Wilf Day's Blog

Could Canada have 105 proportional MPs and scrap the Senate?

2012-01-29T20:11:00.001-05:00

Could Canada have a proportional parliament while keeping all our local ridings, by enlarging the House of Commons? From time to time, someone suggests scrapping the Senate and adding a new tier of 105 MPs in place of the 105 Senators, with no net additional Parliamentarians.

First, scrapping the Senate needs unanimous consent of the provinces, while a normal proportional representation system needs no constitutional amendment.

That’s because voters still elect MPs from each province proportionate to its population. That’s the basis of the model recommended by the Law Commission of Canada: the number of MPs from each province stays the same, but about 65% are elected from local ridings while about 35% are elected regionally as “top-up” MPs.

That’s the Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP), combining direct election by electoral district and proportional representation. We still elect local MPs. Voters unrepresented by the local results top them up by electing regional MPs. The total MPs match the vote share.

However, let’s assume fast consensus on abolishing the Senate.

(Otherwise, onward to the Law Commission Report. For example, NDP policy in the 2011 platform and the March 3 House Motion is “We will propose electoral reform to ensure Parliament reflects the political preferences of Canadians. To this end we will propose a new, more democratic voting system that preserves the connection between MPs and their constituents, while ensuring parties are represented in Parliament in better proportion to how Canadians voted. Your vote will always count.” “That the House appoint a Special Committee for Democratic Improvement, whose mandate is to engage with Canadians, and make recommendations to the House, on how best to achieve a House of Commons that more accurately reflects the votes of Canadians by combining direct election by electoral district and proportional representation, and that the Committee shall report its recommendations to this House no later than one year from the passage of this motion.” Here’s what that would have looked like.)

If fast Senate abolition is possible, would 105 “top-up” MPs really be enough? With 338 MPs to be elected in 2015, those 105 would be only 23.7% of 443. That’s “MMP-lite.” No MMP model now operating has fewer than 33% “top-up” MPs (Wales).

Speculating on the 2015 election results is not easy. But we can see how it would have worked to add 105 “top-up” MPs to the 308 elected in 2011: 25.4% of 413.

This projection assumes voters voted as they did in 2011. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- typically at least 6% more. And some would have voted differently, perhaps 18% of them by one study. No more strategic voting. We would likely have had different candidates -- more women, and more diversity of all kinds. Who knows who might have won real democratic elections?

Open regional list MMP

With the Law Commission model, the regional MPPs are the party's regional candidates who get the highest vote on the regional ballot. The voter casts one vote for local MPP, and one for their party and (if they wish) for their favourite of their party's regional candidates. An exciting prospect: voters have new power to elect who they like.

So we’re talking about MMP with open lists from middle-sized regions. All MPs have faced the voters. All MPs are “locally anchored” and accountable.

In Ontario’s 2007 referendum, 63.1% voted against that MMP model, with closed province-wide lists. About 31% were simply against proportional representation. Many more were voters who wanted all MPPs to be personally elected, not on closed lists. Many more were voters who wanted all MPPs to be anchored in their own region, not on province-wide lists. Another 7.5% were voters outside Toronto who disliked province-wide lists even more than Toronto voters did.

How proportional is MMP-lite?

I’ve compared my spreadsheet’s projection of MMP-lite with a fully proportional result.

When you look at regions, you see many differences between MMP-lite and a normal MMP model. Not bothering with one-seat differences, here are the bigger ones:

Peel-Halton with 12 local MPs and 4 regional: Con. 12 (should be 8), Lib. 2 (should be 5), NDP 2 (should be 3).

Montérégie with 13 local MPs and 4 regional: NDP 13 (should be 8), Bloc 2 (should be 5), Con.1 (should be 2), Lib. 1 (should be 2).

York-Durham with 12 local MPs and 4 regional: Con. 11 (should be 8), Lib. 3 (should be 4), NDP 2 (should be 3), Green 0 (should be 1).

Quebec City and Eastern Quebec with 18 local MPs and 6 regional: NDP 13 (should be 9), Con. 5 (should be 7), Bloc 4 (should be 5), Lib. 2, Green 0 (should be 1).

Central Ontario (Belleville to Owen Sound) with 12 local MPs and 4 regional: Con. 12 (should be 9), Lib. 2 (should be 3), NDP 2 (should be 3), Green 0 (should be 1).

Laurentides--Lanaudière--West & North Quebec with 13 local MPs and 5 regional: NDP 13 (should be 9), Bloc 3 (should be 5), Con. 1 (should be 2), Lib. 1 (should be 2).

Luckily, on the 2011 votes, these tend to cancel each other out.

When you look at each province, again you see many significant differences.

Ontario: Con. 75 (should be 64), NDP 33 (should be 37), Lib. 30 (should be 36), Green 4 (should be 5).

Quebec: NDP 59 (should be 44), Bloc 17 (should be 24), Con. 12 (should be 17), Lib. 12 (should be 14), Green 1 (should be 2).

Saskatchewan with 14 local MPs and 5 provincial: Con. 13 (should be 11), NDP 5 (should be 6), Lib. 1 (should be 2).

New Brunswick with 10 local MPs and 3 provincial: Con. 8 (should be 6), NDP 3 (should be 4), Lib. 2 (should be 3).

Luckily these again tend to cancel each other out.

So Canada-wide with 413 MPs we get: Conservatives 178 (should be 168), NDP 137 (should be 128), Liberals 70 (should be 78), Bloc 17 (should be 24), Greens 11 (should be 15). Luckily, not bad at all. An NDP-Liberal-Green coalition government would have had a majority either way: 218 (should be 221).

But one can easily imagine an election where MMP-lite would let voters for one party elect a false majority with less than 50% of the votes.

Conclusion: MMP-lite can get close to proportional results, and is certainly a vast improvement over our undemocratic winner-take-all system. However, it sometimes does not make every vote count equally.

Note: This simulation uses no legal threshold. If there was a legal threshold of 5% in each province, Green voters would have elected no MPs from Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Nova Scotia, electing only 4 MPs not 10. But of course in a real MMP election Green voters would likely have cast over 5% of the vote in many provinces.

Where will British Columbia's six new seats be?

2012-01-21T16:46:00.001-05:00

The six new seats will be four in the Lower Mainland, one on Vancouver Island, and one in the Interior, using BC Stats projections for 2011 populations.

The North and the Kootenays can, in my opinion, remain unchanged. Growth in Kelowna (which is now too big for a single riding) and Kamloops requires a new riding. In fact, the new Interior riding can even lead to a minor improvement in the BC Southern Interior riding, moving Princeton and Keremeos into Okanagan South-Central.

So here's my prediction of what the Boundaries Commission is likely to do.

Coast-North Shore-Burnaby-New West-Maple Ridge gets 8 ridings (now 6.7). Vancouver-Richmond-South Delta gets 8 (now 7). Surrey/White Rock-North Delta gets 5 (now 4). Langley-Abbotsford-Mission gets 3 (now 2.3). Chilliwack-Fraser Cascade is still one riding, shaving off the 14% of it that was outside the Lower Mainland. That brings the Lower Mainland up to 25 seats from 21, four new ones.

Details, with quotients based on BC Stats 2011 estimates (109,145):

Coast Garibaldi-West Vancouver 1.068
North Vancouver--West Vancouver 1.067
Burnaby--North Vancouver 1.067 (57% of it is in Burnaby)
Burnaby Centre 1.065
New Westminster--Burnaby 1.066
Coquitlam--Port Moody 0.98
Coquitlam Centre - Port Coquitlam 0.982
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows-Port Coquitlam 0.978 (taking about 10,500 from Port Coquitlam.)
Vancouver: five ridings @ 1.040
Vancouver South - Richmond North 1.040 (taking about 16,500 from Richmond)
Richmond West 1.05
Richmond East--South Delta 1.049
Newton--North Delta 1.00
Surrey/White Rock: four more ridings @ 1.00
Langley 0.976
Abbotsford West--Aldergrove 0.971
Abbotsford East--Mission 0.971
Chilliwack - Fraser Cascade 0.967

The Interior gains a seat due to growth in Kelowna and Kamloops:
Skeena - Bulkley Valley 0.938 (unchanged)
Peace River--Prince George 0.999 (unchanged except tweak the splitting of Prince George)
Prince George--Cariboo 0.999 (unchanged)
Kamloops 0.949 (City, First Nation, Areas J & P)
Shuswap-Thompson-Cariboo 0.984 (includes Merrit, Lillooet, Enderby, Armstrong, Spallumcheen)
Okanagan North--Lake Country--North Kelowna 0.939
Kelowna 0.977 (all of Kelowna City but 15,000 people)
Okanagan South-Central 1.003
Southern Interior 0.909 (unchanged except loses Princeton and Keremeos to Okanagan South-Central)
Kootenay-Columbia 0.819 (unchanged).

And Vancouver Island gets a new riding:
Vancouver Island North 1.026 (unchanged except loses 10,365 people to Nanaimo-Alberni)
Nanaimo--Alberni--Cumberland 0.976 (includes north 20% of Nanaimo City)
Nanaimo--Ladysmith 0.976
Cowichan--Langford 1.007 (includes 45,000 people from Capital District)
Capital District (rest): 3 ridings @ 1.01

Note that every riding is within a 10% deviation except the remote riding of Kootenay-Columbia which is 18.1% below quotient, well within the 25% limit.

Ontario's 121 seats for 2015

2011-12-24T12:01:00.023-05:00

Where will Ontario’s 15 new seats in Parliament be? This will be determined by a Boundaries Commission to be set up in Feburary. But since there is so much interest, I have spent some time on the answer.

First, how many seats will be available for southern Ontario, after the North is dealt with?

Last time, in the 2004 Boundaries Commission Report after the 2001 census, the North (north of the French River) had enough people for 7.74 “quotients.” The Commission decided they could not give them more than nine ridings. This time, with 8.4% fewer people and a quotient 2.7% higher, that area has only 6.91 quotients.

But with Ontario getting more MPs, how can a Commission explain the North losing an MP? Conservative MP Michael Chong said in the House debate “the bill would ensure that rural Ontario continues to have the number of seats it has presently, while, at the same time, adding new seats to the rapidly growing urban regions of our province. One of the challenges with the bill that the Liberals have proposed is that, while it would add some new seats to the rapidly growing regions of urban Ontario, it would take seats away from rural Ontario and add them to urban Ontario. Our bill would not do that.” House debates are not binding on the Commission, but this comment does reflect the likely approach of most Commissioners.

There is a simple solution, since the Ontario government now defines the North as including Parry Sound. Adding Parry Sound, it is possible for the North to keep nine MPs without breaking any rules, as detailed below.

So I think the new 15 seats will be:
Peel-Halton gets 5 more seats (3.8 in Peel, 1.2 in Halton)
York Region gets 2 more (2.9 mathematically, considering they now share one MP with Simcoe, and will have to share one with Durham)
Toronto 2 more (1.6 mathematically, but they won't have an MP shared with Pickering)
Durham 1 more (0.9 mathematically; they won't have to share an MP with Scarborough East but will with York.)
Ottawa—Prescott & Russell 1 more (1.2 mathematically, since they won't have to share an MP with Lanark)
Hamilton 1 more shared with Brant; Niagara will no longer have to share one with Hamilton.
Kingston to Peterborough 1 more (due to growth in Kingston and Frontenac, Napanee won't have to share an MP with Lanark anymore, and the urban area of Belleville-Quinte West will have their own MP)
Waterloo—Wellington—Dufferin 1 more (0.7 mathematically, but they won't have to share an MP with Perth anymore)
Windsor--Essex 1 more (0.7 mathematically), a new MP in suburban Windsor, by giving Essex-Kent-Lambton an extra half riding and London-Middlesex the other half, so they no longer have a riding straddling the regions' boundary.
Simcoe—Muskoka has growth worth 0.5 MP, accommodated by Muskoka not having to share an MP with Parry Sound anymore.

Total 15.5 mathematically, but there are only 15 new seats. The North loses 0.4 seats. Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry loses 0.1.

How do I calculate this?

We have some handy 2011 population estimates by districts and counties from the Ontario government.

The results are shown below, with the exact quotients in brackets. Note that all my southern ridings are within 10% of quotient, although the Commission is allowed to deviate by up to 25%.

I have tried to follow districts and counties as much as possible, and District School Boards such as the Near North Board (Parry Sound—Nipissing). I have eliminated 13 boundary-straddling ridings, but created five new ones, sorry.

Toronto has 24.98 “quotients.” But no major region can get its quotients rounded up, after the North gets an extra 1.7 seats. Besides, the Commission will follow the census, with under-reported figures, and the under-reporting will likely be worse in Toronto. So Toronto will get 24 seats.

Toronto 24 (24.98). (Note these 24 ridings will be only 4% over quotient.)
York—Durham 15 (15.30), including a Durham North—Georgina alignment.
Peel—Halton 17 (17.06), including a Halton Hills--Brampton Mount Pleasant.
Hamilton—Brant 6 (6.13), including an Ancaster-Dundas—Brant North.
Niagara Region 4 (4.04)
Haldimand-Norfolk 1 (1.01)
Waterloo—Wellington—Dufferin 7 (7.32) (4.6% over quotient, details below)
Oxford 1 (0.97)
London-Middlesex—Elgin—Perth-Huron 6 (6.22)
Windsor-Essex—Chatham-Kent—Lambton 6 (5.82) (details below)
Simcoe—Muskoka—Grey-Bruce 6 (6.23) (details below)
Peterborough—Kawartha Lakes-Haliburton—Northumberland 3 (2.88) (details below)
Hastings-Prince-Edward—Lennox & Addington 2 (1.85)
Kingston-Frontenac—Lanark 2 (2.00)
Leeds & Grenville 1 (0.93)
Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry 1 (1.03)
Renfrew 1 (0.93)
Ottawa—Prescott & Russell 9 (9.02)

Here are details of the more difficult areas where ridings will have to straddle the boundaries of counties, regional municipalities or districts, showing what amount of a “quotient” each riding has.

North 9:
Sudbury 0.85
Nickel Belt--Timiskaming (includes West Nipissing and Temagami) 0.81
Parry Sound--Nipissing (North Bay and east) 0.99
Cochrane 0.78
Sudbury-Algoma-Manitoulin (includes Bruce Mines) 0.82
Sault Ste. Marie (includes Michipicoten (Wawa) and Dubreuilville) 0.86
Thunder Bay – Superior (includes White River and Hornepayne) 0.76
Thunder Bay – Fort Frances 0.76
Kenora – West Rainy River 0.64 (recognized as exceptional already by the last Commission)

Simcoe—Muskoka—Grey-Bruce 6:
Simcoe South 1.06
Barrie 1.10
Barrie-Midland 1.10
Muskoka—Simcoe North 1.08
Grey North--Simcoe West 1.09
Bruce--Grey--Huron 1.10

Waterloo—Wellington—Dufferin 7:
Waterloo 1.02
Kitchener Centre 1.02
Kitchener-Wilmot-Wellesley 1.01
Waterloo-Wellington (Elmira, East Kitchener, Hespeler, Puslinch, Rockwood, Erin) 1.07
Cambridge 1.07 (still includes North Dumfries)
Guelph 1.07
Dufferin—Wellington (includes Fergus and Mount Forest) 1.08

Windsor-Essex—Chatham-Kent--Lambton 6:
Windsor East 0.98
Windsor West 0.98
Essex Northwest 1.01
Essex—Kent 0.92
Chatham-Kent--Lambton 0.92
Sarnia—Lambton 1.01

Peterborough—Kawartha Lakes-Haliburton—Northumberland 3:
Peterborough 1.01
Northumberland—Peterborough 0.94
Kawartha Lakes-Haliburton 0.93

If Saskatchewan had a democratic voting system . . .

2011-11-08T02:36:00.007-05:00

After the 2011 election, communities in all of Saskatchewan outside Regina, Saskatoon and the two northern ridings have no voice in the opposition. They have no local voice to question any government action or inaction. Their regions face one-party rule.

The 16 MLAs from the southwest (Moose Jaw - Swift Current - Estevan – Rosetown) are all from the Saskatchewan Party. Although 22% of those voters voted NDP, they have no voice in the opposition.

With a regional open-list Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system such as the Law Commission of Canada recommended, if Saskatchewan voters voted as they did in 2011 they would have elected 38 Saskatchewan Party MLAs and 20 New Democrats.

With MMP, we still elect the majority of MLAs locally. Voters unrepresented by the local results top them up by electing regional MLAs. The total MLAs match the vote share. With the regional "Open list" version, voters can vote for whomever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. Like the right-hand part of this ballot.

See MMP Made Easy.

That's using a model with at least one-third of the MLAs elected regionally, in four regions. Three local ridings would generally become two larger ones. You might have 37 local MLAs and 21 elected regionally.

Problems with your Health Region in Prairie North, Prince Albert Parkland, Kelsey Trail, Sunrise, Sun Country, Five Hills, Cypress, or Heartland? Who're ya gonna call?

One interesting difference would be those 16 MLAs from Moose Jaw-Swift Current-Estevan-Rosetown: instead of a SP sweep, my spreadsheet projects four New Democrats, once NDP votes count equally with SP voters. That would be the four regional NDP candidates who got the most votes across the region. Maybe NDP voters would have elected Deb Higgins, Glenn Wright, Carol Morin, and Ken Kessler or Derek Hassen or Donald Jeworski.

The 16 MLAs in that region would be ten local, six regional. The SP would no doubt have won all ten local seats, so those SP voters would even elect two of the regional MLAs. Green Party voters just missed getting enough votes here to elect an MLA like William Caton or Norbert Kratchmer.

Another change would be the 18 MLAs from Prince Albert-Battlefords-Yorkton-Tisdale: instead of the SP winning all but two, we'd see six New Democrats. That would be the four regional NDP candidates who got the most votes across the region (maybe Darcy Furber, Len Taylor, Helen Ben and Bernadette Gopher or Ted Zurakowski or Jeanette Wicinski-Dunn). The 18 MLAs in that region would be 12 local, six regional.

Of course, this projection simplistically assumes voters would have cast the same ballots they did in 2011. The reality would be different. When every vote counts, we typically see around 8% higher turnout. And one recent study suggested 18% of voters might vote differently. No more strategic voting. We would likely have had different candidates -- more women, and more diversity of all kinds. Who knows who might have won real democratic elections?

Different candidates: when the SP members from Moose Jaw-Swift Current-Estevan-Rosetown met in a regional nominating convention, they would have not only voted to put the ten local nominees on the regional ballot, but would have added several regional candidates. With only one woman from the ten local ridings, when they nominated several additional regional candidates, they would have naturally wanted to nominate a diverse group: more women. This year Saskatchewan elected ten women and 48 men. But 90% of Canadian voters say that, if parties would nominate more women, they'd vote for them.

Voters in the 11 Regina ridings would have elected five NDP MLAs, not just three. Perhaps Jaime Garcia and Yens Pedersen or Sandra Morin?

The 13 ridings of Saskatoon plus Martensville were less skewed. Instead of four NDP and nine SP we'd see five NDP: perhaps Andy Iwanchuk or Judy Junor?

The exact numbers might be different if Saskatchewan had five regions rather than four. But this is only an exercise in projection: the real results would have been different when more voters turned out to vote in what are now "safe seats."

Open list

Voters would have a real choice among a manageable number of competing candidates from the party they support. And they could also choose to vote just for their party, leaving the candidates ranked as their party’s nomination process had done. That's the variation of "open-list" recommended by the Law Commission of Canada, known as "flexible list."

The flexible open list method was also recommended by the Jenkins Commission in the UK. Their colourful explanation accurately predicted why closed lists would be rejected in Canada: additional members locally anchored are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

You would have two votes, and more choice. "Open list" means that voters can vote for whoever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. The party would win enough regional "top-up" seats to compensate for the disproportional local results we know all too well. Those regional seats would be filled by the party's regional candidates who got the highest vote on the regional ballot. Canadian voters have twice rejected models with closed province-wide lists. The open-regional-list mixed-member model is used in the German province of Bavaria, and was recommended by Canada's Law Commission and by Scotland's Arbuthnott Commission.

What would Ontario's legislature look like with a proportional voting system?

2011-10-07T05:55:00.026-04:00

Let’s see what the Ontario legislature would have looked like with a proportional voting system if voters voted as they did on October 6, 2011.

Here is the result with a legislature of 129 MPPs, the number recommended by the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly in 2007, 22 more than today. On the votes as cast, we would have seen 49 Liberals, 46 PCs, 31 New Democrats, and 3 Greens, using a nine-region version of the Citizens' model.

Still a minority legislature. The big difference would have been better representation for each region. No longer would parties be hived into regional strongholds.

Regional strongholds

Canadians are, sadly, used to seeing exaggerated regional differences in our federal elections. Now Ontario has joined this parade of stronghold politics, after the recent provincial election. The 2011 Ontario election gave voters very unequal voices.

In the 35 ridings in southern Ontario outside the GTA, Ottawa, and Hamilton-Niagara, 631,465 PC voters elected 24 MPPs (26,311 votes per MPP), 469,291 Liberal voters elected 9 MPPs (52,143 votes per MPP), and 310,590 NDP voters elected 2 MPPs (155,295 votes per MPP).

In the other 72 ridings, 1,153,164 Liberal voters elected 44 MPPs (26,208 votes per MPP), while 896,487 PC voters elected 13 MPPs (68,961 votes per MPP) and 669,811 NDP votes elected 15 MPPs (44,654 votes per MPP).

In regions where Liberal voters are unrepresented, with this model they would elect four more MPPs, while electing fewer in Liberal strongholds. Similarly, unrepresented PC voters, such as those in Toronto, would elect 13 more MPPs, and fewer in PC strongholds. Unrepresented NDP voters, such as those in Eastern Ontario, would elect 14 more MPPs. Green Party voters would elect three MPPs.

This projection assumes voters voted as they did in 2011. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- typically at least 6% more. And some would have voted differently, perhaps 18% of them by one study. No more strategic voting. We would likely have had different candidates -- more women, and more diversity of all kinds. Who knows who might have won real democratic elections?

Regional lists.

When Fair Vote Canada members first met Kingston’s cabinet minister John Gerretsen back in 2004, we didn’t have to explain the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system to him. He explained “the German system,” as he called it, to us. We later found he had been pushing for it since he was first elected in 1995. When the Liberals finally won in 2003, they had spent 60 years in the political wilderness minus only the five years from 1985-90 -- and in 47 of those years they were facing a government with a fake majority supported by a minority of voters. They remembered for a few years why they needed PR.

In “the German system” you have two votes, and more choice. We still elect majority of MPPs locally. Voters unrepresented by the local results top them up by electing regional MPPs. The total MPPs match the vote share. With the regional "Open list" version, voters can vote for whomever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. Like the right-hand part of this ballot.

See MMP Made Easy.

To compensate for the disproportional local results we know all too well, the party’s voters elect personally some regional MPPs. They are the party's regional candidates who get the highest vote on the regional ballot. So the voter casts one vote for local MPP, and one for their party and (if they wish) for their favourite of their party's regional candidates. An exciting prospect: new voices from new forces in the legislature, and the voters have new power to elect who they like.

John Gerretsen was quite specific. The top-up MPPs should be elected regionally, and the regions should not be too large. Kingston should not be lumped in with Ottawa, he said. Those who know Eastern Ontario know that the mid-eastern and Lake Ontario regions and the Ottawa region have many divergent interests, so we were not surprised when Gerretsen mentioned one or two of them.

Gerretsen has not given up on regional MMP. On Sept. 21, 2011, at an all-candidates meeting in Kingston he expressed renewed support for proportional representation. He was eloquent about the benefits of coalitions and agreements. As he said in 2007 “Nobody is ever 100-per-cent right and nobody is ever 100-per-cent wrong. Governing is the art of compromise. There’s nothing wrong with having the governing party take into account smaller parties.”

Open list

Voters would have a real choice among a manageable number of competing candidates from the party they support. And they could also choose to vote just for their party, leaving the candidates ranked as their party’s nomination process had done. That's the variation of "open-list" recommended by the Law Commission of Canada, known as "flexible list."

The flexible open list method was also recommended by the Jenkins Commission in the UK. Their colourful explanation accurately predicted why closed lists would be rejected in Canada: additional members locally anchored are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

The most recent official Quebec study on the topic also looked favourably at regional open list MMP.

Since local candidates can also be on the regional half of the ballot, voters might have had ten or so of their party’s regional candidates to choose from, but not the “bed-sheet ballot“ found in some countries.

In the 2007 Ontario referendum, 63.1% voted against MMP. About 31% were simply against proportional representation. Many more were voters who wanted all MPPs to be personally elected, not on closed lists. Many more were voters who wanted all MPPs to be anchored in their own region, not on province-wide lists. Another 7.5% were voters outside Toronto who disliked province-wide lists even more than Toronto voters did.

Nine mid-sized regions

What would their model have looked like, with those mid-sized regions?

The North would have been a separate region. It could have had a special feature: it could have kept unchanged the ten present ridings north of the French River, and added only two regional MPPs.

The City of Toronto could have gone from 22 local MPPs to 26, 17 local and 9 regional.

The other seven regions would have had 11 to 15 MPPs each, typically 9 local, 4 regional.

Unrepresented Liberal voters would have elected four more MPPs.

Central East Region Liberal voters would have elected four MPPs, not just two. Maybe Tweed's Leona Dombrowsky and Brighton's Lou Rinaldi or Kawartha Lakes' Rick Johnson, Barrie's Karl Walsh or Elmvale's Donna Kenwell.

Central West Region Liberal voters would have elected five MPPs, not just three. Maybe Stratford's John Wilkinson and Huron's Carol Mitchell or Waterloo's Leeanna Pendergast.

(However, Liberal voters would have elected eight fewer MPPs from regions where they are over-represented.)

Unrepresented Progressive Conservative voters would have elected 13 more MPPs.

Toronto PC voters would have elected six MPPs, not none. Maybe Michael Mostyn, Rocco Rossi, Vince Agovino, Mary Anne Demonte-Whelan, Liang Chen and Andrea Mandel-Campbell?

Peel-Halton PC voters would have elected four MPPs, not just two. Maybe Larry Scott and Pam Hundal or Geoff Janoscik?

Hamilton area PC voters would have elected four MPPs from Hamilton, Niagara and Burlington, not just two. Maybe St. Catharine's Sandie Bellows and Niagara-on-the-Lake's George Lepp or Hamilton's Donna Skelly. (However, Central West Region PC voters would have elected two fewer MPPs.)

Northern PC voters would have elected three MPPs, not one. Maybe Kenora's Rod McKay and Sudbury's Paula Peroni or Kapuskasing’s Al Spacek.

Ottawa - Cornwall PC voters would have elected four MPPs, not just three. Maybe Andrew Lister or Marilissa Gosselin? (However, Central East Region PC voters would have elected two fewer MPPs.)

NDP voters would have elected fourteen more MPPs.

Central West NDP voters would have elected three MPPs from the area from Norfolk to Owen Sound, not none. Maybe Cambridge's Atinuke Bankole, Brantford's Brian Van Tilborg and Guelph's James Gordon or Bruce County's Grant Robertson?

Central East region NDP voters would have elected two MPPs, not none. Maybe Peterborough’s Dave Nickle and Kingston’s Mary Rita Holland or Wasauksing First Nation's Alex Zyganiuk.

Ottawa - Cornwall NDP voters would have elected two MPPs, not none. Maybe Anil Naidoo and Cornwall's Elaine MacDonald?

York-Durham region NDP voters would have elected two MPPs, not none. Maybe Oshawa’s Mike Shields and York Region's Megan Tay?

Toronto NDP voters would have elected seven MPPs, not just five. Maybe Paul Ferreira and Cathy Crowe or Neethan Shan?

Peel-Halton NDP voters would have elected two MPPs, not just one. Maybe Michelle Bilek or Dalbir Singh Kathuria?

Southwestern NDP voters would have elected four MPPs, not just two. Maybe Windsor's Andrew McAvoy and Leamington's Aleksandra Navarro or Windsor's Helmi Charif or Sarnia's Brian White or Ingersoll's Dorothy Eisen (a member of the Wabigoon Lake First Nation)?

Green Party voters would have elected three MPPs.

Central East Region Green voters would have elected one: leader Mike Schreiner?

Toronto Green voters would have elected one: maybe Women's Issues critic Judyth Van Veldhuysen or Transport critic Tim Grant?

Peel-Halton Green voters would have elected one: maybe Deputy Leader Rob Strang?

