On December 7th British Columbia’s mail-in referendum on electoral reform closed. Proportional representation lost to the current ‘first past the post’ system by about 61% to 39%.
Proportional representation means the number of seats for a party matches their share of the overall vote. I’m already tired of typing out ‘proportional representation’, so I’m going to say pro-rep. That is not the full words, but it holds more meaning than ‘PR’ which is what the pro-rep advocates use. Mister Compromise in action again. But you can call me Mr-Comp for short. If you must.
It was a shocking defeat considering the governing party was supporting it. Governing parties usually favour the system that brought them to power. Like when Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government campaigned on electoral reform, held hearings across the country, then simply dropped it as quickly and as quietly as they could.
It was also a shocking defeat because this was BC, which has more recent history of looking at electoral reform than just about anywhere in Canada. They actually had more than 50% support for it, according to polls, as recently as last summer.
What happened? You could question the process – it was a mail-in referendum – but there was a 43% response rate, which is impressive for a mail-in and not that far off election participation rates sometimes (sadly). Some felt it was not an independent process but rather a partisan action by an NDP/Green Party government. Also, some thought having three pro-rep options to choose from was confusing and that people didn’t have a vision for what they might get if they voted for pro-rep. It doesn’t take a lot of uncertainty to scare people off when people see the fragility of democracy around the world.
At the end of the day, though, the result was almost the same as the 2009 vote in BC. It seems unlikely the issue will be put forward again in BC anytime soon.
The Super-Cool! and Wildly Interesting! Voting Systems!
Hey, I know this is dry and this is two weeks in a row I’ve been policy wonky. This is democracy, folks, and it is worth 30 seconds, so bear with me.
First Past the Post (FPTP): used in all provincial, territorial and federal elections, in the US, and the UK and a bunch of other countries, most of which are former British colonies. Each riding is its own little election. The person with the most votes wins, even if that is less than half. It tends to produce stable majority governments quite often by skewing the results in favour of leading parties (and also regional parties).
Single Transferrable Vote (STV): used in lots of municipal elections (outside Canada), in the London, ON election last fall, in Ireland, Malta, and some Australian States. It has very big ridings with usually 3-7 seats to be won. That means there are several candidates from each party. Voters vote for individuals, and can vote with second choices, third choices, etc. The bottom candidates are dropped and the people that voted for them have their second choices used instead (and so on). It is complicated and needs a computer system to keep track of votes, but it is the most ‘proportional’ and is best at making every vote actually elect someone directly.
Mixed Member Proportional (MMP): Invented in Germany and used also in Hungary, Mexico, New Zealand and Bolivia, ridings are made perhaps 50% bigger but work the same as they do now. Then there are other seats without ridings that are divided up to make the overall numbers in the legislature proportional. This is the system PEI is looking at.
List proportional representation (List PR): This is the system used the most around the world. It is like STV, but simpler. There are big ridings with multiple seats to be won. Voters vote for parties and the seats are divided among the parties proportionally. The actual people that fill those seats are determined at least in part by lists made by the parties.
There are other systems, most of which are similar to one of the above. I don’t think they need any ink here. If you really want to know what I’m hiding, there are some excellent links at the bottom of the page.
So Whose Side Am I On, Anyway?
This is a simplification and there are lots of nuances and options available in each system. Riding size matters (more outside cities than in them). Having multiple MPs in your riding has pros and cons. Pro-rep tends to spread the votes to more parties and support smaller parties. This gives greater choice to voters, but choice brings complexity and leads to minority or coalition governments. That has pros and cons. It gets complicated to think about.
It is like buying a car – there are many kinds with lots of different features and pros and cons, and it can be confusing to choose. But that doesn’t make driving one hard. We know that, because we have probably been in more than one kind of car, and many of us have driven more than one kind of car.
How many election systems have you driven? How many people from other electoral systems have you talked to about it? Have you seen other political systems in action? That is an important difference between electoral systems and cars, and that is holding pro-rep back. People are also a little worried about messing with the foundation of democracy. I don’t blame ’em.
Okay, there is one other thing holding pro-rep back. I don’t know how to say this. Ummm. The people that want pro-rep, really want it. Badly. And the more proportional the better. They aren’t usually fence-sitters. If you get the chance to talk to an advocate of pro-rep, tell them you like FPTP. Or tell them you are worried about fringe parties holding the balance of power in a coalition government. Even better, tell them you think the ballot will be too complicated. Then sit back and watch the eyes bulge out of their heads. You can see the wheels going furiously in their heads as they try not to blurt out that you are an idiot and that you couldn’t be more wrong. It is the sort of behaviour that tends to make the average citizen want to vote against whatever it is a person like that wants to change.
To be fair, they are largely right. Our FPTP system is a legacy system – it was spread around the world by the British Empire (and to a lesser extent a related system by France). I don’t think many countries have looked at their options and chosen FPTP in say, the last several hundred years. That is a hard fact to check; it is more of a hunch. Also, are the US, the UK, Sudan and Burma great electoral role models?
