Israel - the posterchild for nixing proportional representation

Lawrence Solomon:

... Israel, which has the world’s purest system of PR — winning just 2% of the vote entitles any party to sit in parliament. ...

... coalition governments are formed through back-scratching agreements with smaller parties who join the coalition in exchange for getting their way on issues they care most about. Under PR, not only does the tail wag the dog, this dog has many tails — at least one for each coalition member....

... our PR system would be Made-in-Canada, based on Canadian values. We could then protect any Canadian minority view able to muster 2% of the vote, and then with luck leverage that 2% into a conscription of 100% of the population. ...

....The deadly dull unfactionalized politics of Canada could be transformed, with Canadians never knowing quite what would come of their votes, even after they had voted ...

 Less government with "deadly dull unfactionalized politics" is what we should be aiming for.  But academics, media pundits, the flaky fringe and other assorted political junkies keep pressing for PR.  And they'll keep pressing no matter how many times the wise voting public says "NO!".

Mr. Solomon wrote about PR a few years back.

Coyne won't quit flogging the 'election reform' horse

For now it's just a proposal to use a ranked or preferential ballot in Toronto city council elections but he's hoping this will stimulate broader reform:

... its adoption by Canada’s largest city could change a great deal — not only in Toronto but across the country.

... Would Toronto’s adoption of the ranked ballot help or hurt the broader cause of electoral reform? Almost certainly it would help.

... So while a ranked ballot is not proportional representation, it would, crucially, mark the first breach in first-past-the-post’s monopoly in this country. The seal having been broken, the status quo might no longer exert quite the same grip on the public imagination. ...

I wish Coyne and other like-minded meddlers (eg. academics and fringe parties) would quit flogging the 'election reform' nag.  But, he (and they) won't, so maybe for his next exercise Mr. Coyne could venture beyond the theoretical and analyze actual cases where his suggested reforms have been tried (eg Italy) and what results they've produced. Have they yielded better governments or worse, and by what measures?   Have they produced better standards of living?  What were the unintended consequences?

Preston Manning: Reforrrmm needed to fix “democratic deficit”

Preston Manning is glad that Canada’s electoral muckety-mucks are concerned about declining voter turn-out, "Canada’s democracy deficit" and suggests "open primaries" as a way of fixing the problem. My response to Preston:

Dear Preston,

I don’t know about open primaries or other reforms but I don't buy your initial premise. There is no "problem" with so-called "low voter turn-out". The 59% turn-out in the last federal election was excellent. It certainly doesn’t represent a "democratic deficit" and neither do the other quoted turn-out numbers of 51% and 41% for BC and Alberta respectively.

People don’t vote for a wide range of reasons but my guess is general apathy counts for the greatest numbers - they don’t vote because politics is not really relevant to their lives. They’re not tuned in to the various party platforms and so it doesn’t matter to them which representative or party is elected.

So whatever the voter turn-out and whatever their reasons, in a free society people are entitled to their apathy, to be left alone if they so choose. Everyone doesn’t have to be a political junky - and thank God everyone isn’t. Moreover, people who are unaware of the issues and party platforms have a duty NOT to vote - as their votes would only add random noise or, worse, distortion to the process.

Why not treat election results as a statistical sampling of voter preferences and not get anxious about voter turn-out? Let’s face it, a sample of 30%, 40% or more is a very LARGE sample. The daily polls which attempt to predict election results in the run-ups to elections typically consist of one or two thousand respondents.

So let’s not tinker with the system with a goal of enhancing voter turn-out. This could ultimately lead to idiocies as in Australia where voting is compulsory or to hokey proportional representation schemes. Both would be big mistakes.

So please don't encourage our electoral officers. Instead, spend your time and energy tackling some of the real democratic deficits such as unelected senators and regional inequities in seat distributions.

Sincerely,
JR

BC-STV - Good riddance!

Good news! Last night wise BC voters soundly rejected the proposed STV system of proportional representation, preferring to stick with the tried and true FPTP. The referendum results were:

FPTP 61.2%
STV 38.8% (60% required)

The other threshold was at least 51 of 85 ridings had to vote more than 50% in favour of STV. Only 7 ridings did so and these were all urban ridings in Vancouver and Victoria.

