What does a guy have to do?

[TheDrew]

Once again I am totally heartbroken that none of the parties have even mentioned electoral reform in any meaningful way. What do I have to do to get people to notice that their votes don't count? Run down Bay Street wearing nothing but a banner that says "The people demand a revisitation of an archaic and outdated system of casting votes to choose representatives!"? Because I will! (The banner needs to be long, because it is very cold here in Toronto. I imagine I'd leave the "The people demand" showing, and then wait for the news crews to show up before I explain exactly what we demand).

Am I the only person left in Canada who is sick and tired of being effectively disenfrachised by single-member plurality voting? I mean, sure the idea is to generate stability, but considering it seems to only create corrupt Liberal majorities, or slightly less corrupt Liberal minorities, with a fair chance now of likely-to-be-corrupt Conservative minorities, perhaps it's time for a change. Although minority governments will likely lead to more frequent elections, it will also force the parties to re-examine their stances, become more flexible, and try to create dialogue amongst themselves to ensure that government moves forward via compromise.

In my riding in the last federal election (Calgary South-Centre, for those of you stalking me), the Conservatives won a handy 51% of the popular vote. That's a great foundation for a representative. But that also means that not only did 49% of all the voters throw their ballots into a paper shredder, but so did all the Conservative voters past the magic threshold (the next-highest vote percentage was the Liberals, with about 29%, if I recall correctly, which means that 29% +1 vote would have been enough to ensure a Conservative win). That's a lot of wasted ballots.

When a party can earn 36.7% of the popular vote and win 43.8% of the seats in the Commons, or 15.7% of the vote for 6.1% of the seats, or 4.3% of the vote and 0 seats, I for one think we have a serious problem.

My new signature: Plurality systems work great when there are only two parties.

[August1991]

At present, the BQ gets about 17% of the seats with about 13% of the popular vote so don't expect any chance of reform anytime soon (unless Quebec were to become sovereign).

You can take heart that, because of Chretien's reform, your vote will give $1.75 to the federal political party of your choice.

Nevertheless, your single vote in a federal election, with PR or FPTP or any other scheme I have seen, will change absolutely nothing in the final result. You might as well stay at home and not vote.

On the other hand, when you buy and sell products and services in a market (as you likely do everyday), you have an accurate impact on a collective decision.

When somebody smart devises an electoral system that imitates a market, that person will win a Nobel Prize - and our political system will change radically.

[err]

Nevertheless, your single vote in a federal election, with PR or FPTP or any other scheme I have seen, will change absolutely nothing in the final result.  You might as well stay at home and not vote.

Obviously, she suspects you're not going to vote CPC... So please go out on January 3rd and cancel her vote !!!!

[August1991]

Nevertheless, your single vote in a federal election, with PR or FPTP or any other scheme I have seen, will change absolutely nothing in the final result.  You might as well stay at home and not vote.

Obviously, she suspects you're not going to vote CPC... So please go out on January 3rd and cancel her vote !!!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

err, do you really believe that your single ballot will change in any way whatsoever the result of this election?

Unless the candidate you vote for happens to lose by one vote (to my knowledge this has never happened in any Canadian federal election and the likelihood is extremely small), then your particular ballot is irrelevant. If it is or isn't in the ballot box makes no difference. This would be true under PR also.

[TheDrew]

Nevertheless, your single vote in a federal election, with PR or FPTP or any other scheme I have seen, will change absolutely nothing in the final result.  You might as well stay at home and not vote.

Obviously, she suspects you're not going to vote CPC... So please go out on January 3rd and cancel her vote !!!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

err, do you really believe that your single ballot will change in any way whatsoever the result of this election?

Unless the candidate you vote for happens to lose by one vote (to my knowledge this has never happened in any Canadian federal election and the likelihood is extremely small), then your particular ballot is irrelevant. If it is or isn't in the ballot box makes no difference. This would be true under PR also.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In a PR system my vote would count towads national percentages, and thus count towards list seats (in a multi-member proportional system, the form most commonly proposed for Canada). If getting 30% of the popular vote ensures around 30% of the list/PR seats, then that means a heck of a lot more than if my vote serves to elect NOBODY.

[August1991]

In a PR system my vote would count towads national percentages, and thus count towards list seats (in a multi-member proportional system, the form most commonly proposed for Canada). If getting 30% of the popular vote ensures around 30% of the list/PR seats, then that means a heck of a lot more than if my vote serves to elect NOBODY.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And with about 10 million votes cast in Canada, what difference will your single vote make in the percentage difference? (There would be many zeroes in the decimal.)

It is extremely unlikely (that is, impossible) that your ballot would cross a threshold and add an extra deputy to your preferred party. Hence, your ballot is irrelevant.

The problem here is how individual choice fits within a collective decision. It is a harsh fact to accept that your vote will change nothing. (That is not the case when you deal in a market.)

[kimmy]

Since it's positively balmy here in Edmonton, perhaps I should offer to run about wearing the banner.