90 local ridings

Local ridings would be slightly bigger than today, but not so you’d notice. Often, six present ridings would become five. (But the North could have kept unchanged the ten present ridings.)

Because the Citizens’ model had only 30% “top-up” MPPs, results are not guaranteed to be perfectly proportional, but this year 30% was enough. The perfect result would be 49 Liberals, 46 PCs, 30 NDP and 4 Green, but rounding anomalies from using nine regions produced 49, 46, 31 and 3. That's very close indeed.

More women and minorities

With a choice of your party’s candidates on the regional ballot, we would elect more women. Polls show 94% of women voters want to see more women elected, but so do 86% of male voters.

And when parties nominate a group of candidates, not just one, they nominate more women. What regional convention, nominating five candidates, would nominate only one woman, or no minorities?

Not enough time

The model put to voters in the October 2007 referendum, designed by the 103 members of the Ontario Citizens Assembly (CA), had province-wide closed lists, not the mid-sized regions John Gerretsen had told us he wanted.

Those candidates on province-wide lists were to be nominated democratically by parties, but in the few months between May and the referendum, no major party had had enough time to design a nomination system. The model’s opponents -- even, ironically, an appointed Senator -- said it sounded like parties would appoint those 39 MPPs. The public had not enough time to understand the CA’s recommendation.

In May 2008 the CA’s Chair, George Thomson, spoke to the Annual General Meeting of Fair Vote Canada. He said that, if those 103 Citizens had had another six or eight weeks to deliberate, he felt some elements might have been different, like regional lists and open lists. But he thought the basic model would have stayed the same: 129 MPPs, 90 local, 39 top-up.

Closed province-wide lists?

So why did those 103 Citizens choose province-wide closed lists?

George Thomson’s comments in May 2008 show the process the 103 Citizens went through. Their big design problem was Ontario’s geography, and the fact that our local ridings are already too large. Until Mike Harris shrank the House in 1999 we had 130 MPPs, compared with 101 MPs at that time. Many members of the CA wanted to keep the present 107 ridings and add at least 36 “top-up.” Others wanted to keep 107 MPPs but have only 80 larger local ridings and 27 top-up. Others wanted a higher ratio of top-up. Their big achievement was consensus on 90 plus 39.

They had decided on province-wide lists early in the process, before they agreed on the numbers. Back at that point, many members wanted to use all the most proportional options in order to leave them free to have less proportional numbers of MPPs. For example, on those 2007 votes, because the Citizens’ model had only 30% “top-up” MPPs, it would have resulted in more than 55 Liberal MPPs. And then, making the lists regional rather than provincial added a further four more Liberal MPPs.

Still, once they had 39 top-up MPPs, regional lists became possible, and open list became possible. Four Liberal MPPs too many, in our 2007 example, would have been a modest price to pay for a more accountable and democratic model. But by the time they made that decision for 39 top-up MPPs, it was too late to go back and redesign.

This is no one’s fault. The Democratic Renewal Secretariat had planned for the whole process to start a year earlier. The legislature’s Select Committee got inserted into the process, and did a wonderful job, but that left both the CA and the public debate short of vital time.

Regional candidates

Why do I say voters would have at least five of their party’s regional candidates to choose from, maybe ten or so, when most regions elect only four regional MPPs?

Take a region with 13 MPPs, nine local, four regional. Suppose Party C’s voters cast 30% of the votes in the region, but elect no local MPPs, and suppose no other party’s voters earn a regional MPP. Party C’s voters elect all four regional MPPs. But if one of them dies or resigns during the legislature term, the regional candidate with the next highest votes moves into that seat. A party must run at least five, to have a spare.

This matters to women and minorities. A regional convention, nominating five candidates, would almost certainly nominate at least two women, and at least one cultural minority member.

On the other hand, suppose Party A’s voters cast 61% of the votes in the region, but elect only seven of the nine local MPPs. They also elect one regional MPP. But if the seven local winners were also on the regional ballot, the party needed at least nine regional candidates, one elected, and again one spare. To get good balance I can see them nominating ten regional candidates.

Did Ontarians reject province-wide lists in the 2007 referendum?

2011-10-02T23:10:00.011-04:00

Did Ontarians reject province-wide lists in 2007, in the referendum on the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system recommended by the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly?

The main criticisms of MMP were:

1. That "party bosses" would control who gets on their parties' list. In the majority of Ontario (outside Toronto), this criticism was that "party bosses in Toronto" would have control.

2. That List MPPs would not be elected by voters and accountable to voters, because the MMP model had closed lists.

On the second point, this was a problem everywhere in Ontario. The Law Commission of Canada in its 2004 report said “Based on the feedback received during our consultation process, many Canadian voters would also most likely desire the flexibility of open lists in a mixed member proportional system. Allowing voters to choose a candidate from the list provides voters with the ability to select a specific individual and hold them accountable for their actions should they be elected.”

On both points, the open regional list method was recommended by the Jenkins Commission in the UK. Their colourful explanation accurately predicted why closed lists would be rejected in Canada: additional members locally anchored are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

Voters outside Toronto rejected the model

On the first point, voters outside Toronto rejected the model. The further they were from Toronto, the more they rejected it. It is easy to see the correlation between distance from Toronto and rejection of the model.

Region,. . . . . . . . percent against MMP
Toronto:. . . . . . . . . . . . 55.6%
Peel Region: . . . . . . . . . 61.5%
York Region: . . . . . . . . . 61.7%
Central West:. . . . . . . . . 62.6%
Hamilton-Halton-Niagara: . 64.0%
Central East (Barrie to Brockville): 65.1%
Southwest: . . . . . . . . . . 65.4%
East:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67.3%
North: . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71.3%

Is this just because Toronto voters are more progressive? But compare York Region’s six ridings with Ottawa’s seven ridings. York Region voted 8.1% NDP and 6.7% Green. Ottawa voted 12.3% NDP and 8.7% Green. Yet York Region voted 38.3% for MMP, while Ottawa voted only 34.9% for MMP. And look at Northern Ontario, which voted 36.7% NDP and 4.1% Green – the two parties that supported MMP – yet only 28.7% for MMP.

Across Ontario, 63.1% voted against MMP. About 31% were simply against proportional representation. Many more were voters who wanted all MPPs to be personally elected, not on closed lists. Many more were voters who wanted all MPPs to be anchored in their own region, not on province-wide lists. Another 7.5% were voters outside Toronto who disliked province-wide lists even more than Toronto voters did.

As Prof. Henry Milner wrote just after the referendum "opponents hammered away on the claim that there would be 39 MPPs beholden to party headquarters instead of voters. . . in a short campaign, this image of unrepresentative party hacks from Toronto getting in through the back door was fatal. Had the assembly proposed the alternative MMP method – of having the 39 places filled through regional lists – the proposal would have been less vulnerable to this sort of attack."

This should not have been a surprise. P.E.I. had a referendum on an MMP system with province-wide lists. Again, support dropped in direct proportion to the distance from the capital, Charlottetown.

If those 103 Citizens' Assembly members had had another six or eight weeks to deliberate, some elements might have been different, like regional lists and open lists. What would their model have looked like, with mid-sized regions? And what would the 2011 election results have been on such a model?

The coalition Canada almost had

2011-08-01T12:34:00.006-04:00

A democratic voting system would have let NDP, Liberal and Green voters elect a majority in Parliament. They would have elected 97 New Democrat MPs, 56 Liberals and 11 Greens in the House of Commons. Just as a fair voting system would have given them in the elections of 2008, 2006 and 2004. That's assuming the MMP model recommended by the Law Commission of Canada.

But we almost got that on May 2, 2011. If 2.3% of the Liberal voters (blue Liberals) had not switched to the Conservatives in the final days before May 2, the Liberals would have held another 15 seats. Also, vote splits would have let the NDP take another five from the Conservatives while letting the Liberals hold on to one. Result: Conservatives 147, NDP 107, Liberal 49, Bloc 4, Green 1.

Would the Liberals have joined a coalition, or would they have supported Harper on the first confidence vote? We will never know for sure, but we do know what their voters wanted. On April 28 and 29, 2011, after the Liberals had slipped to third place in the polls, Angus Reid asked how voters would feel about various scenarios. On “The Conservatives win more seats than any other single party, but the Liberals and the NDP have more combined seats than the Conservatives. The Liberals and the NDP form a coalition government” they found 78% of Liberal voters liked it, 17% did not, and 5% were not sure. On “The Conservatives win more seats than any other single party, and form a minority government’ they found only 20% of Liberals liked it, while 76% did not. Of all voters planning to vote Liberal, only 13% said they would never consider voting NDP.

Would Ignatieff have accepted his voters’ wishes? He had spent the campaign saying “you’re looking at the guy who turned down the last coalition. I could be standing here as prime minister of Canada. I turned it down.” (Did this help scare the 17% of his voters away from a coalition with the NDP?) However, on this scenario he would have lost his own seat, and the Liberals would have dropped from 77 seats (so low that Dion resigned) to only 49 seats. So Ignatieff would have resigned.

By the time the House convened, the Liberals would have had an interim leader who would, let’s assume, have agreed to a coalition with the NDP.

It's not surprising that Liberal voters supported a coalition with the NDP. Even in January 2009 the initial hysteria against the Coalition had largely vanished, even though that earlier Coalition would have needed Bloc support.

Who might the cabinet have been? (Assuming 28 ministers (9 Liberals) and 11 ministers of state (3 Liberals).)

Jack Layton, Prime Minister
Tom Mulcair, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Bob Rae, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Libby Davies, Health
Nycole Turmel, Public Works and Government Services
Ralph Goodale, Minister of Finance
Joe Comartin, Minister of Justice
Yvon Godin, Minister of Labour
Marc Garneau, Minister of Public Safety
Peter Stoffer, Veterans’ Affairs and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
Peter Julian, Minister of Industry
Dominic Leblanc, Minister of National Defence
Jack Harris, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway
Dave Christopherson, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities
Joyce Murray, Minister of National Revenue
Peggy Nash, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
Charlie Angus, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario
John McCallum, Minister of Natural Resources
Linda Duncan, Minister of the Environment
Paul Dewar, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, and Minister responsible for Democratic Reform and the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario
Stephane Dion, President of the Treasury Board
Françoise Boivin, Minister for Status of Women
Pat Martin, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development
Claudette Tardif, Leader of the Government in the Senate
Romeo Saganash, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development
Nettie Wiebe, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board
Carolyn Bennett, Minister of International Cooperation
Alexandre Boulerice, Associate Minister of National Defence
Chris Charlton, Minister of State and Chief Government Whip
Jean Crowder, Minister of State (Finance)
Justin Trudeau, Minister of State (Sport)
Raymond Cote, Minister of State (Small Business and Tourism, and La Francophonie)
Don Davies, Minister of State (Asia-Pacific Gateway, Western Economic Diversification)
Anita Neville, Minister of State (Status of Women)
Dennis Bevington, Minister of State (Transport) and Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency
Brian Masse, Minister of State (International Trade)
Martha Hall Findlay, Minister of State (Science and Technology)
Claude Patry, Minister of State (Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec)
Irene Mathyssen, Minister of State (Seniors)

Would Elizabeth May also have been in cabinet? Why not?

In this what-if universe, let’s see what Jack Layton going on leave to fight cancer would have done. Who would have been interim Prime Minister?

Nycole Turmel still looks like the logical choice. Of all the potential NDP ministers, she’s the veteran: the oldest (67), and with the longest history in federal politics of any New Democrat. She was Associate President (Labour) of the federal party almost 20 years ago. Turmel says “I’ve been at this for decades. In the 1990s, I chaired cross-country NDP panels that consulted Canadians on their ideas about progressive government. I moderated the leadership process that saw Jack Layton elected (in 2003).” She co-chaired, with Dick Proctor, the Social Democratic Forum on Canada’s Future, a panel of "nine distinguished Canadians" which held broad cross-country consultations between March 1998 and January 1999 "to create a vision for the future of the federation" and canvass Canadians' ideas about progressive government.

Active in PSAC (Public Service Alliance of Canada) since 1979, she served as vice president of a PSAC component in the late 1980s. She became PSAC Fourth Executive Vice-President from 1991 to 1994, First Executive Vice-President from 1994 to 1997, and National Executive Vice-President from 1997 to 2000. She became the first female PSAC President in 2000, retiring in 2006 when she was about to turn 63. She was also a member of the CLC Executive Committee. On leaving PSAC office she represented workers on the Management Committee of Financial Assets of the QFL Solidarity Fund, and served on many other boards.

Her term as PSAC President was marked by a major shift toward social activism for the union. She was a key player in the union's $3.6-billion pay equity settlement. Under her leadership, in 2003, PSAC created the Social Justice Fund to advance work in five priority areas including anti-poverty initiatives in Canada and humanitarian relief in Canada and around the world. During her presidency PSAC created its National Aboriginal, Inuit and Metis Network.

She had been so active at all levels of the party and the labour movement that Jack Layton drafted her from semi-retirement on Feb. 3, 2011, to be the NDP’s star candidate in Hull-Aylmer, one of the small handful of Quebec ridings that looked winnable at that time.

As the President of PSAC, Turmel had encouraged members of the union to vote for candidates - Liberal, NDP, and Bloc Québécois - that had been endorsed by the union for their progressive values and for being considered electable in their riding. In December 2006 Turmel made a political donation to the riding association of her friend, Carole Lavallée, who was the Bloc's labour critic; and also accepted a Bloc membership card in that riding. Turmel says that she refused to transfer her membership to her own riding when asked. Turmel, however, was never a separatist: she voted “no” in both the 1980 sovereignty referendum and in the 1995 sovereignty referendum, and has never voted for the Bloc. By voting NDP even in 2000, when the NDP got only 1.8% of the vote in Quebec, she showed herself as a hardcore federalist. This dual membership put Turmel in violation of the NDP constitution which prohibits being a member of more than one federal political party at the same time. In January 2011, Turmel cancelled her membership in the Bloc Québécois and agreed to run as a New Democrat candidate.

Who might Canada’s MPs be, under proportional results for the May 2 election?

2011-05-06T11:51:00.039-04:00

Who might Canada’s MPs be, under the proportional results for the May 2 election in my previous post? What would the House of Commons look like, with 127 Conservative MPs, 97 New Democrats, 56 Liberals, 17 Bloc Québécois, and 11 Greens?

Keep in mind that, under the open-regional-list mixed member model recommended by the Law Commission of Canada, all MPs are personally elected. We still elect local MPs. Voters unrepresented by the local results top them up by electing regional MPs. The total MPs match the vote share. So voters in each region choose the regional MPs. The party nominates a group of regional candidates, and voters choose who they like best. Still, I can look at likely winners, starting with those candidates who got the most votes May 2.

Polls have shown repeatedly that about 90% of Canadians want to see more women elected, so if parties give us that chance, we’ll vote for them. I’ve assumed that below.

(As I noted in my previous post, this simulation is only if people voted as they did on May 2, 2011. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- often 6% or so more -- and some would have voted differently.)

Province by province

In Alberta, instead of NDP voters electing only one MP, they would have elected two more MPs from Edmonton and the north half of Alberta. Maybe Ray Martin from Edmonton and Metis lawyer Jennifer Villebrun from Peace River. And two from Calgary and the south half. Maybe Calgary teacher Donna Montgomery and Lethbridge professor Mark Sandilands or Calgary Labour Council V-P Collin Anderson.

Instead of Alberta Liberal voters electing no MPs, they would have elected an MP from Edmonton and the north half of Alberta: maybe Mary MacDonald. And another from Calgary and the south half of Alberta: maybe retired police officer Cam Stewart, or lawyer (and past school board chair) Jennifer Pollock, or nursing professor (and founding Co-chair for Equal Voice Alberta South) Janice Kinch.

Alberta Green voters would have elected an MP from Edmonton and the north half of Alberta: maybe Jasper musician Monika Schaefer or their Transport Critic William Munsey east of Edmonton. And another from Calgary and the south half of Alberta: maybe democracy and human rights expert Heather MacIntosh.

Ontario voters would have been fully represented, with 67 local MPs and 39 regional MPs.

Liberal voters in the GTA would have elected three MPs from Peel-Halton: maybe incumbent MPs Bonnie Crombie, Navdeep Bains, and Paul Szabo or Andrew Kania, or former Ontario Minister of Labour Peter Fonseca. And two regional MPs from York-Durham along with John McCallum: maybe incumbent Mark Holland and Karen Mock or Bryon Wilfert or Dan McTeague or Lui Temelkovski. And a seventh MP from the City of Toronto: maybe both Michael Ignatieff and Martha Hall Findlay would have won regional seats?

NDP voters in the GTA would have elected two MPs from Peel-Halton: maybe lawyer Jagmeet Singh and Michelle Bilek or Pat Heroux. And two MPs from York-Durham: maybe Oshawa union president Chris Buckley and Markham auditor Nadine Hawkins.

Green Party GTA voters would have elected an MP from the City of Toronto –- maybe their climate critic Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu or Peace and Security critic Ellen Michelson -- and one from York-Durham -- maybe their poverty elimination critic Rebecca Harrison from Whitby, or their social services critic Vanessa Long from Newmarket, or John Dewar from Georgina.

From Eastern Ontario (Ottawa to Peterborough region), NDP voters would have elected three more MPs: maybe Trevor Haché and Marlene Rivier from Ottawa and Dave Nickle from Peterborough or Lyn Edwards from Lindsay. Liberal voters there would have elected one more MP: maybe Anita Vandenbeld from Ottawa, Betsy McGregor from Peterborough, Kim Rudd from Cobourg, Julie Bourgeois from Casselman, or Christine Tabbert from Pembroke. Green voters there would have elected an MP: maybe their Industry Critic Jen Hunter or Caroline Rioux, both from Ottawa.

From West Central Ontario (Hamilton-Niagara-Waterloo-Simcoe), Liberal voters would have elected three more MPs: maybe previous Kitchener MP Karen Redman, former minister Bob Speller from Norfolk County, and Niagara Falls lawyer Bev Hodgson or former Hamilton councillor Dave Braden or former MP Andrew Telegdi. NDP voters would have elected a fifth MP from the region: maybe Susan Galvao from Cambridge. Green voters would have elected an MP: maybe their finance critic Ard Van Leeuwen from the Orangeville area, or their seniors critic Valerie Powell from Simcoe County.

In Southwestern Ontario, Liberal voters would have elected two MPs: maybe London incumbent Glen Pearson and Grey County’s Kimberley Love, or Western Law School Director of Community Legal Services Doug Ferguson, or Chatham's Matt Daudlin. New Democrat voters would have elected a fourth MP: maybe Ellen Papenburg from North Wellington or Grant Robertson from Bruce County. Green Party voters would have elected an MP: maybe their Science and Technology Critic Emma Hogbin from Owen Sound.

Northern Ontario Liberal voters would have elected two MPs: maybe incumbent Anthony Rota from North Bay and Sudbury lawyer Carol Hartman, or former MPs Ken Boshcoff or Roger Valley.

BC voters would have been fully represented, with 22 MPs from local ridings and 14 more regional MPs.

In the Lower Mainland Liberal voters would have elected two more MPs as well as the two women elected May 2. Maybe incumbents Ujjal Dosanjh and Sukh Dhaliwal or Wendy Yuan or Taleeb Noormohamed. Green voters would have elected two MPs: maybe Deputy Leader Adriane Carr and Douglas Roy or Brennan Wauters or Larry Colero.

In the rest of BC Liberal voters would have elected an MP: maybe Kris Stewart from Kelowna, or Christopher Causton or Lillian Szpak from Victoria. Green voters would have elected another MP as well as Elizabeth May: maybe Greig Crockett from Vernon, Alice Hooper from Kelowna or Dan Bouchard from Penticton.

In Saskatchewan, NDP voters would have elected five MPs rather than none: maybe Nettie Wiebe, past chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations Lawrence Joseph, Regina lawyer Noah Evanchuk, Saskatoon health expert Denise Kouri, and Darien Moore from near Saskatoon or long-time Regina councillor Fred Clipsham?

In Manitoba, New Democrat voters would have elected four MPs rather than two: maybe Rebecca Blaikie and Jim Maloway or Cheryl Osborne. Liberal voters would have elected a second MP: maybe incumbent Anita Neville, or Sydney Garrioch (Grand Chief of MKO), or former MP Raymond Simard?

In Nova Scotia, Green voters would have elected an MP: maybe John Percy of Halifax, Sheila Richardson from Wolfville or Jason Blanch from Amherst.

In New Brunswick, NDP voters would have elected three MPs not just one: maybe Shawna Gagné from Moncton and Rob Moir from St. John. Liberal voters would have elected a second MP: maybe incumbent Jean-Claude D'Amours from northern New Brunswick or Kelly Wilson from west of Saint John or incumbent Brian Murphy from Moncton.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, Conservative voters would have elected a second MP: maybe Fabian Manning.

In P.E.I. Conservative voters would have elected a second MP as well as Gail Shea: maybe Tim Ogilvie, former Veterinary College Dean.

Québec’s diverse regions and voters would have been fully represented by 46 local MPs and 29 regional MPs.

Montréal and Laval Conservative voters would have elected three MPs: maybe Larry Smith, Saulie Zajdel and Svetlana Litvin or Neil Drabkin. Bloc voters would have elected four MPs not just Maria Mourani: maybe incumbents Gilles Duceppe and Bernard Bigras, and women’s centre coordinator Ginette Beaudry.

From Montérégie, Bloc voters would have elected three MPs: maybe incumbents Luc Malo, Claude DeBellefeuille and Carole Lavallée. Liberal voters would have elected an MP: maybe incumbent Alexandra Mendès. Conservative voters would have elected an MP: maybe Mélisa Leclerc from Granby or lawyer Marc Boudreau.

From Laurentides, Lanaudière, Outaouais and Abitibi, Bloc voters would have elected three MPs: maybe Pierre Paquette from Joliette, Johanne Deschamps from Labelle, and Marc Lemay from Abitibi. Liberal voters would have elected an MP: maybe incumbent Marcel Proulx from Hull, or lawyer Chantal Perreault in Repentigny. Conservative voters would have elected an MP: maybe Lawrence Cannon.

From Estrie-Centre-du-Québec-Mauricie, Bloc voters would have elected three MPs not just two: maybe incumbents Serge Cardin or France Bonsant from Sherbrooke. Conservative voters there would have elected a second MP: maybe Jean-Philippe Bachand, former Mayor of Asbestos, or Marie-Claude Godue of Maskinongé. Liberal voters would have elected an MP: maybe former MP Denis Paradis from Estrie, or former MNA Francine Gaudet from Maskinongé in the Mauricie.

From the region of Québec City and eastern Québec, Bloc voters would have elected three more MPs beyond Jean-François Fortin: maybe incumbents Michel Guimond and Christiane Gagnon from the Quebec City region, and municipal councillor Nathalie Arsenault from L'Islet in Chaudière-Appalaches. Conservative voters would have elected a fifth MP: maybe incumbent Josée Verner from Quebec City. Liberal voters would have elected two MPs: maybe former MNA Nancy Charest from Matane and lawyer Jean Beaupré from Quebec City.

Technical footnote: I've used the names of real local candidates on May 2 because those are the only names at hand.

The Law Commission Report says it is inspired by the systems currently used in Scotland and Wales, which have 16-MP regions (9 local MPs, 7 regional MPs) or 12-MP regions (8 local MPs, 4 regional MPs). With 2/3 local MPs, a 14-MP region would have 9 local MPs and 5 regional MPs.

With the regional MMP model, if a party wants to nominate 50% women regional candidates at its regional nomination convention (as the NDP would do, and others might copy), how does it do this? The "target" local ridings (those the party hopes to pick up) will nominate long before the election. It has two options. First option: hold the regional nominations before half of the local nominations. Those who win regional nominations will have an excellent chance of winning local nominations afterwards. Second option: let most local ridings go first, then let the regional convention rank those candidates into a "zippered" regional list (alternating men and women), and if there are not enough women or cultural minorities, add some "list-only" candidates. That's how the Germans do it, and at every election, a small handful of "list-only" candidates are elected. Since those MPs have no local riding to serve, they will "adopt" a riding where their party elected no local or regional MP, and open their local office there. In New Zealand, when this happens, they call that MP a "buddy MP" for that riding.

Also note: I looked at those candidates who got the most votes May 2, but I also looked at geography. If, for example, voters in Ottawa cast regional votes preferring some Ottawa candidates who got elected to local seats, then after those winning candidates are struck off the regional list, it may well be that the remaining leading candidate will be from Eastern Ontario outside Ottawa.

What would those 2011 election results have been if every vote counted equally?

2011-05-04T20:17:00.026-04:00

How would the results of the 2011 election play out, by province and nationally, if every vote counted equally? That is, if a model of proportional representation were in place?

All MPs are personally elected

We still elect local MPs. Voters unrepresented by the local results top them up by electing regional MPs. The total MPs match the vote share. Will we voters have no voice in choosing the individual that will represent us regionally? To prevent any concern about that, let’s use the open-regional-list mixed member proportional (MMP) model recommended by the Law Commission of Canada in 2004.

You have two votes. The first is for your local MP, as today. The second is for your party’s regional candidate you like best. This model still leaves almost two-thirds of MPs elected from local ridings. The other one-third are elected from regions averaging 14 MPs (nine local, five regional). If a party’s voters have managed to elect only a few local MPs in that region or none at all, that party gets additional “top-up” seats. The regional candidate with the most votes gets any regional seat needed to top-up the local results to make every vote count equally. (More details below.)

This simulation is only if people voted as they did on May 2, 2011. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- often 6% or so more -- and some would have voted differently. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We could have different parties.

Winner-take-all gave Canada a House of Commons in 2011 of 166 Conservatives, 103 New Democrats, 34 Liberals, 4 Bloc Québécois, and one Green.

The fair result

Instead, the proportional results would have been 127 Conservatives, 97 New Democrats, 56 Liberals, 17 Bloc Québécois, and 11 Greens.

The majority of Canadians voted NDP, Liberal or Green. An NDP-Liberal-Green coalition government would have a clear majority; or so would a Conservative-Liberal coalition government. Either way, that's a strong, stable majority in Parliament elected by a majority of voters, rather than "the tyranny of the minority" when 40% of the voters elect 54% of the MPs with 100% of the power.

The provincial results are even more telling. Our political diversity in each province is fully represented. Voters would be free to vote for their first choice, not having to vote for the "lesser of evils." But even on the votes as cast May 2, this would be the end of the “regional silos” that Canada’s politics have fallen into.

A new politics

An exciting prospect: voters have new power to elect who they like. New voices from new forces in Parliament. No party rolls the dice and wins an artificial majority. Cooperation will have a higher value than vitriolic rhetoric. Instead of having only a local MP -- whom you quite likely didn’t vote for -- you can also go to one of your diverse regional MPs, all of whom had to face the voters. Governments will have to listen to MPs, and MPs will have to really listen to the people. MPs can begin to act as the public servants they are. And all party caucuses will be more diverse.

The models in Ontario and PEI which failed referendums had closed province-wide lists for the additional “top-up” MPPs. This failure was no surprise to those who wrote the Jenkins Commission report in the United Kingdom. Jenkins said top-up MPs locally anchored to small areas are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

It's not just Liberal voters and Green voters who would benefit.

The Conservative caucus would be more representative with nine more MPs from underrepresented areas. Instead of Conservative voters electing no one from the west two-thirds of Québec, they'd have three MPs from Montréal/Laval, one more from the South Shore (Montérégie), and one more from the North Shore and western Québec where Lawrence Cannon lost his seat. And they'd have two more from central and eastern Quebec, and second MPs from both Newfoundland and PEI.

NDP voters in areas where they elected too few or no MPs would have elected 21 more MPs: five in Saskatchewan, four more in Alberta, two more in Manitoba, three more in Eastern Ontario, three more in the GTA, one more in each of West Central Ontario and Southwest Ontario, and two more in New Brunswick.

Accountable MPs

In this model, all MPs are locally accountable. Generally each group of three local ridings becomes two larger ones. Voters can go to their local MP or one of their competing diverse regional MPs (about five regional MPs). Voters for all parties have representation in their region.

Province by province

Alberta’s diverse voters would be fully represented.

Instead of Alberta Liberal voters electing no MPs, they would have elected an MP from Edmonton and the north half of Alberta, and another from Calgary and the south half of Alberta. So would Alberta Green voters. Instead of Alberta NDP voters electing only one MP, they would have elected two more MPs from Edmonton and the north half of Alberta, and two from Calgary and the south half. Alberta Conservative voters would have elected 19 MPs rather than 27.

