The polls show support for radical reform of British Columbia's electoral system within striking range of the level required for victory in tomorrow's referendum. While still short of the mark, the proposed single-transferable vote (STV) leads two to one among those voters who say they are well-informed on the issue.

In itself this is a remarkable result: for an unusual and seemingly complicated proposal to overcome voters' natural propensity to say "no" suggests British Columbians understand there is something seriously wrong with our traditional voting system, known as first-past-the-post (FPP), in which the plurality rules. And why shouldn't they? In recent elections, BC voters have not only seen "majority" governments elected with well short of a majority of the vote, but with fewer votes than their opponents!

But that doesn't begin to describe the problems with FPP. Along with exaggerating and distorting the overall result, it discriminates against smaller parties; it deprives voters who support a candidate other than the winner of representation; it narrows choices. Worse yet are its effects nationally. The party that can cluster its votes geographically will win many mores seats than a party whose support is spread more broadly and evenly, rewarding regional grievance-mongering at the expense of a national vision.

We can debate the specifics of the BC vote later. But for now, wouldn't you agree we'd be better served by a system in which the distribution of seats in the legislature bore some resemblance to the distribution of the vote among the public -- that is, by some form of proportional representation? If a people get the government they deserve, shouldn't they at least get the government they voted for?

-- ac

Andrew,

I agree completely that we'd be better served by a system in which the distribution of seats in the legislature bore some resemblance to the distribution of the vote among the public. And I agree completely that a political system that emphasizes regionalism harms Canada and her potential. These are among the reasons you should -- and I do -- oppose propose proportional representation in favour of a clear-winner, First Past the Post system for Canada.

PR's great atttraction for most reformers is its ability to engineer a predetermined minority representation, and not just by minority parties. Too few women MPs? PR can, and in many countries does, deliver more female representatives than voters would willingly choose. Too few ethnic minorities? Getting the right ethnic mix is touted as a PR strength. PR is also the political system of choice if you want to deliver the right number of Christians vs Moslems, or Shia vs Sunni. Or the right number of racists. French President Francois Mitterrand, a socialist, successfully introduced PR in 1986 to empower Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and split the conservatives (when the conservatives subsequently regained power, they switched back to a First-Past-the Post system, in the process ending Le Pen's power).

More to your point, Andrew, PR provides the answer for those who believe this region or that has a moral claim to more representation. PR disproportionately tilts to regions in most jurisdictions, typically by amalgamating small jurisdictions or manufacturing large new ones, in the process creating explicit regional elections. This is exactly how PR's champions want it to work in Canada: in B.C, for example, up to seven existing ridings would be amalgamated into one; in Quebec, the entire province would be carved into just three regional districts. If you're looking for a way to enshrine regional rights over individual and national rights by creating new regional tiers of government, you can't do much better than PR.

I have a radical concept to propose: one person, one vote. With one person, one vote, under a FPP system we wouldn't see the great distortions in representation now evident, with a voter in a rural riding often having twice or even three times the weight of an urban counterpart. With one person, one vote, Alberta's cities, where Liberals have tended to do well, would have elected more Liberals, making the province seem more like the rest of the country. Likewise, Quebec's separatist strongholds in the rural areas would have sent fewer MPs to parliament, giving those who would split the country apart less clout.

At the same time, a one-person, one-vote FPP would indirectly defuse fairness concerns, because in many important ways who we are determines where we live. Our FPP system now elects minority candidates, who tend to live in tight-knit urban communities, without difficulty. With one-person, one vote creating more urban ridings, we would see more representatives coming from smaller minorities -- minorities not populous enough to meet the PR threshold -- and they wouldn't all be ethnic minorities. Urban gays (are there any other kind) would also elect more members, as would greens, and any others found attractive to urban voters in a district. Unlike the crude regional representation that PR imposes -- the Law Reform Commission recommends federal representatives be chosen from provincial lists, for example -- FPP communities would better represent the country's diversity without binding the citizenry to vote by region, or minority, or anything else. They would vote for the individual candidate that best represented their aspirations. If that candidate be gay, separatist, fundamentalist or white-bread Canadian, so be it. If we can't be unabashed Canadians even in federal elections, Andrew, is there any hope for the country?

