Electoral Reform (Senate, Commons, & Gov Gen)

[McG]

One LPC candidate's proposal for electoral reform is here:  http://ranked-pairs.ron-mckinnon.ca/ranked-pairs-voting-system/voting-reform/

In Canada we elect representatives to each provincial legislature, as well as to the House of Commons federally, by first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections in each respective constituency.

The Problem

FPTP works perfectly well when there are only two candidates for a given position, but when there are more – and in our provincial and federal elections there usually are more – it tends to skewed, unpersuasive victories to the candidate merely having first-preference support of the largest minority, NOT a definitive majority win.

Such minority victories detract from the legitimacy and credibility of the decision.

They also diminish the winners’ sense of accountability beyond their own narrow voter bases, and feed into voter cynicism, disillusionment, and over-all disengagement.

Solutions

There then ensues a hue and cry for voting reform – to replace FPTP with, among other things, Proportional Representation (PR).

Many people, by default it seems, see proportional representation (in some unspecified form) as the only way to address the FPTP problem. While it’s not a bad choice, necessarily, it’s also not the only, nor necessarily the best, practical and fair solution.

There are other alternatives as well: some places, Australia, for instance, use a preferential-ballot evaluated using an approach called the Alternative Vote (AV), also known as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) (also known as Ranked Ballots).

IRV / AV is somewhat better than FPTP but nevertheless shares many of its worst flaws.

All is not lost, however, for there are still more ways of dealing with preferential ballots; much better ways, in my view, called Condorcet (“con-dor-say”) methods.

...

 

[ModlrMike]

As flawed as FPTP may be, anything else runs the risk of denying people their franchise. When a minority party candidate receives votes, then that's the will of the electorate. Are those choices to be overlooked when there are no others you care to rank, or will voters be required to compromise their principles to cast a vote for someone they might not have otherwise chosen?

IMHO, preferential and/or ranked ballots will only bring us to the two party state faster than the current system, because the left will vote left, and the right right. After a few rounds, the big boys are all that will be left.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Unless every other country with some sort of variation on non-FPTP voting is collapsing into a two-party state, I don't think it's a threat.

FPTP has the virtues of being easy to understand and explain, easy to execute, easy to verify, clear, having a straightforward result, not being predicated on any special assumptions about the meaning of parties, and not favouring particular voting patterns or habits.

 

[McG]

When a minority party candidate receives votes, then that's the will of the electorate. Are those choices to be overlooked when there are no others you care to rank, or will voters be required to compromise their principles to cast a vote for someone they might not have otherwise chosen?

We already expect that don't we?  If there are no candidates acceptable to a voter, we still expect him to cast a ballot for somebody.  Spoiling a ballot can be done in error by any idiot, and so it is counted as an idiot's mistake and not as a recognized protest.  What you want is a "None of the above" option.  Such an option could be introduced on FPTP or any form of preferential ballot.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Let the changes begin!!!!!!!!!!

In order to bring real change to the Senate, the Honourable Maryam Monsef, Minister of Democratic Institutions, with the Honourable Dominic LeBlanc, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, announced today the establishment of a new, non-partisan, merit-based process to advise on Senate appointments.

Under the new process, an Independent Advisory Board on Senate Appointments will be established to provide advice to the Prime Minister on candidates for the Senate. The Independent Advisory Board will be guided by public, merit-based criteria, in order to identify Canadians who would make a significant contribution to the work of the Senate. The criteria will help ensure a high standard of integrity, collaboration, and non-partisanship in the Senate.

The Government is moving quickly to reform the Senate, recognizing its fundamental role in the representation of regional and minority interests in the legislative process. The new, independent appointments process will contribute to creating a less partisan and more effective institution to serve Canadians.

The new appointments process will be implemented in two phases. In the transitional phase, five appointments will be made early in 2016 to immediately reduce partisanship in the Senate and improve the representation of the provinces with the most vacancies (i.e., Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec). A permanent process will then be implemented with further enhancements to replenish the remaining vacancies, and will include an application process open to all Canadians.

As part of demonstrating its commitment to the new appointments process, the Government will seek to appoint a Representative from among the initial, independent appointees. This person would work within existing Senate rules to ensure Senate business can be effectively coordinated in a new Parliament ....

And the list ....

Age

A nominee must be a minimum of 30 years of age and be less than 75 years of age.
Citizenship

A nominee must be a citizen of Canada.
Net Worth in Real and Personal Property

A nominee must own property with a net value of $4,000 in the province for which he or she is appointed, and have an overall net worth of $4,000 in real and personal property.

In the case of Quebec, a nominee must have his or her real property qualification in the electoral division for which he or she is appointed, or be resident in that electoral division.

    Senators from Quebec must represent one of 24 electoral divisions.