Ontario’s diverse regions and voters would be fully represented. They would have elected 67 local MPs and 39 regional MPs.

GTA voters would, rather than electing only seven Liberal MPs, have elected 13 Liberal MPs – three from Peel-Halton, three from York-Durham, and seven from the City of Toronto. They would have elected 11 New Democrat MPs rather than only eight – two from Peel-Halton, two from York-Durham, and seven from the City of Toronto. They would have elected two Green Party MPs -- one from the City of Toronto, one from York-Durham. They would have elected 20 Conservative MPs rather than 31.

For the 17 MPs of Eastern Ontario (Ottawa to Peterborough), instead of 13 Conservatives, one New Democrat, and three Liberals, voters would have elected eight Conservatives, four New Democrats, four Liberals, and one Green.

For the 20 MPs of West Central Ontario (Hamilton-Niagara-Waterloo-Simcoe), instead of 15 Conservatives, four New Democrats, and one Liberal, voters would have elected 10 Conservatives, five New Democrats, four Liberals, and one Green.

In Southwestern Ontario (London-Windsor-Owen Sound), instead of 11 Conservative MPs and three New Democrats, voters would have elected seven Conservatives, four New Democrats, two Liberals, and one Green.

In Northern Ontario, instead of three Conservative MPs and six New Democrats, voters would have elected two Liberals along with three Conservatives and four New Democrats.

BC voters would have been fully represented, with 23 MPs from local ridings and 13 more regional MPs.

In the Lower Mainland Liberal voters would have elected four MPs rather than two, Green voters would have elected two MPs, Conservative voters would have elected ten MPs rather than 12, and NDP voters would have elected six MPs rather than seven. Similarly, in the rest of BC Liberal voters would have elected one MP rather than none, Green voters would have elected another MP, while Conservative voters would have elected seven MPs rather than nine.

In Saskatchewan, NDP voters would have elected five MPs rather than none, while Conservative voters would have elected eight MPs not 13.

In Manitoba, New Democrat voters would have elected four MPs rather than two, and Liberal voters would have elected two MPs not just one, while Conservative voters would have elected three fewer.

In summary, across the West that would mean 25 NDP MPs rather than 15, ten Liberal MPs not just four, and five Green MPs not just one.

In Nova Scotia, Green voters would have elected an MP, while Liberal voters would have elected three not four.

In New Brunswick, NDP voters would have elected three MPs not just one, and Liberal voters would have elected two MPs not just one, while Conservative voters would have elected five MPs not eight.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, Conservative voters would have elected a second MP, while Liberal voters would have elected three MPs not four.

In P.E.I. Conservative voters would have elected a second MP, while Liberal voters would have elected two MPs not three.

Québec’s diverse regions and voters would have been fully represented.

For the 21 MPs from Montréal and Laval, voters would have elected four Bloc MPs not just one, three Conservative MPs, eight NDP MPs not 13, and six Liberal MPs not seven.

For the 12 MPs from Montérégie, voters would have elected three Bloc MPs, one Liberal and one Conservative. NDP voters would have elected the seven local MPs, not all 12.

For the 14 MPs from Laurentides, Lanaudière, Outaouais and Abitibi, voters would have elected three Bloc MPs, one Liberal and one Conservative. NDP voters would have elected nine MPs, but not all 14.

For the 10 MPs from Estrie-Centre-du-Québec-Mauricie, voters would have elected three Bloc MPs not just two, two Conservatives not just one, and one Liberal. NDP voters would have elected four MPs not seven.

For the 18 MPs from the region of Québec City and eastern Québec, voters would have elected four Bloc MPs not just one, five Conservatives rather than four, and two Liberals. NDP voters would have elected seven MPs not 13.

I’ve posted an example of who might have been elected.

Statistical notes:

The Law Commission of Canada recommended a Mixed Member Proportional model (MMP) with open regional lists, as did the Jenkins Commission in the UK. In Quebec it is called the mixed compensatory system.

MMP is used in Scotland, Wales, New Zealand and Germany. This model was described in more detail by Prof. Henry Milner at an electoral reform conference Feb. 21, 2009. A similar "open-list" model is used in the German province of Bavaria and was proposed by Scotland's Arbuthnott Commission in 2006.

By having only 36% of MPs elected regionally, the results are not perfectly proportional, but very close. If we had used province-wide totals with perfect proportionality the results would have been: 126 Conservative, 94 New Democrats, 59 Liberals, 18 Bloc, and 11 Greens. In this simulation, after adjustments due to having 64% local seats, the results are: 127 Conservatives, 97 New Democrats, 56 Liberals, 17 Bloc, and 11 Greens. The effect on the balance of parties in the House is the same. In return for slight deviations from perfect proportionality, all MPs are “locally anchored” and accountable. A very good trade-off.

If there was a legal threshold of 5% in each province, the Greens would have no MPs from Ontario and Nova Scotia, getting only 5 MPs not 10. (However, if every vote counted, there would be no need for negative "strategic voting," so I expect the Greens would have gotten more than 5% there.)

What would the 2011 election results be if every vote counted?

2011-04-18T15:14:00.020-04:00

How would the results of the 2011 election play out, by province and nationally, if a model of proportional representation were in place?

For a start, let’s use the 2008 votes.

This simulation is only if people voted as they did on October 14, 2008. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- often 6% or so more -- and some would have voted differently. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We could have different parties.

To prevent any concern that we voters might have no voice in choosing the individual that will represent us, let’s use the open-regional-list mixed member proportional (MMP) model recommended by the Law Commission of Canada in 2004. (More details below.)

You have two votes. The first is for your local MP, as today. The second is for your party’s regional candidate you like best. This model still leaves almost two-thirds of MPs elected from local ridings. The other one-third are elected from regions averaging 14 MPs (nine local, five regional). If a party’s voters have managed to elect only a few local MPs in that region or none at all, that party gets additional “top-up” seats. The regional candidate with the most votes gets any regional seat needed to top-up the local results to make every vote count equally.

Winner-take-all gave Canada a House of Commons in 2008 of 143 Conservatives, 77 Liberals, 49 Bloc Quebecois, 37 New Democrats, no Greens and two independents.

Instead, the proportional results would have been 116 Conservatives, 86 Liberals, 55 New Democrats, 31 Bloc, 18 Greens, and two Independents. The majority of Canadians voted Liberal, NDP or Green. A Liberal-NDP-Green coalition government would have a clear majority. Or a Liberal-NDP government could rely on either the Greens or the Bloc for a majority. Either way, that's a strong, stable majority in Parliament elected by a majority of voters.

The provincial results are even more telling. They would be the end of the “regional silos” that Canada’s politics have fallen into. Our political diversity in each province is fully represented.

An exciting prospect: voters have new power to elect who they like. New voices from new forces in Parliament. No party rolls the dice and wins an artificial majority. Cooperation will have a higher value than vitriolic rhetoric. Instead of having only a local MP -- whom you quite likely didn’t vote for -- you can also go to one of your diverse regional MPs, all of whom had to face the voters. Governments will have to listen to MPs, and MPs will have to really listen to the people. MPs can begin to act as the public servants they are.

Instead of Alberta Liberal voters electing no MPs, they would elect four Liberal MPs – two from Calgary, southern and central Alberta, two from Edmonton and northern Alberta. Alberta NDP voters would elect three NDP MPs (two north, one south), Greens two (one south, one north), and Conservatives 19.

Instead of Quebec having 49 Bloc MPs from only 38 percent of Quebec voters, it would have only 31. It would have 18 Liberal MPs, 15 Conservatives, nine New Democrats, a Green, and an independent.

In Ontario, instead of no Conservative MPs from the City of Toronto and 51 from outside Toronto, Toronto Conservative voters would have elected five MPs; outside Toronto, 35. Liberal voters, instead of electing 32 MPs from the Greater Toronto Area and only six from outside the GTA, would have elected 17 from outside the GTA and 22 from the GTA. NDP voters would have elected three more for a total of 20. Green voters would have elected seven MPs, one from each of six regions in southern Ontario and a second from their strongest region.

In BC, in the Lower Mainland Liberal voters would have elected five MPs rather than four, Green voters would have elected two MPs, and Conservative voters would have elected nine rather than 12. Similarly, in the rest of BC Liberal voters would have elected two MPs rather than only one, Green voters would have elected two MPs, while Conservative voters would have elected seven rather than ten.

In Saskatchewan, NDP voters would have elected three MPs rather than none, Liberal voters would have elected a second MP, and Green voters would have elected one, while Conservative voters would have elected eight MPs not 13.

In Manitoba, Liberal voters would have elected three MPs, not just one. Green voters would have elected an MP, while Conservative voters would have elected two fewer and over-represented NDP voters would have elected one fewer.

In summary, across the West that would mean 16 Liberal MPs, not just seven. For another example, the 28% of the voters in South Central Ontario (Hamilton-Waterloo-Niagara) who voted Liberal but elected no one would have elected four regional MPs.

In Nova Scotia, NDP voters would have elected a third MP, and Greens one, while over-represented Liberal voters would have elected three not five.

In New Brunswick, NDP voters would have elected a second MP and Greens one, while Conservative voters would have elected four not six.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, Conservative voters would have elected an MP, and NDP voters a second, while Liberal voters would have elected four not six.

In P.E.I. Conservative voters would have elected a second MP, while Liberals would have two MPs not three.

The models which failed referendums in Ontario and PEI had closed province-wide lists. This failure was no surprise to those who wrote the Jenkins Commission report in the United Kingdom. Jenkins said MPs locally anchored to small areas are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

MMP is used in Scotland, Wales, New Zealand and Germany. This model was described in more detail by Prof. Henry Milner at an electoral reform conference Feb. 21, 2009. A similar model is used in the German province of Bavaria and was proposed by Scotland's Arbuthnott Commission in 2006.

In this model, all MPs are locally accountable. Generally each group of three local ridings becomes two larger ones. Voters can go to their local MP or one of their competing regional MPs (about five regional MPs). Voters for all parties have representation in their region. A more detailed breakdown is available.

Note on Quebec Greens. In 2008 the Greens got only 3.5% of the votes in Quebec. Many MMP models would prevent them winning seats in a province where they got less than 5%, but the Law Commission did not say that. However, the region size in this model gives them no seats except one in the 21-MP region of Montreal/Laval where they got 4.3%.

Note: By having only 35% of MPs elected regionally, the results are not perfectly proportional, but very close. If we had used province-wide totals with perfect proportionality the results would have been: 118 Con (119 without the Quebec Greens), 81 Lib, 58 NDP, 28 BQ (30 without the Quebec Greens), 21 Green (18 without the Quebec Greens), and 2 Ind. If we had used regional totals with perfect proportionality the results would have been 117 Con, 82 Lib, 58 NDP, 28 BQ, 21 Green, and 2 Ind. In this simulation, after adjustments due to having 65% local seats, the results are: 116 Con, 86 Lib, 55 NDP, 31 BQ, 18 Green, and 2 Ind. The effect on balance in the House is the same. In return for slight deviations from perfect proportionality, all MPs are “locally anchored” and accountable. A very good trade-off.

"The Twelve Percent Solution"

2011-04-09T19:47:00.002-04:00

Liberal MP Mauril Belanger likes the “12-per-cent solution,” an additional 42 MPs on a proportional basis. He spoke favourably of it in a House of Commons debate March 3, 2011.

Great timing, when Canada is about to add seats to the House after the 2011 census.

Belanger was Paul Martin’s Minister responsible for Democratic Reform after the 2004 election. This March 3 he said in the House “I remember the discussions I had with Ed Broadbent, who was the member for Ottawa Centre at the time. I said that I personally agreed that there may be a use in our system for an element of proportionality.”

Referring to a 2004 Globe and Mail article by John Bossons proposing 42 proportional seats, Belanger said “The reasoning then was that if we had greater regional representation within caucuses, for instance if the Liberals had more voices from Alberta and the Conservatives more voices from Quebec and the NDP more voices from other provinces, in other words, if we had more provincial voices speaking in the respective parties' national caucuses, the national perspective might win the day more often. I think that would be healthy for our country. Therefore, I do support, notionally, an element of proportional representation.”

Belanger went on “despite all of the concerns with the concept of proportional representation, an element of that, . . . perhaps not even as high as 50% or even 25%, but an element of that, might help our democracy. . . perhaps the way to go would be to create a committee of the House of Commons and to give it a mandate . . . to go out and sound this out in a rational, responsible, realistic manner and come back to Parliament with its conclusions. Then Parliament should take them up in debate and see where they would lead us. If we were to do that . . . I would certainly be willing to support it and would encourage my colleagues to support it and to see where it takes us.”

Adding 42 more MPs

The last House also debated the government’s Bill C-12, which would have added 33 more MPs to the House of Commons (18 for Ontario, eight for Alberta, seven for BC). The majority of MPs seemed to also support giving Quebec a few more MPs to maintain its weight or at least ensure that it had as many MPs per person as the Canadian average. That number might be five or eleven, but let’s take nine, so as to use the total 42 of John Bosson’s proposal.

What would this “12 percent solution” do for Canada?

It wouldn’t give us full proportional representation as recommended by the Law Commission of Canada, where every vote would count equally.

Limited MMP

It would give us a taste of proportionality, limited proportionality, with only 42 proportional MPs to "top-up" the disproportional results from the local ridings.

But at least there would have been a couple of Liberal MPs from Alberta. And we would have three Conservative MPs from metropolitan Montreal, a couple more Liberals from BC, a couple of Conservatives from Toronto, a couple more NDP MPs from the West and four more from Quebec, maybe 13 Greens here and there, and so on.

However, how would these MPs be elected?

Locally anchored proportional MPs, elected not appointed

As Lord Jenkins’ Commission in the United Kingdom wrote, additional MPs locally anchored to small areas are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

So let’s assume medium-sized regions, each electing one, two or three “top-up” MPs to give representation to voters now unrepresented or under-represented.

Using the Law Commission’s method, the party’s regional candidates with the most votes win those seats. That’s why it’s called “open list.”

Or using the “best runners-up” method, they would be the party’s local candidates in the region who got the highest percent of the votes.

Either way, they would be personally elected, not appointed.

What would the House of Commons look like?

Based on the votes cast in 2008, let’s see what the House of Commons would look like.

Note: this is only if people voted as they did on October 14, 2008. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- typically 6% or so more -- and some would have voted differently. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We could have different parties.

Overall, a simulation of the 350 MPs shows 153 Conservatives, 87 Liberals, 48 Bloc, 47 NDP, 13 Greens, and 2 independents. (Note that, unlike full proportional representation where the majority of voters -- who voted Liberal, NDP or Green – would elect a majority of MPs, this would still leave the Bloc holding the balance of power on the 2008 votes.)

The “top-up” regions would average 16 or 17 MPs each (14 or 15 local, 2 regional). With larger provinces getting more MPs, most local ridings would be no larger. Elsewhere, every group of seven or eight ridings becomes six or seven larger ridings, but a candidate can also run for one of the regional MP positions, with two regional MPs in each 15-riding region.

Ontario could have 15 regional MPs: two Conservatives and a Green from Toronto, a Liberal and a Green from Hamilton-Niagara-Waterloo, a Liberal and a Green from Southwest (London - Windsor), a Liberal from Northern Ontario, an NDP and a Green from Eastern Ontario, an NDP and a Green from Peel-Halton, and two NDP and a Green from York-Durham-Barrie-Peterborough. (Note that Ontario would also have 109 local MPs, up from the present 106.)

BC could have five regional MPs: a Liberal and two Greens from the Lower Mainland, and a Liberal and a Green from the rest of BC.

Alberta could have four regional MPs: a Liberal and a Green from Edmonton and northern Alberta, and another Liberal and Green from Calgary, south and central Alberta.

Quebec could have 10 regional MPs: two Conservatives and an NDP from Montreal/Laval, a Conservative and an NDP from Montérégie, a Liberal and an NDP from Laurentides—Lanaudière -Western Quebec, a Liberal from Estrie-Centre-du-Québec-Mauricie, and a Liberal and an NDP from Quebec City and Eastern Quebec. (Note: this assumes a party has to reach a 5% threshold in a province to qualify for a regional MP, but the Greens were below that level in Quebec.)

Saskatchewan could have two provincial NDP MPs. Manitoba could have a Liberal and a Green provincial MP. Nova Scotia could have a provincial Green MP. New Brunswick could have a provincial NDP MP. Newfoundland and Labrador could have a provincial Conservative MP. P.E.I. could have a provincial Conservative MP.

Regions and sizes

The 42 regional MPs would include some in each province, so the six smaller provinces would lose some local MPs. Manitoba and Saskatchewan would have 12 local MPs not 14, and in return would have two provincial MPs. Each Atlantic province would have one less local MP, and one provincial MP. BC would have 38 local MPs and five regional MPs. Alberta would have 32 local MPs and four regional MPs. Ontario would have 109 local MPs and 15 regional MPs. Quebec would have 74 local MPs and 10 regional MPs.

With six small regions having only one regional MP (four Atlantic provinces, northern Ontario, and Estrie-Centre-du-Québec-Mauricie), four regions could have three regional MPs each: the BC Lower Mainland with 25 MPs, the City of Toronto’s 25, Montreal/Laval’s 25, and Central East Ontario (York-Durham-Barrie-Peterborough) with 24. The other 12 regions would have two regional MPs each.

Canadians supported the coalition in January 2009.

2011-03-27T14:38:00.001-04:00

Polls two years ago showed Canadians actually supported the coalition, once the hysteria died down.

Yet some reporters say things like "The last time a coalition was attempted Canadians spoke out against it in such strong numbers that had an election been called Stephen Harper would have gained a huge majority."

The hysteria against the coalition largely vanished after Christmas, 2008.

On Jan. 3-7 Nanos found 33% would vote Conservative, 34% Liberal, 19% NDP.

By January 12th to 14th, 2009, the Strategic Counsel found the parties were back to more or less 2006 levels: CPC - 36%, Libs 29%, NDP 18% and it also shows the public now almost evenly split in terms of their attitude towards coalition. It appeared that the short term bump the Tories got after they prorogued had vanished. The coalition had 44% support, another election 49%, yet only 36% would vote Conservative.

On Jan. 15 - 17 EKOS found 50% support for the Coalition, while 43% would prefer the Conservative government to the Coalition, and 6% were undecided, although only 36% would vote Conservative. Yet 49% wanted a new election, showing some confusion remained.

Even after the federal budget Jan. 27, which 62% liked (on Jan. 28-29) and 67% said the opposition should support, Strategic Counsel found Conservative support had dropped to 34%. While this poll did not mention the word coalition, the attitudes against Harper had dropped even further than on Jan. 12-14. It found 51% agreed "The Harper government has failed Canada on the economy, and another government should be given a chance” while 49% disagreed; 63% agreed "Stephen Harper hasn't changed at all and this Budget is all about politics and buying time for his government" while 69% agreed "Regardless of this budget, I still blame Stephen Harper for causing an unnecessary political crisis two months ago when he should have been focusing on the economy," and 72% agreed "The Harper government would not have introduced a budget like this if it had not been for the pressure from the opposition parties."

And in late April 2011 only 17% of Liberal voters did not like the idea of a coalition with the NDP.

The Bloc supports proportional representation; the Liberals are interested

2011-03-27T13:36:00.004-04:00

In the run-up to the current election, was anyone watching March 3 when the House of Commons debated the NDP motion on proportional representation (and Senate abolition), and the Bloc supported it?

There's a common belief that the Bloc would never vote for proportional representation, since it would cost them close to half their seats in Parliament. But this is not true. There is a consensus among most Quebecois, especially progressives, in favour of the principle of proportional representation. The Bloc does not have a definitive position on PR, but is not opposed.

The motion called for the House to appoint a Special Committee for Democratic Improvement, whose mandate is to engage with Canadians, and make recommendations to the House, on how best to achieve a House of Commons that more accurately reflects the votes of Canadians by combining direct election by electoral district and proportional representation. (It also, unfortunately, called for a referendum on abolishing the Senate, an issue worth debating, but giving the Liberals an easy reason to vote against the motion.) The NDP's call for a mixed member system has been party policy since 2003. See MMP made easy.

The Bloc moved an amendment that the recommendations "in no way reduce the current weight of the Quebec nation in the House of Commons.” The NDP had already taken the same position, so it accepted the Bloc amendment. The Bloc then supported the amended motion. However, after their amendment was defeated by a vote of 77 to 214, they could not vote for the original motion.

The NDP caucus was vocal in support of proportional representation, with statements from David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre), Libby Davies (Vancouver East), Claude Gravelle (Nickel Belt), Jean Crowder (Nanaimo-Cowichan), Jack Harris (St. John's East), Fin Donnelly (New Westminster - Coquitlam), Jim Maloway (Elmwood - Transcona), Alex Atamanenko (British Columbia Southern Interior), Peter Julian (Burnaby - New Westminster), Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway), Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre), Yvon Godin (Acadie - Bathurst), and Linda Duncan (Edmonton Strathcona).

The Bloc MPs stated, in regard to "the undemocratic nature of the current form of representation in Parliament, specifically the House of Commons, we quite agree with the NDP." Pierre Paquette (Joliette) said "We are comfortable with this motion, but on two conditions. . . I want to point out right now that we will support the NDP motion . . . We also agree with abolishing the Senate and with looking at a new voting system that would include elements of the proportional voting system. . . Most countries with such a voting system have elements of both representation based on ridings and representation based either on regions or on lists presented by political parties. There are a number of possible models. In Quebec during the time of René Lévesque, Robert Burns did some very important work that led to proposed reforms that, unfortunately, were never implemented. . . In the debates that were held in Quebec, we discussed at length the difference between members who would be elected on the basis of their ridings and those who would be elected on the basis of the lists suggested by the political parties. There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems. What would be best is a combination of the systems in which proportional representation would be used but the regions and ridings would also have a say in the choice of members. . . The Bloc Québécois has proven time and time again that it is not here to reform Canadian institutions or to prevent reform. However, we want it to be understood that our priority is certainly not to work toward the abolition of the Senate or toward a system of proportional representation across Canada but rather to work toward Quebec sovereignty."

The Liberals said interesting things.

Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's), their democratic renewal critic, said "As for electoral reform, the issue is in need of serious and comprehensive dialogue with Canadians about whether the current system is, for all its faults, working, and if not, what needs to be fixed or what is to replace it. We believe there is lots of support for various approaches to electoral reform.

"Last week in Alberta it was very clear. Many Liberals in Alberta are very keen that their votes count in the House of Commons. Green Party members across the country care about this. I think the federalists in Quebec have been often worried that more people there can vote for a federalist party and they can end up with a separatist majority. This kind of distortion in result is worrying to people and although we welcome that dialogue, I believe it would be premature to start prescribing alternate systems at this time.

"On October 23, 2003, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced the creation of the Democratic Renewal Secretariat, which mandated a citizens’ assembly to examine the electoral system. In May 2007, the citizens' assembly recommended a mixed member proportional system. Under this system, a person votes for a local member and for a party, which is elected by means of the first past the post system. The local member represents an electoral riding, while the votes for the parties, in conjunction with the number of local members elected from each party, determine how many list members each party will receive in addition to its local members. In October 2007, this reform received only 36.9% of the vote, far less than the 60% required to make the referendum result binding.

"Commentators said that the result reflected the electorate's skepticism about political parties. The lack of transparency and democracy in every political party deterred people from voting in favour of the referendum question.

" . . . in the world there are only three countries with pure first past the post systems left, the U.K. which is moving to change it a bit, the United States and ourselves, and that there are systems around the world that work and ones that do not. I agree with the member that the ones where it is purely proportional and no one really knows who their member of Parliament is would not work in this huge country. People do need to know their members' address, where they come from and know the regional issues. We would, I assume, in any electoral reform keep individual riding members.

"The debate that we would have with Canadians is about the lack of proportionality and the lack of Liberal members from Alberta when they can get up to 20% of the vote, and the fact that in 1993 the Conservative Party had 20-plus per cent of the vote and only two seats. People understand that there is a distortion and that we need to have a proper conversation with Canadians as to what might work to fix that.

"The Green Party put forward an interesting idea which would be that there would be a best losers list, where they would have had to have been a candidate in the last election, knocking on doors and listening to people, that if we were going to get three members from Alberta, they would be three of our candidates as opposed to a predetermined party list, as was the proposal in Ontario. I have to admit that until we move on party reform, we are not going to get the kind of support for electoral reform."

Liberal MP Mauril Belanger (the former Minister) said "I really rather agree with where the rest of the motion (on PR) is going.

"I was at one point the minister for democratic renewal, and I remember the discussions I had with Ed Broadbent, who was the member for Ottawa Centre at the time. I said that I personally agreed that there may be a use in our system for an element of proportionality. I tried to define that element.

"I recall an op-ed in the Globe and Mail a few years ago calling for a “12-per-cent solution”, which apportioned a reduced number of seats on a proportional basis, but regionally. The reasoning then was that if we had greater regional representation within caucuses, for instance if the Liberals had more voices from Alberta and the Conservatives more voices from Quebec and the NDP more voices from other provinces, in other words, if we had more provincial voices speaking in the respective parties' national caucuses, the national perspective might win the day more often.

"I think that would be healthy for our country. Therefore, I do support, notionally, an element of proportional representation."

Liberal MP Scott Simms said "the mixed member proportional representation that the member talks about has some merit."

That's as close as we have gotten to a Liberal position, at this point. The Liberals need the Law Commission's recommendation, but they haven't said so, yet.

A modest element of proportionality for Canada’s parliament: the parallel system? Or MMP-lite?

2011-02-05T14:53:00.001-05:00

It may be useful to consider electoral reforms with less than full proportionality, as a compromise or step in the right direction.

For example, the “MMP-lite” (or “Limited MMP”) model designed by the Jenkins Commission in the UK was specifically intended to increase the odds on stable governments, while getting many of the benefits of a mixed member proportional model.

Another option is the parallel system, once used in Russia, still used in Japan.

The Pépin-Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity in 1979 recommended:
i. The number of members in the House of Commons should be increased by about 60.
ii. These members should be selected from provincial lists of candidates prepared by the federal parties in advance of a general election, with the seats being distributed between parties on the basis of percentages of popular votes.

That's the parallel model, because those extra 60 MPs do not compensate for disproportionate local results. Rather than the "top-up" Mixed Member Proportional model, they are a separate, parallel, election.

On the votes cast in 2008, the additional 60 MPs would have been 21 Conservatives, 18 Liberals, 12 NDP, 6 Bloc, and 3 Greens.

This model would have addressed regional divisiveness slightly by electing 22 more MPs from provinces where their party’s voters were underrepresented: 1 Liberal MP from Alberta, 1 more from BC, 1 more from Manitoba, and 4 more from Quebec; 3 more Conservative MPs from Quebec; 4 more NDP MPs from Ontario, 2 more from Quebec, 1 from Saskatchewan, 1 more from Alberta, and 1 more from Nova Scotia; and 2 Green Party MPs from Ontario and 1 from BC.

But it would also have elected 35 more MPs from provinces where their party’s voters were already over-represented: 8 more Conservative MPs from Ontario, 3 more from Alberta, 3 more from BC, 2 more from Saskatchewan, 1 more from Manitoba, and 1 more from New Brunswick; 7 more Liberal MPs from Ontario, 1 more from Newfoundland, 1 more from Nova Scotia, and 1 more from PEI; 6 more Bloc MPs from Quebec; and 1 more NDP MP from Manitoba. Along with one more Liberal MP from New Brunswick where Liberal voters were already fairly represented, and two more NDP MPs from BC where NDP voters were already fairly represented.

I doubt the public would want 60 more MPs when more than half of them would just add to a party’s over-represented strongholds. But if we cut the local MPs to 248, so each riding is 25% bigger than today, doesn’t the loss outweigh the gain?

And the Pepin-Robarts model used closed province-wide lists, not the open regional lists that Canadian voters are likely to require. As Jenkins said, additional members locally anchored to small areas are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

No, if you want a compromise with 247 local MPs and only 61 regional MPs, go to a Limited Mixed Member Proportional model.

That model is a compromise toward the model recommended by the Law Commission of Canada.

Poll results on Canadian public support for proportional representation

2011-01-05T02:16:00.009-05:00

For many years, it was well-known that polls showed a strong majority of Canadians (around 70%) believe that the portion of seats a party wins in the House of Commons should reflect the portion of the votes they receive.