-- ls

Larry,

You seem to be concerned about everything except proportional representation. I can't be responsible for what some proponents of PR might prefer to add on top in the way of racial or gender quotas, but I can assure you the standard model comes without these extras -- and besides, there are as many people who would gerrymander an FPP system in the same way, if they could. Would, and have.

Indeed, you save most of your fire for the unfairness of our current system. I can see why a stricter adherence to one-person, one-vote would improve it, but I don't see why this is supposed to be an argument against proportional representation. Giving every vote equal weight is one of the chief arguments for PR. Even a "pure" FPP system, without the overweighting of rural ridings you decry, would still be grounded in the same fundamental inequity: the 30% or less of the voters who typically elect the winner in any given riding get 100% of the representation. In the aggregate, 40% of the voters can often claim two-thirds or more of the seats. That's hardly one-person, one-vote.

PR would be a departure, it is true, from the appealing simplicity of one-riding, one-vote. Most PR systems involve either a mixture of constituency representatives and those elected from party lists, or the multi-member ridings envisaged in the proposal before B.C. voters. But that's in the service of giving every voter a more equal voice. With more than one MP from each riding, it's possible to more closely represent the actual diversity of views among the riding's voters. Ditto in the legislature as a whole. At the same time, the transferable ballot (voters rank the candidates in order, with second- and third-choices redistributed as need be) ensures candidates have to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate, and not just a narrow slice.

Although this means, in some cases, larger ridings, this hardly amounts to "new regional tiers of government," as you put it. Though a riding might have three or four times as many voters as before, it would correspondingly have three or four MPs: the ratio of electors to elected remains the same. Moreover, in such a system candidates compete, not just against those representing other parties, but their own as well. (The same is true of mixed-member "list" systems, provided it is left to voters, and not party brass, to choose which of the listed candidates get in.) Voters would no longer be stuck with the Hobson's choice they often face at present: either a candidate they like representing a party they despise, or the reverse.

That sometimes gives rise to another complaint: that PR would weaken parties. If MPs were elected as much in their own right as by virtue of their party affiliation, it is pointed out, they would be less beholden to the party machinery. Sorry: this is a complaint? Canada has had all too much experience with party discipline, and the resulting failure of Parliament to hold those in power to account.

What about accountability at the local level? Would multi-member ridings leave voters uncertain whom to blame if things went badly? Possibly. But with more than one member to choose from, voters would also benefit from the stimulus to better representation competition would provide. Choice carries risks, but also rewards. That's why we have more than one party.

-- ac

Andrew,

You are quite right. I do see no virtue in proportional representation by political party. The PR systems now in existence -- virtually all failed or unproven -- come in more varieties than there are countries. And, much as I admire your powers of persuasion, I do not see you carrying the day in ensuring that some better brand that Canada adopts is less failure prone -- I do not even know what your variety looks like, except that you would give mainstream political parties more weight, and local residency less, and you would somehow make your system less subject to manipulation than the thousand others that change their principles with the fashions. There is no "standard model," except in the imagination, much as Marxism in the abstract once seemed sensible.

PR doesn't promote regionalism? Let me remind you that prominent PR models put forward for Canada -- including that by the Law Reform Commission, which you have elsewhere cited approvingly -- produce explicitly provincial lists for federal elections. That is not just amalgamated regional ridings -- some the size of countries -- which are bad enough. That is elevating regional jurisdictions at the national jurisdiction's expense.

