republicans that are in her Congressional District.

[ReeferMadness]

Hopefully all parliamentarians represent all peole in their riding, of whatever party?

Hopefully, that is true. In reality, is it?

Representatives serve 2 main functions. The first is to help their constituents access the government bureaucracy. This is a non-partisan activity and shouldn't be affected by political stripes. However, it's one that I've never used and to me it's less important.

The other function (and the more important one by far, IMO) is to represent the constituents views in the HoC. Our system utterly fails us on this count for multiple reasons, a couple of the main ones being:

1. Power is so thoroughly centralized that MP's are actually more the party's representative to the people than the people's representative in the HoC. The system has been turned on its head.

2. In theory, the MP's are people's representatives and the PM is accountable to the MP's. In reality, MP's are beholden to the party and the PM. All significant policy decisions are made by the party and the MP's that don't toe the line will be out. You can check with Brent Rathgeber if you doubt that.

3. It is functionally impossible for a single person to adequately represent the views of a hundred thousand (or more) constituents on the basis of geography. The reality is that probably half or more of those people will have a fundamental difference with their representative on any given issue.

It is the second and third points that PR addresses and STV addresses best.

BTW, I'm not sure who Nita Lowey is. If your point is that the issues cut across ideologies, then I agree. This is Canadian forum and I've used Canadian examples.

I understand your system is different and so your issues will be different as well. My impression is that the parties have less centralized control in your country and that the main problem down there is more about concentration of power in the hands of money interests than concentration of power in the hands of unelected party officials.

[Mighty AC]

IRV can produce even worse results than FPTP. STV sacrifices some degree of regionalism for proportionality.

IRV isn't a proportional system. However, it is a better system than FPTP when electing just one person, like a mayor. If we were to use a proportional system like MMP, I think IRV should be used to elect the local reps.

[jbg]

The other function (and the more important one by far, IMO) is to represent the constituents views in the HoC. Our system utterly fails us on this count for multiple reasons, a couple of the main ones being:

1. Power is so thoroughly centralized that MP's are actually more the party's representative to the people than the people's representative in the HoC. The system has been turned on its head.

2. In theory, the MP's are people's representatives and the PM is accountable to the MP's. In reality, MP's are beholden to the party and the PM. All significant policy decisions are made by the party and the MP's that don't toe the line will be out. You can check with Brent Rathgeber if you doubt that.

3. It is functionally impossible for a single person to adequately represent the views of a hundred thousand (or more) constituents on the basis of geography. The reality is that probably half or more of those people will have a fundamental difference with their representative on any given issue.

I would hope that MP's present the views of their constituents and advocate for them, publicly or privately.

BTW, I'm not sure who Nita Lowey is. If your point is that the issues cut across ideologies, then I agree. This is Canadian forum and I've used Canadian examples.

I understand your system is different and so your issues will be different as well. My impression is that the parties have less centralized control in your country and that the main problem down there is more about concentration of power in the hands of money interests than concentration of power in the hands of unelected party officials.

I use Canadian examples plenty often. The House of Representatives is similar to the HOC. The main difference is that the executive does not literally sit in Congress. Still it is the Representatives' jobs to advocate their constituents view to the execute and the various departments.

[eyeball]

Sadly, it would probably be better.

It's always been my favourite, mostly because I think it would take a lot of the politics out of governance which would be even better than taking religion out of it.

[cybercoma]

Sortition is impossible in our system. How would an executive branch form? Another layer of sortition?

[eyeball]

That's pretty much how our representatives form an executive now.

OTOH we have a Queen and GG who could execute the will of our representatives.

[Michael Hardner]

It isn't supposed to be about winning and losing, it's supposed to be about representing the people. And PR does a much better job of representing the wishes of the voters than FPTP.

It's about governance, actually. And the reason politics exists is that people don't agree. The system works to establish leadership and opposition to work through those disagreements.

The voters wish for many things, but gridlock is not one of those things.

[Michael Hardner]

Under FPTP the power of a vote changes depending on the political views of your neighbours, what word would you like to use to describe that?

Votes on their own have little power. It's not the political views of your neighbours that affect the power of your vote - if you vote the same way they did then your choice will win the day.

I think it's reasonable for me to ask for language that is less skewed.

Votes cast for a losing local candidate in a 'Winner Take All' system, like FPTP, do not create any representation. The commonly used term for that practice is wastage. What term would you prefer?

"Votes cast for a losing candidate"

The difference between the proportion of seats allocated to a party in parliament and the proportion of the votes received is commonly referred to as distortion. What term would you prefer?

"Difference between the proportion of seats allocated to a party in parliament and the proportion of the votes received"

The Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) System dramatically improves on all three of these points, no matter what word you would like to label them with.

I said we get more local representation from MMP specifically, not PR in general. This point was clearly explained here:

By untying a vote for the government from the vote for a local rep, the MMP system lessens the ability of a local candidate from riding the coattails of a party. MPs that ignore local wishes in favour of party orders can be punished at the polls more easily. I'm not sure how to make that point numerically for you.

Because it can't be done. PR (as a general term) is about making sure that the proportion of power that ends up in the legislature reflects the overall vote. That can only be done by reducing the effects you describe, which means reducing the number of representatives that a local group can potentially win.

Currently, many MPs serve their parties and pay lip service to their local ridings. Can you show me, numerically, how much actual local representation we are receiving now?

That's specific to how the house of commons works, and it's a qualitative assessment not a numeric one.