For example, polls showed this in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Last year a poll found this is still true.

February 2010:

A poll on proportional representation was conducted by Environics Research between February 22 and 24, 2010. It found that 68 per cent of Canadians support "moving towards a system of proportional representation (PR) in Canadian elections" (as a percent of decided respondents.)

Question #1 asked in the Environics Research poll was:

There has been some discussion about reforming the electoral system in Canada. Some people favour bringing in a form of proportional representation, which means that seats in parliament would be apportioned according to the popular vote won by each party, instead of the current system of electing MPs from single-member ridings. Would you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose moving towards a system of proportional representation in Canadian elections?

Strongly support: 23 per cent
Somewhat support: 38 per cent
Somewhat oppose: 15 per cent
Strongly oppose: 13 per cent
Don't know: 10 per cent

The results represent the findings of a telephone survey conducted among a national random sample of 1,001 adults comprising 501 males and 500 females 18 years of age and older, living in Canada. The margin of error for a sample of this size is +/- 3.10 percent, 19 times out of 20.

February 2004

A Vector Research poll found 64 per cent support changing to a PR system.

2003

The 2003 Portraits of Canada, from the Centre for Research and Information on Canada, reported that 71% of Canadians support distributing legislative seats proportionally according to the share of votes received in an election. Quebecers (76%) show greater support levels than Canadians in the rest of Canada (69%) when it comes to distributing legislative seats according to the overall proportion of votes received by each party in an election. Albertans (65%) are least supportive of this potential option for change.

Also, 74% favoured allowing smaller parties to win representation in legislatures.

April 2002

Decima Research polled 1,920 voters. Leaving aside 10% undecided, 71.4% supported PR, while 28.7% opposed it.

February 2001

Ipsos-Reid interviewed a representative national sample of 1,000 adult Canadians by telephone. 64 per cent of Canadians believe that Canada’s electoral system should award seats in Parliament in proportion to the popular vote received by each party, which is of course the definition of PR.

When asked to choose between a system which produces strong majority governments and a system which gives each party a number of seats in proportion to its popular vote, Canadians choose the latter system by a margin of 60 per cent to 36 per cent.

When asked directly whether Canada’s electoral system should be changed to provide PR in the House of Commons, the majority of Canadians (59 per cent) say yes. Thirty-eight per cent say no.

In BC, a poll after the referendum showed that 44.3% of those who voted for first-past-the-post in the referendum responded they are in “favour of replacing first-past-the-post with a voting system in which the percentage of seats a party gets in the legislature is more in line with their percentage of the popular vote.” That makes 66% of BC voters in favour of some proportional system.

How would PR work? See the Law Commission of Canada Report.

A New Brunswick proportional legislature

2010-09-30T03:28:00.028-04:00

What would the New Brunswick legislature look like under a fair voting system?

We don't have to invent one. It's been professionally done by New Brunswick's Commission on Legislative Democracy, appointed by the Progressive Conservative government of Bernard Lord in 2003.

It is clear to the Commission that the current single member plurality electoral system is not meeting the democratic values and needs of New Brunswickers. Fairness and equality of the vote, which are central to democratic satisfaction, must be given more weight when votes are translated into seats. Fortunately, it is not necessary to discard the values of effectiveness and accountability - key benefits of our current system - when making a change. The Commission’s made-in-New Brunswick, regional mixedmember proportional representation system would continue to produce effective single party majority governments while maintaining the direct link between voters and their riding MLA - a link that helps keep them accountable to voters.

Why change?

Simply put, it is not equitable that 60 per cent of the voters in 1987 elected 100 per cent of the MLAs. The votes cast by the other 40 per cent of New Brunswickers had absolutely no effect on the election results. The outcome would have been identical had these 161,814 New Brunswickers simply stayed home. And while this result is somewhat extreme, the three elections that followed illustrate that it is not anomalous. In each of these three elections, about half of the voters elected 80 per cent of the MLAs while the other half elected just 20 per cent. . . There are often too few opposition members to effectively hold the government accountable - a key function of the Legislative Assembly.

Bernard Lord said he supported proportional representation, and if he had been re-elected in 2006 he would hold a referendum on the new system, with 50% of voters required to pass it, not the 60% threshold used in BC and Ontario. Ironically, although Lord's PCs got more votes than the Liberals, it was a "wrong-winner" election, and Lord was out of office.

In the 2010 election it has taken 4,328 New Brunswickers to elect one Progressive Conservative member; 9,854 to elect one Liberal; and 38,737 to elect not a single candidate from the New Democratic Party despite those voters' explicit desire to do so.

Commission's model

The Commission recommended MLAs elected from local ridings and from four regions. Each region would have nine local MLAs, elected as today, and five regional MLAs. To "top-up" the disproportional local results we know all too well, the voters for an under-represented party elect some regional MLAs.

See MMP Made Easy.

Power to the voters

An exciting prospect: voters have new power to elect who they like. You can vote for what you want, not against what you don't want. New voices from new forces in the legislature. No party rolls the dice and wins an artificial majority. Cooperation will have a higher value than vitriolic rhetoric. One-party dominance by the Premier’s office will, at last, be out of fashion. Governments will have to listen to MLAs, and MLAs will have to really listen to the people. MLAs can begin to act as the public servants they are.

Competing MLAs

Every voter has competing MLAs. Instead of having only a local MLA -- whom you quite likely didn’t vote for -- you can go to your local MLA or one of your diverse regional MLAs, as you choose.

Each voter has two votes. Your local vote is used to elect an MLA to represent your riding, as today, but you don't need to vote for the local candidate of your party. You can vote for who you prefer, since the party make-up of the legislature is determined by your second vote.

Your second vote -- your regional vote or party vote -- is used to elect several regional MLAs from your region. The regional votes are counted to give the level of support for each party in the region.

What would the legislature look like?

For an example, let’s see what the New Brunswick legislature would have looked like under this model if voters voted as they did in 2010.

This projection assumes voters voted as they did in 2010. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- typically at least 6% more. And some would have voted differently -- no more strategic voting. We would likely have seen different candidates -- more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We could have seen different parties. Who knows who might have won real democratic elections?

But on the votes as cast in 2010 for 55 MLAs, the overall result is 28 Progressive Conservatives, 18 Liberals, 6 New Democrats, and 3 Greens.

New Brunswick's Liberal government shelved the Commission’s report in 2006, yet their voters in the Saint John and Fredericton regions are the ones who got shafted worst in this year’s election. A lesson for Liberals everywhere?

Liberals:

Liberal voters in South West and Central New Brunswick are badly under-represented today. South West Region voters would have elected 13 MLAs (8 local, 5 regional), including three more Liberal MLAs: maybe Mary Schryer, new candidates Dan Joyce and Kevin McCarville, or Ed Doherty or Abel LeBlanc or new candidate Victoria Clarke? Central region voters would have elected 14 MLAs (9 local, 5 regional) including three more Liberal MLAs: maybe Greg Byrne, T. J. Burke and Kelly Lamrock or Larry Kennedy or new candidate Kit Hickey?

New Democrats

New Democrat voters would be fairly represented. From the Northern region they would have elected two MLAs: no doubt leader Roger Duguay, and maybe Ray Godin or Claudia Julien or Maureen Michaud. From the South East they would have elected two MLAs: maybe Susan Levi-Peters and Bill Evans or Leta Both or Cyprien Okana or Agathe Lapointe? From the South West they would have elected one MLA such as Wayne Dryer, Sandy Harding, Julie Drummond or Jesse Travis. From the Central region they would have elected one MLA such as Tony Myatt, Sharon Scott-Levesque or Jason Purdy.

Greens

Green Party voters would be fairly represented. From the Central region they would have elected one MLA: their leader Jack MacDougall or Jim Wolstenholme? From the South East they would have elected one MLA such as Margaret Tusz-King, Bethany Thorne-Dykstra, Mike Milligan or Paul LeBreton. From the South West they would have elected one MLA such as Janice Harvey or Sharon Murphy-Flatt.

The Law Commission of Canada Report

The Law Commission of Canada recommended a similar system for Canada in 2004: a mixed member proportional system, like Scotland's and Germany's, with the majority of MPs elected locally, and additional MPs to represent under-represented voters and "top-up" the local results. Unlike the models which failed to win support in referendums in Ontario and P.E.I, it had open lists, not closed lists, so every MP faced the voters.

What would a proportional House of Commons look like?

While Stephen Harper once favoured proportional representation (as did the PC Party in 2002 just before they decided to merge instead), Ottawa’s present Conservatives (other than Senator Hugh Segal, Rick Anderson and Walter Robinson) seem have lost interest. Conservatives once courted the young, bilingual Bernard Lord for federal leader, and he’s still only 45. Might he yet play a role in the evolution of Canadian democracy?

Why Liberals need the Law Commission of Canada’s recommended electoral reform.

2010-07-17T14:34:00.014-04:00

As Chantal Hebert wrote on May 28, 2010: “If the Liberals are serious about restoring their status as a national institution, it is time for them to abandon their faith in short-term electoral short cuts and rethink their approach to a more proportional voting system.”

Across Canada, people ask “why do three-quarters of Western voters vote Conservative?”

But they don’t. In 2011 54.7% voters in the four western provinces voted Conservative, but they elected 78% of their MPs. In 2008, 52.5% of them voted Conservative, but they elected 77% of their MPs. In 2006 only 48.6% of them voted Conservative, yet they elected 71% of their MPs.

And they used to ask “why do the majority of Quebecois keep voting for the Bloc?”

But they didn’t. In six elections from 1993 to 2008 the Bloc never won the majority of votes in Quebec, yet they always elected the majority of Quebec MPs.

Proportional representation cannot be left to the NDP and the Green Party.

Liberal voters have practical reasons to need it. And Canadian unity requires it.

The answer was authoritatively recommended in 2004 by the Law Commission of Canada: Voting Counts: Electoral Reform for Canada.

In 2006 the Harper government disbanded the Law Commission of Canada, one of the country’s most respected and productive federal commissions.

Launched in 1971 by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau as the Law Reform Commission of Canada, and resurrected by Prime Minister Jean Chretien in 1997 as the Law Commission of Canada, this independent body conducted research, facilitated dialogue and produced innovative policy recommendations on a wide range of issues related to the role of law in society.

In 2002, under the leadership of President Nathalie Des Rosiers (currently General Counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association) and Vice President (later Liberal MP) Stephen Owen, the Law Commission of Canada launched a comprehensive review of Canada’s electoral system. In 2004, the Commission recommended to Parliament the adoption of a mixed member proportional voting system.

1. Update on the Law Commission’s 2004 report.

Events since early 2004 make this report more relevant than ever.

First, the Commission’s approach to designing an MMP system differed from the MMP models presented to voters in the Ontario and PEI referendums. Its model has been proven correct. Voters did not accept closed province-wide lists where voters would be forced to accept a party slate of at-large candidates, as presented, rather have the option to vote for individual candidates on those lists. In the last B.C. referendum voters did not accept the Irish STV system.

Second, after Quebec’s first draft model was not well received in 2006, Quebec’s Chief Electoral Officer described a model like the Law Commission’s.

Third, polls continue to show strong support for adopting a more proportional voting system. On April 15, 2010, the Council of Canadians released a major poll conducted by Environics showing that 62 per cent of Canadians support "moving towards a system of proportional representation (PR) in Canadian elections."

Fourth, the elections of 2004, 2006 and 2008 repeated the pattern of the previous three elections in Quebec, but with even worse under-representation of federalist voters. And even worse under-representation of Western Liberal voters.

The model: two-thirds of MPs from local ridings, one-third from open regional lists

The Law Commission recommended “Adding an element of proportionality to Canada’s electoral system, as inspired by the systems currently used in Scotland and Wales, would be the most appropriate model for adoption.”

It recommended “a flexible list system that provides voters with the option of either endorsing the party “slate” or “ticket,” or of indicating a preference for a candidate within the list.” This open list method means every MP has faced the voters and been personally elected.

Voters have TWO votes: one local, for a constituency representative, and one regional.

Scotland and Wales have 16-MP regions (9 local MPs, 7 regional MPs) and 12-MP regions (8 local MPs, 4 regional MPs). In Canada, with 2/3 local MPs, a 14-MP region would have 9 local MPs and 5 regional MPs. This would mean eight regions in Ontario, five or six in Quebec, two in BC, and two in Alberta.

This method was also recommended by the Jenkins Commission in the UK. Their colourful explanation accurately predicted why closed lists would be rejected in Canada: additional members locally anchored are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

Similarly, the latest Quebec model described by their Chief Electoral Officer in December 2007 has a typical MNA elected from a 15-MNA region, with nine local MNAs, and six regional MNAs elected by the flexible open list model, which it said would balance voter choice with better representation of women and minorities.

See "Why the Liberal Party of Canada should lead on electoral reform."

Bloc Québécois Bonus

In 2004 Bloc Québécois voters cast 48.9% of the votes in Québec, so they deserved 37 MPs. But they got 54, a bonus of 46%.

In 2006 they cast 42.1% of the votes in Québec, so they deserved 31 of the 74 MPs won by parties. But they got 51, a bonus of 65%.

In 2008 they cast only 38.1% of the votes in Québec, so they deserved only 28 of the 74 MPs won by parties. But they got 49, a bonus of 75%.

In 2008 it took 86,203 federalist voters to elect one Quebec MP, but only 28,163 Bloc voters.

To quote Lord Jenkins’ Commission about this effect of first-past-the-post systems on regionalism “This is perverse, for a party's breadth of appeal is surely a favourable factor from the point of view of national cohesion, and its discouragement a count against an electoral system which heavily under-rewards it.”

2. A long-standing need

Liberals have known the problem for decades.

The Law Commission noted that first-past-the-post has been criticized as:

• "Disregarding a large number of votes in that voters who do not vote for the winning candidate have no connection to the elected representative, nor to the eventual make-up of the House of Commons." About half the votes cast elect no one. Many voters live in safe ridings dominated by one party and have no hope of electing an MP.

• "Being overly generous to the party that wins a plurality of the vote, rewarding it with a legislative majority disproportionate to its share of the vote." The partisan beneficiaries and victims may change from time to time, but skewed results are routine.

• "Promoting parties formed along regional lines, thus exacerbating Canada’s regional divisions.

• Leaving large areas of the country without adequate representatives in the governing party caucus."

• "Allowing the governing party, with its artificially swollen legislative majority, to dominate the political agenda." A party with far less than majority support can gain majority control of Parliament and introduce programs and laws that most Canadians oppose.

• "Contributing to the under-representation of women, minority groups, and Aboriginal peoples.

• Preventing a diversity of ideas from entering the House of Commons.

• Favouring an adversarial style of politics."

When most votes have no effect, incentive to vote is reduced. Voter turnout is declining, with turnout in 2008 dropping to 59%, an historic low. Lord Roy Jenkins, who chaired the U.K.’s Jenkins commission on electoral reform, had this to say about safe seats and ineffective votes in his 1998 report: “many voters pass their entire adult lives without any realistic hope of influencing a result. In these circumstances it is perhaps remarkable that general election turnouts remain at a respectable level.” When he wrote that, turnout in the prior election had been 71%. In the subsequent election turnout dropped to 59%.

In 1979, first-past-the-post produced a "wrong-winner" election. Pierre Trudeau's Liberals won 40.1% of the vote, but only 114 seats. Joe Clark's Progressive Conservatives received only 35.9% of the vote, but elected 136 MPs and formed the government with support from six Créditiste MPs.

Trudeau’s big problem was the West. Liberal voters in BC deserved to elect six MPs, but got only one. In Alberta, Liberal voters deserved to elect five MPs but got none. In Saskatchewan they deserved three, but got none; even Ralph Goodale lost his seat.

In 1980 Trudeau's problem with western underrepresentation in his government was extreme: he had only two MPs from the four western provinces, both from Manitoba. Trudeau would have had sixteen more western MPs with proportional representation. In the 1980 Speech from the Throne, the newly re-elected Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau promised to appoint a committee to study the electoral system.

3. No more Bloc blockage, no more Conservative bonus

With this Law Commission model, if voters voted as they did in 2008, they would have elected 118 Conservative MPs and only 32 Bloc MPs.

4. Would the Alternative Vote be better for Liberals?

In the UK, the Liberal Democrats have postponed their claim for proportional representation, settling for the Alternative Vote (AV) which they thought would help them somewhat in the UK. Since no one really wanted it, it was no surpriose when AV was rejected by UK voters.

They don’t have our problem of exaggerated regional differences. AV would do nothing for Alberta Liberal voters, or most other western Liberal voters.

Would AV have helped Quebec federalists? In three-way or four-way races, who can say? To quote Lord Jenkins and his Commissioners, “its effects are disturbingly unpredictable.” It depends who voters want to vote against on voting day.

5. Unheard Liberal voices

A study released in 2006 by Fair Vote Canada showed that in the seven federal elections between 1980 and 2004 an average of 43.3% of Liberal voters cast ineffective votes, electing no one.

In the 2008 election, the percentage of Liberal voters electing no one was stunning in a number of provinces: Alberta (100%), Manitoba (82%), Saskatchewan (73%), British Columbia (72%), and Quebec (69%). In 2011 it was even worse.

In summary, many Liberal voters live in areas where they will seldom, if ever, elect a Liberal MP. The elected Liberal caucus simply does not represent the breadth of Liberal support across the country.

With the Law Commission’s model, Liberal voters in 2011 would have elected 25 more MPs from regions where they are unrepresented or underrepresented, minus four where they were over-represented. For example, in the GTA Liberal voters deserved to elect at least 13 MPs in 2011, but elected only seven.

Prime Minister Paul Martin spoke frequently and eloquently about the urgent need to address Canada’s democratic deficit, but was unable to take corrective action during his tenure. The solution is overdue and new Liberal voices are needed to carry the torch.

“Limited MMP” (Canada’s electoral Plan B)

2010-06-20T22:23:00.017-04:00

The Liberal Party, like the British Labour Party, is more likely to accept a “more proportional system” than a fully proportional system. That’s what Lord Jenkins’ Commission in the UK aimed at, to balance broad proportionality with the need for stable Government: “limited MMP.”

As a compromise, it’s not as bad as I thought.

The essence of the MMP system, as Lord Jenkins wrote, is that the voter has the opportunity to cast two votes, the first for his or her choice of local riding MP, and the second for an additional or Top-up MP who would be elected for the purpose of correcting the disproportionality left by the riding outcomes.

See MMP Made Easy.

“Limited MMP” in Canada would have only 20% “top-up” MPs. A group of five present ridings would become four larger ridings. We could have small “top-up” regions averaging only ten each. The regional “top-up” MPs would be personally elected and be very accountable.

Jenkins proposed an open list system in small regions, in the interests of local accountability and providing the regional MPs with a broad constituency link. As Jenkins said, additional members locally anchored to small areas are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.” He wanted regions ranging from six to 12 MPs.

Take New Brunswick. On the 2008 votes, if the eight local ridings elected four Conservatives, three Liberals and one New Democrat, the two provincial MPs would be one New Democrat and one Green, making the overall result proportional to the votes cast. Who fills those two seats? The voter has two votes: one for local MP, one for their favourite of their party's provincial candidates. The top vote getter is elected to that provincial seat. All MPs are personally accountable. Maybe Rob Muir or Alice Finnamore would be the provincial NDP MP, and Mary Lou Babineau or Alison Ménard the Green. In larger provinces, the additional MPs are accountable at a regional level.

Germans call this "personalized proportional representation." Every voter has competing MPs: you can go to your local MP or one of your regional MPs.

Lord Jenkins’ model needs some tweaking for Canada. He had no region with more than two regional MPs, but that’s punitive to smaller parties. “Limited MMP” could have small regions but ranging from four MPs to 16, averaging 10. The number of regional MPs from each region would be one, two or three. My simulation has only eight regions large enough for three regional MPs, seven with only one regional MP, and 15 with two regional MPs each.

Lord Jenkins called for 15% or 20% of regional “top-up” MPs, but at least 35% is needed for full proportionality. That’s the intent: more chance of stable government. Still, every point below 20% distorts the result still more.

“Limited MMP” would work rather fairly in Ontario and BC, so long as the calculation method is “highest remainder.” However, in the extreme strongholds -- Saskatchewan, Alberta and Quebec -- it would have a more limited effect. On the votes cast in 2008, the Bloc would keep almost half of its Quebec bonus. Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC Conservative voters would have seven more MPs than they deserve. Green Party voters would elect 14 MPs, not 18 or 21. Most importantly, due to under-representation of Green and NDP voters, the Liberal-NDP-Green majority of voters would elect only 146 MPs rather than 157 or 160 as a full MMP model would. But that’s what you get with a compromise model. Although “Limited MMP” doesn’t give the Liberals any national bonus seats on the 2008 votes, it would if they were the largest party; and meanwhile it gives them five more MPs in the GTA than full MMP would.

To use Limited MMP in Canada our 305 MPs in the provinces might be in 30 regions, with 61 regional MPs, 244 local MPs. That’s what I used for my spreadsheet projections. (I left the three territories unchanged.)

The result Canada-wide would have been 123 Conservatives, 81 Liberals, 51 NDP, 37 Bloc, 14 Greens, and two Independents.

Note: this is only if people voted as they did on October 14, 2008. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- typically 6% or so more -- and some would have voted differently. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We could have different parties.

The benefit of this system is to voters who are now unrepresented, and the 7 benefits listed below. However, to repeat, incumbent MPs would find it a moderate and acceptable model: every group of five ridings becomes four larger ridings, but a candidate can also run for one of the regional MP positions, with two regional MPs in each ten-riding region.

The Liberal caucus would not be just the GTA plus the Montreal area and the Atlantic Provinces. Currently only 15 of the 77 Liberal MPs are outside those regions. Liberal voters would have elected 15 more MPs from regions where they are now unrepresented or under-represented: six more from the West, six more from Ontario outside the GTA, and three more from Quebec outside Montreal. With the open-list system, those regional MPs would be the regional candidates who get the most votes on the regional ballot.

Today, 71 of the west's 92 MPs are Conservatives, 21 others. With “Limited MMP” that would be 56 Conservatives, 36 others (15 more than today).

Today, 49 of Quebec’s MPs are Bloc members, and only 26 are federalists (14 Liberals, 10 Conservatives, 1 NDP, and 1 independent). (It took 86,203 federalist voters to elect one Quebec MP last year, but only 28,163 Bloc voters.) With “Limited MMP” that would be 12 more federalists: 37 Bloc MPs and 38 federalists (16 Liberals, 13 Conservatives, 8 NDP, 1 independent.)

Today, 27% of the voters in South Central Ontario (Hamilton-Niagara-Brant) voted Liberal but elected no one. Limited MMP would let those voters elect two Liberal MPs.

Why would Liberals want electoral reform? Let’s look at the points made by Lord Jenkins in a similar context in the UK:

“Under-representation of a relatively strong minority party is very much a function of that party's appeal across geographical areas and occupational groups. When a party has a narrow but more intense beam“ (like the Bloc in Canada) “its representation, although by no means perfect under the present system, approximates more to its strength. This is perverse, for a party's breadth of appeal is surely a favourable factor from the point of view of national cohesion, and its discouragement a count against an electoral system which heavily under-rewards it.”

1. Canadian Liberals want a system that favours Canadian unity, not one which gives a big bonus to sovereignists.

“The same properties of FPTP tend to make it geographically divisive between the two leading parties, even though each of them can from time to time be rewarded by it with a vast jackpot.”

2. Canadian Liberals want a system that gives them a foothold in their regions of weakness like Alberta and eastern Quebec.

“There is also not merely the regular divergence from a majority but occasionally from a plurality in the country as a whole. . . Systemic bias . . .essentially arises when a given number of votes translates into significantly more seats for one party than for the other.”

3. Many Liberals remember that Joe Clark won more seats than Pierre Trudeau in 1979 with fewer votes, just as the PQ won the Quebec election in 1998 with fewer votes than the Liberals. This was largely a consequence of Liberals piling up large unneeded majorities in their heartland seats.

“The semi-corollary of a high proportion of the constituencies being in 'safe-seat' territory is not merely that many voters pass their entire adult lives without ever voting for a winning candidate but that they also do so without any realistic hope of influencing a result. In these circumstances it is perhaps remarkable that general election turnouts remain at a respectable level.”

4. Voter turnouts in Canada have fallen well below a respectable level. Liberals see the danger in this.

“The next criticism of FPTP is that it narrows the terrain over which the political battle is fought, and also, in an associated although not an identical point, excludes many voters from ever helping to elect a winning candidate. The essential contest between the two main parties is fought over about a hundred or at most 150 (out of 659) swingable constituencies. Outside the chosen arena voters were deprived of (or spared from) the visits of party leaders, saw few canvassers, and were generally treated (by both sides) as either irrevocably damned or sufficiently saved as to qualify for being taken for granted.”

5. Liberals in weak areas are tired of being written off. Liberals in strongholds are tired of being taken for granted.

“One thing that FPTP assuredly does not do is to allow the elector to exercise a free choice in both the selection of a constituency representative and the determination of the government of the country. It forces the voter to give priority to one or the other, and the evidence is that in the great majority of cases he or she deems it more important who is Prime Minister than who is member for their local constituency. As a result the choice of which individual is MP effectively rests not with the electorate but with the selecting body of whichever party is dominant in the area. Unless the electorate is grossly and rarely affronted, individual popularity in any broad sense hardly enters into the process at all. This is not an inbred deficiency in all voting systems. Both the Additional Member System (as in Germany) with its two votes, and the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies (as practised in the Republic of Ireland) allow the voter to combine influencing the choice of government and expressing a preference between individuals as local representative.”

6. Liberals have often wanted to be elected on their own merits, whether or not their party has run into bad times.

“A party which has the will to increase female or minority representation might find it easier to do so under a system involving lists or slates of candidates than it would with a system which makes use exclusively of single-member constituencies.”

7. Liberals do wish to elect more women and minority MPs.

What would the House of Commons look like?

On the 2008 votes, Liberal voters would have elected 15 more MPs, starting with six more from the West:

In the Vancouver region one more: maybe Raymond Chan or Don Bell?
One in the BC Interior: maybe Diana Cabott from Kelowna?
One in Calgary and Southern Alberta: maybe Jennifer Pollock?
One in Edmonton and Northern Alberta: maybe Jim Wachowich, Donna Lynn Smith or Indira Saroya?
In Manitoba three MPs, not just one. Maybe Raymond Simard and John Loewen or Tina Keeper or Bob Friesen?
In South Central Ontario (Hamilton-Niagara-Brant) two MPs, not none. Maybe Paddy Torsney and Lloyd St. Amand or Larry Di Ianni or Arlene MacFarlaneVanderBeek or Joyce Morocco?
In Central Ontario one MP, not none. Maybe Jamie McGarvey from Parry Sound?
In Southwestern Ontario (London - Windsor) two MPs, not just one. Maybe Susan Whelan?
In the Ottawa region three MPs, not just two. Maybe Marc Godbout or Dan Boudria or Penny Collenette?
In Northern Ontario two MPs, not just one. Maybe Ken Boshcoff from Thunder Bay or Louise Portelance or Diane Marleau from Sudbury?
In the Quebec City region one MP, not none. Maybe Jean Beaupré or Pauline Côté?
In Eastern Quebec one MP, not none: Nancy Charest from Matane?
In Estrie--Centre-du-Québec--Mauricie one MP, not none. Maybe Denis Paradis from Brome--Missisquoi or Nathalie Goguen from Sherbrooke?

On the other hand, Liberal voters would have elected 11 fewer MPs from regions where they are now over-represented: seven from the GTA, one from Montreal, one from Nova Scotia, one from Newfoundland and Labrador, and one from PEI. So they would have a net gain of only four MPs, but their caucus would be far more representative.

Conservative voters would have elected 11 more MPs from regions where they were unrepresented or under-represented, starting with five from Quebec:
From the Montreal region two MPs, not none. Maybe Michael Fortier and Hubert Pichet or Andrea Paine or Rafael Tzoubari?
From Laval--Laurentides--Lanaudière two MPs, not none. Maybe Claude Carignan from Saint-Eustache and Jean-Pierre Bélisle from Laval or Sylvie Lavallée from Joliette?
In Montérégie one MP, not none. Maybe René Vincelette or Marie-Josée Mercier?
From East Toronto two MPs, not none. Maybe John Carmichael and Dr. Benson Lau or Roxanne James?
From West Toronto one MP, not none. Maybe Joe Oliver or Rochelle Wilner or Axel Kuhn or Patrick Boyer?
From Northern Ontario two MPs, not just one. Maybe Gerry Labelle from Sudbury, Cameron Ross from Sault Ste. Marie, or Dianne Musgrove from Manitoulin?
From Newfoundland and Labrador one MP, not none. Maybe Fabian Manning?
From PEI two MPs, not just one. Maybe Mary Crane?

