Tag Archives: voting reform

What Is MMP?

democracy and good government, ontario referendum on mmp,

This is the second of three posts concerning the the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform’s recommendation that Ontario vote yes to adopt a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system in the October 10, 2007 referendum. The first outlined the need for change; the next will refute some common arguments from the “no” side.

Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) is a “best of both words” voting system. It will allow us in Ontario to keep the parts of our current system that we like (for example, that our MPPs represent our specific geographic area) while adding on some extra features, the most notable of which is proportional representation. MMP is used in some other countries including Germany and New Zealand, but the specific system we’ll be voting on was designed by Ontarians for Ontario.

So, how would this system work? First, voters would cast two votes: one for their preferred local candidate, and one for the party they support over all. It’s up to voters if they want to place their candidate vote and their party vote with the same party or not. This new system removes the obligation of having to vote for a candidate you dislike to elect your party of choice, or vice versa.

Next, the candidate votes are counted the old fashioned way; whichever candidate gets the most votes in each riding wins, same as before.

That’s when MMP’s extra features kick in. After all the candidate votes are counted and all of those seats have been allocated, we get to take a step back and see if we’ve elected Members with proportionality to the party vote–that second vote you cast. Proportionality means that the number of Members elected from a party should be roughly equivalent to the percentage of the vote that party gets. That’s what people mean when they talk about proportional representation.

That’s accomplished through another group of seats–the party vote seats–that can be distributed to compensate for discrepancies in proportionality (eg, party X got 10% of the vote but no seats, while party Y got 40% of the vote but 60% of the seats). These “top-up” seats are filled with Members from lists that are supplied by the parties.

(It’s important to note that not only do parties have to make these lists public well before the election, for the sake of transparency they also have to make public the process by which the lists were generated. In other countries where MMP is used, parties often chose to “zipper” the lists so that they alternate male/female, ensuring greater gender parity. Also, only parties that receive at least 3% of the vote will qualify to elect list seats, so only parties with clear support will be elected to the legislature.)

At the end of the day we end up with a legislature that more closely reflects the diverse makeup of the province, and more accurately reflects the will of the electorate. By its nature, MMP also forces parties to be more cooperative, which leads to stable coalition governments (as opposed to the negative and combative minority governments our current system has been giving us at the federal level).

Still don’t get it or have other questions? Let me know by commenting below. I’m going to continually improve this post with your feedback as we move towards the referendum on October 10th. Also, some more technical details about MMP in Ontario are available here, and in the Citizens’ Assembly’s report, due May 15th.

The Need For Change

democracy and good government, ontario referendum on mmp, ,

This is the first of what will be three posts concerning the the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform‘s recommendation that Ontario vote yes to adopt a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system in the October 10, 2007 referendum. The next two will cover what is MMP, and refute arguments from the “no” side.

Most of you probably already know this, but I thought that before we got into what MMP is and why we should adopt it, it would be useful to review what’s wrong with the system we’ve got now. (I’m taking much of the below information from Fair Vote Canada.)

Admittedly, there are flaws and trade-offs with every voting system. The system we (Canada and all the provinces) use now, however, is particularly ill-suited for the time and place that we find ourselves in. It’s known as First Past the Post (FPP) or Single Member Plurality (SMP), which basically means that whoever gets the most votes in a given riding wins that riding, even if they haven’t received the majority of votes. (In other words, they win even if most people voted for someone else.)

As this is applied on a provincial or national level, the result is that a party can win only 40% of the vote, but get 60% of the seats, and 100% of the power. What’s worse, is that if you happen to live in a riding where your preferred candidate doesn’t have a chance (for example, if you’re a Conservative in Toronto), your vote doesn’t count towards electing anyone. And in a democracy, every vote should count.

Here are some federal examples of the strange distortions that our voting system has created:

  • In 1984, the Progressive Conservatives win 50% of the votes but gain nearly 75% of the seats
  • In 2004, more than 500,000 Green voters fail to elect a single MP anywhere, while fewer than 500,000 Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada alone elect 22 Liberal MPs
  • The 2004 election produces a House with only 21% women MPs, with Canada now ranking 36th among nations in percentage of women MPs, well behind most Western European countries
  • In 1993, the newly formed Bloc Quebecois comes in fourth in the popular vote, but forms the Official Opposition by gaining more seats than the second place Reform Party and third place Tories
  • In 2000, 2.3 million Liberal voters in Ontario elect 100 Liberal MPs while the other 2.2 million Ontario voters elect only 3 MPs from other parties
  • In 1993, more than two million votes for Kim Campbell’s Progressive Conservatives translate into two seats – or one seat for every 1,000,000 votes. Meanwhile, the voting system gives the Liberal Party one seat for every 32,000 votes

The biggest winners under our current system are regional parties like the Bloc, while the biggest losers are women and minorities (our current system is extremely good at electing white men, and less effective at electing everyone else). Ultimately, people feel like their votes don’t count, and/or that they can’t vote for the candidates or parties they truly believe in for fear of accidentally electing someone they’re truly afraid of.