Residency

A nominee must be a resident of the province for which he or she is appointed.

    A nominee must have his or her place of permanent residence in the province or territory of vacancy at the time of application and appointment. The permanent residence of a nominee is where the person is ordinarily present and has made his or her home for a minimum period of two years leading up to the application. The nominee must provide documentation of residence in the province or territory.

    Despite rule 1, an exception to the two-year requirement may be made in a case where a nominee is temporarily absent from the province or territory of vacancy for reasons of employment or education but can provide satisfactory proof he or she intends to return to his or her permanent residence in the province or territory of vacancy.

Gender, Aboriginal and Minority Balance

Nominees will be considered with a view to achieving gender balance in the Senate. Priority consideration will be given to nominees who represent Aboriginal peoples and linguistic, minority and ethnic communities, with a view to ensuring representation of those communities in the Senate consistent with the Senate’s role in minority representation.
Non-Partisanship

Nominees will be asked to demonstrate to the Advisory Board that they have the ability to bring a perspective and contribution to the work of the Senate that is independent and non-partisan. They will also have to disclose any political involvement and activities. Past political activities would not disqualify a nominee.
Knowledge Requirement

Nominees must demonstrate a solid knowledge of the legislative process and Canada’s Constitution, including the role of the Senate as an independent and complementary body of sober, second thought, regional representation and minority representation.
Personal Qualities

Nominees must demonstrate outstanding personal qualities, including adhering to the principles and standards of public life, ethics, and integrity.

Nominees must demonstrate an ability to make an effective and significant contribution to the work of the Senate, not only in their chosen profession or area of expertise, but the wide range of other issues that come before the Senate.
Qualifications Related to the Role of the Senate

A nominee must demonstrate one of the following criteria:

    a high level of experience, developed over many years, in the legislative process and public service at the federal or provincial/territorial level; and/or,

    a lengthy and recognized record of service to one’s community, which could include one’s Aboriginal, ethnic or linguistic community; and/or,

    recognized leadership and an outstanding record of achievement in the nominee’s profession or chosen field of expertise.

Asset Qualifications

Bilingualism: fluency in both official languages will be considered an asset.

 

[a_majoor]

Lets start sending nominees. I'm sure we can think of a great many meritorious people who would make excellent senators (Edward, I'm saving your nomination for Regent of Canada....)

 

[Bearpaw]

I have a simple hybrid voting scheme in mind which I call the Triple Ballot.

Triple Ballot Scheme

3 columns of voting choices against each nominee

At most 1 "X" in each column else ballot spoiled.

Most "X" wins.

Very strong support----> 3 X for nominee of choice

Two Choices------------> 2 X for first choice, 1 X for second choice

"Exclusionary Vote" ---> 1 X for at most 3 of less objectionable nominees

Weak support votes-----> 1 or 2 X for nominee of choice, no other X

To me this scheme offers much of the advantage of a ranked ballot but is simpler to implement and recount,....
This scheme also moves partially toward a proportional scheme in the sense that third or fourth parties will have greater
chances of capturing seats.

Bearpaw

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

I have a simple hybrid voting scheme in mind which I call the Triple Ballot.

Triple Ballot Scheme

3 columns of voting choices against each nominee

At most 1 "X" in each column else ballot spoiled.

Most "X" wins.

Very strong support----> 3 X for nominee of choice

Two Choices------------> 2 X for first choice, 1 X for second choice

"Exclusionary Vote" ---> 1 X for at most 3 of less objectionable nominees

Weak support votes-----> 1 or 2 X for nominee of choice, no other X

To me this scheme offers much of the advantage of a ranked ballot but is simpler to implement and recount,....
This scheme also moves partially toward a proportional scheme in the sense that third or fourth parties will have greater
chances of capturing seats.

Bearpaw

What's wrong with everyone getting 1 vote?

 

[PuckChaser]

What's wrong with everyone getting 1 vote?

Because it means the Liberals don't win every election and tell us how we should think.

 

[Bearpaw]

everyone getting 1 vote is the FPTP system.

The triple ballot I have proposed is a mix of FPTP and ranked balloting.  Casting 3 X for your nominee of choice is FPTP.

What I would like to avoid is a proportional system----just look at the Israeli Knesset for an example of a proportional system run amok.  Proportional system in Canada would eventually destroy the Canadian 3+ party system.

FPTP eventually reduces to essentially 2-party system as in the US.

Bearpaw

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

everyone getting 1 vote is the FPTP system.

The triple ballot I have proposed is a mix of FPTP and ranked balloting.  Casting 3 X for your nominee of choice is FPTP.

What I would like to avoid is a proportional system----just look at the Israeli Knesset for an example of a proportional system run amok.  Proportional system in Canada would eventually destroy the Canadian 3+ party system.

FPTP eventually reduces to essentially 2-party system as in the US.

