G33KS 4 PR
No, I’m not talking about the federal election, or the provincial election. I’m not talking about a contest between the political parties at all..., but rather one that pits the parties -- the largest ones, at any rate -- against the citizens.
Or more particularly, the Citizens. As in the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, 103 randomly selected Ontarians who have been deliberating these past seven months over how, or whether, to fix the province’s electoral system. This weekend, the assembly will decide whether to recommend sticking with the present system, known as “first past the post,” or whether, as seems all but certain, to propose adopting a form of proportional representation, the system in use in most of the democratic world. The issue would then be put to the voters in a referendum, to coincide with this fall’s provincial election. And if Ontario goes for it, you may be sure the idea will take on new life elsewhere.
By rights, the referendum ought to overshadow the election, a pallid affair between two cautious centrists that will change nothing. Change the electoral system, on the other hand, and you change everything, not least the predominance of cautious centrists: poll-driven, essentially interchangeable brokerage parties who wouldn’t know an idea -- or a principle -- if it bit them in the leg. Electoral reform holds the potential, as nothing else does, to transform our politics, from the present squalid auction of state favours to a genuine contest of philosophies.
Which is why the two main parties, Liberals and Conservatives, are already lining up against it. (The NDP is in favour, though for scarcely less self-interested reasons.) Expect to see other interests, heavily invested in the status quo, campaign strenuously to defeat it. The Citizens’ Assembly? It has the support of a handful of geeks like me. But stay tuned: a similar exercise in B.C. last year resulted in a 57% vote in favour of electoral reform, including a majority of the voters in 77 of the province’s 79 ridings -- inches short of the required margin.
Which is why it’s disappointing that the assembly punted on the innovative form of PR proposed for BC, known as the “single transferable vote,” in favour of the more familiar “mixed member proportional,” as used, for example, in Germany. The STV model -- or as I call it, the 1-2-3 -- has acquired a reputation for complexity, but as far as the voters are concerned it’s as simple as can be: you just mark your ballot in order of preference.
But the STV model also makes use of multi-member constituencies -- instead of just one member of the legislature per riding, you’d have as many as seven competing to represent you -- and apparently the assembly thought that would be a hard sell. Under MPP, by contrast, the majority of the members would be elected in the usual way, one member per riding, but with the addition of a certain number of members elected from party lists, according to the proportion of the popular vote each party received (hence “proportional” representation).
In the assembly’s model, there would be 90 MPPs elected in the ridings (down from 107), topped up with 39 elected by PR. Voters would mark their ballot twice: once for the candidate, once for the party. In the end, you get a distribution of seats that is not quite proportional, but not as outrageously distorted as is often the case under first-past-the-post.
So far, so okay. The clinching case for proportional representation is not in the name of fairness between the parties, but fairness between voters: to give every vote equal weight in deciding who is represented in the legislature, not just those who happen to vote for the winning team. The 1-2-3 model does that quite nicely; MMP, not so much.
Worse, the assembly opted to allow the parties to decide the order in which PR candidates should be elected from lists: what’s called the “closed” list system. (I told you I was a geek.) Far better would have been to allow the voters themselves to indicate which of a party’s candidates they wished to send to the legislature -- the “open” list system. Believe it or not, this is critical.
One of the legitimate criticisms of PR, once you get past the usual “Italy and Israel” nonsense, is that it puts too much power in the hands of the party brass to decide who gets in. STV answers this objection, and then some: local candidates in fact would be far more independent of party than at present, since voters could give a high ranking to an individual candidate they liked even if they gave low marks to the rest of his party. Open lists also pass the test. But a closed-list system is vulnerable.
No matter. Even a flawed version of PR is yards better than the system we have now. Once escaped from the bovine attachment to the status quo on which so much of the anti-PR case rests, there will be time to discuss improvements. But for now, the game’s afoot! Bring on the referendum!
4/11/2007