I faced a similar situation myself last election, when I knew before going to the polling station that the Conservative candidate would win this riding in a landslide. Voting for any of the major parties would have been pointless; I opted to vote Green to offer the $1.75 of support and help them reach the 4% threshold.

The need for electoral reform has never been more clear. Luckily, once the Liberals squeak back in with another rickety minority, we can look forward to hearing from Belinda Stronach, who has been designated by PMPM as his point-woman on "addressing the democratic deficit." Belinda is certainly known as a profound thinker with a penetrating insight into our nation's democratic tradition, and I'm very excited to learn what innovative solutions she developed in the time she's spent grappling with the issue. The ideas she comes up with could shape the course of our country's future, and I for one am extremely excited about it.

-kimmy

[normanchateau]

The need for electoral reform has never been more clear. Luckily, once the Liberals squeak back in with another rickety minority, we can look forward to hearing from Belinda Stronach,  who has been designated by PMPM as his point-woman on "addressing the democratic deficit."  Belinda is certainly known as a profound thinker with a penetrating insight into our nation's democratic tradition, and I'm very excited to learn what innovative solutions she developed in the time she's spent grappling with the issue.  The ideas she comes up with could shape the course of our country's future, and I for one am extremely excited about it.

And CPC MP Nina Grewal can be the point-woman for her party.

Sure she might not say anything profound or even say anything period, but hey, at least you can count on her, unlike Belinda, to stand by her man.

[TheDrew]

It is extremely unlikely (that is, impossible) that your ballot would cross a threshold and add an extra deputy to your preferred party.  Hence, your ballot is irrelevant.

The problem here is how individual choice fits within a collective decision.  It is a harsh fact to accept that your vote will change nothing.  (That is not the case when you deal in a market.)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm not certain we're even discussing the same issue here.

In my riding, the second-place candidate received 15,305 votes out of 51,201, meaning that only 15,306 votes, or 29.9% of the popular vote was needed to win that riding. Which means that every vote for a non-winning party, AND all the votes for the winning party in excess of 15,306 were wasted. So it's not just my ONE vote, it's 70.1% of all the votes in my riding, or 35,985 votes that would be counted under some form of PR that are meaningless to the outcome of an election under our current system. And that's just my riding.

My current riding, Toronto Centre, faces a similar problem:

Total votes cast in 2004: 53,663

Votes for winning candidate: 30,336

Votes for second-place candidate: 12,747

Votes needed to win: 12,748

Votes for winning candidate wasted: 17,558

Votes for non-winning candidates (wasted by default): 23,327

Total wasted votes: 40,885

Percentage wasted votes: 76.2%

So in two ridings alone, I've already seen 76,870 votes that made no difference to the outcome of the election.

A third riding, Western Montreal's Jeanne-Le Ber (the closest non-territorial riding in the country in the last election, and thus the riding with the fewest wasted votes; the closest riding, Yukon-Western Arctic had only 13,478 votes cast, so it makes for a poor sample):

Total votes cast in 2004: 45,676

Votes for winning candidate: 18,766

Votes for second-place candidate: 18,694

Votes needed to win: 18,695

Votes for winning candidate wasted: 71

Votes for non-winning candidates (wasted by default): 26,910

Total wasted votes: 26,981

Percentage wasted votes: 59.0%

That's 103,851 votes wasted in three ridings.

If we extrapolate the problem, assuming (very conservatively) that about 60% of votes are wasted per riding on average, with 13,489,559 votes cast in the last federal election, that means that over 8 million votes did nothing to influence the makeup of Parliament.

I don't speak for just me. I speak for 8 million Canadians who cast their votes for no reason. It's simple math. The Single-member Plurality system disenfranchises us in a huge way.

Plurality systems work great when there are only two parties.

*Edit: When I say a vote is wasted, I mean beyond the additional party funding. But funding is not all that's needed to participate in elections, and it's certainly not the only thing that matters to activity in the House. Look at the Green Party: 582,247 votes cast for them, which means $1,018,932.25 in funding, but they still don't get to participate in the leaders' debate, and they still didn't get to sit even a single member in the House during the 38th Parliament.

[Yaro]

I agree, lists would have many benefits on the federal scene including creating an atmosphere in which Canada as a whole can be viewed as something greater then its parts. Combined with a rebalancing of regional/federal powers it would give us the best federal politic setup in the world (IMO).

[August1991]

Drew, you still don't seem to understand my argument.

If I take your Jeanne-LeBer example which was the closest (non-territorial) riding in the last election, the margin of victory was 71 votes. In other words, if any single voter had not bothered to vote, the Liberal (Liza Frulla) would still have won.

Since your vote is not decisive, you have no reason to bother to vote.

Incidentally, we haven't even got to the question of whether you should take the trouble to be informed about how to vote.

I agree, lists would have many benefits on the federal scene including creating an atmosphere in which Canada as a whole can be viewed as something greater then its parts. Combined with a rebalancing of regional/federal powers it would give us the best federal politic setup in the world (IMO).