Confused? We all are. What have we determined so far? Pro-rep is the world normal, but it is strange to us. We are afraid to go there even though no one really likes FPTP, they just are afraid something else will be worse. Just the sort of mess I like to wade into.
So we need something more proportional because no one wants a party to win a majority government with 39% of the vote (well, they do when their party wins). On the other hand no one wants six parties to disappear into board rooms in Ottawa for three weeks after each election, only to re-appear long enough to shuffle into other board rooms until a mysterious coalition government gets formed with some carrots thrown to the Marijuana party (who were hoping to be thrown Doritos, but will shrug and eat the carrots) in order to get their support for the coalition. The result will often be that we don’t even have a minority government, but instead we have a coalition with a Prime Minister from a party that only got 35% of the vote and is propped up by some un-published multi-party deal.
Proportional is fair, right?
The foundation of the argument for pro-rep is that proportional is fair. All votes should count and should count equally. If you live in Alberta and vote Liberal, I hope you didn’t stand in line too long, because it is a bit of a waste of time. Also if you live in Alberta and vote Conservative you are wasting your time, because wining with 67% of the vote means about 15000 people voted Conservative more than were needed to elect their candidate. It makes you wonder why anyone in Alberta votes at all.
If you take this argument completely seriously you end up with Israel. Their whole country is one riding. Sure you may have something like the Tinfoil Hats Party and the Three Day Weekend Party, but it is sure fair. Also STV, the system that takes fractions of your 2nd choice vote and redistributes it so it isn’t wasted, should be used everywhere. It is mathematically pure. It is perfection in ballot counting.
Yet hardly anyone uses these systems. So how important is proportionality to fairness really? Many advocates of pro-rep say it is fundamentally important and elections aren’t fair any other way, but fairness is all about how you slice it.
In our FPTP system, each riding is its own little election. The person with the most votes wins. That isn’t unfair. It can (and almost always does) lead to unproportional outcomes at the national level, but it is fair in it’s own way. If we were generally happy with the working of the system, it would be perfectly fair to continue using it. Of course, many of us aren’t happy with the outcomes.
Can a hockey player have their foot in the goalie’s crease or not? Two different sets of rules. We pick one, and we play by it. One isn’t more fair than the other until we see outcomes that don’t seem fair.
So perhaps what matters is what works. Perhaps functional (and democratic) governments as an end result is the best test of a good system. So let’s not make proportionality the Holy Grail. For all the ads by the pro-rep folks in BC, the public mostly just wants functional and democratic governments.
Do we have functional and democratic now? Well for starters majorities with 39% of the vote wouldn’t be quite so embarrassingly bad if the governing party governed like they have 39% of the vote, but they don’t. They govern like they have a mandate from God to implement their Chosen Party Platform and whatever else they make up on the fly.
So no. As a teacher, I’d give it a C-. Satisfactory, barely. Functional, but not excelling. What are the chances a new system would be an A-plus? Low. I think it is worth fighting for an A-minus though. The BC public knows this, too, which is why polls show a slim majority generally want change.
Here’s what we need: we need a system that is more proportional, but doesn’t split the electorate such that we will rely on complex multi-party coalitions to govern the country. We need good minorities or razor-thin majorities to keep governments honest but stable and functional. Sometimes we can have coalitions too, but perhaps with two parties and where there are choices to keep the nutbars from holding the balance of power (which is difficult when all the parties are partly nutbars, but that’s a separate problem). How does that sound?
How exactly do we do that? Mister Compromise here has an idea that is more proportional (because that’s necessary), but not necessarily fully proportional. It would be perfect for British Columbia, where it seems most people want change, they just didn’t want to take what was offered to them. I couldn’t agree more. The solution is right there in their name: the British use FPTP, and the Columbians use pro-rep. We need a compromise system that is a little FPTP and a little pro-rep, and if BC is interested in it, I think they can even call it the British-Columbian model. Anything that speaks to a patriotic province’s ego should get a few votes.
Is it possible to make the BC electorate happy? No. But we can listen to the message they are sending and make sense of it and give them something that will make them more happy. They want change, but safe change, controlled change, understandable change. Even with our clunky old FPTP system we have seen many times that the electorate is often pretty good at getting the overall results it wants. Let’s trust what the electorate says now and work towards giving it to them.
It will not satisfy many pro-rep folks because it is impure, but they should think about it because it may be the only way to get there from here. Where it ‘there’?
Here’s a hint, and it is the key to getting a wary electorate to take the jump away from FPTP: let the people decide riding-by-riding when they are ready, and let them decide again if they change their minds.
I’ll come back to this in a few weeks with part II. There’s no hurry. I don’t see BC having another referendum for a long, long time.
References
Summary of all the major electoral systems of the world (by the UN created ACE Project)
The ACE Project’s telling perspective on Canada still having the FPTP system