Anyway, good riddance!

That should put and end to it, but the pro-STV crowd is riddled with righteous fanatics who will no doubt keep pushing.

Seven reasons to vote NO to STV

By Donald Bird of North Vancouver:

SEVEN REASONS TO VOTE AGAINST THE STV

On May 12th, the voters in the province of British Columbia will be asked if they would like to change the way they elect their provincial government.

They will be offered two choices: to remain with the current system or to adopt a system based on a single transferrable vote, commonly called the STV.

While people may not like the existing system, the STV will be much worse for the province. Do not confuse a dislike for the current system with a preference for the STV.

1 More Minority Governments – The STV is a form of proportional representation which attempts to ensure that the percentage of MLAs elected from each party matches the percentage of the total popular vote received by that party. Therefore it will be harder for any one party to elect more than half of the MLAs. The effect of this is that more minority governments will be produced, making it harder to govern the province. Minority governments will also lead to more frequent elections and the formation of unusual coalitions as we have seen in recent federal politics.

2 Less Popular Parties Holding the Balance of Power – Minority governments will need to build coalitions among different parties to get the support of a majority of MLAs in order to form government and to pass legislation. With proportional representation, we are more likely to see parties with only a small percent of the vote, like the Marijuana Party, win seats. Concessions will need to be made to these small parties to get important legislation passed. Will we have to stop enforcing federal drug laws in order to get a provincial budget passed? We may see a lot more “pork” in British Columbia, similar to what happens in the United States, where one small group can require that the rest of the province give them what they want in order for the legislature to do its job.

3 Ridings Too Large – The ridings in rural British Columbia will be very large, making it even harder for the MLAs to connect with their constituents.

4 Unequal Treatment– The number of MLAs elected from each of the new 20 ridings will not be the same. Some ridings will have two MLAs and others will have seven MLAs and all the others will be somewhere in between. With the proportionality of the STV, the ridings with two MLAs are very likely to elect MLAs from only the two most popular parties, currently the BC Liberal Party and the NDP. There is very little chance in those ridings of electing MLAs from any other party. However, in ridings with more MLAs there is a much greater chance of electing MLAs from other parties. This is consistent with the proportional nature of the STV; however, not all ridings are treated equally. Those in ridings with a larger number of MLAs will have a greater chance of electing MLAs from parties who traditionally receive a smaller percentage of the vote, like the Marijuana Party. That may be good or bad, depending on your perspective, but it is not equal treatment for all voters in the Province. All citizens of British Columbia have a right to equal treatment, especially in electing a government. This unequal treatment, combined with the balance of power, will result in those ridings with a larger number of MLAs being more likely to elect the MLAs who will hold the balance of power. Ridings with only two or three MLAs will almost certainly elect only MLAs from the two largest parties, but ridings with five, six or seven MLAs are much more likely to elect MLAs from other parties. So if you really want your vote to count, and you want to elect MLAs that will hold the balance of power, you are out of luck in if you are in Fort Nelson or Dawson Creek – Victoria is the place to be!

5 Different results in By-Elections – The unequal treatment continues in by-elections. The procedure for voting and counting the ballots in a by-election is the same as a general election, but usually one MLA is to be elected. Therefore it is extremely likely that the MLA will be from one of the most popular parties in BC, currently the BC Liberal Party and the NDP. It is much less likely in a by-election than in a general election that winner of the election will be from a party that traditionally receives a smaller percentage of the vote. So if an MLA from a party that received a small percentage of the votes resigns, it is very unlikely that they will be replaced by a member of their own party.

6 Complicated Counting System – The STV system is a very complicated, very hard to understand and very hard to explain. Any system for electing a government in a free and democratic society should be understood by all voters. Do you know if it is better for a party’s supporters to mark the same person as their number one choice or to split their number one choice among each of their party’s candidates in a particular riding? To find the answer takes some work. Should it?