That's a non-starter given how the BQ benefits from the current system. In any case, it would not solve the fundamental problem of voting.

This is not an academic issue and it will become increasingly more severe. Voter turn out will decline and governments will be less accountable.

[Yaro]

That's a non-starter given how the BQ benefits from the current system. In any case, it would not solve the fundamental problem of voting.

While I agree that electoral reform as an issue would be immensely difficult to cram down the throats of the federal politicians, why does the fact that the BQ and Liberals benefit from the current system enter into it? Shouldn't the federal system be determined by the nation as a whole? Or are you simply meaning the charter issues involved?

This is not an academic issue and it will become increasingly more severe. Voter turn out will decline and governments will be less accountable.

I don't know of any nation which has a popular system that didn't see a sharp rise upon implementation of that system. I agree that it’s a severe problem; voter apathy is a democracy killer.

[TheDrew]

In other words, if any single voter had not bothered to vote, the Liberal (Liza Frulla) would still have won.

Since your vote is not decisive, you have no reason to bother to vote.

I agree that no single vote is decisive in a plurality system, but that's part of my problem: those votes should count for something. What I'm saying is that while currently an individual vote means little, there exist ways of making them mean more. Under a PR variant, say multi-member proportional, while the appearance of one voter more or less at the polling station might not change who gets elected in a given riding seat, the cumulative effect of numerous votes cast for non-winning parties will result in the election of national list MPs, and furthermore, the effect of additional votes cast for winning candidates beyond the minimum required to win their seat will help bolster their party by providing them with national list seats also. And, as I've pointed out, we're not talking about the one vote of any given person; we're talking about making the millions of votes cast by supporters of non-winning parties and supporters of winning parties in excess of the necessary minimum.

Your argument seems to be terribly reductionist: since no one vote counts, then nobody should vote. That's ludicrous. All that means is that in elections, group action on a constituency level is vitally important, and that would be dulled somewhat by the introduction of PR.

And the issue of whether or not one should be informed about voting is completely irrelevant to the discussion of electoral reform; in fact, I would argue that the increased parity between popular support and parliamentary representation would result in people being more interested in becoming informed, since it would reduce emphasis on strategic voting (voting "against" rather than for), thus allowing people to vote according to the issues, rather than just trying to "block" specific parties.

As far as any party benefiting from the current system is concerned, why does that matter? Certainly it will make it more difficult to get electoral reform through our current parliamentary structure, but since electoral reform doesn't require constitutional amendment, just an amendment to the Elections Act, you would only need 155 MPs to vote in favour of it. It doesn't matter which 155. If there is any legacy of Reform populism left in the CPC, I can see no reason that they would not support some form of PR, and the NDP has been fairly clear that they are supportive. Though the BQ would like oppose it due to their perceived benefit from the current system, their benefit is minor, and ultimately it would come down to the will of the constituents: if the Bloc opposed electoral reform, but the Quebecois saw that PR can actually improve regional power by allowing limited-interest parties to take list seats even if they fail to win riding seats, then the Quebecois would have to choose whether they feel the BQ or PR would better serve their interests.

I don't know of any nation which has a popular system that didn't see a sharp rise upon implementation of that system. I agree that it’s a severe problem; voter apathy is a democracy killer.

Mostly true. Ireland and Norway are both PR systems, and their voter turnout still manages to be fairly low. Germany and Belgium on the other hand have relatively high voter turnout. Voter turnout still has a lot to do with the issues facing an electorate. I am unconvinced however that switching to some form of PR could possibly hurt Canadian voter turnout levels.

Plurality systems work great when there are only two parties.

[August1991]

As far as any party benefiting from the current system is concerned, why does that matter? Certainly it will make it more difficult to get electoral reform through our current parliamentary structure, but since electoral reform doesn't require constitutional amendment, just an amendment to the Elections Act, you would only need 155 MPs to vote in favour of it.

The Constitution sets provincial seat totals so PR would have to be on a provincial basis.

What I'm saying is that while currently an individual vote means little, there exist ways of making them mean more.

I am not saying that s single vote means little - I am saying that it means nothing. Even under PR, a single vote will have no material effect on the outcome.

Your argument seems to be terribly reductionist: since no one vote counts, then nobody should vote. That's ludicrous.

Why is it ludicrous? It's painfully obvious. And it explains in large part why voter turn out is falling everywhere, why it is well below 30% in municipal elections and why many people feel politics is pointless.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't vote. I'm saying that people increasingly realize that their single vote changes nothing.

And, as I've pointed out, we're not talking about the one vote of any given person; we're talking about making the millions of votes cast by supporters of non-winning parties and supporters of winning parties in excess of the necessary minimum.

Drew, I think your error is in going from one vote to millions. You and I don't have a million votes. We only have one vote. You look at the masses and forget that they are composed of individuals.

----

But let me go further with this. Why would an individual bother to investigate political parties, their policies, their credibility? The individual vote will make no difference. Hence, most people don't care about politics and spend little time investigating parties and politicians. There's no point.