The good news is, we can do better…

Listen to the people on electoral reform, says Green Party

democracy and good government, green party,

From http://www.greenparty.ca/en/releases/18.04.2007…

A fair system for electing members of parliament.

OTTAWA – The results of Ontario’s public consultation on electoral reform send a clear signal to the federal government to abandon its ludicrous “private” public consultation and start listening to what Canadians want – a fair system for electing members of parliament, Green Party leader Elizabeth May said today.

“The Harper government promised in the Throne Speech to consider reforming our archaic first-part-the-post voting system,” said May, “but they have no real interest in changing a system that puts them in power with 36% of the vote.”

This became clear, she said, when the government appointed a conservative think tank to run the closed-door focus groups that will be the basis for its “public” consultation on electoral reform.

May called for an open and transparent nationwide consultation on the issue. “Ontario’s Citizens’ Assembly is a great model,” she said, “and the fact that it has come out overwhelmingly in favour of the change to proportional representation proves that this is an idea whose time has come.”

Green Party electoral reform spokesperson Chris Tindal said that members of the Citizens’ Assembly underwent intensive education and public consultation phases, and heard from all view points before reaching their decision.

“It was a truly democratic, grassroots and unbiased process, in stark contrast to the Harper government’s current $900,000 closed-door think tank process, which can produce questionable results at best,” he said.

“Politicians should take note of the overwhelming majority (92%) by which the Citizens’ Assembly voted in favour of change. This proves that not only do most people want a fair voting system, but that their support for proportional representation increases the more they know about it.”

“Democracy belongs to citizens, not politicians,” said Tindal. “For too long, Canadians have sensed that something is wrong with their voting system but have not known what to do about it. Ontario now has a chance to take democracy back. The rest of Canada deserves the same chance.”

-30-

Fair Vote Canada Seminar on Electoral Reform

democracy and good government

Last night I attended a seminar on electoral reform hosted by the Toronto chapter of Fair Vote Canada. There was a good turn out, and many in the audience didn’t necessarily know a whole lot about our voting system, the alternatives, or what it means to have proportional representation. Many also left feeling better informed, and prepared to be advocates for electoral reform in Canada (likely starting in BC or Ontario).

There were four presentations. Gregory Laxton began by explaining the need for electoral reform in Canada, which he described as “one of the only meta-issues in political science,” meaning it’s one of the only political issues that effects how all other issues are debated and decided. Even though we don’t have a two-party system, Laxton explained, we do have a “two-party dynamic,” where there usually are only two parties who have a chance to form government or win any single riding (Wayne Smith later pointed out that, in many ridings, there’s actually a one-party dynamic). This motivates the two most popular parties to present themselves as binary opposites (even though they almost never are), which in turn leads to a binary-decision making process in parliament, and wrongly convinces many voters that there are only two sides to every issue. Laxton emphasized that our voting system was designed in 1265, before political parties or universal education. We now have a much more sophisticated electorate that can handle more sophisticated options. He concluded by explaining that a “winner takes all” system is a zero-sum game, meaning there’s no culture of consensus or compromise. A proportional model is a consensus model, which means everyone (parties, politicians, media, voters) starts thinking differently about their options. We need to get over the cultural belief that “compromise is week.”

Wayne Smith then spoke about Fair Vote Canada’s founding principals, and outlined various discrepancies between how people voted and who ended up in parliament. He talked about Ontario’s Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, and said that over the next 18 months we’ll need a lot of activists to spread the word about why our voting system needs to be changed.

The third speaker was June Macdonald, with a presentation called “Size Matters to Women.” She said there are two kinds of representation: Substantive Representation of policy issues and concerns, and Descriptive/Mirror Representation that reflects the diversity of the electorate. Canada ranks 44th in the world for representation of women in government, and our system is largely to blame. (There are obviously cultural issues at play as well, but Macdonald pointed out that it’s actually easier–as a first step–to change our electoral system than to change all of the cultural attitudes around women.) She argued that the current candidate selection process favours “comfortable, Homo Politicus” candidates, and that party list systems create more diverse candidates.

Finally, Bruce Budd got in to the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of three different proportional voting systems: the party list system, mixed member proportional (MMP), and single transferable vote (STV). His presentation was extremely technical, and, while interesting, would not be well-replicated here. The important thing to emphasize is that perhaps even more important than which voting system we choose are the details of how it is implemented. Each system has many small nuances that can make a big difference.

That’s why it’s so important for this decision to be made by a citizens’ assembly, because the strength of our voting system goes straight to the health of our democracy. And because, as Wayne Smith pointed out, “our voting system belongs to us, not politicians or political parties.”