Proportional Representation

 Nigel Farage is now running for a seat at Westminster. He complains, however, that the “first past the post” system that Canada shares with Britain makes it difficult for new parties. The current government of Canada managed only 33% of the vote last election, and fewer votes than the opposition Conservatives. Reform in the UK could surpass the Tories in votes, but win almost no seats. This does not reflect the popular will.

I’m not convinced majority rule is the end-all goal here. It is more important to have a system of any sort that ensures an orderly transition of power. Since first past the post is tried and true, it is risky to tamper with it.

Second, majority rule always risks oppression of minorities. Nazi Germany is the obvious example. It makes sense to have checks and balances, like the riding system, which elects representative voices by region, to protect regional minorities.

Third, first past the post is simple; making elections harder to steal.

Fourth, proportional representation almost never produces a majority government. This makes it hard for any government to pursue a consistent and rational policy; they must govern as part of an unstable coalition, making ad hoc deals. That leads to inconsistency and unpredictability which makes it harder for people to manage their lives. And said coalitions could fall at any moment. A lot of fuel is burned just taking care of business.

But let us suppose we nevertheless want proportional representation, or some form of voting that more justly reflects the popular will. Here’s my proposal:

For the House of Commons, go to the Irish system of ranked ballots: if there are five candidates in a riding, you can number your preferences on the ballot, 1 through 5. If no candidate gets 50%, the bottom candidate is dropped from the count, and his votes reassigned based on second preference; and so on until one candidate reaches the 50% threshold. This would end the problem of wasted votes and the need for strategic voting. The system is still simple enough that fraud is unlikely. All the current systems could still be used, including the same ballots. If some voter is confused by or does not know about the ranked ballot, his ballot, simply marked as now with an x beside one candidate, could still be counted just as it is now. So nothing is lost.

And then the Senate; widely criticized now for being unelected and serving no purpose. For the sake of illustration, say it has 100 seats. These seats could be assigned proportionally, based on the percentage each party achieves in the popular vote for commons seats. This way, every small or new political party would have a voice, given that they attract as little as 1% of the vote. Each party puts up and advertises their ranked slate of 100 candidates. One party gets 40% of the vote—they seat their first 40 candidates. One gets 30%--they seat their first thirty. Again, this requires no change in the actual voting system, only in how the vote count is applied. Little chance of fraud or gumming things up.

A Senate majority would be almost impossible; a problem with proportional representation. But it need not matter. The Senate would, as now, not be empowered to initiate legislation. Allow it only to repeal existing legislation, and legislation in effect for at least a year (or some other time span). 

This way, it would not hamstring the government in the Commons, but would be a check on bad policy and a force preventing government from getting too large or regulations too Byzantine. The incsntive would be to always be looking for things to repeal.

By electing the Senate by this method, from the national vote totals, it would also be a voice for national unity, in counterbalance to the regional voices of the riding system.

Britain could do the same with the anachronistic House of Lords.

Who’s with me on this?

Disproportional Representation and Doug Ford

Australian ballot

The inevitable laments from the left have begun—Doug Ford was only elected by 40% of the voters! His election is not legitimate!

I myself pointed out when Canadian leftist friends complained about Donald Trump not having a real mandate that he actually got a higher percentage of the vote than almost any Canadian government ever does. He took 47%. Trudeau won a majority government in Canada last time with 39%.

I think this is a feature, not a bug, in the Westminster system. We see proportional representation in countries like Italy. It does not work as well. When you have more than two parties, you will almost never see any one of them win more than 50% of the vote. Since 1921, Canada has elected only four governments with 50% of the vote or more: St. Laurent, Diefenbaker, Mulroney. Without a majority, government is permanently unstable, and nobody gets to implement a coherent program. It is a recipe for stagnation. It is horse trading on every bill, with all possible opportunities for porkbarrelling, earmarking, and not dealing with the important issues or making the tough decisions. Having an election every four years is a severe enough restriction on long-range planning. A permanent minority situation means any unpopular decision could trigger an election at any time. 

New Zealand ballot

The great advantage of democratic representative government is not that it lets the majority have its will. There is nothing magic about the majority. The majority can be wrong, or selfish, or bigoted. The great advantage is that it institutionalizes an orderly transition of power, and introduces an objective check on an overreaching government.

