Minister of Democratic Institutions Introduces 8 Principles for Electoral Reform in Canada

[Blahface]

Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef has outlined 8 principles for Electoral reform in Canada:

1) Canadians should believe that their intentions as voters are fairly translated into elections results, without (the) significant distortion that often characterizes elections conducted under the first-past-the-post system
2) Canadians’ confidence needs to be restored — in their ability to influence politics and in their belief that their vote is meaningful .
3) Reforms need to increase diversity in the House of Commons and politics more broadly.
4) The chosen reform can’t make the electoral system more complex.
5) Voting needs to be more user-friendly and accessible.
6) Local Connection an MP has with their constituents should be maintained.
7) It needs to be secure and verifiable.
8) Canadians need to be inspired to find common ground and consensus.

If you want to keep it simple, approval voting is the way to go (voting for all the candidates you like instead of just one). It easy to understand, it is easy to tabulate, and it tends to elect the Condorcet winner (the candidate that beats all other candidates head-to-head). You can always support your favorite without being penalized for it and you can also make compromise votes if you feel that you have to. It is just as easy as FPTP, but it is more expressive and representative.

If you want proportional representation, the simplest solution is to use asset voting. The ballot instructions can read:

Vote for a single candidate. Top 5 candidates win a seat in the House of Commons. Candidates may transfer all or part of their votes to other candidates.

Each candidate can have a transfer list that is public to the voters and STV can be used based on the candidates transfer list.

Using STV directly is a bit confusing and complicated for voters. It is not very transparent and it is hard to tabulate results. Also, you can't expect voters to want to rank 50 candidates. Voting for a candidate would be like voting above the line in Australia, but the list would be tailored to the individual candidate instead of the party.

 

[bilby]

Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef has outlined 8 principles for Electoral reform in Canada:

1) Canadians should believe that their intentions as voters are fairly translated into elections results, without (the) significant distortion that often characterizes elections conducted under the first-past-the-post system
2) Canadians’ confidence needs to be restored — in their ability to influence politics and in their belief that their vote is meaningful .
3) Reforms need to increase diversity in the House of Commons and politics more broadly.
4) The chosen reform can’t make the electoral system more complex.
5) Voting needs to be more user-friendly and accessible.
6) Local Connection an MP has with their constituents should be maintained.
7) It needs to be secure and verifiable.
8) Canadians need to be inspired to find common ground and consensus.

If you want to keep it simple, approval voting is the way to go (voting for all the candidates you like instead of just one). It easy to understand, it is easy to tabulate, and it tends to elect the Condorcet winner (the candidate that beats all other candidates head-to-head). You can always support your favorite without being penalized for it and you can also make compromise votes if you feel that you have to. It is just as easy as FPTP, but it is more expressive and representative.

If you want proportional representation, the simplest solution is to use asset voting. The ballot instructions can read:

Vote for a single candidate. Top 5 candidates win a seat in the House of Commons. Candidates may transfer all or part of their votes to other candidates.

Each candidate can have a transfer list that is public to the voters and STV can be used based on the candidates transfer list.

Using STV directly is a bit confusing and complicated for voters. It is not very transparent and it is hard to tabulate results. Also, you can't expect voters to want to rank 50 candidates. Voting for a candidate would be like voting above the line in Australia, but the list would be tailored to the individual candidate instead of the party.

I would say that criterion number 4 kills any alternative to FPTP - ANY reform that meets the other criteria will make the electoral system more complex (although many possibilities exist that don't make it much more complex). This needs to be discarded, or at least made subordinate to the more important criteria. Of course, simplicity shouldn't be a primary objective in an electoral system; it should be considered only when you have a number of candidate systems that are very similar in the degree to which they achieve the other, more significant criteria, such as numbers 7, 1, 2, (and perhaps 6) in the list.

Point 3 is not for the voting system to decide; the degree of diversity should be up to the voters, and the system should reflect the amount of diversity the electorate desires; Point 5 is another 'nice to have' that will likely be independent of the system - it has more to do with infrastructural considerations, and those are largely dictated by criterion number 7, which is IMO the bedrock upon which any worthwhile system must be constructed.

Point 8 is meaningless politico-drivel; it's the job of an electoral system to give individuals a say in the selection of representatives, not to inspire anything, nor to push people into consensus; it is up to the elected representatives to inspire whatever they want to inspire in their voters, if they can, once they are in power.