7 Who won? – Sometimes no one will win - the STV does not fill all of the seats in the legislature in all circumstance. This is because there is no rule to adjust the “Quota” required in the event that there are not sufficient votes remaining to elect all MLAs in a riding after the “Exhausted Ballots” are removed. The result is that in certain circumstances, not enough MLAs will be elected to fill all the seats. An extreme example would be if not all the MLAs are elected on the first count and no one marks a second or subsequent choice. There is a rule dealing with the situation where all but one of the candidates to be elected have been elected, but it does not deal with the situation where more than one of the candidates to be elected have not been elected. Not only is the STV flawed, it is so complex that even those who created the system do not understand it well enough to know that it does not always work. Clearly the STV is not the way to go, even for those who not like the current system.

DONALD BIRD

Vote NO to STV!

Vote “NO to BC STV”

Yesterday my wife and I voted in the advance polls for the BC provincial election and referendum on election reform. We both voted to keep the current first-past-the-post system and NO to the proposed new Single Transferrable Vote (STV).

We voted "NO to STV" four years ago but our miserable weasel of a Premier, Gordon Campbell, decided not to take "NO" for an answer - so we’re voting again.

Today a National Post editorial reviews the many reasons our "NO to STV" vote was the correct one [my emphasis]:

One sign that a society is running out of real problems is that bored upper-middle-class types start inventing phony ones. Thus do we periodically get initiatives aimed at replacing our perfectly functional first-past-the-post electoral system with some hybrid alternative that few understand or support.

The STV system ostensibly was developed by B.C.’s Citizens’ Assembly, "an independent, non-partisan assembly of 160 randomly selected British Columbians,..." But the idea that ordinary citizens could spontaneously have come up with such a complicated scheme defies belief. Like all hybrid electoral systems, this one seems to have been engineered by theoreticians burrowed deep in the recesses of the local university political science department. [These "random" 160 people were, to a large extent, self-selected and who but those with a strong bias towards changing the current system would volunteer for such onerous ‘duty’?]

Then there's discussion of the complexities of the STV system:

...the "wasted" votes from marginal also-rans and the "surplus" votes from clear victors get shuffled to the middle of the pack in a manner that is algorithmically determinate, but — from a dazed voter’s point of view — effectively random. [The ridiculous notion of "wasted" votes is a favourite of PR proponents. As if a vote for any candidate is somehow "wasted". It’s a sure thing that candidates don’t think the votes they receive are wasted. This is somewhat like suggesting to a losing team in a soccer match that they had wasted their time and effort - that they might as well have stayed home and not bothered competing.]

... The effect is to arbitrarily reward voters who picked loony-toon candidates from the extreme left or right, while mainstream voters get their punching weight chopped down dramatically.

... At this point, let us ask our readers: Did you understand the preceding paragraph? Probably not ... And this gets to the heart of why STV is so misguided. The system’s architects have become so obsessed with the single, narrow goal of eliminating "wasted" votes that they have lost sight of a basic truth: No matter how many eggheads put their stamp of approval on STV, ordinary voters inevitably are going to be alienated by a system they don’t understand, and which produces unpredictable local results.

And then there’s:

...the other flaws that inevitably arise from any bastardizations of FPTP. Most notably: (1) The link between a single political representative and his or her riding his compromised. (2) Majorities give way to ineffectual "coalition" minorities — such as the motley Green/NDP monster that would likely arise out of any implementation of the STV under current political circumstances in B.C.

Most of these reasons and a few more were covered in a number of previous posts.

And there's much, much more at this site.

Update: Jack's Newswatch picked up this post - there's some heated debate.

PR anyone?

Bumped: My response to comments on the previous post on polls:

"Yeah, these on-line media polls do lack the credibility of the supposedly unbiased ones done by the professional polsters (and as Alberta Girl notes where are they on this crisis?). But in this case there's reasonable consistency (as Reid points out) with other similar polls. Also, in a small town like Victoria 300 responses (I note it's now up to almost 500) to a radio station's on-line poll is a pretty good sample - and it's against the natural local political grain.

