Blown into Proportion
One issue that seems to be getting virtually no attention during this election campaign is Lord's 2008 referendum on electoral reform. I'm going to skip the sermon on the pitfalls of the archaic, out-dated, vote wasting first-past-the-post system and the virtues of the proposed mixed member proportional system. I'm just going to assume that you understand the fact that the proposed MMP system is more democratic, more civilized, more equitable, and just plain better. If you believe that the current anti-democratic system of throwing the majority of votes away and systematically disenfranchising most New Brunswickers is preferable to a more proportional system, you might be either (a) misinformed, (b) a person with a vested interest in the disproportionate status quo, (c) Kelly Lamrock, or (d) all of the above. If you are (a), this is a great resource for you. If you are (b), then I will begrudgingly suppose that your position is understandable. If you are (c) or (d), then god help ya.
Here are what I assume to be the party positions:
- Tories are in favour of proportional representation, because of its populist potential and innate correctness. The introduction of a proportional system would reinvigorate the NB NDP, a development that would affect the Liberals more negatively than the Tories.
- Liberals are against it because it would hurt them electorally.
- NDPers are for it, obviously. The NDP has been grossly shortchanged by the current system. A more proportional system would: attract excellent candidates to the NDP, get more seats for the NDP, and cause more people to vote NDP.
None of this is meant to insult the Liberals in any way. Politics is a Machiavellian exercise and either of the other parties would act the same way in the Liberals' position. After winning an election under the old system, the federal Tories aren't talking about it. NDP governments won in the old system in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and aren't clamouring for proportional representation. Unfortunately, it's all about position and not policy.
At any rate, I hope that New Brunswickers will hold whichever government is elected to the promise of a referendum. A fair referendum.
posted by Alvy Singer @ 10:52 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
That's funny, I've always argued that people who are supportive of this kind of system meet criteria 'a'.
First, to rebutt a few of your comments...
I don't understand why it is when the Liberals and other major parties oppose PR that they are considered to be doing so due to a vested interest in the status quo while when the NDP and other smaller parties, who would benefit more from PR than major parties would suffer, are exclusively doing so because it is right not because it will help them. I mean come on!
Proponents of PR tend to have an attitude such as you are portraying here, Alvy, in that they argue that anyone who doesn't support their view is, essentially, stupid and/or corrupt. Again, I say come on.
Is FPTP a perfect system? No. Is MMP or any other PR system? No.
Proponents of PR say that it is tried and proven around the world and that Canada is in the dark ages of democracy by sticking to our antiquated plurailty system. This is an oversimplification which distorts reality.
Of the major wesminister-style democracies of the world, only New Zealand uses MMP. Australia does use an STV PR system but only for its Senate which is a different kettle of fish altogether. (As a side bar, I would support the reintroduction of an upper house in NB - something we had until 1892 - which would have equal rep by county or other region and be elected by PR)
If we look to New Zealand, they have been electing under MMP only since 1996 and have not had great results. As a matter of fact there is a growing movement there to scrap it.
It is not well proved in systems similar to ours and may be thrown out in the one system like ours which uses it.
Why?
The fundamental nature of Westminister democracy is that we all vote only once. We vote in our riding for our local MP/MLA and everything else flows from that point.
If you move to any form of PR this fundamental aspect must change and that is not something as simple as PR proponents would argue.
In New Zealand, they are considering scrapping PR because they have found that it creates unequal MPs.
Those who are elected from ridings have to tend to their constituents and also balance that with their allegience to a party. Those MPs elected on the PR side are free to do as they please without facing concequences from a riding.
Unequal legislators is not a good thing.
Also, in order to go to PR we have to either enlarge the ridings (I.e. lessen local representation) or increase the number of MLAs or both. No one wants that.
Thanks for commenting, nbpolitico.
I included a paragraph explaining how there was nothing anti-Liberal about this. In fact, to use your example of the NDP, I specifically pointed out that the Manitoba and Saskatchewan NDP governments are staying away from PR for strategic reasons. The names of the parties don't matter, they are interchangeable. If PR was bad for the NDP or Tories, they would be against it, no question. Thought I made that clear, but perhaps I was being too subtle on that point. My apologies.
Also, I wrote that people might be (a), (b), (c) or (d). Clearly the list was never intended to be exhaustive.
The proposed model for New Brunswick increases the size of the legislature from 55 to 56. As for local representation, I would argue that the proposed MMP system for New Brunswick actually increases local representation despite the slightly larger constituencies: under MMP (NB version), you have your regular local MLA and five regional list MLAs. That's six people that any citizen can bitch to. Not too shabby.
As for how many times we vote, that remains unchanged. Under the proposed NB MMP model, we vote for both a candidate and a party. Currently, we vote for both a candidate and a party. The difference is that MMP allows us to pick our own permutation.
Creating two classes of MLAs is a legitimate concern, and one of the small issues with MMP.
NB MMP is not perfect, as you point out. But really, it is much better than FPTP, the primary virtue of which is that it is the status quo. In a legitimate policy debate, being the status quo should not be a consideration: it is a fiction created for ease of argumentation.
I really appreciate you comments, nbpolitico.
I really do try to be non-partisan here and none of this was intended to attack the Liberals or their motives. Every party would do the same in their position. Flip the Liberals and Tories (or the Liberals and NDP) and the same arguments would be coming from the Tories (or the NDP) that are now coming from the Liberals - and for the same reasons.