However, Conservative voters would have elected 31 fewer MPs from regions where they are now over-represented: three from Edmonton and Northern Alberta, three from Calgary and Southern Alberta, three from Saskatchewan, two from the BC Lower Mainland, two from the BC Interior, two from Manitoba, two from the Ottawa region, two from York-Durham, two from Central West Ontario (Kitchener-Grey-Bruce), two from Southwest Ontario, one from South Central Ontario, one from Central Ontario, one from Lake Ontario (Kingston--Peterborough), two from the Quebec City region, two from New Brunswick, and one from Nova Scotia. So they would have a net loss of 20 MPs, yet their caucus would be more representative of the whole country.

New Democrat voters would have elected 19 more MPs from regions where those voters are unrepresented or under-represented.
In Saskatchewan two MPs, not none. Maybe Nettie Wiebe and Don Mitchell or Valerie Mushinski or Janice Bernier?
In Edmonton and Northern Alberta two MPs, not just one. Maybe Ray Martin or Mark Voyageur or Adele Boucher Rymhs?
In Calgary and South Alberta one MP, not none. Maybe John Chan?
In Surrey--Fraser Valley one MP, not none. Maybe Rachid Arab?
In Montreal two MPs, not just one. Maybe Alexandre Boulerice or Anne Lagacé Dowson?
In Laval--Laurentides--Lanaudière one MP, not none. Maybe Réjean Bellemare?
In Montérégie one MP, not none. Maybe Richard Marois or Sonia Jurado?
In Outaouais--Abitibi--Nord-du-Quebec one MP, not none. Françoise Boivin?
In Estrie--Centre-du-Québec--Mauricie one MP, not none. Maybe Annick Corriveau from Drummond, or their young star Geneviève Boivin from Trois-Rivières, or TV host Yves Mondoux from Sherbrooke?
In the Quebec City region one MP, not none. Maybe Anne-Marie Day or Raymond Côté?
In Eastern Quebec one MP, not none. Maybe Guy Caron from Rimouski?
In Ontario in York-Durham one MP, not none. Maybe Mike Shields from Oshawa?
From West Toronto one MP, not none. Maybe Peggy Nash?
From Peel--Halton one MP, not none. Maybe Jagtar Shergill or Jash Puniya?
From Central West Ontario (Waterloo-Guelph-Grey-Bruce) one MP, not none. Maybe Tom King or Cindy Jacobsen or Max Lombardi or Kerry McManus?
In Lake Ontario region (Kingston-Peterborough) one MP, not none. Rick Downes from Kingston?
From Nova Scotia three MPs, not just two. Maybe Gordon Earle or Tamara Lorincz?
In New Brunswick two MPs, not just one. Maybe Rob Moir or Alice Finnamore?

However, New Democrat voters would have elected five fewer MPs from regions where they are now over-represented: two from Northern Ontario, one from Central South Ontario, one from Manitoba, and one from Vancouver region. So they would have a net gain of 14 MPs.

Green voters would have elected 14 MPs from regions where those voters are unrepresented:
One from Nova Scotia: no doubt Elizabeth May.
One from the Vancouver region: maybe Adriane Carr?
One from the BC Interior: maybe Huguette Allen from North Okanagan or Angela Reid from Kelowna?
One from Edmonton and Northern Alberta: maybe Will Munsey from Vegreville-Wainwright or Monika Schaefer from Yellowhead or Les Parsons from Wetaskiwin?
One from Calgary and South Alberta: maybe Eric Donovan or Lisa Fox or Natalie Odd?
One from Saskatchewan: maybe young star Amber Jones, or Tobi-Dawne Smith?
One from Manitoba: maybe Kate Storey from Dauphin or Dave Barnes from Brandon?
One from East Toronto: maybe Sharon Howarth or Stephen LaFrenie?
One from York-Durham: maybe John Dewar from Keswick or Glenn Hubbers from Newmarket?
One from Ottawa region: maybe Jen Hunter or Lori Gadzala from Ottawa?
One from Central West Ontario: maybe Mike Nagy from Guelph, Dick Hibma from Owen Sound, or Cathy MacLellan from Kitchener-Waterloo?
One from Peel-Halton: maybe Ard Van Leeuwen from Dufferin-Caledon, or Dr. Blake Poland from Oakville?
One from Southwestern Ontario: maybe Mary Ann Hodge from London?
One from New Brunswick: maybe Mary Lou Babineau from Fredericton or Alison Ménard from Moncton?

In summary, the Liberal caucus today would be 65 local MPs and 16 regional MPs. The Conservative caucus would be 112 local MPs and 11 regional MPs (five in Quebec, three in Toronto, one in Northern Ontario, one in Newfoundland, and one in PEI.) The NDP caucus would be 31 local MPs and 20 regional MPs. The Bloc caucus would be 37 local MPs. The Green Party caucus would be 14 regional MPs.

Caveat: any MMP-lite model is vulnerable to the "decoy list" trick invented by Silvio Berlusconi to sabotage Italy's voting systenm. In that trick, a party would run only regional candidates, while running its local candidates under another name, so that the MMP system works like the parallel system. It is also vulnerable to a softer version where a small party runs no local candidates, but appeals to a large party's supporters whose second vote will likely not be needed to "give us your second vote" for its regional candidate. Two counter-measures would be advisable. First, give the Chief Electoral Officer power and broad discretion to deem two associated parties to be a single party. Second, prevent a party running a regional candidate unless it runs local candidates in at least half the seats in the region.

The practical case against the Instant Run-off Vote (the Alternative Vote)

2010-05-23T02:52:00.015-04:00

Fair Vote Canada has produced a carefully documented explanation of why the Alternative Vote, used in Australian lower house elections, is no solution for Canada’s democratic deficit.

I won’t attempt to summarize it, since its four pages are concise already.

But I’ll sound a practical note on why IRV, or AV, doesn’t suit our situation. Three points.

One: Fair Vote Canada asks:

“Would AV fix the problem of single party domination in particular regions?

“No. Under the current system, large parties and parties with support concentrated in particular regions of the country win many more seats than their popular support warrants while supporters of other parties gain little or no representation. For example, Liberals in the West and Conservatives in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal are almost always underrepresented in Parliament.

These distortions in representation exacerbate regional tensions in Canada, but AV could make them even worse. A study looking at the possible effects of a wide variety of voting systems on federal election results in 1980 and 2000 found “for almost all parties regional imbalances would have been worsened if we adopted AV even (though slightly) more than under SMP [single-member plurality, or first-past-the-post].”

In the 2008 election, 144,646 Alberta Liberal voters got no representation in Parliament. They deserved three or four of those 28 MPs.

IRV would have done nothing for those voters. Conservative voters would still have elected 27 of those MPs, when they deserved only 18 or 19.

Similarly, in the BC Interior, the Conservatives would still have elected seven of the nine MPs when they deserved five, unless perhaps the “anyone but Conservative“ vote elected an NDP member in Kamloops. Moreover, I doubt the Conservative bonus of seven MPs in Saskatchewan and Manitoba would have been dented much, if at all.

And in the 32 Quebec ridings east of Greater Montreal, IRV might have elected a couple of Liberal MPs if they were lucky, but not the five or six those voters deserved. Actually, predicting how IRV would work in four-party races in Quebec is a roll of the dice. As the Jenkins Commission in the UK concluded "its effects are disturbingly unpredictable." See the discussion at the end of this blog post: the Bloc would pick up more than another 11% of the vote on second choices, putting them just over 50%.

Two: Fair Vote Canada also asks:

“Would AV help small parties get established and win seats?

“Not at all. AV would make it easy for voters to give smaller parties their first choice vote and their second choice to a larger party with a better chance of winning a seat. It is formalized strategic voting. But actual AV election results show that supporters of small parties are no more likely to gain representation with AV than with the current system. AV exaggerates the tendency of the current system to direct all voters into a choice between two big-tent political parties.

The Jenkins Commission, a blue ribbon panel on electoral reform in the UK, set up by the Labour government in 1997, concluded that AV outcomes would be even less proportional than first-past-the-post.”

Why should Liberals care about this? Because Liberals need to get NDP and Green voters to vote “anyone but Conservative” in swing ridings. But you can’t attract those votes by promising a phoney voting reform that does nothing for them.

In fact, there are enough Blue Liberal voters in Ontario and elsewhere that half a dozen NDP seats would have gone Conservative under IRV. (Maybe more. In strong NDP seats, centre-left Liberal voters will often be voting NDP already. The remaining diehard Liberals don't like the NDP, and would mostly give their second choice to the Conservatives.)

Three: Fair Vote Canada notes:

“Neither the BC Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, nor any of the recent federal and provincial commissions examining voting system alternatives in Canada, have recommended AV for parliamentary elections.”

Now, that Ontario case is interesting.

In 2001 Dalton McGuinty put forward a Democratic Charter promising “A referendum on how we vote.“ He said “There is a lot of discontent with our first-past-the-post system. It often elects people to the Legislature, even though more than half the people in that riding wanted someone else. It gives one party all of the power, when that party failed to capture a majority of the votes.”

He noted “the two alternatives that would be on the table would be on the table would be preferential balloting, which requires only modest changes to the system that we have in place, and proportional representation, which has various forms found throughout the world.” One suspects he preferred the first option, IRV.

However, when the newly elected government set up the Democratic Renewal Secretariat, they said “Many have lost faith in a system that, for too long, has been cynically manipulated to promote the interests of the government in power.” The Liberals were experts in elections. They knew that, in 2003, IRV would likely have meant the Liberals were everyone’s second choice. The result would likely have been both the NDP and PCs electing so few MPPs as to lose official party status.

They must have been tempted to stack the Citizens’ Assembly’s staff with IRV advocates. However, that would have been “cynical manipulation to promote the interests of the government in power.” They didn’t do it.

After an honest process, the result was clear: of 103 Citizens’ Assembly members, only three made IRV their first choice.

Honest Liberals will still think twice before promoting a partisan-advantage system. Electoral reform will never succeed if it's a partisan project.

Instead of IRV, let's consider what Liberals really need.

With a proportional voting system, the Liberal caucus would not be just the GTA plus the Montreal area and the Atlantic Provinces. Currently only 15 of the 77 Liberal MPs are outside those regions. On the votes cast in 2008, Liberal voters would have elected 26 more MPs from regions where they are now unrepresented or under-represented: nine more from the West, ten more from Ontario outside the GTA, and seven more from Quebec outside Montreal.

Pierre Trudeau decided this in 1980. With proportional representation, he would have had sixteen more western MPs.

Alberta was the worst. Trudeau's Alberta problem actually began back in 1972, when Alberta Liberal voters deserved to elect five MPs but got none. Even in his 1974 comeback, Alberta Liberal voters again deserved five MPs but got none.

The 1979 election was a "wrong-winner" election. Pierre Trudeau's Liberals got 40.1% of the vote, but only 114 MPs. Joe Clark's PCs got only 35.9% of the vote, yet elected 136 MPs and formed the government with support from six Créditiste MPs, giving them a one-seat majority. As in 1980, Trudeau’s big problem was the West.

Liberal voters in Alberta in 1979 again deserved to elect five MPs but got none. In 1980 Liberal voters in Alberta again deserved five and got none.

In its 1980 Speech from the Throne, Trudeau’s newly re-elected government promised to appoint a committee to study the electoral system; you can see why. And in every election since, large numbers of Albertans again voted Liberal but only a handful of Liberals were elected. Which IRV would not help.

As detailed here, the Law Commission proposed a regional open list system for MMP. You have two votes. With your local vote, you elect a local MP as today. With your regional vote, you also choose one specific candidate from the regional candidates on the list nominated in a medium-sized region. That vote would count for the party first. If a party's voters were not fairly represented by the local MPs, those voters would then elect the top vote getting regional candidates for each party as regional "top-up" MPs. Result: each party would receive a proportional share of the seats in the region. See MMP made easy.

MMP Made Easy

2010-04-25T17:42:00.020-04:00

Scottish, Welsh, German and New Zealand Parliamentary elections use a type of Proportional Representation called the Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP).

The ten-second definition of MMP is this:

We still elect local MPs. Voters unrepresented by the local results top them up by electing regional MPs. The total MPs match the vote share.

MMP is a voting system which mixes our winner-take-all system with an element of proportional representation, so that the number of MPs elected to Parliament from each province matches the share of the overall votes cast by supporters of each party in that province.

Different places use different MMP models. This is a description of an MMP model with “open lists.”

Each voter has two votes.

The local vote is used to elect an MP to represent your riding, as today.

The regional vote or party vote is used to elect several regional MPs from your region.

The local vote can be cast by marking your ballot with an X for any candidate standing in your riding, as we do today. The candidate chosen by the largest number of voters in a riding wins the seat on a winner-take-all basis.

The regional vote can be cast by marking your ballot with an X for any regional candidate standing on the regional ballot.

If that candidate is a party candidate, this vote counts as a vote for your party. The parties' regional votes are then counted to give the level of support for each party in the region.

If a party’s voters have managed to elect only a few local MPs in that region, or none at all, that party gets additional “top-up” seats to make their final total more in line with their vote share in the region.

The party’s regional candidates with the most votes win those seats. That’s why it’s called “open list.”

Every voter has competing MPs: you can go to your local MP or one of your diverse regional MPs. Germans call this "personalized proportional representation."

Your local ballot will look like today's ballot. Your second ballot -- the regional ballot --will look like the right-hand part of this ballot.

Here are further details on this model as designed by the Law Commission of Canada.

What would the 2011 election results have been under this model?

(The number of regional MPs you have depends on the size of your region: if they are medium-sized regions it might be five, maybe as many as eight or more. In smaller provinces, the "region" would be the whole province.)

What would the British Columbia legislature look like under a fair voting system?

2010-04-24T04:13:00.012-04:00

What would the British Columbia legislature look like under a fair voting system?

There are two likely options for a fair voting system for BC provincial elections. The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform designed two systems in 2004.

BC-STV

They decided BC-STV was the best for BC, so that was the system that went before voters in a referendum, in 2005 and again in 2009. In 2005 voters were asked “Should British Columbia change to the BC-STV electoral system as recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform?” They voted 58% yes, but the government had set a 60% threshold for success. In 2009 voters were asked “Which electoral system should British Columbia use to elect members to the provincial Legislative Assembly? ▪ The existing electoral system (First-Past-the-Post) ▪ The single transferable vote electoral system (BC-STV) proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform." This time they voted only 39% for BC-STV.

However, a poll after the referendum showed that 44.3% of those who voted for first-past-the-post in the referendum responded they are in “favour of replacing first-past-the-post with a voting system in which the percentage of seats a party gets in the legislature is more in line with their percentage of the popular vote.” That makes 66% of BC voters in favour of some proportional system.

Why not STV?

STV has been used in Ireland since 1922. It’s the only thing Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic agree on; Northern Ireland has used it since 1973. And it has now spread across the sea to be used in Scotland’s local elections. To those familiar with STV, it’s an excellent system if the district magnitudes are large enough for decent proportionality, like Northern Ireland’s six-MLA districts, and the population per district is low enough, like Northern Ireland’s 98,000 people per district. Unfortunately BC voters are not familiar with STV. If the British Liberal Democrats had succeeded in moving the UK towards STV, this might have changed; but even they gave up.

Furthermore, the BC-STV model designed by the Electoral Boundaries Commission was not very proportional. With each district having, on average, only 4.25 MLAs, Green Party voters, who deserved to elect seven MLAs on the votes cast in 2009, would have been lucky to elect even three MLAs. Yet many BC voters complained that the proposed 20 districts, with an average population of about 222,000, were already unmanageably-large. This is not a trivial point. In a country with as much geography as Canada, fitting our geography into the voting system is the major design issue.

Open-list MMP

The Citizens’ Assembly (CA) designed, before they chose STV instead, an excellent Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system. The majority (60%) of MLAs are elected in local districts like today’s. The others are "top-up" regional MLAs: to compensate for the disproportional local results we know all too well, the party’s voters elect personally some regional MLAs.

See MMP Made Easy.

This is the system invented by British political scientists in 1946 in the British Zone of West Germany. It took the old German proportional representation system and grafted British personal MPs into it. “Personalized proportional representation” the Germans called it. “The best of both worlds” said political scientists.

With the CA’s regional "Open list" version, voters can vote for whomever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. The elected Regional MLAs are the party's regional candidates who get the highest vote on the regional ballot. You have two votes: one for local MLA, one for regional MLA which counts as a vote for your party. The German province of Bavaria does this too.

If the CA had chosen the “flexible list” variant, where you can vote for the list or for an individual on it, the ballot would have looked like the one recommended by the British Independent Commission on the Voting System (the Jenkins Commission). The voter casts one vote for local MLA, and one for their party and (if they wish) for their favourite of their party's regional candidates. This same model was recommended for Scotland by the Arbuthnott Commission as an improvement on their MMP system; but no action yet. The result is much the same with any open-list model: all MLAs have faced the voters, and no one has a safe seat. (But I'd bet the CA would have chosen straight open-list, the Bavarian model.)

Power to the voters

An exciting prospect: voters have new power to elect who they like. New voices from new forces in the legislature. No party rolls the dice and wins an artificial majority. Cooperation will have a higher value than vitriolic rhetoric. One-party dominance by the Premier’s office will, at last, be out of fashion. Governments will have to listen to MLAs, and MLAs will have to really listen to the people. MLAs can begin to act as the public servants they are.

Based on the Ontario and BC experience, many reformers now think open-list MMP with regional lists is the only system likely to be acceptable to Canadians.

Local districts and regions

The 51 local BC districts would each have about 87,000 people (smaller in the North, no doubt). The CA ran out of time before settling details like the number of regions, which might have been four, five or six; I’m using six, electing a total of 34 regional MLAs.

What would the legislature look like?

For an example, let’s see what the BC legislature would have looked like under this model if voters voted as they did in 2009.

This projection assumes voters voted as they did in 2009. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- typically at least 6% more. And some would have voted differently -- no more strategic voting. We would likely have seen different candidates -- more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We could have seen different parties. Who knows who might have won real democratic elections?

But on the votes as cast in 2009, the overall result is 41 Liberals, 37 New Democrats, 6 Greens, and independent Vicky Huntington.

Competing MLAs

Instead of having only a local MLA -- whom you quite likely didn’t vote for -- you can also go to one of your regional MLAs. On this projection, all six regions will have at least one regional MLA from each of the three parties. Even Northern voters, assuming they elected three local Liberals and two local New Democrats, would have elected one regional MLA from each party. Even Interior voters, where I expect Liberal voters would have elected seven of the ten local MLAs, would also have elected one regional Liberal MLA. Even Vancouver Island voters, where I expect NDP voters would have elected seven of the nine local MLAs, would also have elected one regional NDP MLA. That’s because the CA wisely chose a model with 40% regional MLAs.

NDP:

Many NDP voters are under-represented. Voters in the Interior would have elected 16 MLAs (10 local, 6 regional), including two more NDP MLAs: maybe Doug Brown and Tish Lakes or Charlie Wyse or new candidate Lakhvinder Jhaj or Troy Sebastian?

Surrey-Fraser Valley-Delta-Langley voters would elect 17 MLAs (10 local, 7 regional), including two more NDP MLAs: maybe new candidates Debbie Lawrance and Pat Zanon or Bonnie Rai or Lynn Perrin or Gwen O’Mahony?

Vancouver-Richmond voters would elect 14 MLAs (8 local, 6 regional), including another NDP MLA: maybe Gabriel Yiu or Jenn McGinn or Helesia Luke?

Liberals:

Liberal voters on Vancouver Island are under-represented. Vancouver Island voters would elect 15 MLAs (9 local, 6 regional), including two more Liberal MLAs: maybe new candidates Marion Wright and Dawn Miller or Dianne St. Jacques or Cathy Basskin?

Green Party voters would have elected six MLAs.

Green Party voters in Vancouver Island would have elected a regional MLA, no doubt the leader Jane Sterk.

Vancouver-Richmond Green Party voters would have elected a regional MLA: maybe Damian Kettlewell or Vanessa Violini or John Boychuk or Jodie Emery?

Burnaby-Tri-Cities-North Shore-Maple Ridge voters would have elected 15 MLAs (9 local, 6 regional) including a Green Party regional MLA: maybe young Michelle Corcos or Helen Chang or Jim Stephenson?

Voters in the North would have elected 8 MLAs (5 local, 3 regional), including a Green Party regional MLA: maybe Liz Logan or Lisa Girbav?

In the Interior, Green Party voters would have elected a regional MLA: maybe Julius Bloomfield or Hughette Allen?

Surrey-Fraser Valley-Delta-Langley Green Party voters would have elected a regional MLA: maybe Bill Walsh or Kevin Purton or Bernadette Keenan?

Regional independents

The CA never had time to decide whether independent candidates should be able to run for regional seats. I‘d bet they would have said yes. Scotland uses regional MMP to elect the Scottish Parliament. Two independent candidates have won regional seats there, and two more in local seats. STV fans like the way independents can win any STV seat. But they can win any seat in Scotland too, with regional MMP.

More choices

Maybe independent Arthur Hadland would have won a regional seat in the North. Maybe independent David Marley would have won a regional seat.

The CA’s MMP model had a 3% threshold. The Conservative Party fell below that threshold in 2009, yet they got enough votes for a regional MLA in the Interior. In a real MMP election they would have been sure to exceed the 3% threshold and elect an Interior regional MLA -- their leader Wilf Hanni or Joe Cardoso or Beryl Ludwig -- and quite likely regional MLAs in other regions.

Trade-off from a province-wide model

The Green Party would have won seven seats, not six, under a perfectly proportional system with province-wide lists. Losing one seat, to get every MLA democratically accountable in a model that voters will accept, is a good trade-off.

Higher turnout

If voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted, and some would have voted differently. The Greens, for example, were so close to winning two seats on Vancouver Island and two in the Interior that in a real MMP election they would have been sure to win at least eight seats.

More women, minorities and younger candidates

With a choice of your party’s candidates on the regional ballot, we would elect more women. Polls show 94% of women voters want to see more women elected, but so do 86% of male voters.

And when parties nominate a group of candidates, not just one, they nominate more women. What regional convention, nominating five candidates, would nominate only one woman, or no minorities, or no young people?

The BC Green Party, for example, was very white in 2009: they had no Chinese-origin candidates in Vancouver-Richmond region, which is 33% Chinese, and only one token South Asian candidate in Surrey-Fraser Valley-Delta-Langley region, which is 17% South Asian.

Who would have been the government?

Contrary to what some Canadian newspaper headline-writers think, you cannot say the largest party will form the government. “Conservatives win!” say Canadian headline-writers even when Harper loses his bid for a majority. Compare the Times of London headline last May 7: “Britain wakes up to a hung Parliament.” No instant winner. Remember also 1985 in Ontario when Frank Miller lost his bid to win a majority. Who won? We found out only 26 days later when the Liberal-NDP Accord was signed. In most countries with more than two parties, coalitions are normal.

No “bed-sheet” ballots

Since local candidates can also be on the regional half of the ballot, voters might have had as many as ten of their party’s regional candidates to choose from, but not the “bed-sheet ballot“ found in some countries. So voters would have a real choice among a manageable number of competing candidates from the party they support.

In a 15-MLA region, suppose Party A’s voters cast 53% of the votes in the region, but elect only seven of the nine local MLAs. They also elect one regional MLA. But if that MLA dies or resigns during the legislature term, the regional candidate with the next highest votes moves into that seat. A party must run a spare. But if the seven local winners were also on the regional ballot, the party needed at least nine regional candidates, one elected, and one spare. To be safe I can see them nominating ten regional candidates.

The Ontario mixed member model the Citizens’ Assembly almost chose.

2010-03-16T11:06:00.039-04:00

When Fair Vote Canada members first met Kingston’s cabinet minister John Gerretsen back in 2004, we didn’t have to explain the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system to him. He explained “the German system,” as he called it, to us. We later found he had been pushing for it since he was first elected in 1995. When the Liberals finally won in 2003, they had spent 60 years in the political wilderness minus only the five years from 1985-90 -- and in 47 of those years they were facing a government with a fake majority supported by a minority of voters. They remembered for a few years why they needed PR.

In “the German system” you have two votes, and more choice. We still elect majority of MPPs locally. Voters unrepresented by the local results top them up by electing regional MPPs. The total MPPs match the vote share. With the regional "Open list" version, voters can vote for whomever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. Like the right-hand part of this ballot.

See MMP Made Easy.

To compensate for the disproportional local results we know all too well, the party’s voters elect personally some regional MPPs. They are the party's regional candidates who get the highest vote on the regional ballot. So the voter casts one vote for local MPP, and one for their party and (if they wish) for their favourite of their party's regional candidates. An exciting prospect: new voices from new forces in the legislature, and the voters have new power to elect who they like.

John Gerretsen was quite specific. The top-up MPPs should be elected regionally, and the regions should not be too large. Kingston should not be lumped in with Ottawa, he said. Those who know Eastern Ontario know that the mid-eastern and Lake Ontario regions and the Ottawa region have many divergent interests, so we were not surprised when Gerretsen mentioned one or two of them.

However, the model put to voters in the October 2007 referendum, designed by the 103 members of the Ontario Citizens Assembly (CA), had province-wide closed lists, not the mid-sized regions John Gerretsen had told us he wanted.

What the 2011 election results would have been under the model John Gerretsen wanted.

Not enough time

Those candidates on province-wide lists were to be nominated democratically by parties, but in the few months between May and the referendum, no major party had had enough time to design a nomination system. The model’s opponents -- even, ironically, an appointed Senator -- said it sounded like parties would appoint those 39 MPPs. The public had not enough time to understand the CA’s recommendation.

In May 2008 the CA’s Chair, George Thomson, spoke to the Annual General Meeting of Fair Vote Canada. He said that, if those 103 Citizens had had another six or eight weeks to deliberate, he felt some elements might have been different, like regional lists and open lists. But he thought the basic model would have stayed the same: 129 MPPs, 90 local, 39 top-up.

Nine mid-sized regions

What would their model have looked like, with those mid-sized regions?

The North would have been a separate region. It could have had a special feature: it could have kept unchanged the ten present ridings north of the French River, and added only two regional MPPs.

The City of Toronto could have gone from 22 local MPPs to 25, 17 local and 8 regional.

The other seven regions would have had 12 to 14 MPPs each, such as 9 local, 4 regional.

Open list

Since local candidates can also be on the regional half of the ballot, voters might have had ten or so of their party’s regional candidates to choose from, but not the “bed-sheet ballot“ found in some countries. So voters would have a real choice among a manageable number of competing candidates from the party they support. And they could also choose to vote just for their party, leaving the candidates ranked as their party’s nomination process had done. That's the variation of "open-list" recommended by the Law Commission of Canada, known as "flexible list."

The flexible open list method was also recommended by the Jenkins Commission in the UK. Their colourful explanation accurately predicted why closed lists would be rejected in Canada: additional members locally anchored are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

The most recent official Quebec study on the topic also looked favourably at regional open list MMP.

More women and minorities

With a choice of your party’s candidates on the regional ballot, we would elect more women. Polls show 94% of women voters want to see more women elected, but so do 86% of male voters.

And when parties nominate a group of candidates, not just one, they nominate more women. What regional convention, nominating five candidates, would nominate only one woman, or no minorities?

90 local ridings

Local ridings would be slightly bigger than today, but not so you’d notice. Often, ten present ridings would become nine. (But the North could have kept unchanged the ten present ridings.)

Closed province-wide lists?

So why did those 103 Citizens choose province-wide closed lists?

George Thomson’s comments in May 2008 show the process the 103 Citizens went through. Their big design problem was Ontario’s geography, and the fact that our local ridings are already too large. Until Mike Harris shrank the House in 1999 we had 130 MPPs, compared with 101 MPs at that time. Many members of the CA wanted to keep the present 107 ridings and add at least 36 “top-up.” Others wanted to keep 107 MPPs but have only 80 larger local ridings and 27 top-up. Others wanted a higher ratio of top-up. Their big achievement was consensus on 90 plus 39.