Number 6 is interesting; I can see a lot of benefit in having a local connection, providing an MP who is 'ours' for voters to lobby - but in a multi-party system, that can discourage input from people who voted for the other guy, so it might make more sense to allocate one member from each of the major parties to each district/riding/region/constituency - so wherever you live, you have a local member from each major party to whom you can direct your questions, requests. lobbying efforts, grievances, etc., This might be achieved by having a bigger parliament, with more than one member elected in each district; or by (after the results are known) nominating the winner of an adjacent district as the representative for the losing party in your district - so if you have a blue MP in district A, and a red MP in neighbouring district B, the two elected members are given responsibility for both districts jointly; or by merging districts into larger blocs, each of which then elects several representatives.

So I would suggest the criteria need to be (in order of importance):

7) It needs to be secure and verifiable.
1) Canadians should believe that their intentions as voters are fairly translated into elections results, without (the) significant distortion that often characterizes elections conducted under the first-past-the-post system
2) Canadians’ confidence needs to be restored — in their ability to influence politics and in their belief that their vote is meaningful.
6) Local Connection an MP has with their constituents should be maintained.
5) Voting needs to be more user-friendly and accessible.
4) The chosen reform shouldn’t make the electoral system more complex, except where complexity is necessary to achieve the first five criteria.​

and they should have a six point plan (rather than eight), discarding the criteria:

3) Reforms need to increase diversity in the House of Commons and politics more broadly.
8) Canadians need to be inspired to find common ground and consensus.​

both of which should fall out as results of an improved system, and should not be part of its fundamental design.

 

[Blahface]

I would say that criterion number 4 kills any alternative to FPTP - ANY reform that meets the other criteria will make the electoral system more complex (although many possibilities exist that don't make it much more complex). This needs to be discarded, or at least made subordinate to the more important criteria. Of course, simplicity shouldn't be a primary objective in an electoral system; it should be considered only when you have a number of candidate systems that are very similar in the degree to which they achieve the other, more significant criteria, such as numbers 7, 1, 2, (and perhaps 6) in the list.

I would argue that approval voting is just as simple as FPTP – maybe more so because it has a lower ballot spoiler potential. It is also much easier to organize around issues.

Approval voting might fail number 3 though – diversity in politics. On one hand, approval voting ensures that candidates must get as much approval from all groups as possible, but it also tends to elect centrists. It seems they are looking for some sort of proportional representation system which would inherently make the system more complex. The least complex form of PR that can be implemented is asset voting as I have described in the OP, but that is still more complex than FPTP.

If you want to inspire common ground and consensus, I think they need to change parliamentary procedure. Chiefly, parliament would need to elect the prime minister through a Condorcet method.

 

[lpetrich]

I suggest taking a look at  Table of voting systems by country. It shows what different nations do.

Here are the main possibilities.

• First past the post (what we want to avoid) (single-seat)
• Two-round system -- top-two runoff elections (single-seat)
• Instant runoff voting (single-seat)
• Single transferable vote (multiseat)
• Party-list proportional representation (multiseat)
• Parallel voting: district seats elected in single-seat fashion and list seats elected in party-list fashion
• Mixed-member voting: like parallel voting, but the proportionality is over all the seats, not just the party-list ones

No nation uses approval voting or asset voting.

I think that that Canadian commission is likely to consider STV or MMP. Both options have a mixture of locality and proportionality.

 

[Blahface]

I suggest taking a look at  Table of voting systems by country. It shows what different nations do.

Here are the main possibilities.

• First past the post (what we want to avoid) (single-seat)
• Two-round system -- top-two runoff elections (single-seat)
• Instant runoff voting (single-seat)
• Single transferable vote (multiseat)
• Party-list proportional representation (multiseat)
• Parallel voting: district seats elected in single-seat fashion and list seats elected in party-list fashion
• Mixed-member voting: like parallel voting, but the proportionality is over all the seats, not just the party-list ones

No nation uses approval voting or asset voting.

I think that that Canadian commission is likely to consider STV or MMP. Both options have a mixture of locality and proportionality.

I doubt that they would choose approval voting as well, but I think it is the best choice and I think it best matches the criteria. I may be wrong, but I really don't think they are going to go with MMP or STV. They are overly complex and they don't have a history or passing referendums.

In all likelihood, I think they are going to go with IRV. That may be a problem if they Senate forces them to go through referendum as it does not have a good history of getting through that. IRV is pretty easy to mischaracterize as demonstrated by the Conservatives in the UK.

I'd prefer approval voting, but I just want to get rid of FPTP. I hope any reform passes and I hope the Liberals don't bungle it like the Liberal Democrats in the UK.

 

[lpetrich]

The Liberal Democrats were remarkably meek when the Tories stabbed them in the back about that issue.