So people are clearly seeing through the opposition BS. Even if they had reasonable justification for ousting a six week old 143 seat minority government(and they don't) there's no way that they can form a more credible or stable minority government with a mixed bag of leaderless Libs and NDP with 113 (76+37) seats between them backed up by a bunch of (50) commie separatists.

Though the opposition can't admit it, it's blatantly obvious that the driving motivation for this attempted coup d'etat is the threatened cancellation of taxpayer funded 'entitlements' for political parties - and for the NDP maybe the no-strike provision for gov't unions.

But as far as I know the opposition doesn't really need a good argument to defeat a minority government. They can do it any time they see an opportunity. However, ordinarily, they have to risk going to the polls. I can't see the GG and/or the Supremes allowing this "coalition" of idiots to form a government on such a thin pretext without a new vote . But it's possible and, as Ted says, "downright scary."

And people actually want Proportional Representation?! Permanent instability and elections every year or so? Nuts to that!"

Proportional representation and (un)Fair Vote Canada

Lawrence Solomon began his ‘Post’column today:

Canada needs electoral reform to bring in proportional representation. It is unconscionable that in a modern democracy such as ours, vast swathes of the
electorate should be effectively disenfranchised ...

Aarrggh! Lawrence Solomon is now on the stinking PR bandwagon? Say it ain’t so!

However, reading on we discover that by ‘proportional representation’ he means straightforward rep-by-pop which is currently out of whack with BC, Alberta and Ontario badly under-represented. Mr. Solomon’s problem is with Bill C-22 which brings BC and Alberta up to snuff after the 2011 census but will leave Ontario 11 seats short. He is also unhappy with organizations such as Fair Vote Canada who have been silent on the issue:

The unfairness, affecting almost 12.7 million Ontarians, could not be plainer. Yet rather than take on this dismissal of the principle of one person-one vote – surely a prerequisite for any voting system that pretends to democratic fair play – Fair Vote Canada has other priorities.

The Fair Vote lobbies, its fair to say, are not about fair voting at all. They are not even about proportional representation, the term they have appropriated to describe their electoral preferences. The Fair Vote lobbies are about delivering power to the parties, rather than power to the people.

Right on, Larry! What a relief! The guy who brings such good sense to the global warming debate and who previously denounced Ontario’s MMP proposal just couldn’t have climbed into bed with the Fair Vote PR flacks.

‘No’ means ‘yes’

That’s Andrew Coyne’s reading of the meaning of the 63/37 rejection of PR/MMP in the Ontario referendum. This is typical of the PR fanatics - keep pressing for change till it happens then we’re stuck with it.

Iain Hunter has an excellent take on the PR pushers:

Who are these people, anyway?

Mostly, they're losers. Some of them are former politicians who wish they'd gone farther than they did. Some couldn't get elected dogcatcher. A lot of them are supporters of parties that have little chance of forming either the government or official opposition.

Many more are on the political fringe, among the raving loonies and raging grannies, fanatic cyclists and yogic flyers who have their special, sometimes weird, priorities that they feel everyone should share.

There are women who believe the electoral system must be changed if their sex is to gain the political influence it deserves, and aboriginals who see that system, and what it has produced, as a cause of so much of their historical hurt and present grievances.

And academics, who love tinkering with things, encourage citizens' committees to come up with proposals for a new model that will make each voter think that he or she counts more than he or she does now.

... And pundits like Coyne. And they’ll be back. Like Quebec separatists, they don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

Humourless utopian evangelists

PR supporters, says Lorne Gunter, remind him of:

... Dennis, the muck-tilling peasant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
[...]
...Dennis [played by Andrew Coyne] is such a pinched, humourless evangelist for his utopian ideals that by the end of the scene you find yourself rooting for Arthur to repress him.
[...]
Proportional representation, including MMP, appeals to the sort of solemn soul who sees him-or herself as slightly smarter than the rest of us and above anything so crass as partisan politics.
[...]
... Marxism, too, looked good on paper until every attempt to implement it in the real world led to a disparity between rich and poor (party members and non-members) that would have made John D. Rockefeller blush, as well as a level of state violence against the citizenry comparable to the worst of fascism.