Fair voting isn't (or ought not to be) a partisan issue, though. I feel quite passionately about it, have studied it at an advanced level and am genuinely concerned for the future of our democracy.
Oh, and 'misinformed' does not equal 'stupid'.
For example, I am quite misinformed about the sport of cricket. This is not because I am stupid, it is because I have never looked into cricket and nobody has ever explained it to me. I am certainly capable of understanding cricket.
I am still anxiously waiting for Lordslation and Brewerslation.
I didn't mean to say that you were attacking the Liberals. When I said the Liberals or other major parties I was using their name only becuase they were the example in your post.
My argument was that the parties who would suffer from PR are not necessarily opposed to it for greedy and unsavoury reasons, they may just think it is bad policy.
Moreover though, the crux of that argument was that I think that it is generally unfair that the reason given for big parties favouring the status quo is always that they are power hungry jerks while the small parties favouring PR are virtuous and the fact they would benefit seems to be a coincidence.
You make a good point in terms of local rep under the NB model but my fear would be that those regions would be dominated by the large population clusters. For a region we would have to combine 11 current ridings. So let's say the Moncton region under NBMMP would consist of the 4 present day Moncton ridings, two Dieppe ridings, Petitcodiac, Albert. Riverview, (antramar and Shediac. The 5 MLAs elected from the list are almost certainly going to be from Moncton or Greater Moncton. Where is the representation for Salisbury, Hillsborough, Sackville, Cap-Pele, etc?
Even if that were not an issue, I really think the dual class MLAs would ruin our system.
If you feel we must have MMP then we should have no local MLAs and have 10 or 11 regions electing 5 members or some variation thereof.
My preference though would be to maintain the single member districts and eliminate wasted votes by bringing in the time tested and proven Australian model of preferential balloting.
* I meant to say PR and not MMP when I proposed that you do away with local MLAs altogether. If it were a serious of regional lists it would not be mixed member, it would be STV.
I think that you are really overstating the dual class thing. First of all, this sort of bifurcated class structure may not even occur. And even if it did, you can't just assume that the effects would be negative. The "two classes of representatives" thing is a really minor point. If it exists, it might have an effect. If it has an effect, the effect might be negative. If the effect is negative, it might be significant. It's a real reach.
As for rural representation, the notion of political accountability would still exist. Any group that votes will be attended to.
In fact, you could have even smaller ridings under the NB MMP system, because you could allow for small districts that constitute "communities of interest" in a way that FPTP's half-assed, impotent attempt at vote equity (trying to make the ridings all within 10% of the average) currently prevents.
The goal of McLaughlin's report was to strike a balance between local representation and proportionality. He did it very well and the report was lauded across the country. People also have to be able to understand it - and the NB MMP model is very simple - so STV had a major strike against it in that sense. In fact, confusion over STV (and Gordon Campbell's RIDICULOUS requirement of a 60% threshold for the 'yes' side) is credited with killing the idea in British Columbia (for now).
nbpolito, I must admit that you are the first person that I have actually met you has had real, actual, legitimate points on the 'no' side of this debate. I appreciate this very much. I still disagree with you of course, but I respect your tenacity and ability to articulate.
One technique of the 'no' side, if this referendum ever happens, will be to begin talking about other models of PR and which would be best. This is for two reasons: (1) FPTP is virtually indefensible, so they have to do something, and (2) to get people away from the very simple question: would you prefer FPTP or MMP? That should the only part of a simple question.
In my view, the minor problems with MMP could not possibly over-ride the fact that FPTP wastes the votes of most New Brunswickers. Hell, I don't think that major problems with MMP could over-ride that.
I would think that MMP would benefit the Liberals. With MMP we would have minority governments and coalitions would become necessary - the NDP are natural allies of the Liberals. A Liberal-NDP coalition government (possibly the Greens to?) could dominate the political landscape in New Brunswick for a long time to come!
Gotta love cricket ;)
NBPolitico, you make some interesting points - most of which we dealt with on the Commission. On the issue of overwhelming urban representation on the lists, there are ways to combat that.
One would be for a party to make sure that the members on its list were scattered throughout the region. The party that had the most diversity (be it geographical, gender, linguistic, etc.) could use that as a selling point and the voters could decide whether to reward them.
If a party knew that it was unlikely to elect a constituency MLA from a particular group of ridings, it could strategically place a candidate from that group at the top of its list...
Another way would be to keep rural regions and urban regions separate, so that one's MLAs do not predominate over the other.
Lastly, and the one I pushed for and did not succeed with, you could have MORE list MLAs from the regions and fewer from the cities, because urban areas have other levels of government and urban MLAs are nowhere near as busy as their rural counterparts.
There are ways you could do that and still respect rep-by-pop and not violate the Constitution.
As for dual class MLAs, we researched that in considerable depth. In Germany, and Malta, and may other jurisdictions, the elected members did not distinguish themselves, nor were they tarred, by being elected one way or the other. It just did not materialize.
MMP is a strong system. Frankly, I think if it fails here in NB it will be because the public has just witnessed what a tight legislature would look like (which will be the norm under MMP) and I'm sure they're not happy with what they saw - especially the committee gridlock.
Therefore, although I'll be boosting MMP out in the wild when the time comes, I think Leg reforms MUST come first that will allow a government to actually govern in a tight house - and not go through what it had to endure in 2006.
If we adopted MMP right away without changing the Standing Rules first, it could be a disaster.
If the parties (particularly the opposition) had mature leadership it would be a different story, but we can't ever guarantee that such leadership would be there. It wasn't there this spring.
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