They had decided on province-wide lists early in the process, before they agreed on the numbers. Back at that point, many members wanted to use all the most proportional options in order to leave them free to have less proportional numbers of MPPs. For example, on those 2007 votes, because the Citizens’ model had only 30% “top-up” MPPs, it would have resulted in more than 55 Liberal MPPs. And then, making the lists regional rather than provincial added a further four more Liberal MPPs.

Still, once they had 39 top-up MPPs, regional lists became possible, and open list became possible. Four Liberal MPPs too many, in our 2007 example, would have been a modest price to pay for a more accountable and democratic model. But by the time they made that decision for 39 top-up MPPs, it was too late to go back and redesign.

This is no one’s fault. The Democratic Renewal Secretariat had planned for the whole process to start a year earlier. The legislature’s Select Committee got inserted into the process, and did a wonderful job, but that left both the CA and the public debate short of vital time.

Regional candidates

Why do I say voters would have at least five of their party’s regional candidates to choose from, maybe ten or so, when most regions elect only four regional MPPs?

Take a region with 13 MPPs, nine local, four regional. Suppose Party C’s voters cast 30% of the votes in the region, but elect no local MPPs, and suppose no other party’s voters earn a regional MPP. Party C’s voters elect all four regional MPPs. But if one of them dies or resigns during the legislature term, the regional candidate with the next highest votes moves into that seat. A party must run at least five, to have a spare.

This matters to women and minorities. A regional convention, nominating five candidates, would almost certainly nominate at least two women, and at least one cultural minority member.

On the other hand, suppose Party A’s voters cast 61% of the votes in the region, but elect only seven of the nine local MPPs. They also elect one regional MPP. But if the seven local winners were also on the regional ballot, the party needed at least nine regional candidates, one elected, and again one spare. To get good balance I can see them nominating ten regional candidates.

What would the legislature have looked like in 2007?

For another example, let’s see what the Ontario legislature would have looked like under this model if voters voted as they did in 2007.

This projection assumes voters voted as they did in 2007. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- typically at least 6% more. And some would have voted differently -- no more strategic voting. We would likely have had different candidates -- more women, and more diversity of all kinds. Who knows who might have won real democratic elections?

But on the votes as cast, we would have seen 61 Liberals, 39 PCs, 20 New Democrats, and 9 Greens.

Since the Liberals got only 42% of the vote, they would not have had an outright majority of the 129 seats. But as John Gerretsen said “Nobody is ever 100-per-cent right and nobody is ever 100-per-cent wrong. Governing is the art of compromise. There’s nothing wrong with having the governing party take into account smaller parties.”

Because the Citizens’ model had only 30% “top-up” MPPs, this 2007 projection is not perfectly proportional. That would have meant 55 Liberals, 41 PCs, 22 NDP and 11 Green. But it’s close enough: the potential coalitions are the same either way.

Progressive Conservative voters would have elected 13 more MPPs.

Toronto PC voters would have elected five MPPs, not none. No doubt leader John Tory and councillor David Shiner, and maybe school trustee Angela Kennedy or Bernie Tanz or Pamela Taylor or Igor Toutchinski or Lillyann Goldstein or Andy Pringle or Gary Grant?

Peel-Oakville PC voters would have elected three MPPs, not just one. Maybe Rick Byers and Pam Hundal or Tim Peterson or Nina Tangri?

Ottawa Valley PC voters would have elected five MPPs, not just three. Maybe Chris Savard from Cornwall, and Graham Fox or Trina Morissette. (However, Lake Ontario Region PC voters would have elected one fewer MPP.)

Hamilton area PC voters would have elected five MPPs from Hamilton, Niagara, Brant and Burlington, not just three. Maybe Chris Corrigan and Bart Maves or Tara Crugnale.

Southwestern PC voters would have elected three MPPs, not just two from the London-Windsor area. Maybe Monte McNaughton or Allison Graham.

Northern PC voters would have elected two MPPs, not none. Maybe Bill Vrebosch and Rebecca Johnson or Ron Swain.

NDP voters would have elected nine more MPPs.

Central East region NDP voters would have elected two MPPs, not none. Maybe Kingston’s Rick Downes and Belleville’s Jodie Jenkins or Peterborough’s Dave Nickle or Muskoka's Sara Hall.

Southwestern NDP voters would have elected two MPPs, not none. Maybe London’s Stephen Maynard and Sarnia’s Barb Millitt or Windsor’s Mariano Klimowicz?

Central West NDP voters would have elected one MPP from the area from Waterloo to Owen Sound, not none. Maybe Rick Moffitt or Catherine Fife or Paul Klopp?

Peel-Oakville NDP voters would have elected one MPP, not none. Maybe Glenn Crowe or Shaila Kibria or Mani Singh or Gail McCabe?

Ottawa Valley NDP voters would have elected one MPP, not none. Maybe Will Murray or Edelweiss D'Andrea?

York-Durham region NDP voters would have elected two MPPs, not none. Maybe Oshawa’s Sid Ryan and York Region's Nancy Morrison or Rick Morelli?

Toronto NDP voters would have elected five MPPs, not just four. Maybe Paul Ferreira or Sheila White or Peter Ferreira or Sandra Gonzalez?

Green Party voters would have elected nine MPPs.

Toronto Green voters would have elected two MPPs: maybe leader Frank de Jong, and Caroline Law or Dan King?

York-Durham Green voters would have elected one: maybe June Davies of Uxbridge or Liz Couture of Richmond Hill?

Central East Region Green voters would have elected one: maybe Judy Smith Torrie of Northumberland, or Matt Richter of Muskoka, or Simcoe's Peter Ellis or Erich Jacoby-Hawkins, or Kingston's Bridget Doherty?

Peel-Oakville Green voters would have elected one: maybe Deputy Leader Dr. Sanjeev Goel, or Rob Strang or Marion Frances Schaffer or Paul Simas?

Central West Green voters would have elected one: maybe Shane Jolley of Owen Sound or Ben Polley of Guelph or Victoria Serda from Huron-Bruce or Judy Greenwood-Speers of Kitchener-Waterloo?

Ottawa Region Green voters would have elected one: maybe Greg Laxton or Elaine Kennedy?

Hamilton area Green voters would have elected one: maybe Melanie Mullen from Niagara or Peter Ormond from Hamilton or Ted Shelegy from Brant.

Southwest Region Green voters would have elected one: maybe Brett McKenzie or Jessica Fracassi?

The Liberals have needed proportional representation since 1979.

2010-02-21T18:27:00.007-05:00

The Liberal Party has needed proportional representation for a long time, and its leaders have known it.

The 1979 election was a "wrong-winner" election. Pierre Trudeau's Liberals got 40.1% of the vote, but only 114 MPs. Joe Clark's PCs got only 35.9% of the vote, yet elected 136 MPs and formed the government with support from six Créditiste MPs, giving them a one-seat majority. Trudeau was short-changed only three Ontario seats by the voting system, and only two in Nova Scotia; his big problem was the West. Liberal voters in BC deserved to elect six MPs, but got only one. In Alberta, Liberal voters deserved to elect five MPs but got none. In Saskatchewan they deserved three, but got none; even Ralph Goodale lost his seat. In Manitoba three, not just two.

Prof. Massicotte has written that Trudeau briefly favoured a modest parallel (semi-proportional) system after 1979.

Pierre Trudeau's problem with western underrepresentation in 1980 was extreme: he had only two MPs from the four western provinces, both from Manitoba. In 1980 Liberal voters in BC had deserved six MPs, but elected none. In Alberta, they again deserved five and got none. In Saskatchewan, they again deserved three and got none. In Manitoba, four rather than only two. Trudeau would have had sixteen more western MPs with proportional representation.

In its 1980 Speech from the Throne, the newly reelected Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau promised to appoint a committee to study the electoral system; however, none was ever struck because opposition to even modest reforms among Liberal Members of Parliament was intense. (Ironically, René Lévesque had the identical problem as Quebec premier at the same time: after being re-elected in 1980, Lévesque started to implement proportional representation for Quebec, and got part-way down the road when his caucus veto'd it.)

Someone has written that Trudeau said in 1980 that he would introduce legislation for proportional representation if the NDP would co-sponsor it. What he actually offered, if anything, is not known.

Ed Broadbent has written "Shortly following the election Pierre Trudeau asked me to meet with him. The subject of our subsequent discussion was his proposal that I join the cabinet. . . I said to him that I would of course need other members of the NDP to be included. I said, “We will need five or six and a couple of major portfolios.” He looked at me and said, “You’ve got them.”

"Trudeau explained that he planned to introduce in the coming session of Parliament what turned out to be two of the most important and divisive measures in recent political history: the National Energy Program and the repatriation of the constitution combined with a charter of rights. . . he wanted us in the cabinet because . . . we had 26 MPs in the four provinces.

"The failure of the Liberals to obtain seats in Western Canada anywhere proportional to their vote was by no means an isolated incident. I recently looked at the data for the four federal elections that took place since I left politics in 1989 (1993, 1997, 2000, 2004). There is a persistent failure of Western Canadians to get the Liberals they voted for elected. In each of the three provinces (Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C.), in virtually every election, large numbers voted Liberal but only a handful of Liberals were elected. . . the absence of equitable representation in caucus and cabinet plays a significant role in producing an imbalance in the substance of policy as well as weakness in persuading the public to accept it."

"My point is all regions deserve an electoral system that will ensure impact in Ottawa is equitably distributed. All caucuses deserve a system that ensures representation from all regions proportional to votes cast."

Even Jean Chrétien had some of the same problems in 1993. Liberal voters in BC deserved 10 MPs, not just six. In Alberta seven, not just four. In 1997 Liberal voters in BC again deserved 10 MPs, not just six. In Alberta six, but they got only two. In Saskatchewan four, but they got only one. In 2000 Liberal voters in BC deserved 10 MPs, not just five. In Alberta five, but they got only two. In Saskatchewan three, not just two.

Trudeau's western problem had actually began back in 1972, when BC Liberal voters deserved seven MPs not just four, in Alberta five but got none, in Saskatchewan three but got only one, and in Manitoba four not just two. Even in his 1974 comeback Alberta Liberal voters again deserved five MPs but got none, Saskatchewan four not just three, and Manitoba four not just two.

So for 31 or 38 years Western Liberal voters have needed PR, yet "opposition to even modest reforms among Liberal Members of Parliament" -- elected from Liberal strongholds -- "was intense." Understandable, since those who needed PR (such as Ralph Goodale) were not elected in 1980. But outside their strongholds, why don't more Liberals speak up?

The Law Commission of Canada Report

2010-01-26T22:14:00.028-05:00

The Law Commission of Canada recommended a proportional representation system for Canada in 2004: a mixed member proportional system, like Scotland's and Germany's. We still elect local MPs. Voters unrepresented by the local results top them up by electing regional MPs. The total MPs match the vote share in the region. The majority of MPs are elected locally, and additional MPs are elected to represent under-represented voters and "top-up" the local results.

See MMP Made Easy.

It's a made-in-Canada model. To represent unrepresented voters the Law Commission, unlike the German model, did not recommend 50% "top-up" MPs. It had only 33% "top-up" MPs added to the local MPs, so local ridings don't have to double in size. Unlike the models which failed to win support in referendums in Ontario and P.E.I, it had open lists, not closed lists, so every MP faced the voters. In Ontario it did not have the province-wide lists which Ontario voters did not support in the referendum, but instead, the "top-up" MPs were to be elected regionally. Since the number of MPs from each province would not change, no constitutional amendment is required.

The full Report, all 209 pages, is on-line here. It has an eight-page executive summary. Here are the highlights:

. . . the Commission’s goal was to balance the benefits of introducing some element of proportionality into the existing system with the capacity to maintain accountable government, most notably as a direct link between elected politicians and their constituents. The Report, therefore, examines alternative systems from the premise that constituencies should stay small enough to maintain the Member of Parliament–constituent relationship. The Report also accepted the premise that there is little appetite for substantially increasing the size of the House of Commons to accommodate a new electoral system. Finally, the report is based on the premise that changes to the electoral system should be made without a process of constitutional amendment.

The conclusion of this survey is that adding an element of proportionality to Canada’s electoral system, as inspired by the system currently used in Scotland, would be the most appropriate model for adoption. Its potential benefits include:
• reducing the discrepancy between a party’s share of the seats in the House of Commons and its share of the votes;
• including in the House of Commons new and previously under-represented voices, such as smaller political parties;
• electing a greater number of minority group and women candidates;
• encouraging inter-party cooperation through coalition governments;
• reducing the huge disparities in the value of votes that currently exist, in which a vote for the winning party is often three to four times more “valuable” than a vote for any of the other parties;
• reducing the number of disregarded votes, thus increasing the number of “sincere,” as opposed to strategic, votes; and
• producing more regionally balanced party caucuses.

The Commission, therefore, recommends adding an element of proportionality to Canada’s electoral system, and that Canada adopt a mixed member proportional electoral system.

. . . democracy is more than just voting in a municipal, provincial, or federal election. Democracy is also about what happens between elections, how politicians and the electorate relate to each other, and the role that citizens play in their system of democratic governance.

How might the process of reform unfold? Drawing on the results of its consultation process, and the experiences of other Canadian jurisdictions, as well as the experiences of other countries, the Report concludes that it is crucial that citizens be included in an ongoing dialogue about electoral reform, and that the process of reform include a citizens’ engagement strategy. Many Canadians are eager to participate in democratic governance, and they need and want information. This strategy should have diverse and broad representation, including representation from women, youth, minority groups, and all regions. It should seek the views of political parties (minority parties as well as mainstream parties), Parliamentarians, and citizens’ groups. Any reform process should also include provision for formal review after implementing changes.

Highlights of their recommended model are:

Adding an element of proportionality to Canada’s electoral system, as inspired by the systems currently used in Scotland and Wales, would be the most appropriate model for adoption.

A mixed member proportional system should be based on giving voters TWO votes: one for a constituency representative and one for a party list. The party vote should determine who is to be elected from provincial and territorial lists as drawn up by the parties before the election.

Two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons should be elected in constituency races using the first-past-the-post method, and the remaining one-third should be elected from provincial or territorial party lists.

Within the context of a mixed member proportional system, Parliament should adopt a flexible list system that provides voters with the option of either endorsing the party “slate” or “ticket,” or of indicating a preference for a candidate within the list.

The federal government should prepare draft legislation on a mixed member proportional electoral system as proposed in this Report. After drafting the legislation, a Parliamentary committee should initiate a public consultation process on the proposed new electoral system.

An ad hoc Parliamentary committee should review the new electoral system after three general elections have been conducted under the new electoral rules.

"Recent Canadian research contends that turnout is 5 to 6 points higher in countries where the electoral system is proportional or mixed compensatory" says the Report. To quote the Jenkins Commission in the UK on “safe seats,” ”many voters pass their entire adult lives without any realistic hope of influencing a result. In these circumstances it is perhaps remarkable that general election turnouts remain at a respectable level.” In Canada, they have dropped well below a respectable level.

The Report says it is inspired by the systems currently used in Scotland and Wales, which have 16-MP regions (9 local MPs, 7 regional MPs) or 12-MP regions (8 local MPs, 4 regional MPs). In Canada, with 2/3 local MPs, a 14-MP region would have 9 local MPs and 5 regional MPs. With the present 308 MPs, this would mean seven regions in Ontario, five or six in Quebec, two in BC, and two in Alberta. (With more MPs in 2015, BC and Alberta might well have three regions each.) The report also includes a sample "demonstration model" with larger regions, because they make it easier to show the smallest parties winning seats. But the point is, this "demonstration model" is NOT part of their recomendation.

The flexible open list method was also recommended by the Jenkins Commission in the UK. Their colourful explanation accurately predicted why closed lists would be rejected in Canada: additional members locally anchored are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

Should independent candidates be able to run for regional MP? The Commission is silent. Scotland, their inspiration, does allow this. On a related point, some democrats strongly believe that, if an MP is elected as a party candidate (even as a local MP), he or she should resign if they wish to cross the floor, and seek re-election as an independent or for their new party in a by-election. The Commission is silent about that too. So these are separate issues, not part of the design of an MMP system.

What would the House of Commons look like under such a system?

Why Liberals need the Law Commission of Canada’s recommended electoral reform.

How would Canada look if Michael Fortier had won in Vaudreuil-Soulanges last year?

2009-12-12T18:05:00.015-05:00

How would the current history of Canada differ if Michael Fortier had won in Vaudreuil-Soulanges last year?

And why didn’t he?

It must have looked like a winnable riding, only 72% francophone in 2006, yet part of Quebec’s fast-growing Montérégie region (87.4% francophone).

Provincially the PQ won it only once in 1976. Otherwise it was solidly Liberal, safely held by Daniel Johnson who was premier in 1994.

The Bloc could not take it even in 1993 when the Bloc won 54 seats, nor in 1997 with a different candidate, nor in 2000 with a third candidate.

It had been held by the Tories from 1958 to 1963, while Jack Layton (born in 1950) was growing up there. It was held by the PCs again in 1984 to 1993. (Jack's father Bob Layton was a Liberal when Jack was young, as was Jack, and Bob tried for the local Liberal nomination in Vaudreuil in 1972, but in 1984 Bob Layton ran and won for the PCs in Lachine.)

Yet the Bloc took it in 2004 and holds it today.

Fast-growing Montérégie is typical of what winner-take-all does for the Bloc. Its candidates won 10 of the region’s 11 seats last year, although it got only 45% of the vote. A democratic voting system would have let Conservative voters, with 18% of the vote across the region, elect two MPs, along with two Liberals and one or two New Democrats. And one of the two Conservatives would surely have been Michael Fortier.

Similarly, there would have been three Conservative MPs from Montreal Island (perhaps including Hubert Pichet and Andrea Paine), and two from fast-growing Laval--Laurentides--Lanaudière (no doubt including Claude Carignan).

In Vaudreuil-Soulanges in 2008 the incumbent Bloc MP whom Fortier would face, Meili Faille, must have looked like as much of an “accidental MP” as Quebec City’s three surprise MPs of 2006. (Sylvie Boucher, Daniel Petit and Luc Harvey were the “accidental Tories” as Phil Authier famously called them. Phil’s great story is no longer on the Gazette website, but can be found here.)

In 2004 the Bloc had run a new young candidate Meili Faille, 31, who turned 32 just 10 days before the election. Her father had been the defeated PQ candidate in Vaudreuil in 2003, as he had also been in 1998.

Her mother Feng-Chi and her father Yvon Faille had named her “Meili,“ a Québecois version of the Chinese name Mei Li which means “beautiful.” Her mother tongue had been Mandarin.

Meili had left the riding in 1989 when she finished high school, going to Ottawa for university, getting a Business Administration degree. She had worked at Employment and Immigration Canada from 1993 to 1995 as a Project Manager for the International Service group. Her son Jasmin was born in 1996, and she had then worked for an IBM affiliate LGS Group as a Project Manager from 1996 until her election. In her team at LGS Group she was its only Mandarin-speaker, which was sometimes very useful.

To her surprise, she had won in 2004 with 44% of the vote. In 2006 Liberal star Marc Garneau thought she was easy prey, but she had held on, although her vote had slipped slightly to 43%.

Yet in 2008 Michael Fortier crashed and burned against her, when she still got 41% but he got only 24% while the new Liberal woman candidate, 28-year-old Brigitte Legault, recently president of the Quebec Young Liberals, got 21%. (She had been appointed to run there as a consolation prize; like other Liberals she had hoped to run in Outremont.)

There was more to Meili, a double giant-killer, than Fortier had first thought.

Her father Yvon had been a Catholic priest, working as a missionary and teacher in Taiwan in the 1960s. Her mother Feng-Chi, 12 years his junior, had once been his student, and became a linguist. Their relationship began while she was working as a translator on a U.S. military base in Taiwan. He left the priesthood and they married. They moved to Quebec in 1970, where Meili was born June 18, 1972, in Montreal. A younger sister and brother followed.

Yvon got a job as a teacher at College Bourget in Rigaud, 7 km from the Ontario border, where he would become his daughter’s favourite teacher. Meili grew up on a farm just outside of Rigaud, just upstream from Jack Layton‘s hometown Hudson, on what has become the limit of Montreal‘s commutershed. (The AMT runs 13 trains a day to Vaudreuil but only one to Hudson and Rigaud.)

Her grandfather Émilien Faille had run for the Bloc Populaire in 1944 in Châteauguay, also in Montérégie, and lived until 1978 when he died in Valleyfield, Beauharnois, also in Montérégie. Her father Yvon first ran for the PQ in 1981 in Huntingdon, also in Montérégie.

(The various parallels with Jack Layton, whose grandfather was elected provincially in 1936 as a member of the Union Nationale and ran federally as an independent PC in Mount Royal in 1945, and who has a Cantonese-speaking wife Olivia Chow, cannot have escaped Meili.)

Her father had taken his eldest child to countless political events since she was nine, and she had stayed at her father’s side. An active PQ member since 1992, she had worked in election campaigns in Vaudreuil--Soulanges in 1994, 1997, 1998, and 2003, and was president of the BQ riding association when she took the nomination in 2004, a veteran at age 31.

Her mother ensured Meili, a multi-talented girl, excelled in piano and oil painting. She also excelled in judo, and played hockey (defence).

During university, she had worked as an intern in the office of two PC Ministers. For Pierre Cadieux, the local MP for Vaudreuil (born in Hudson), as Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in 1989. For Pierre Cadieux again, as Solicitor General of Canada in 1990-1991. For Pierre Cadieux again, as Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport and Youth) in 1991-1992. And for Bernard Valcourt, the Minister of Employment and Immigration in 1992-1993; and also for the Secretary General of the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 1993. Her resume even includes being a volunteer for the United Way campaign in the federal public service in 1991-1993.

Both Meili Faille and Michael Fortier deserved to be in the House of Commons. But winner-take all could let only one of them be elected, while leaving 55% of Montérégie's voters unrepresented.

What would Quebec’s National Assembly look like with a proportional voting system?

2009-11-30T02:35:00.014-05:00

Below is a simulation based on the votes cast in 2008 and the new electoral map just announced. With 133 MNAs, Quebec would have 58 Liberals, 48 PQ, 23 ADQ, and four Quebec Solidaire.

Quebec has been debating proportional representation since before 1980. The latest step in the debate is the new electoral map announced Nov. 25, 2009.

Why a new map?

Population growth has been concentrated in the Montreal suburbs. Several no-growth regions of Quebec stood to lose seats if the number of MNAs was kept at 125. Without an increase, the ridings of Gaspé, Kamouraska-Témiscouata and Beauce-Nord would have been scrapped.

(This is a familiar issue in Ontario. In 2003, the no-growth North stood to lose up to three of its 11 MPPs. McGuinty’s Liberals promised to let the North keep them, and they kept that promise. But as the Conservative opposition critic Norm Sterling told the House: “Our Constitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada to say that you can't give more electoral power to one segment of our population than others. . . if you're going to have 11 ridings in the north, you're probably going to have to have, not 96, but 105, or maybe even 110, in the south.” Ontario needed more MPPs, but left that issue to the Citizens' Assembly which recommended a return to 129 MPPs, inserting that issue into the debate on proportional representation. Quebec may be wiser in tackling the issues separately.)

Quebec’s Bill 78 will protect the four ridings of Bas-St-Laurent, the three of Gaspésie, and the eight in Chaudière-Appalaches, as well as all the other regions, totalling 123 seats. As well, three exceptional ridings are spelled out: Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Ungava and Nunavik. After dividing the population of the 123 normal ridings by 123, any region with a shortfall is given more seats. By my calculation this means seven extra ridings, for a total of 133.

A unanimous consensus

On Nov. 11 and 12, 2009, Quebec's National Assembly unanimously voted for Amir Khadir's motion that reform of the Elections Act ensure "fair representation of political pluralism." As the government spokesman said "Everyone can agree on the principle, the problem is the how. . . We want a proportional voting system, we must specify which method of proportional representation we put forward. We have resumed the debate, the issue is not dead, the issue is evolving, the question is before us, the issue moves forward."

The DGE Report

Quebec’s Chief Electoral Officer (DGE) reported on mixed compensatory models for Quebec in December 2007: “Systèmes Mixtes Avec Compensation (SMAC),” what the rest of Canada calls the Mixed Member Proportional system.

See MMP Made Easy.

Based on his report, my simulation uses the nine regions he uses, with the open list system called “flexible lists,” a 3% threshold, and region-by-region calculation.

In referendums in PEI and Ontario, voters turned down a Mixed-Member system with closed province-wide lists. BC voters recently turned down an STV model. That leaves a Mixed-Member system with regional open lists.

Open regional lists

You have two votes. You vote for your local MNA -- whoever you like best locally, and this vote won't count against your party, for a change -- and you also have a vote for your favourite out of your party's candidates for regional MNA. Your regional vote counts for your party.

A regional MNA, who faced the voters in the region, will represent voters in the region whose votes didn‘t elect a local MNA. Unrepresented and under-represented voters will finally have a voice. And all voters will then have a choice after the election: you can go to your local MNA for service, or to one of your regional MNAs. Instead of having to vote for your party's single candidate, and then having to go to your single MNA, you have competing MNAs! What a concept!

Simulation of 2008 results

In the following simulation, Quebec has nine regions, based on its established 17 regions but grouping some smaller ones. Overall, 61% of the MNAs are still from local ridings, 81 of them, while 52 MNAs are from the nine regions. Montreal Island has 28 MNAs as it does today: 17 local (from larger ridings) and 11 regional. The three regions of Outaouais–Abitibi-Témiscamingue–Nord-du-Québec (West-and-north Quebec) have 11 ridings under the new map, up from the current nine since Nunavik gets a special seat and the Outaouais gets an extra MNA due to growth. With PR this becomes seven local MNAs, four regional.

Take the votes as cast in 2008. (This isn’t real, since many voters in safe ridings don’t bother to vote today, while others have no hope of their vote counting and also stay home. So with a Mixed-Member system more voters would vote, and we’d expect more choices to vote for. But take 2008 as an example.)

Liberals

In Montreal’s northern suburbs of Laurentides--Lanaudière, Liberal voters elected only one MNA last fall, despite casting 30% of the region’s ballots. They would have elected three more. Which three? The ones who got the most votes on the regional ballot (after skipping over anyone who won a local seat.) I’d bet on the three who were the best runners-up: Monique Laurin, director of the Collège Lionel - Groulx, who missed election by only 403 votes. Then Isabelle Lord, Political Assistant responsible for the Laurentians Region to the one Liberal MNA previously elected. Then Johanne Berthiaume, former municipal councillor for the City of Boisbriand.

Under-represented Liberal voters would have elected two more MNAs from the suburban Montérégie south of Montreal. Maybe two rising young Liberal stars: Chambly lawyer Stéphanie Doyon, and Longueuil lawyer Isabelle Mercille who is also Director of Public Affairs for the well-known comedy festival “Just for Laughs.” (Polls show 90% of Canadians want to elect more women, and if a good woman candidate is on the ballot, we’ll elect them.)

In Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean–Côte-Nord Liberal voters again elected only MNA last fall, despite winning 37% of the vote. They would have elected at least one more: the best runner-up was Joan Simard, a former Chicoutimi Councillor.

The government would have fewer MNAs, but a more representative caucus.

Parti Québecois

Two more MNAs from Montreal, where PQ voters were underrepresented. Maybe Frédéric Isaya, a teacher whose father was born in Côte d'Ivoire and whose adoptive father is of Congolese origin, and Martine Banolok, a marketing professional of Nigerian origin.

Two more from Outaouais–Abitibi-Témiscamingue–Nord-du-Québec. Maybe Dr. Gilles Aubé of Gatineau, plus former Val-d'Or MNA Alexis Wawanoloath (first aboriginal elected to the National Assembly), former Rouyn MNA and teacher Johanne Morasse, or Gatineau teacher Thérèse Viel-Déry.

One from the City of Laval. Maybe legal aid lawyer Donato Centomo, real estate agent Rachel Demers or retired police office Marc Demers.

One more from Capitale-Nationale--Mauricie. Maybe Congolese-born Neko Likongo who just finished his LL.M., or lawyer and United Way Campaign Chair Françoise Mercure.

One more from Chaudière-Appalaches–Bas-Saint-Laurent–Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Est-du-Québec). Maybe Annie Chouinard from Gaspé, who teaches social work techniques and is president of the teachers union at the Cégep de la Gaspésie et des Îles. She was Québec Solidaire’s candidate in 2007 but came back to the PQ in 2008.