PR causes bigger problems than it purports to solve:

... PR tends to correct one problem-- too many seats for the big parties --
with another-- too much power for little ones.

Just what we need - excessive emphasis on single issue flakery.
So, Ontario, be careful what you vote for tomorrow!

PR, MMP truly suck

George Jonas said PR sucks. Today, John Williamson of the Canadian Tax Payers Federation disagreed with George because, he says, MMP works just fine in New Zealand.

Also in today’s ‘Post’ are two columns, one by Colby Cosh and another by Lawrence Solomon, citing, among many other things, New Zealand as an example of why Ontarians should vote ‘NO’ to MMP.

Colby Cosh on New Zealand:

How rarely MMP supporters seem to mention that the race-based Maori Party has become a major power-broker in their hero-country, New Zealand.

Colby's main point, though, is that FPTP "ain’t broke"and Ontarians aren’t calling for change anyway:

The plain fact is that Ontarians have greeted the prospect of electoral reform with an apathy that must surprise even a hardened cynic. If there were such abundant appetite for change, any particular alternative to FPTP might well win or lose with the voters in a referendum.....Is it possible that people are largely satisfied with FPTP, in all its tainted majesty, because it is simple, clear, fair and time-tested?

Also Ontarians are being asked to vote for a pig-in-a-poke:

...Ontarians are being asked to vote in the referendum for a principle not yet cast in the stone of specific legislation; it remains to be decided [for example] whether any formal requirements will be imposed on the parties in ordering their lists...
...it's surely better for Ontarians to simply vote "No" to a blank cheque for reform...

Lawrence Solomon argues persuasively that MMP ("Myriad Minority Parties") is a "force for division" :

Now the fastest growing political party in the world, the Pirate Party offers youth the right to download pirated music and movies --a basic human right, it argues. The Pirate Party -- which says it will support any ideology in a coalition government, as long as it gets its way on free downloads......This year it surpassed the Swedish Green Party in members, and in 2009 it is expected to be the Hot New Thing in European Union-wide elections. 

...if Ontarians vote for MMP in the referendum Oct. 10, look for MSM messaging, Face-Book and political chat-rooms to hum, exhorting our youth to join the political process to make free downloads a reality. 

In New Zealand, an orgy of crass political deal-making so offended the electorate after it switched to MMP in 1996 that three years later, in a citizen-initiated referendum, more than 80% voted to roll back MMP......[However] True to form, the newly entrenched politicians ignored the non-binding referendum, and continue to this day to resist calls for reform. 

....Italians and Israelis are likewise trying to reform their dysfunctional systems of proportional representation. 

In the worst cases, proportional representation gives voice -- and vent -- to the vileness in humanity. In France, ... the bigot, Jean-Marie Le Pen... won 32 seats, making him a major political force until public revulsion at proportional representation led to its repeal in favour of a system more like ours. Without proportional representation, Le Pen lost all 32 seats and his party became a spent political force. 

Ontario has its Le Pens, striving to divide us, as it has regionalists and pirates and others with grievances to nurse.

There is no shortage of unintended consequences associated with changing the time-tested FPTP system. Be careful what you wish for!!
And another thing! I confess I’m not just a little envious and annoyed at all the attention being paid to the Ontario vote on MMP. Envious because I don’t recall anywhere near this much debate in the run up to the BC referendum on STV. Annoyed because this seems to be another example of just how ‘Ontario-centric’ the MSM remains.
I just hope the anti-PR pundits keep their arguments handy for the next time the PR-freaks attempt to shove it down our throats in BC.

Proportional representation sucks (more than FPTP)

The closer the Ontario referendum looms the more frantically Andrew Coyne pumps out columns slamming FPTP and praising PR. You’d think his life depended on it.

Father Raymond J. De Souza argued in a recent column that the while the FPTP system is broken, PR isn’t the fix.

Today Coyne has yet another column - this one with a headline referring to PR opponents as "fear mongers".

George Jonas summarizes and, adding an argument, takes sides :

[My bold]

Be it resolved that our current first-past-the-post-system sucks. There was
never a clearer, better argued and more convincing case made out for any resolution than that offered by the mighty pen of Coyne. It carried the day -- until next morning it collided with the mighty pen of de Souza.