There are ways to juke proportional representation so that it still produces stable governments: the Irish or Australian preferential ballot, the French system of runoffs.

But the issue is fairly trivial. And there are tradeoffs. The Australian or Irish system is complicated, raising the likelihood of voting errors, counting errors, and spoiled ballots. The French system is costly.

Ain’t broke.

Alberta Swings Left

The Alberta election yesterday is an example of how strange the results can be in a “first past the post” (so-called) electoral system like our own. To be sure, there was a major swing from right to left in the popular vote. The combined left-of- centre vote went from 19.74% in 2012 to 44.76% of votes cast in 2015. That's significant. Nevertheless, the NDP win hinged too on a collapse of the Liberal Party and a surge by the Wildrose. The left of centre vote was united behind one party, and the right of centre vote was evenly split in two, so that the NDP was able to come up the middle. Based on raw votes, which is to say, the actual popular will, the government of Alberta would still be to the right of centre: you will note that 44.76 is still less than 50%. The Wildrose plus the PCs took 52.01% of all votes, and the tiny Alberta Party another 2.28%. Instead, the election has produced an absolute majority for a party that is not even centre-left, but left-left, on the Alberta political spectrum: not the moderate Liberals, but the out-there NDP.

Change in government is good, and Alberta was overdue. But lurches like e this are probably not. They make it hard for businesses and individuals to plan for the future.

This seems to me to illustrate the argument for my own proposal for the Canadian senate. One could do something similar, after all, on the provincial level. Leave the lower house elected as now, by riding; and add an upper house elected province-wide, or nation-wide, by proportion of the popular vote, without ridings.

Why? In the first case, because it would more accurately reflect the popular will, ensuring that all voices are heard. In the present case, assuming, for simplicity, a 100-member upper house, the result would be 41 NDP members in the upper house, 28 PCs, 24 Widrose, 4 Liberals, and 2 Alberta Party, with one Green. In other words, while the NDP would be the largest bloc, it would be a minority government there. The right wing would have a majority in the upper house.

This would also work towards stability, reducing sudden lurches in government policy.

A problem with bicameral legislatures generally is that they can cause deadlock. This is also a problem with proportional representation, as it makes it much more difficult for any one party to get a majority. My proposal would avoid this: only the lower house would have the power to initiate bills. The upper house, on the other hand, would have solely the power to rescind bills previously passed, which had been in effect for a set time period. Even if this time period were just a year, this would allow the lower house to budget on its own.

This would prevent any direct clashes between the two houses, and allow a majority government in the lower house to get on with the practical business of government. There would be no fiscal crises like the recent budget battles in the US. But there would still be a check on government actions.

The idea of ridings is, on the whole a good one. It is a way to protect geographically-based minorities from being run over roughshod by majorities. On the other hand, it does this by short-changing any minorities that are not geographically based. The upper house could handle that: you will note that it gives increased representation to minority parties like the Alberta Party and the Greens. In Canada, our problem tends to be regionalism; we could use such a unified chamber as a corrective. A regional grouping like the Bloc Quebecois would have much smaller representation in this upper than the current lower house. Giving more voice to minority parties, in turn, would encourage their formation, allowing more voices to be heard in parliament and in our public affairs, without the political splintering and ever-changing coalitions one sees in nations like Israel or Italy. There would be a point in voting NDP even if you knew they could never win your local riding.

This form of upper house would also give parties the opportunity to protect star candidates whose talents they consider vital to their success, or their success in government. Such protection would in turn lure more people of high calibre into public life.

Not incidentally, the structure I propose would naturally lead to legislation being regularly rescinded. This corrects a problem with the current system: now, all the incentive is to add new legislation, never to repeal old legislation. As a result, government naturally grows larger and larger, which is not the best thing to have happen. Better to have a balance here.

In the meantime, Albertans, get ready for a rocky ride. Ontarians went through something like this a generation ago, when their longstanding PC government was supplanted first by the Liberals, and then the NDP. It was a less dramatic swing than this one, and I think most Ontarians would now agree that it did not turn out terribly well.