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?

A Sober Second Thought

Canadian Senate Chamber

In the wake of the Canadian election, I hear many people calling for electoral reform. They want a move from the “first-past-the-post” system to some form of proportional representation. Andrew Coyne is a leading proponent. Trudeau promised it at the previous election.

I am not enthusiastic. People seem to want it because it would be a more accurate reflection of voter intentions. I do not see this as the primary goal of our electoral system. The main benefit of an electoral democracy is that it provides an orderly transition of governments. Most other systems regularly dissolve into bloodshed and chaos at regular intervals for the transfer of power.

An election also serves as an objective check, so that the nation can get rid of an incompetent, corrupt, or oppressive government. And knowing they can be voted out of power at the next election gives those in charge a reason not to steal everything in sight: once out of power, they might be prosecuted.

But having a government that reflects the popular will as closely as possible is not an important goal—so long as it does so in broad terms, there are other considerations that argue against too much democracy. Our system understands this, and has been designed accordingly.

The people, for one thing, have no special expertise in making laws, in managing foreign relations, in making a prosperous economy, and so forth. They are entirely liable to make bad decisions.

Further, democracy is dangerous to any minority. The majority can and naturally will gang up on and plunder the minority. Notice that Hitler was democratically elected.

As a result, our system, and other modern democratic systems, have features that limit the power of the people. First, obviously enough, everyone does not vote on every issue. Instead, we elect representatives, presumably people with some expertise, to decide for us. Second, election by riding instead of by proportional representation ensures that geographical minorities cannot be so steamrolled. The federal structure serves the same purpose: as much as possible, matters are decided at a more local level.

Then there is, in Canada, the Senate, an unelected body supposedly of eminent citizens, to give our legislation “sober second thought.” Because they stay until retirement, they necessarily develop expertise, and are presumed not influenced by every political wind.

Then, since 1982, there is the Constitution, limiting what the elected government is allowed to do. The Supreme Court has recently been given the power to disallow laws on the grounds that they go against the constitution, no matter how popular they might be.

You can get into a lot of trouble by tinkering with your electoral system; the current Brexit crisis in the UK is due to some tinkering done by the Cameron and the Blair governments over the last few years: introducing referenda on major issues, taking the power to dissolve parliament away from the Crown, separating the prime ministership from the support of the house, giving the Supreme Court the right to overrule parliament. It’s a mess.

The Westminster system has been tested repeatedly and on the whole served well, for centuries, in several countries. Proportional representation systems have tended to end in either revolutionary upheaval or collapse. They are less flexible.

Elizabeth May inadvertently explains why. She complains about the Westminster system because it causes “policy lurch”: successive government tends to change the national direction. Exactly: this is its flexibility. In a crisis, the Westminster system can switch course quickly and fairly dramatically. A proportional representation system, by contrast, has a huge problem in changing direction. It muddles on, incoherent in its policies, even if the roof is on fire. Nothing can ever substantially be improved.

Under the Westminster system, for example, the UK was able to switch smartly into warrior mode in the Second World War, bringing in Churchill. Under the Westminster system, the UK was able to transform itself under Margaret Thatcher when its economy was no longer working.

All that said, I do see a useful place for proportional representation in Canada: in the Senate.

Right now, the Senate is a useless appendage. Its traditional role, of “sober second thought,” has been stripped away. Let’s restore its relevance by electing it by proportional representation.

Here’s my idea: when the Crown dissolves parliament, it dissolves both houses: the Commons and the Senate. The people vote only once, just as they do now; but this vote is used to elect both chambers. Members of the House of Commons are elected directly. But then the national popular vote is tallied, as it is now, and Senate seats are assigned to the parties based on their share of the popular vote.

Assume a Senate of 100 seats, if only for ease of illustration; the Senate is currently 105 seats. Given the popular vote this election, the Conservatives would have 34 Senate seats, the Liberals 33, the NDP 16, the BQ 8, the Greens 7, and the PPC 2. If we want to keep the 105 figure, maybe we could add in automatic seats for the last five living prime ministers.

Notice that the PPC, Greens, and NDP get more representation in this Chamber than they do in the Commons; the BQ gets less. The Commons is set up to protect geographical minorities. The Senate, under proportional representation, would protect political minorities, minority opinions or perhaps ethnic minorities that do not have the good fortune to have a geographical base.

But this new Senate could also do something protect geographical minorities. Currently, the Liberal government will have no seats in Alberta or Saskatchewan. It will have no members of cabinet from those provinces, no one in government to speak for that regions interests.

Give the political parties the right to appoint their Senate quota after the election, and each party can use this quota, or some of it, to correct such regional deficits. The Liberals can appoint some Senators from Alberta and Saskatchewan, who could then serve in Cabinet; the Conservatives or NDP can similarly compensate for their regional deficits. And parties can, if they wish, use their Senate allotment to balance their caucus in other ways: for sex, or ethnicity, or whatever they think important. How each party actually chooses their senators could be left up to them: appointment by party leader, by vote of their membership, by committee, or whatever.

Such a system would also allow us to keep figures like Lisa Raitt or Ralph Goodale or Maxime Bernier in public life if they lost their Commons seats. Politics would become less bloody; and more attractive to good people.

What would the Senate do? It could, in effect, be given back its old position of sober second thought. All bills would have to be initiated in the Commons. The Senate could only repeal, or refuse a new bill. To avoid the gridlock usual to proportional representation systems, I suggest this power of refusal, as opposed to repeal, be limited: a bill newly passed could only be rejected by the Senate on constitutional grounds. Properly, the federal government has the legal right to reject laws passed by the provinces; let’s give this power, too, to the Senate, on the same condition: that any rejection or repeal of a provincial law be on constitutional grounds.

This power could then be taken away from the Supreme Court. I think this is a great advantage: the Supreme Court has become activist, and this is profoundly undemocratic. It amounts to government passing into the hands of a small unelected professional elite.

I propose that the Supreme Court could no longer rule on the constitutionality of any law until and unless it had first been ruled unconstitutional by the Senate. The Supreme Court could then overturn this decision in case it was too political, and not really defensible on constitutional grounds.

But note that any law could be repealed by the Senate on any grounds, whether or not it was constitutional, once it had been in force for a given period—say five years. This gives the Senate a role in keeping the government from becoming too large and too intrusive.

One nice feature of this particular electoral reform is that it would cost nothing. Any other imaginable switch to proportional representation is likely to cost a lot. It also keeps the system of casting and counting votes exactly as it is now, minimizing the risk of introducing new problems.

Because they are not reliant for their continuing political careers on pleasing one specific subgroup of Canadians—those in their riding—such a Senate might also become a force for national unity.

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.