Your One Big Confusion, Andrew, lies in thinking that meaningful choice can come of sharing executive power. When a company chooses a leader among, say, five-top candidates, it does not make the four also-rans vice-presidents with the power to veto the CEO's decisions. Especially if the also-rans have radically different ideas of the direction in which to take the company. It lets the leader implement his ideas and test their merit. If his ideas are wanting, the company turfs him out and chooses again, having learned from the experience. A company -- or any organization -- led by a collective that agrees on nothing would go nowhere and learn nothing.

-- ls

Larry,

Have you run out of specific objections already? Are we reduced to generalities about PR being "failed or unproven," and in "virtually all" cases to boot? All? Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia ... well, most of the democratic world, in fact: failed states, (nearly) every one? Each of these countries has its problems, but if proportional representation is the cause, what's our excuse?

As for unproven, which I gather is meant to take in the BC experiment -- STV, as its opponents never fail to remind us, is in use in only three countries in the world -- this is essentially a restatement of Cornford's law: that nothing should ever be done for the first time. One of the three, I should note, is Ireland, a spectacular economic success which we are forever being encouraged to emulate in other respects. And talking of rarities, there's another system only three developed countries use: FPP, now restricted to Britain (which is thinking of ditching it), the United States, and Canada.

I like the US. But it's a two-party system, the kind FPP was designed for. Once you get into three and four and five parties, you get the kind of vote-splitting that so distorts our legislatures. As important, it's a functioning federation.

This is the oddest part of your argument: your suggestion that PR would balkanize Canada, already the most balkanized federation in the world (even the Balkans are more united than we are). By rewarding regional voting blocks (or indeed Blocs) FPP has done more to inflame regional tensions than anything I can think of. You speak of the provincial lists some propose, but you neglect to mention these would be in addition to traditional constituency reps.

What's the point, then? The point is to have a Parliament that looks more like the country. Under PR, there would be more Liberals elected in the West, more Tories in Ontario and Quebec -- and fewer Blocquistes anywhere. Differences of opinion would turn less on region than on ideology. The system would no longer be stacked against parties that took a broader national view. Reinvested with legitimacy in this way, the federal government would be better able to assume its proper national responsibilities.

A final point. With your last gasp, you raise the spectre of endless coalition governments, rather than the smoothly alternating majorities of the Westminister system (leaving aside the present mess). I like the "firm smack of authority" as much as the next fellow -- oof! yes! use your mandate! -- but if it's a majority government people want, they can just as easily vote for it under PR. The difference is, they would have voted for it.

-- ac

Andrew,

By unproven, I mean that almost no PR country has stood the test of time, and almost none rival Canada, the U.K., or the U.S. in either democratic freedoms or economic prowess.

Italy, with 60 governments in the last 60 years, is not on your list. Neither is France, a PR state before World War II whose disgrace led De Gaulle to switch to FPP. Germany is on your list but shouldn't be: It, too, was a PR state before the Second World War whose disgrace led to fascism. New Zealand shouldn't be on your list, either: While they did recently move away from FPP, most soon regretted that decision, leading reformers to agitate for a move back.

I measure the success of a country's political system in centuries, not years or even decades. We think of Canada as a young country but even our FPP system is older and more stable than that of virtually all PR nations. The inherent strength of FPP can also be seen in India's ascendancy: the world's largest democracy has an unusually free press, an unusually prosperous economy and an unusually stable society, all this despite the assassination of its political leaders and factional conflicts and military burdens that make those in the west seem trivial.

I do not oppose PR because it hasn't been tried -- as you've shown, it's been tried (and tried and tried) almost everywhere on earth. I oppose PR because, with few exceptions, it has failed to last more than a few decades almost everywhere on earth.

We agree that FPP works best in the U.S. It would work equally well in Canada if we simply do what the U.S. (and the UK) does: Allow legislators a free vote in most instances to make them truer representatives, allow more plebiscites to diminish the demand for one-issue parties (a trend in PR as well as FPP countries) and respect the principle of democracy that most Canadians think we already have -- one-person, one-vote.

--ls