Bearpaw

1 person 1 vote is literally the fairest system we can have. Proportional just means you don't have to make a decision...

 

[McG]

A counter to an opinion stated somewhere earlier on this site (either in this thread or the 2015 election thread) that electoral reform would require constitutional change.  It seems that idea is probably not true.

You can’t hide behind the Constitution to spare us electoral reform
Dennis Pilon, National Post
01 Feb 2016

A number of commentators have recently tried to argue that Justin Trudeau’s plans to use his legislative majority to change Canada’s voting system would be unconstitutional. They argue that the use of our traditional single member plurality (SMP) system is “implied” or “presumed” in various parts of the constitution, and that the 2014 Senate reference case decided by the Supreme Court would include the voting system as part of our “constitutional architecture” because any change would unduly affect provincial interests. These views are badly informed and poorly argued, seemingly unaware of Canada’s electoral history and its influences. Most crucially, they ignore sections 40 and 41 of the Constitution Act 1867, which clearly empower the federal parliament to alter its own election rules.

Those who argue that our present SMP system should be presumed constitutional lean on the line from the original BNA Act of 1867, that the new Confederation would have a  “Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom.” This is the approach floated recently by former law clerks Yaakov Roth and Jonathan E. Roth. From there they simply argue that as the U.K. used SMP, we must do so as well, as part of a constitutional inheritance. But you can’t inherit something that didn’t exist. In 1867, U.K. elections used mostly multi-member ridings. Not until 1885 did they move decisively to adopt single-member districts. Nor was plurality the only voting method used then or since. From 1867 to 1885, a number of ridings were elected using the semi-proportional limited vote, and later the proportional single transferable vote would be used to return members from Northern Ireland and the universities.

Roth and Roth also try to argue that Canada’s constitutional documents imply the use of SMP, for instance, noting how section 40 of the original BNA Act 1867 divided representation for the House of Commons into geographic districts returning “one member.” They ignore how the same section also provides for a dual member riding for the County of Halifax. Most crucially, they overlook how both sections 40 and 41 (dealing with electoral districts and election rules) contained a preamble indicating that such arrangements would hold only “until the Parliament of Canada otherwise provides …” In other words, decisions about such things was clearly put in the hands of Parliament, not the constitution.

The attempt to cast the voting system as constitutional is a fairly recent innovation, one that lacks historical perspective. As the dean of Canadian electoral studies, Norman Ward, noted more than 60 years ago, our country’s founders placed no barriers in the way of a government making changes to our elections laws. And change they did. Most were partisan-fuelled, but eventually our politicians would agree to establish a non-partisan approach to election administration and drawing up riding boundaries. That the voting system should be singled out from the rest of electoral law is not supported by history, either.  Parliament extensively debated adopting proportional representation in the 1920s, eventually voting down a trial use in some major cities, but constitutional barriers were never raised in rejecting it. A parliamentary committee investigated the issue in detail in the late 1930s, again turning it down, but not for constitutional reasons. And then in the 1970s, the Pepin-Robarts Task Force recommended an element of PR be added to Canadian elections and they didn’t mention the constitution either. It is hard to believe that so many people missed what Roth and Roth now claim to have found.

Law professor Michael Pal has offered a new angle in attempting to constitutionalize the voting system. He argues that the Supreme Court rejected the Harper government’s case that it could use section 44 of the Canada Act 1982 — the one that allows Parliament to alter the constitution unilaterally in areas that only concern Parliament — to reform the Senate because Senate reform was also a matter of constitutional concern for the provinces. He claims that changing the national voting system could also hurt provincial interests. This is a weak and uninformed argument. At one level, everything Parliament does could be said to affect the provinces in some way — that doesn’t give them a constitutional veto over everything Parliament might want to do. But more to the point, the original BNA Act 1867 explicitly set out constitutional rules about who could sit in the Senate and how they should be appointed. Furthermore, the Senate and its workings was one of the key themes of the Confederation negotiations, dominating the Charlottetown, Quebec, and United Province deliberations. The old United Province actually had a partially elected, partially appointed upper house, which had informed the decision to make the new Canadian Senate fully appointed. With so much evidence, the Supreme Court had little doubt about the founders’ constitutional intentions. By contrast, the debates leading to Confederation made no mention of the voting system and the only thing the original BNA Act 1867 had to say about election rules was that Parliament had the right to change them.

Let us be clear, the voting system itself is not a part of the constitution. The design of a national voting system, on the other hand, would be subject to a key constitutional proviso: sections 51 and 52 of the Constitution Act 1867 state that the allocation of seats to provinces must be proportionate to their population.  But this could be accommodated easily in any voting system design, proportional or otherwise. So if critics don’t want reform, they should just say that. They can’t hide behind the constitution as an excuse.