Action démocratique du Québec

The 2008 election was a disaster for Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec, which dropped from 41 MNAs to only seven, losing official party status. However, its voters cast more than 16% of the votes, and deserved to elect 23 MNAs. That would have included:

Three from Laurentides--Lanaudière, where the ADQ was wiped out. Maybe François Desrochers MNA for Mirabel 2007-8, a Vice-Principal and Shadow Minister of Education. Maybe Pierre Gingras, MNA for Blainville 2007-8, former mayor of Blainville and ADQ Caucus Chair. Maybe Linda Lapointe, MNA for Groulx 2007-8.

Three more from Montérégie, where the ADQ was reduced to only one MNA. Maybe Richard Merlini, MNA for Chambly in 2007-8 and vice-president of the ADQ in 2006. Maybe Simon-Pierre Diamond, MNA for Marguerite-D'Youville from 2007-8, the youngest MNA ever elected, a law student who was ADQ Youth President. Maybe Lyne Denechaud; she was political assistant to ADQ MNA André Riedl until he crossed the floor to the Liberals.

Two from the Island of Montreal: maybe Diane Charbonneau, lawyer, vice-president of the ADQ, and three-term president of the Association of Businesspeople of Ahuntsic-Cartierville; and maybe 45-year-old lawyer Pierre Trudelle.

Two from Estrie-Centre-du-Québec. Maybe Jean-François Roux, MNA for Arthabaska 2007-8, and Sébastien Schneeberger, MNA for Drummond 2007-8.

Two more from Capitale-Nationale--Mauricie. Maybe Sébastien Proulx, MNA for Trois-Rivières 2007-8, lawyer and House Leader of the ADQ, and Catherine Morissette, lawyer, MNA for Charlesbourg 2007-8 and Vice-President of the ADQ.

One from the City of Laval: likely Tom Pentefountas, who was then President of the ADQ.

One from Outaouais–Abitibi-Témiscamingue–Nord-du-Québec. Maybe Gilles Taillon, MNA 2007-8 and party President 2006-7.

One from Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean–Côte-Nord. Maybe Robert Émond, a union militant in the CSN for 20 years, or Baie-Comeau chiropractor Dr. Louis-Olivier Minville.

One more from Chaudière-Appalaches–Bas-Saint-Laurent–Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Est-du-Québec). Maybe Christian Lévesque, MNA for Lévis 2007-8, or Claude Morin, MNA for Beauce-Sud 2007-8.

The ADQ would have a broader base and wider perspective.

Québec Solidaire

To add to Dr. Amir Khadir’s solitary win in Mercier, PR would let Québec Solidaire voters elect at least three more MNAs.

One more in Montreal, no doubt co-leader Françoise David.

One from Montérégie. Maybe young Longueuil trade unionist Sebastian Robert who is responsible for QS internal communications at the national level, or Longueuil community development worker Manon Blanchard.

One from Capitale-Nationale--Mauricie. Maybe Serge Roy, president of the Quebec Public Service Union (SFPQ) from 1996 to 2001, or Martine Sanfaçon, community activist.

Power to voters

What’s the point? First, voters everywhere would have real choices, for both candidates and parties.

Second, all voters would have an MLA they trusted. Competing MLAs would be more accountable.

Third, you’d be sure that the system gave fair results. Supporters of all political parties would be fairly represented in proportion to the votes they cast.

Rural and urban voters would be fully represented. All regions would be sure of effective representation.

MNAs would have real control, not be rubber-stamps for a powerful Premier. MNAs and their parties would have to work together, like a real democracy. Bring it on!

Does anyone else use this particular model? Lots of countries use a Mixed-Member system. This particular open-regional-list model is used in the German province of Bavaria, and has been recommended as an improvement to Scotland's similar system.

Quebec-wide proportionality

The Citizens’ Committee in 2006 insisted on Quebec-wide proportionality. (Original French text here.) However, their model was not complete. The DGE’s Report seemed to favour the German model of national calculation and regional allocation, within parties, by the weight of the regional votes within that party’s total, even though this can cause a region to gain or lose “a seat or two” said the DGE’s report.

So I calculated my simulation both ways. With province-wide calculation, some regions lose more than two seats.

My 2008 province-wide projection shows the East losing all three seats that the government just decided to give back to them. Montreal also loses three seats due to lower turnout. Ouest-et-Nord-du-Québec loses the two seats the new map would have given them, and one more. The winners are:

- Capitale-Nationale--Mauricie with three more than even the government wants to give them (they now have 16, the new map gives them 17, and regional allocation gives them 20)
- Montérégie with two more than even the government wants to give them (they now have 21, the new map gives them 23, and regional allocation gives them 25)
- Laurentides--Lanaudière also with two more than even the government wants to give them (they now have 14, the new map gives them 16, and regional allocation gives them 18)
- Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean–Côte-Nord with one more than they have now (the new map left them unchanged)
- Estrie-Centre-du-Québec with one more than they have now (the new map left them unchanged)

In return for all this, would Quebec get more proportionality?

Well, Québec Solidaire would get a fifth MNA, in Laurentides--Lanaudière. Maybe Lise Boivin, a teacher at Cégep de St-Jérôme, and former full-time coordinator of the Women’s Committee of the Quebec Teachers Federation.

The model of regional calculation works better than many had feared. The model of Quebec-wide calculation works much worse than I had expected.

Can the DGE’s 9-region model be improved upon? Certainly. The smallest of their nine regions is Laval, which is hardly a remote region. It does not need to be a separate region. Combine it with Laurentides--Lanaudière, and you will have eight regions which work even better. For example, QS got only four seats with the 9-region model, when it deserves five; but with the 8-region model it gets a seat in Laval--Laurentides--Lanaudière.

Why doesn't New Zealand have open regional lists?

2009-11-15T09:23:00.014-05:00

Since the consensus among Ontario electoral reformers now is that closed province-wide lists will not fly here -- as some founding FVC members had warned from the start -- we should examine why New Zealand has closed nation-wide lists for its MMP system. (Open lists require regional lists, since voters need a manageable number to choose from, and most candidates don't have nation-wide reputations.)

This very issue was examined in New Zealand's last review of their MMP model, by Parliament in 2001:

“Survey information shows significant majority support for the principle of open lists, the idea that closed party lists deprive voters of choice has wide currency. Those favouring open lists suggested that MMP would not be fully accepted until voters had the opportunity to exercise some influence over which candidates were to be elected from party lists.

The United party suggested the use of open lists would provide voters with a means to signal to parties how they rated the performance of particular members. The party submitted “there is an understandable adverse reaction [when a member is defeated in an electorate] if an MP defeated in this way returns to Parliament subsequently because of a high place on the list.” The party also submitted list MPs were “effectively beyond public sanction” and, as long as they retained the confidence of their parties, were likely to be re-elected because of their place on the list."

But all parties except the small United Party liked it that way.

The original Royal Commission had considered the issue of open or closed lists at some length. Did subsequent public opinion matter? Apparently not.

"It (the Royal Commission) noted that while the idea of voters having some influence over lists was attractive in principle, there were considerable difficulties in practice with combining open national lists with constituency contests, particularly with dual candidacies. Although supportive in principle of the idea of open regional lists, in the end the Royal Commission recommended that a system of closed national lists be adopted.

The parties that supported the status quo agreed it was good for democracy when political parties had the ability and a strong electoral incentive to present a balanced list.

These parties also saw the ability to control the party lists as an important means to encourage party discipline.

• a national list enables parties to ensure balanced representation among its candidates

• regional lists may lead MPs and electors to concentrate unduly on local or regional issues to the detriment of national issues

• since New Zealand does not have clearly defined regions and is not a federal state, it may be unnecessary and unwise to artificially create such divisions

• with regional lists and each party’s entitlement determined nationally, there is no obvious correlation between list position and the likelihood of election

• in order to make it clear that the party vote is a choice between parties and their leaders, all voters should have the same key names in front of them.

• parties should be able to retain those they regard as talented even if the public did not appreciate these talents to the same degree.

• open lists would undermine the effectiveness and legitimacy of political parties by providing for an outside influence that might rank candidates on a superficial basis."

Good arguments, but hardly democratic ones.

In Scotland surveys also showed significant majority support for the principle of open lists, so their Arbuthnott Commission reviewed the model and recommended a change to the open-list variation of MMP. There is one available for inspection in the German province of Bavaria, with seven regions, that might suit Scotland, and Canada's larger provinces, nicely.

The open list method was also recommended by the Jenkins Commission in the UK. Their colourful explanation accurately predicted why closed lists would be rejected in Canada: additional members locally anchored are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

Does New Zealand have, say, four natural regions? Perhaps not, but Canada's four large provinces certainly have natural regions. As for ensuring balanced representation among parties' candidates, all polls show that most Canadians want more women in parliament, and if parties give us women we can vote for, we'll elect them. Open regional lists will do that. MMP with open regional lists is the Ontario model the Citizens’ Assembly almost chose.

What would Saskatchewan's legislature look like with a proportional voting system?

2009-10-25T22:20:00.007-04:00

Today the ten MLAs from Yorkton-Melfort-Humboldt are all from the Saskatchewan Party. Although 27% of those voters voted NDP, they elected no representatives. Conversely, only three of Regina's 11 MLAs are in the government caucus, although 37% of Regina voters voted SP.

With a regional open-list Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system such as the Law Commission of Canada recommended (but with smaller regions), if Saskatchewan voters voted as they did in 2007 they would have elected 30 Saskatchewan Party MLAs, 22 New Democrats, and six Liberals.

See MMP Made Easy.

That's using a model with at least one-third of the MLAs elected regionally, in five regions. Three local ridings would generally become two larger ones. You might have 37 local MLAs and 21 elected regionally.

One interesting difference would be the 12 MLAs from Moose Jaw-Swift Current-Estevan-Kindersley: instead of a SP near-sweep, my spreadsheet projects three New Democrats and a Liberal, once NDP votes and Liberal votes count equally with SP voters. That would include the two regional NDP candidates and one regional Liberal candidate who got the most votes across the region. Maybe NDP voters would have elected Glenn Hagel and Sharon Elliott or Ken Crush, and Liberal voters Colleen Christopherson-Cote or Tim Seipp or Michael Klein. The 12 MLAs in that region would be eight local, four regional. The SP would no doubt have won seven of the eight local seats, so those SP voters would even elect one of the regional MLAs.

Another change would be the 10 MLAs I mentioned from Yorkton-Melfort-Humboldt: instead of an SP sweep, we'd see three New Democrats and a Liberal. That would be the three regional NDP candidates who got the most votes across the region (maybe Randy Goulden, Marlys Knezacek and Jordon Hillier) and the top-voted Liberal (perhaps Brent Loehr). The 10 MLAs in that region would be six local, four regional. Those SP voters would no doubt have elected all six local MLAs.

Of course, this projection simplistically assume voters would have cast the same ballots they did in 2007. The reality would be different. When every vote counts, we typically see around 8% higher turnout.

And we would see different candidates. Note that, when the SP members from Moose Jaw-Swift Current-Estevan-Kindersley met in a regional nominating convention, they would have not only voted to put the eight local nominees on the regional ballot, but would have added several regional candidates. With only one or two women from the eight local ridings, when they nominated several additional regional candidates, they would have naturally wanted to nominate a diverse group: more women. And 90% of Canadian voters say that, if parties would nominate more women, they'd vote for them.

Conversely, SP voters across Saskatchewan would also count equally. In the 12 ridings of Regina plus Indian Head - Milestone, instead of four SP MLAs we'd see five, and a Liberal (maybe Michael Huber.) If the SP had won three of the eight larger local ridings, who would Regina voters have chosen as the two regional SP MLAs?

The 13 ridings of Saskatoon plus Martensville were less skewed. Instead of seven NDP and six SP we'd see five NDP, six SP and two Liberals: perhaps David Karwacki and Zeba Ahmad?

The 11 ridings of Prince Albert - Battlefords & North would have an extra NDP MLA (perhaps Maynard Sonntag) and a Liberal (perhaps Ryan Bater).

The exact numbers might be different if Sakatchewan had four regions rather than five. But this is only an exercise in projection: the real results would have been different when more voters turned out to vote in what are now "safe seats."

As noted in previous posts, I prefer regional "top-up" MLAs elected personally under the "open list" model. You would have two votes, and more choice. "Open list" means that voters can vote for whoever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. The party would win enough regional "top-up" seats to compensate for the disproportional local results we know all too well. Those regional seats would be filled by the party's regional candidates who got the highest vote on the regional ballot. Canadian voters have twice rejected models with closed province-wide lists. The open-regional-list mixed-member model is used in the German province of Bavaria, and was recommended by Canada's Law Commission and by Scotland's Arbuthnott Commission.

Imagine that 1.5 million fraudulent votes had been stuffed in Canada's ballot boxes

2009-10-20T22:38:00.002-04:00

Larry Gordon wrote:

“Imagine this election scenario. A party wins 155 seats in a 301-seat Parliament and forms a majority government. But after the election, officials discover that 1.5 million fraudulent votes had been stuffed in the ballot boxes, giving the winning party 38 seats it didn't deserve and majority power that it didn't earn.

That would be electoral fraud on a breath-taking scale. Fortunately the scenario is imaginary, but the following one is real.

In 1997 federal election, the Liberals won just 38 per cent of the votes, but the voting system —- not the voters —- gave them 51 per cent of the seats, or 38 more seats than warranted by the popular vote. If Canada had a fair voting system that treated all votes equally, the Liberals would have needed another 1.5 million votes to capture a majority of seats.

The imaginary scenario would be criminal because individuals manipulated results to give an undeserved 1.5 million vote advantage to one party. The real-life election in 1997 also produced an undeserved advantage equal to 1.5 million votes. The only difference is the fantasy fraud was perpetrated by individuals, whereas the culprit in real life is a voting system that distorts what we say with our ballots.”

In the same vein, let’s look at The Bloc Bonus, and other chronic bonuses.

In the 2008 federal election, the Bloc won just 38 per cent of Quebec’s votes, but the voting system gave them 65 per cent of those seats, or 21 more seats than warranted by the popular vote. If Canada had a fair voting system that treated all votes equally, the Bloc would have needed an extra 2.8 million votes to capture 65 percent of Quebec’s seats. (More precisely, an extra 2,843,986 votes to capture 65.333 per cent of those seats.)

In the 2008 federal election, the Liberals won just 46 per cent of the City of Toronto’s votes, but the voting system gave them 91 per cent of those seats, or 10 more seats than warranted by the popular vote. If Canada had a fair voting system that treated all votes equally, the Liberals would have needed an extra 4.6 million votes to capture 91 percent of Toronto’s seats. (More precisely, an extra 4,604,061 votes to capture 90.909 per cent of those seats.)

In the 2008 federal election, the Conservatives won 65 per cent of Alberta’s votes, but the voting system gave them 96 per cent of those seats, or 8 more seats than warranted by the popular vote. If Canada had a fair voting system that treated all votes equally, the Conservatives would have needed an extra 11.3 million votes to capture 96 percent of Alberta’s seats. (More precisely, an extra 11,301,192 votes to capture 96.429 per cent of those seats.)

Wow!

No wonder some Toronto Liberals and some Alberta Conservatives are willing to put up with the Bloc Bonus.

Who cares if the equivalent of 2.8 million fraudulent votes had been stuffed in Quebec ballot boxes, when you’re benefiting from the equivalent of 4.6 million fraudulent votes stuffed in Toronto ballot boxes, or from the equivalent of 11.3 million fraudulent votes stuffed in Alberta ballot boxes.

Proportional representation would be good for Canada.

Democratic nominations: why is Germany more democratic than Canada?

2009-10-06T00:12:00.005-04:00

You can't turn on the television without hearing of a candidate being appointed to run for parliament somewhere in Canada.

In Germany, this would be illegal.

But isn't Germany the place, you may ask, where half the MPs are elected on a party list? Aren't they appointed? And anyway, can't parties do whatever they like?

No, and no. Germany has laws to guarantee democratic nominations.

Why can't Canada have laws making nominations democratic?

Germany's Law on Political Parties states "The nomination of candidates for elections to parliaments must be by secret ballot:" Sec. 17. Their Federal Elections Act states "A person may only be named as a candidate of a party in a constituency nomination if he or she has been elected for this purpose at a members' assembly convened to elect a constituency candidate:" Sec. 21(1).

The Law Commission of Canada designed a democratic voting system for Canada. The nomination system was outside the mandate of that study, but their model was the German system.

What about nominations at provincial conventions for candidates to be on province-wide lists of party candidates for the federal parliament? Doesn't the party leader decide which candidates get the top ranking, almost guaranteeing them a seat?

No. Again, Germany's Federal Elections Act requires that the order of names of the candidates in the provincial list must be laid down by secret ballot: Sec. 27(5). (This matters for federal elections in Germany, where half of the MPs are elected from closed party lists. By contrast, in provincial elections in Bavaria the list order doesn't matter, since voters vote for the candidate on the regional list they prefer, as well as for the local candidate they prefer.)

But aren't those provincial conventions controlled by the party brass?

No. Even the election of convention delegates is democratic: "The elections of the delegates to delegates' assemblies (party conventions) shall be secret" says Sec. 15(2) of the Law on Political Parties. And if the party allows executive members to be automatic ex-officio delegates at conventions, that Law states that the number of them eligible to vote must not exceed 20% of the total number of delegates: Sec. 9(2). And the usual practice is that the provincial convention to elect list candidates is held only after local constituency candidates have been elected; most good list positions go to candidates who have already won a local nomination. (The SPD, for example, makes sure at least 40% of each group (5 or 10) of candidates on the list are women. Occasionally the list includes a "list-only" minority or female candidate not nominated locally.)

But if an incumbent MP loses the nomination, can't the party brass protect him or her? Not much. The provincial executive may object to the decision of a membership meeting. "If such an objection is raised, the ballot shall be repeated. Its result shall be final:" Sec. 21(4) of the Federal Elections Act. An interesting example from the recent German election was the nomination of Bärbel Bas for the SPD in Duisburg I, defeating an incumbent MP for the nomination. At the first nomination meeting she won by only five votes. A second meeting was called: she increased her margin to 17 votes, and then won the seat in the election.

The Bloc Bonus, and other chronic bonuses

2009-09-12T14:11:00.022-04:00

In 2008 it took 86,203 federalist voters to elect one Quebec MP, but only 28,163 Bloc voters. Bloc Québecois voters cast 38.1% of the votes in Québec, so they deserved 28 of the 74 MPs won by parties. But they got 49, a bonus of 75%.

Back in 1993 the Bloc Québecois formed the Official Opposition despite getting fewer votes than either Reform or the Progressive Conservatives.

In 1993 Bloc voters cast 49.3% of the votes in Québec, so they deserved to elect 36 MPs of Québec’s 74 seats won by parties. But they elected 54, a bonus of 50%.

And they did it again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

Over six elections they got an average bonus of 53%. (Details below)

Why do conservatives accept this?

Why do some Conservatives accept such an undemocratic voting system? A system that cheats Québec federalist voters? A system that also cheats Toronto Conservative voters, who deserved to elect six MPs in the last election but have elected no one since 1993?

Is it because their party has been run from Alberta?

The Alberta conservative bonus

In 2008 it took 449,013 non-Conservative voters to elect one Alberta MP, but only 30,450 Conservative voters. Conservative Party voters cast 64.7% of the votes in Alberta, and deserved to elect 18 of Alberta’s 28 MPs. But they elected 27, a bonus of 50%.

In 1993 Reform Party voters cast 52.3% of the votes in Alberta, so they deserved to elect 14 of Alberta’s 26 MPs. But they elected 22, a bonus of 57%.

In fact, over six elections Alberta conservative voters got a bonus of an average of 57%, even a bit worse than the Bloc’s 53% bonus in Quebec. (Details below.) Meanwhile, in six elections Toronto's Conservative voters have elected no one: 244,732 of them in 2008.

Why do Liberals accept this?

So why do some Liberals accept such an undemocratic voting system? A system that cheats Québec federalist voters? A system that also cheats Liberal voters in the West and in Ontario outside the GTA?

Is it because the party has been run from Toronto?

The Toronto Liberal bonus.

In 2008 it took only 21,887 Toronto Liberal voters to elect an MP, but it took 252,090 non-Liberal voters to elect one MP. Toronto Liberals keep getting a big bonus of their own, again for the last six elections in a row. (See this post.)

These numbers assume voters voted as they did in 2008. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted, and some would have voted differently. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds.

Are Canadians slow learners?

In a country of solitudes, where parties are comfortably entrenched in their strongholds, will nothing change?

When will Conservative activists outside their Party’s strongholds, and Liberal activists outside their Party’s strongholds, be more vocal? They must be thinking “what are we, chopped liver? These regional bonuses are bad for Canada. And the Bloc’s bonus keeps paralyzing Parliament.” When will they say it in public?

Imagine that 1.5 million fraudulent votes had been stuffed in Canada's ballot boxes.

Details of the Bloc Bonuses:

In 1997 Bloc voters cast 37.9% of the votes in Québec, so they deserved 28 of Québec’s 75 MPs. But they got 44, a bonus of 57%.

In 2000 they cast 39.9% of the votes in Québec, so they deserved 30 MPs. But they got 38, a bonus of 27%.

In 2004 they cast 48.9% of the votes in Québec, so they deserved 37 MPs. But they got 54, a bonus of 46%.

In 2006 they cast 42.1% of the votes in Québec, so they deserved 31 of the 74 MPs won by parties. But they got 51, a bonus of 65%.

Details of the Alberta bonuses:

In 1997 Reform Party voters cast 54.6% of the votes in Alberta, and again they deserved to elect 14 of Alberta’s 26 MPs. But they elected 24, a bonus of 71%.

In 2000 Canadian Alliance voters cast 58.9% of the votes in Alberta, and deserved to elect 15 of Alberta’s 26 MPs. But they elected 23, a bonus of 53%.

In 2004 Conservative Party voters cast 61.7% of the votes in Alberta, and deserved to elect 17 of Alberta’s 28 MPs. But they elected 26, a bonus of 53%.

In 2006 Conservative Party voters cast 65.0% of the votes in Alberta, and deserved to elect 18 of Alberta’s 28 MPs. But they elected all 28, a bonus of 56%.

Open list

As noted in previous posts, I prefer a mixed member proportional system with regional "top-up" MPs elected personally under the "open list" model. You would have two votes, and more choice. "Open list" means that voters can vote for whoever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. The party would win enough regional "top-up" seats to compensate for the disproportional local results that cause these chronic bonuses. Those regional seats would be filled by the party's regional candidates who got the highest vote on the regional ballot. Still, 65% of MPs would be elected from local ridings as we do today. Each province and region would keep the same number of MPs it has today. This is the model recommended by the Law Commission of Canada, used in the German province of Bavaria, and recommended for Scotland by its Arbuthnott Commission.

What would Manitoba's legislature look like with a proportional voting system?

2009-09-06T15:09:00.006-04:00

With a regional open-list MMP system such as the Law Commission of Canada recommended (but with smaller regions), and using the Scottish Parliament's "highest average" calculation method, if Manitoba voters voted as they did in 2007 my spreadsheet projects an NDP majority of three: 30 NDP, 23 PC, four Liberal.

See MMP Made Easy.

That's using a model with at least one-third of the MLAs elected regionally, in five regions. In most cases three local ridings would become two larger ones. You might have 36 local MLAs and 21 elected regionally.

One interesting difference would be in South West and Central Manitoba: instead of the sole Brandon New Democrat MLA, I project four. That would be the three regional NDP candidates who got the most votes across the region. Maybe Denise Harder from Ste. Rose, James Kostuchuk from Portage La Prairie, and Harvey Paterson from Minnedosa? Instead of the PC near-sweep of the region, when NDP votes count equally the PCs get six seats, not nine. The ten MLAs in that region would be six local, four regional. The PCs would no doubt have won five of the six local seats, so they even get one of the regional MLAs.

Of course, this projection simplistically assume voters would have cast the same ballots they did in 2007. The reality would be different. When every vote counts, we typically see around 8% higher turnout. And you would see different candidates. When any party's regional nomination process nominates five regional candidates at once, you can expect them to nominate a diverse slate.

Conversely, Conservative votes across Manitoba would also count equally. In the 18 ridings of north Winnipeg, instead of one lonely PC we'd see five, and two Liberals instead of only one. Maybe Linda West, Chris Kozier, Kelly de Groot and Brent Olynyk would be PC regional MLAs, and Wayne Helgason a Liberal regional MLA?

The 13 ridings of south Winnipeg were less skewed. Instead of three PCs we'd see four; perhaps Jack Reimer? Instead of only one Liberal, we'd see two: perhaps Paul Hesse?

The six Northern ridings would have a couple of regional Conservative MLAs along with four local New Democrats. That might be Maxine Plesiuk and David Harper?

The 10 southeast ridings around Winnipeg actually, by a fluke, saw a fair result over all. It would still be four New Democrats and six PCs.

The exact numbers might be different if Manitoba had four regions rather than five. And they would certainly be different if Manitoba used the old German "highest remainder" calculation (which Germany has just moved away from): maybe 28 NDP, 22 PC and seven Liberal. I'm assuming the Manitoba government would prefer the Scottish model.

As noted in previous posts, I prefer regional "top-up" MPs elected personally under the "open list" model. You would have two votes, and more choice. "Open list" means that voters can vote for whoever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. The party would win enough regional "top-up" seats to compensate for the disproportional local results we know all too well. Those regional seats would be filled by the party's regional candidates who got the highest vote on the regional ballot. Canadian voters have twice rejected models with closed province-wide lists. The open-regional-list model is used in the German province of Bavaria, and was recommended by Canada's Law Commission and by Scotland's Arbuthnott Commission.

Why don’t more Liberals speak up?

2009-07-17T23:51:00.013-04:00

As noted in a previous post, with a democratic voting system, a proportional House of Commons elected as voters voted in 2008 would have given Liberal voters 26 more MPs from regions where they were unrepresented or under-represented.

That‘s nine more from the West, ten more from Ontario outside the GTA, and seven more from Quebec outside Montreal. Liberals need the recommendation of the Law Commission of Canada.

Chronic Liberal under-representation

Was this a one-time problem? No, a chronic one.

In 2006, with a democratic voting system Liberal voters would have elected 18 more MPs from regions where they were unrepresented or under-represented. That‘s eight more from the West, five more from southern Ontario outside the GTA, and five more from Quebec outside Montreal.

Chronic federalist under-representation

In 2008, 49 of Quebec’s MPs were Bloc members, and only 26 were federalists (14 Liberals, 10 Conservatives, 1 NDP, and 1 independent). With a democratic voting system in 2008 Quebec voters would have elected 17 more federalists. That‘s 43 federalists (17 Liberals, 16 Conservatives, 8 NDP, 1 Green, 1 independent) and only 32 Bloc MPs.

Was this a one-time problem? Again, not at all.

In 2006, Quebec federalist voters would have elected 17 more MPs: seven Conservatives, six New Democrats, three Greens and one Liberal. And that's chronic. See the Bloc Bonus and other chronic bonuses.

So why don’t more Liberals speak up?

Many Liberal activists in the West like Anne McLellan know all this very well; they've been dealing with it since 1972. So do Liberal activists in Quebec.

So why don’t more Liberal activists promote electoral reform?

Because in 2006 Liberal voters would have elected seven fewer MPs from Toronto and five fewer from Peel/York. Just as, in 2008, Liberal voters would have elected eight fewer MPs from the City of Toronto and four fewer from Peel/York.

Now, the best Toronto Liberal reformers have a national vision.

However, others think 12 fewer Liberal MPs from the GTA are more important than 17 more federalist MPs from Quebec. They think 12 fewer Liberal MPs from the GTA are more important than 18 or 26 more Liberal MPs from regions like Alberta where Liberal voters were unrepresented or under-represented.

Do these Toronto-centred folks really run the Liberal Party?

Perhaps not. When John Gerretsen was elected MPP for Kingston in 1995, he found himself the only Liberal elected between Toronto and Ottawa, facing a very conservative majority government elected by a minority of voters. A familiar position for Ontario Liberals, who had faced fake-majority governments for 42 of the previous 53 years. Proportional representation was in Ontario Liberals' interest, and Gerretsen started working for it. Unfortunately, by 2005 some of them had started to forget this. It is also in Quebec Liberals' interest, where the skewed demographics give the PQ the same bonus the Bloc gets; that's how the PQ won the 1998 election with fewer votes than the Liberals.