Now, at the risk of sounding like a CBC commentator, I think that one man's free election is another man's coup d'etat. How to decide? Let's see which countries use mixed-member proportional representation (PR.) That should tell us which country Ontario might come to resemble if we replaced its present system.

Germany? Hmm. Italy? Hmm. Mexico? Hmm squared. Bolivia? Hmm cubed. Hungary? You must be kidding. That's where I came from.

Lesotho? Er, refresh my memory. Ah, Africa, OK.

What? You can't be serious. Vene-bloodyzuela has PR?

Thank you, Andrew. Not today.

PR - more evidence it's a bad idea

In today's National Post Gerald Owen rebuts Andrew Coyne in an excellent column discussing PR in relation to the German experience:

Though West Germany adopted PR, like the weak Weimar regime, it started with few parties and before long passed a law that parties with less than 5% of the vote would get no seats in parliament. (Our Canadian Greens got less than that in 2006, I note.)

[...]

The unification of West and East Germany in 1990 made a more complex nation-state. Federal German politics is now a constellation of five parties, and the FDP has struggled to meet the 5% threshold.

[...]

It is hard for ... [Angela Merkel's coalition] government to make strong decisions. Even the mildest measures to make labour markets more flexible, and thus reduce East German unemployment, are a struggle.

[...]

Andrew Coyne did not read Tuesday's Post editorial attentively. With inexact reasoning, he claims there is a contradiction between two consequences of PR alleged by the Post: party fragmentation and excessive consensus. If he followed the politics of Continental Europe with active interest, he would see the drift that results when those two factors collaborate.

[...]

PR is not good for countries as complex as unified Germany and Canada. It would mean endless and incoherent coalition governments.

Amen!

Proportional Representation - a bad idea

"The more innocuous the change, the more far reaching the consequences." (Anonymous)

Responding to yesterday’s National Post editorial "PR is a bad idea", Andrew Coyne asks:

What is it about proportional representation (PR) that turns otherwise
sensible individuals into raving loonies?

Good question Andrew! What is it about PR that makes Andrew Coyne such a raving fanatic in favour of changing an electoral system that’s served us so well for well over a century? He calls the Ontario proposal a "minor patch" to the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. He’s written several columns on the subject recently to convince Ontario voters to ‘go for it’.

We in BC narrowly escaped switching to STV (single transferable vote) in a recent referendum. But the PR pushers are still trying to get their way so we’re not out of the woods yet.

I'm not fond of the idea of switching to a system that institutionalizes back-room dealing to set up governance coalitions between parties. Who do the voters hold accountable for screw-ups and malfeasance? I'm not sold on the screwball notion, advanced by PR enthusiasts, of votes being "wasted" in the FPTP system (a vote for someone who fails to get elected is presumed to have been wasted?)

We were told that voting wasn’t complicated. The ballots were clear and simple - no problem - just show up and tick off the candidates. That's true, but then you try to follow how those ballots are counted to determine winners and losers. Not so simple. There’s a complicated formula cooked up in the back rooms by the experts and a computer spits out the answer. A website set up by the BC Citizen’s Assembly offers an animated simulation of exactly what happens in a typical scenario. That’s what finally convinced me there would be lots of unintended consequences.

And one more little thing. Coyne wrote in a column last week that the Citizen’s Assemblies set up to make recommendations on PR (or otherwise) were "randomly selected". So that’s good and fair and very democratic, right? Wrong. The BC Citizens’ Assembly (and I assume the Ontario CA) may have been randomly chosen - but from a list of self-selected, motivated and activist individuals heavily pre-disposed to changing the system. That a majority of the ‘expert’ witnesses they would hear would be enthusiastic champions of novel voting systems was highly likely. That the Citizens’ Assembly would recommend switching from FPTP to some other system was a foregone conclusion.

I hope the National Post continues to oppose PR. But it might be better if they printed rebuttals to the Andrew Coynes in the form of columns written by identifiable individuals rather than in anonymous editorials.