Dennis Pilon is an associate professor of political science at York University. He is the author of The Politics of Voting: Reforming Canada’s Electoral System and Wrestling with Democracy: Voting Systems as Politics in the Twentieth Century West, as well we numerous articles and book chapters on Canadian voting system reform. 

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/dennis-pilon-you-cant-hide-behind-the-constitution

 

[a_majoor]

An example of what can happen with a PR system in  Australia (reading on how the various houses are elected is somewhat like prading an advanced physics text):

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/03/28/turnbulls-political-gamble/

Turnbull’s Political Gamble

Last week, Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull surprised his political opponents by suggesting he might call for snap elections. The WSJ:

Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Monday threatened snap elections if the country’s upper house Senate refused to pass reform bills affecting the building industry, saying the issue was vital for the country’s economic future.

The conservative government will recall lawmakers from a break for a special session of Parliament beginning April 18 to vote on controversial bills aimed at curbing the country’s powerful building unions, Mr. Turnbull said, and would call snap elections on July 2 if the measures were blocked.

“The time has come for the Senate to recognize its responsibilities and help advance our economic plans, rather than standing in the way,” Mr. Turnbull told reporters at Parliament. “This is an opportunity for the Senate to do its job of legislating rather than filibustering.”

Mr. Turnbull said if the Senate agreed to the construction bills, there would be no snap vote and the election would be held on time around September.

Australian politics in recent years has been dogged by intra-party squabbling, making it a challenge to get a solid legislative majority. Particularly in the closely divided Senate, the political system has been hijacked by small minority parties.

Turnbull, who took power after an internal power struggle with the former PM, Tony Abbott, seems to be trying to change that. It’s a gamble: the double dissolution after a long campaign could bring his opponents back to power. But if it succeeds, voters will have endorsed his replacement of Abbott, and he’ll have a solid majority in the Senate—in these unusual elections, every Senate seat would be up for grabs and polling indicates Turnbull’s coalition might do quite well.

This isn’t just a good thing for Turnbull. Whether the Coalition (conservative) or the Labour opposition (liberal) wins, Australia needs a strong and stable government at a time when the U.S. is an unpredictable ally and tensions are rising in Asia. A confident Australian government with a strong mandate will be well-placed to play a leading role in Asia politics.

 

[RDBZ]

An example of what can happen with a PR system in  Australia (reading on how the various houses are elected is somewhat like prading an advanced physics text):

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/03/28/turnbulls-political-gamble/

Is actually pretty simple.  Members of the House of Representatives are elected to single member electorates using preferential/instant run-off ballots.  Senators are elected to represent the interests of their state, and so are elected using proportional representation at the state level.  The term for Senators is twice that of members of the House, with half the Senate going to the ballot at each general election.

The constitution provides for three mechanisms to deal with legislative gridlock.  The first is a joint sitting of the House and Senate.  The second is for the PM to call a double dissolution election, in which all Senate and House seats are contested.  The third is the nuclear option; the Governor General dismissing the House and the Senate and installing a caretaker government until the results of elections are known.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I know I'm repeating myself, but ...

Canada's Constitution (1867) was written, mainly, in London by British (mostly English) bureaucrats, to suit agreements crafted, in haste, in Canada. It was, in many respect, the very first draft of a federal constitutions for a Westminster Style parliamentary democracy. When the Canadian Constitution was drafted the only really useful model of democratic federalism was in the USA and it, too, displayed a real, common in the 19th century suspicion of "unrestrained" democracy and, therefore, it (the US Constitution) also had an unelected senate intended to protect the states and bring "sober second thought" to the actions of overly democratic legislators and executives.

The Australian Constitution was the "second draft" if you will ... and it featured an elected upper house, which was just being imagined in the USA at the same time, because London was a bit more liberal-progressive in its views on democracy than was the USA.

The "third drafts" were written, also mainly in London, in the mid to late 1940s for Germany and India ... they are "better" in the details of how to make a federal state work well than either Canada's first draft or Australia's second draft.

It's probably time that we revised our Constitution and updated it to a "fourth draft" status.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

It's probably time that we revised our Constitution and updated it to a "fourth draft" status.

Well, good luck with that !  ... Can you say Lake Meech ...  ullhair:

 

[The Bread Guy]

Well, good luck with that !  ... Can you say Lake Meech ...  ullhair:

And I'm not even as optimistic as you are  ;D

 

[jmt18325]

It would be a waste of time. Our government system has worked at least as well as most others, even if it was a first draft.

 

[PuckChaser]

It would be a waste of time. Our government system has worked at least as well as most others, even if it was a first draft.

So we leave the Senate as is? We also leave FPTP in?

 

[McG]

So we leave the Senate as is? We also leave FPTP in?

The constitution does not mandTe FPTP.  That can change without tinkering in the constitution.