Open list

As noted in previous posts, I prefer regional "top-up" MPs elected personally under the "open list" model recommended by the Law Commission of Canada. You would have two votes, and more choice. "Open list" means that voters can vote for whoever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. Like the right-hand part of this ballot. The party would win enough regional "top-up" seats to compensate for the disproportional local results we know all too well. Those regional seats would be filled by the party's regional candidates who got the highest vote on the regional ballot. Each province would keep the same number of MPs it has today.

What would a proportional representation model for Nova Scotia look like?

2009-05-18T23:25:00.003-04:00

Nova Scotia’s Premier Rodney MacDonald stated in the May 18 Halifax Chronicle-Herald:

“One of the concerns I have . . . is the issue of proportional representation. As a rural Nova Scotian, that scares me . . . because that means less of a voice for rural parts of Nova Scotia.”

That’s why, when the Ontario NDP took a position on proportional representation in 2002, they decided on a regional model. Perhaps Nova Scotians have not yet looked at how a decent proportional system would work in Nova Scotia.

They're not alone. Outside BC, journalists routinely say things like, with winner-take-all, "you get representatives who fight tooth and nail for the good of their communities. I'm not sure how you get a system of proportional representation that doesn't somehow require the appointment of MPs or MPPs."

So let’s look at a typical regional proportional system.

In referendums in PEI and Ontario, voters turned down a Mixed-Member system with closed province-wide lists. BC voters recently turned down an STV model. That leaves a Mixed-Member system with regional open lists.

You have two votes. You vote for your local MLA -- whoever you like best locally, and this vote won't count against your party, for a change -- and you also have a vote for your favourite out of your party's candidates for regional MLA. Your regional vote counts for your party. Like this ballot.

See MMP Made Easy.

A regional MLA, who faced the voters in the region, will represent voters in the region whose votes didn‘t elect a local MLA. Unrepresented and under-represented voters will finally have a voice. And all voters will then have a choice after the election: you can go to your local MLA for service, or to one of your regional MLAs. Instead of having to vote for your party's single candidate, and then having to go to your single MLA, you have competing MLAs! What a concept!

The province has four regions. Urban Halifax has 18 MLAs as it does today: 11 local (from larger ridings) and seven regional. Cape Breton still has nine: six local, three regional. South-West still has 14: nine local, five regional. North-East still has 11: seven local, four regional. Overall, 63% of the MLAs would still be from local ridings, 33 of them, while 19 MLAs would be from the four regions.

Mr. MacDonald would like what this does in Halifax.

Take the votes as cast in 2006. (This isn’t real, since many voters in safe ridings don’t bother to vote today, while others have no hope of their vote counting and also stay home. So with a Mixed-Member system more voters would vote, and we’d expect more choices to vote for. But take 2006 as an example.)

The NDP swept Halifax in 2006. With fewer local seats, NDP voters would have elected five fewer Halifax MLAs. But PC voters would have elected three more MLAs than they did. Which three? The ones who got the most votes on the regional ballot (after skipping over anyone who won a local seat.) I’d bet on Bill Black (hmm -- might he have been Premier today?), African-Canadian educator Dwayne Provo (would Nova Scotia have a black cabinet Minister today?), and former Caucus Chair Gary Hines.

Halifax Liberal voters would have elected one more MLA than they did. Maybe their leader Francis MacKenzie wouldn't have lost his seat?

Halifax Green voters would have elected one MLA. Maybe their leader Nick Wright? Then again, Amanda Myers got more votes than he did.

But in the South-West, where NDP voters were short-changed, they’d have elected two more MLAs than they did, and PC voters two less. Maybe Wolfville Councillor David Mangle and Mahone Bay councillor Chris Heide would have been elected NDP regional MLAs?

In the North East, almost 16,000 Liberal voters elected no one in 2006, when they deserved two MLAs. I’d bet Antigonish lawyer Daniel MacIsaac would have won a regional seat, and maybe Danny Walsh from Pictou County.

Sometimes our winner-take-all system happens, by accident, to work about right. In 2006 it did in Cape Breton. PC voters elected four MLAs, Liberal voters three, and NDP voters two, and those numbers wouldn’t change.

In fact, the overall result wouldn’t be so very different from 2006, which accidentally worked out about right. You’d still see a PC minority government, with one less MLA, but better Halifax representation. Three fewer NDP MLAs, three more Liberals, one Green.

What’s the point? First, voters everywhere would have real choices, for both candidates and parties.

Second, all voters would have an MLA they trusted. Competing MLAs would be more accountable. Scotland's similar model has 16-member regions (nine local members, seven regional), while Wales has 12-member regions (eight local, four regional), allowing reasonable accountability.

Third, you’d be sure that the system gave fair results. Not like 1999, when PC voters elected 58% of the MLAs with only 39% of the vote. Supporters of all political parties would be fairly represented in proportion to the votes they cast.

Rural and urban voters would be fully represented. All regions would be sure of effective representation.

Would this system always mean minority governments? Well, in 1993 Liberal voters outnumbered the PC and NDP voters combined, so they got an honest majority, and that wouldn‘t change. Same as the PC win in 1984.

But otherwise, MLAs would have real control, not be rubber-stamps for a powerful Premier. MLAs and their parties would have to work together, like a real democracy. Bring it on!

Does anyone else use this particular model? Lots of countries use a Mixed-Member system. This particular open-regional-list model is used in the German province of Bavaria, and has been recommended as an improvement to Scotland's similar system. It was recommended for Canada by the Law Commission of Canada.

What would a proportional Alberta Legislature look like?

2008-12-15T23:16:00.016-05:00

In the last provincial election, the majority of Alberta voters stayed home. And in the 2008 federal election, while BC had a 60% turnout. Alberta had only 54%. Why? Because, outside of two or three ridings in Edmonton, the Conservatives had safe seats. Why bother voting?

Many Alberta provincial Liberals have favoured PR for some time. The party's website used to say "An Alberta Liberal government would organize a Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform, to determine if other voting systems — including proportional representation — could improve participation and representation in our democracy."

So what would the Alberta Legislature look like under a PR model?

Note that, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted, and some would have voted differently. Alberta would have had different candidates - likely more women, and more diversity of all kinds. However, all I can do is project the votes cast in 2008 into a reformed voting system.

I used a Mixed Member Proportional model with regional open lists. You still have 83 MLAs. The 50 local MLAs are elected from districts larger than today's (about five of today's districts become three larger districts.) The 33 regional top-up MLAs are elected from five regions.

You, the voter, have two votes: one for your local MLA, the other for the party you want in government and for your favourite regional MLA candidate of your party (like the right-hand part of this ballot.) So you are free to vote for the best candidate locally; only your regional ballot counts for your party. The regional MLAs top up the local results, so the total result matches the vote shares in the region. Every vote counts equally. And the regional seats are filled by the party's regional candidates who get the most votes on the regional ballot (unless that person was already elected to a local seat.)

See MMP Made Easy.

Overall, PC voters would still have elected a majority: 44 of the 83 MLAs. Liberal voters would have elected 22 MLAs, NDP voters seven, Wildrose Alliance voters six, and Green Party voters four.

Liberal voters would have elected MLAs across Alberta, not just in Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge. In the 12 ridings of Northern Alberta, Liberal voters would have elected two regional MLAs: maybe Lisa Higgerty from Hinton and Ross Jacobs from Fort McMurray. In the 13 ridings of Central Alberta, another two MLAs such as Diane Kubanek and Richard Farrand of Red Deer. In the 13 ridings of Southern Alberta, two more regional MLAs such as Karen Charlton of Medicine Hat and Bal Boora of Lethbridge. In the 23 Calgary ridings, three more MLAs such as Craig Cheffins, Mike Robinson and Avalon Roberts. In the 22 Edmonton ridings, four more MLAs such as Rick Miller, Mo Elsalhy, Bruce Miller and Weslyn Mather.

New Democrat voters would have elected a regional MLA from Northern Alberta such as Adele Boucher Rymhs from Peace River. In Central Alberta, a regional MLA such as Lisa Erickson from Leduc County. In Calgary, a regional MLA such as Julie Hrdlicka. In Edmonton, two more MLAs such as David Eggen and Ray Martin.

Wildrose Alliance voters would have elected two regional MLAs from Southern Alberta, no doubt leader Paul Hinman, plus another such as Kevin Kinahan from Coaldale. From Calgary, two regional MLAs such as Chris Jukes and Bob Babcock. From Central Alberta, a regional MLA such as Dean Schmale from Winfield. From Northern Alberta, a regional MLA such as Dale Lueken from Fairview.

Green Party voters would have elected a regional MLA from Calgary such as leader George Read or Susan Stratton, one from Edmonton such as Glen Argan or Kate Harrington, one from Central Alberta such as Joe Anglin from Rimbey, and one from Southern Alberta such as Dan Cunin from Cochrane.

All MLAs would have faced the voters, and all votes would have counted. Democracy, eh?

Voters for all parties would be represented in all regions, except where they had too few voters to elect even one regional MLA: NDP voters in southern Alberta, Wildrose Alliance voters in Edmonton, and Green voters in Northern Alberta.

Of course, that was with a miserable turnout of only 40.6 percent. Fair voting systems usually boost turnout by an average of about six percent. Likely more in Alberta, where turnout in 1993 was more than 60 percent. Funny thing: if there's no point voting, lots of people don't. Or as Elections Alberta stated "In an election where there appears to be a clear front runner, electors may be less motivated to vote since the outcome is perceived to be predetermined and their vote may not be needed or may not make a difference." So add a whole lot more votes to the picture, and who knows what would have happened?

This projection is based on five regions: Calgary with 23 MLAs (14 local, 9 regional); Edmonton with 22 MLAs (13 local, 9 regional); Central Alberta with 13 MLAs (8 local, 5 regional); Southern Alberta with 13 MLAs (8 local, 5 regional); and Northern Alberta with 12 MLAs (7 local, 5 regional).

The same kind of model works well federally too. Alberta's provincial Liberal party is quite separate from their federal cousins, and more popular, so federal Liberals need proportional representation even more than provincial Liberals.

This model is based on the recommendation of the Law Commission of Canada. An STV model like BC-STV would likely have had much the same result.

What would a proportional House of Commons look like?

2008-12-06T00:49:00.092-05:00

What would the House of Commons look like, under the democratic proportional model described in the previous post? (That was the open-regional-list mixed member proportional model recommended by the Law Commission of Canada in 2004 and by Scotland's Arbuthnott Commission in 2006, and like the model described in more detail by Prof. Henry Milner at an electoral reform conference Feb. 21, 2009. A similar model is used in the German province of Bavaria.)

See MMP Made Easy. See also the simulation of the 2011 results.

Power to the voters: Competing MPs

An exciting prospect: voters have new power to elect who they like. New voices from new forces in parliament. No party rolls the dice and wins an artificial majority. Cooperation will have a higher value than vitriolic rhetoric. Instead of having only a local MP -- whom you quite likely didn’t vote for -- you can also go to one of your regional MPs, all of whom had to face the voters. A typical region would have 14 MPs, 9 local, 5 regional. Governments will have to listen to MPs, and MPs will have to really listen to the people. MPs can begin to act as the public servants they are.

Why middle-sized regions? As Lord Jenkins’ Commission in the United Kingdom wrote, additional MPs locally anchored to small areas are “more easily assimilable into the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions.”

What would the House look like?

This simulation is only if people voted as they did on October 14, 2008. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted -- typically 6% or so more -- and some would have voted differently. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We could have different parties.

Still, this will show us the shape of a proportional House of Commons.

As noted below, the result Canada-wide would have been 117 Conservatives, 84 Liberals, 56 NDP, 31 Bloc, 18 Greens, and two Independents. The majority of Canadians voted Liberal, NDP or Green, and a Liberal-NDP-Green coalition government would have a clear majority. Or a Liberal-NDP government could rely on either the Greens or the Bloc for a majority.

The Liberal caucus would not be just the GTA plus the Montreal area and the Atlantic Provinces. Currently only 15 of the 77 Liberal MPs are outside those regions. Liberal voters would have elected 26 more MPs from regions where they are now unrepresented or under-represented: nine more from the West, ten more from Ontario outside the GTA, and seven more from Quebec outside Montreal. With the open-list system, those regional MPs would be the regional candidates who get the most votes on the regional ballot.

In the 2008 elections, 71 of the west's 92 MPs were Conservatives, 21 others. With a democratic voting system that would be 50 Conservatives, 42 others (double today's 21).

In 2008, 49 of Quebec’s MPs were Bloc members, and only 26 were federalists (14 Liberals, 10 Conservatives, 1 NDP, 1 independent). It took 86,203 federalist voters to elect one Quebec MP last year, but only 28,163 Bloc voters. With a fair voting system that would be 18 more federalists: 31 Bloc MPs and 44 federalists (17 Liberals, 16 Conservatives, 9 NDP, 1 Green, 1 independent.)

Today, 28% of the voters in South Central Ontario (Hamilton-Waterloo-Niagara) voted Liberal but elected none of those 15 MPs.

Liberal voters would have elected 26 more MPs, starting with nine more from the West:
In the BC Lower Mainland five MPs, not four. Maybe Wendy Yuan or Don Bell or Brenda Locke or Raymond Chan or Dana Miller? Maybe even Michelle Hassen?
In the BC Interior and Vancouver Island two MPs, not just one. Maybe Diana Cabott from Kelowna, or Briony Penn?
In Edmonton and Northern Alberta two MPs, not none. Maybe Donna Lynn Smith and Jim Wachowich or Rick Szostak?
In Calgary, Southern and Central Alberta two MPs, not none. Maybe Jennifer Pollock and Sanam Kang or Heesung Kim or Anoush Newman from Calgary or Michael Cormican from Lethbridge?
In Saskatchewan two MPs, not just one. Maybe Deb Ehmann or David Orchard, or even young star Karen Parhar?
In Manitoba three MPs, not just one. Maybe Raymond Simard and Wendy Menzies or John Loewen or Bob Friesen or Tina Keeper?
In South Central Ontario (Hamilton-Waterloo-Niagara) four MPs, not none. Maybe Karen Redman, Lloyd St. Amand, John Maloney and Paddy Torsney or Andrew Telegdi or Larry Di Ianni or Walt Lastewka or Joyce Morocco or Eric Hoskins?
In Southwestern Ontario (London - Windsor - Owen Sound) four MPs, not just one. Maybe Susan Whelan, Sue Barnes and Greg McClinchey or Sandra Gardiner or Matt Daudlin or Tim Fugard?
In Eastern Ontario (Ottawa to Belleville) four MPs, not just three. Maybe Marc Godbout or Penny Collenette or Dan Boudria from Ottawa, or David Remington from Napanee, or Carole Devine from Pembroke?
In Central East Ontario (Durham-Peterborough-Barrie) three MPs, not just two. Maybe Betsy McGregor from Peterborough, Paul Macklin from Northumberland—Quinte West, Steve Clarke from Simcoe North or Andrea Matrosovs from Collingwood?
In Northern Ontario two MPs, not just one. Maybe Ken Boshcoff or Roger Valley or Louise Portelance or Diane Marleau or Paul Bichler?
In Quebec City and Eastern Quebec three MPs, not none. Maybe Jean Beaupré and Pauline Côté or Yves Picard from the Quebec City region, and Nancy Charest from Matane?
In Estrie--Centre-du-Québec--Mauricie one MP, not none. Maybe Nathalie Goguen from Sherbrooke or Jean-Luc Matteau from Maskinongé?
In Montérégie two MPs, not just one. Maybe Denis Paradis from Brome--Missisquoi or Roxane Stanners from Saint-Lambert, or Pierre Diamond, or their young star Brigitte Legault?
In Laval--Laurentides--Lanaudière two MPs, not just one. Maybe Robert Frégeau or Eva Nassif or Suzie St-Onge or Pierre Gfeller or Alia Haddad?
In Outaouais--Abitibi--Nord-du-Quebec two MPs, not just one. Maybe Gilbert Barrette from Abitibi, Michel Simard or Cindy Duncan McMillan?

On the other hand, Liberal voters would have elected 20 fewer MPs from regions where they are now over-represented: 11 from the GTA, four from Montreal, two from Nova Scotia, two from Newfoundland and Labrador, and one from PEI. So they would have a net gain of only six MPs, but their caucus would be far more representative. And it would not face an inflated Bloc caucus and an inflated Conservative caucus. Why don't more Liberals speak up about our undemocratic voting system?

Conservative voters would have elected 16 more MPs from regions where they were unrepresented or under-represented, starting with eight from Quebec:
On Montreal Island three MPs, not none. Maybe Hubert Pichet, Andrea Paine and Rafael Tzoubari?
In Montérégie two MPs, not none. Maybe Michael Fortier and Maurice Brossard or Marie-Josée Mercier?
From Laval--Laurentides--Lanaudière two MPs, not none. Maybe Claude Carignan from Saint-Eustache and Jean-Pierre Bélisle from Laval or Sylvie Lavallée from Joliette?
From Estrie--Centre-du-Québec--Mauricie two MPs, not just one. Maybe Éric Lefebvre, André Bachand, Marie-Claude Godue or Claude Durand?
From Toronto five MPs, not none. Maybe Joe Oliver, Rochelle Wilner, John Carmichael, Axel Kuhn and Patrick Boyer or Dr. Benson Lau or Roxanne James or Heather Jewell, or even their young star Christina Perreault?
From Northern Ontario two MPs, not just one. Maybe Gerry Labelle from Sudbury, Cameron Ross from Sault Ste. Marie, or Dianne Musgrove from Manitoulin?
From Newfoundland and Labrador one MP, not none. Maybe Fabian Manning?
From PEI two MPs, not just one. Maybe Mary Crane?

However, Conservative voters would have elected 40 fewer MPs from regions where they are now over-represented: five from Saskatchewan, four from Edmonton and Northern Alberta, four from Calgary, Southern and Central Alberta, three from the BC Lower Mainland, three from the BC Interior and Vancouver Island, two from Manitoba, four from Central East Ontario (Durham-Barrie-Peterborough), four from Southwest Ontario, four from South Central Ontario, three from Eastern Ontario, two from Quebec City and Eastern Quebec, and two from New Brunswick. So they would have a net loss of 24 MPs, yet their caucus would be more representative of the whole country.

New Democrat voters would have elected 23 more MPs from regions where those voters are unrepresented or under-represented.
In Saskatchewan three MPs, not none. Maybe Nettie Wiebe, Don Mitchell and Valerie Mushinski or Janice Bernier?
In Edmonton and Northern Alberta two MPs, not just one. Maybe Ray Martin or Mark Voyageur?
In Calgary and South-Central Alberta one MP, not none. Maybe John Chan, Mark Sandilands or Holly Heffernan?
On Montreal Island two MPs, not just one. Maybe Alexandre Boulerice or Anne Lagacé Dowson or Daniel Breton?
In Laval--Laurentides--Lanaudière one MP, not none. Maybe Réjean Bellemare?
In Outaouais--Abitibi--Nord-du-Quebec one MP, not none. Françoise Boivin?
In Montérégie two MPs, not none. Maybe Richard Marois and Sonia Jurado or Lise Saint-Denis?
In Estrie--Centre-du-Québec--Mauricie one MP, not none. Maybe Annick Corriveau from Drummond, or their young star Geneviève Boivin from Trois-Rivières, or TV host Yves Mondoux from Sherbrooke?
In Quebec City and East Quebec two MPs, not none. Maybe Anne-Marie Day from Quebec City and Guy Caron from Rimouski or Raymond Côté from Quebec City?
In Central East Ontario two MPs, not none. Maybe Mike Shields from Oshawa and Myrna Clark from Barrie or Jo-Anne Boulding from Muskoka?
From Toronto four MPs, not just two. Maybe Peggy Nash and Marilyn Churley?
From Peel-Halton-York-Guelph two MPs, not none. Maybe Tom King from Guelph and Jagtar Shergill from Brampton or Nadine Hawkins from Markham or Karan Pandher from Mississauga?
In Eastern Ontario two MPs, not just one. Rick Downes from Kingston, or Darlene Jalbert from the Cornwall area?
From Nova Scotia three MPs, not just two. Gordon Earle or Tamara Lorincz?
In New Brunswick two MPs, not just one. Rob Moir or Alice Finnamore?
In Newfoundland and Labrador two MPs, not just one. Ryan Cleary?

However, New Democrat voters would have elected four fewer MPs from regions where they are now over-represented: two from Northern Ontario, one from Central South Ontario and one from Manitoba. So they would have a net gain of 19 MPs.

Green voters would have elected 17 MPs from regions where those voters are unrepresented:
One from Nova Scotia: no doubt Elizabeth May.
Two from the BC Lower Mainland: maybe Adriane Carr and Blair Wilson or Jim Stephenson?
Two from the BC Interior and Vancouver Island: maybe Huguette Allen or Angela Reid from the Okanagan, and John Fryer or Adam Saab or Christina Knighton from Vancouver Island?
One from Edmonton and Northern Alberta: maybe Les Parsons from Wetaskiwin or Monika Schaefer from Yellowhead or Will Munsey from Vegreville-Wainwright or David James Parker from Edmonton?
One from Calgary, Southern and Central Alberta: maybe Lisa Fox or Natalie Odd?
One from Saskatchewan: maybe young star Amber Jones, or Tobi-Dawne Smith?
One from Manitoba: maybe Kate Storey from Dauphin or Dave Barnes from Brandon?
One from Montreal: maybe Claude Genest or Jessica Gal?
One from Toronto: maybe Georgina Wilcock, Stephen LaFrenie, Ellen Michelson or Sharon Howarth?
One from Peel-Halton-York-Guelph: maybe Mike Nagy from Guelph, Ard Van Leeuwen from Caledon, Blake Poland from Oakville or Glenn Hubbers from Aurora?
One from Eastern Ontario: maybe Jen Hunter or Lori Gadzala or Sylvie Lemieux from Ottawa, or Eric Walton from Kingston?
One from Central East Ontario: maybe Valerie Powell or Erich Jacoby-Hawkins or Peter Ellis from Simcoe County, or Glen Hodgson from Parry Sound?
One from Central South Ontario: maybe Cathy MacLellan from Kitchener or Peter Ormond from Hamilton?
One from Southwestern Ontario: maybe Dick Hibma from Owen Sound or Mary Ann Hodge or Monica Jarabek from London?
One from New Brunswick: maybe Mary Lou Babineau from Fredericton or Alison Ménard from Moncton?

The unrepresented

It's not just Green Party voters who are unrepresented.

In Southern Alberta 32% of voters voted for candidates other than Conservatives, but elected no one.

As mentioned above, 28% of the voters in South Central Ontario (Hamilton-Waterloo-Niagara) voted Liberal but elected no one.

In the City of Toronto 26% of voters voted Conservative and elected no one.

In Saskatchewan 25.5% of voters voted NDP but elected no one.

In Estrie-Centre-du-Québec-Mauricie 18% of voters voted Liberal, and in Eastern Quebec 16%, but both groups elected no one.

A readily available proportional representation model for Canada.

2008-12-01T02:47:00.018-05:00

In the last election more than half the votes cast elected no one. This is not fair. Our voting system gives regional grievance parties a bonus, but no bonus for compromising. Many members of all parties and none want a fairer voting system.

Do we have a readily available model for a proportional representation system? Yes. (I have modified the model described below similar to the model presented by Prof. Henry Milner Feb. 21, 2009.)

The starting place would be the Law Commission of Canada Report tabled in March 2004. It proposed a mixed member proportional (MMP) model with two-third of MPs elected locally as today, and one-third of MPs to be regional "top-up" MPs elected personally under the "open list" model. You would have two votes, and more choice. "Open list" means that voters can vote for whoever they like out of the regional candidates nominated by the party's regional nomination process. Like the right-hand part of this ballot. The party would win enough regional "top-up" seats to compensate for the disproportional local results we know all too well. Those regional seats would be filled by the party's regional candidates who got the highest vote on the regional ballot. Each province would keep the same number of MPs it has today.

What have we learned since then?

The Law Commission was right to propose an open-list model. All MPs would face the voters. The voters have twice rejected MMP models with closed province-wide lists. Ontario voters would have voted for even that model if they had understood it, polls have shown, but that is not easy to explain, and anyway electoral reformers have concluded the Law Commission’s model would have been more acceptable on that point: the regional MPs would be more accountable. Voters are concerned with effective local representation, having an MP that they voted for and not having to vote strategically. With open regional lists, every voter will have a local MP, and if they did not vote for him or her, at least they will mostly have a regional MP they voted for.

This open-regional-list model was recommended by Scotland's Arbuthnott Commission in 2006 as an improvement to their regional model. A similar model is used in the German province of Bavaria.

In Germany and Scotland they nominate local candidates first, then rank them on regional lists as well. With open-list in smaller accountable regions the rank doesn't matter as much.

The Report says it is inspired by the systems currently used in Scotland and Wales, which have 16-MP regions (9 local MPs, 7 regional MPs) or 12-MP regions (8 local MPs, 4 regional MPs). With 2/3 local MPs, a 14-MP region would have 9 local MPs and 5 regional MPs. This would mean seven regions in Ontario, five or six in Quebec, two in BC, and two in Alberta. They also show a sample calculation with larger regions, because they provide more proportional results than smaller districts, and make it easier for smaller parties to win representation in Parliament, but this is not their recommendation.

First, Northern Ontario showed last year that they wanted Northern voters to elect Northern MPPs, and a guarantee that the North would not lose MPPs. The North must be a separate region. Jack Murray’s Ontario NDP PR Task Force reached the same conclusion in 2002.

Second, regions of 36 or so MPs would mean an effective threshold of only 3%. In Ontario’s referendum last year, the 3% threshold was widely criticized. Smaller regions with an effective threshold of 5% (or even higher in some cases) would be less controversial.

Third, ballots with long lists of candidates for as many as 12 regional MPs would be easy targets for criticism. Smaller regions would have more accountable MPs. As Lord Jenkins said: regional "members locally anchored . . . are, we believe, more easily assimilable into the British political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party directions."

So we need medium-sized regions.

The preferred model for Quebec has also been refined since 2004. Last December the Quebec Director-General of Elections tabled the latest report, which suggests a model with 127 MNAs in nine regions, an average of 14 each. Typically a region would have five regional MNAs, a workable number, and nine local MNAs, with an effective threshold averaging 7.1%. In the two most urban and largest regions it would be lower, giving new parties a chance for a foothold. When parties nominate five or more regional candidates, they will naturally tend to nominate a balanced group including women and minorities. And 85% of voters support electing more women, while only 11% oppose this.

In the model described here, in most cases, three present ridings become two larger ridings. Easily organized with an expedited Boundaries Commission process. Local ridings are usually 50% bigger than today. Regions have at least one-third regional MPs; a typical region would have 14 MPs, 9 local, 5 regional.

Yet would such a model, with separate smaller regions and only 35% regional MPs (compared with more than 40% in other models), produce fair results?

Yes, fair enough. A spreadsheet of the 2008 results shows that this model would (if voters voted the same) give quite proportional results. (See below.)

Does the model have distracting math problems? Not at all. If a party gets 38% of the vote in a 15-seat region, that's 5.7 seats, round up to 6. If it won 5 local seats already, that's one regional "top-up" MP. The only possible tricky math would be this: suppose one party gets 7.4 seats, one gets 6.3, and one gets 1.3, if you round them all down, that's only 14 seats; who gets the 15th? The one with 7.4: the "largest remainder" rule.

One of Jack Layton’s objectives in the 2008 election campaign was, as he put it, "the very early implementation" of proportional representation. This model would fit the bill.

What would a proportional House of Commons look like?

As compared with a perfectly proportional model, this model gave the Bloc three extra seats as a result of the low 35% ratio, at the cost of the Greens (two) and the Liberals (one). In the rest of Canada the 35% ratio costs the NDP two seats and the Greens two more, to the benefit of the Liberals (three, outweighing their Quebec loss) and the Conservatives (one). The result Canada-wide would have been 119 Conservatives, 83 Liberals, 56 NDP, 31 Bloc, 17 Greens, and two Independents: a Liberal-NDP government could rely on either the Greens or the Bloc for a majority. (In Germany they don't use the term "minority government" in that situation, they call it "governing with shifting majorities," a rather more accurate term. But in the situation where the minority government has only one partner, that's a "minority government with external support.")

This model gives the Greens one MP from Quebec, where they got only 3.5%. If there was a legal threshold of 5% in each province, the Greens would have no MP from Quebec.

Note that these numbers assume voters voted as they did on October 14. In fact, if voters knew every vote would count, more would have voted, and some would have voted differently. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds.