Election Blues

“Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.”

  - Harry S. Truman

Now that the Ontario election of 2014 is finished, there will undoubtedly be more cries for electoral reform.  The argument will again be made that a majority government has been elected with less than 40% of the popular vote.  They will also point out that the Green Party got 5% of the popular vote and yet again gets no seats.  All of this is true, and is a common outcome for the type of voting system we have. 

Our present system of the winning candidate being the one with the most votes comes to us from the British parliamentary system and is still used there and in the United States.  The US system relies of the fact that there are only two parties of any consequence in that country.  A viable third party, as has sometimes been the case in the past, raises the same concerns there as here.  Is the system flawed?  Probably.  Can it be fixed? Possibly.

Ontario tried to introduce a different voting system in a referendum in 2007.  It was dubbed the MMP (mixed member proportional) system and would have had a proportional representation system for most of the members plus a group of 39 seats (“the gang of 39”) set aside for candidates to be nominated by the parties in proportion to their elected seats.  As I said at the time in a letter to the editor, my “concern is a conviction that the voters will never get to directly vote for party leaders or prospective cabinet members.”  It was a system that could only have been devised by a committee.  Fortunately, in my opinion, the electorate turned down the proposal.  But the attempt points out one of the problems with the various ideas that have been floated for electoral reform.  Each of the ones proposed so far have been a mish-mash of ideas like the MMP system above.  Each has seemed to try to address a number of factions while satisfying none.  All have appeared to be designed by committee.  

Are there other options?  There are two methods of candidate election that are used extensively in other democratic nations and they are much more straightforward than any of the ones being discussed in Canada.

The first is straight proportional representation.  It is widely used in Europe.  Under this method, the recent Ontario election would result in about 42 Liberal, 35 PC, 24 NDP and 6 Green seats – a minority government, but representative of the popular vote.  There are, however, some downsides to this method.  They invariably result in minority governments which in turn bring about coalitions – a word that is somehow anathema to Canadians.  They also tend to open the door to new parties so that many represent very special interests.  This not to say they are unworkable – they just take more effort to work out the necessary coalition dynamic that can rule effectively.  However, the major defect in my case is that the elected representatives are drawn from a party list with no apparent concern for local representation.  The first seat goes to the party leader and so on down the party’s list.

The second alternative is the use of run-off elections.  In this case, when no candidate gets 50% of the vote for his/her riding, there is a run-off between the first two vote-getters.  This ensures that the winner gets over 50% of people’s first or second choice.  Of course it takes a bit more time with the run-off, usually held one or two weeks after the main election.  And we are an impatient lot who demand instant answers, so that wait might not be popular for some.  However, it is in my opinion, the best of the alternatives.  It is straightforward, fair and effective.  It can produce majority or minority governments, depending on the mood of the electorate.  Other supposedly similar schemes such as ranking preferences on the initial ballot with some sort of numerical scoring to select the winner can become confusing for many voters and could be open to question of the results.  The run-off format is clear and transparent.

So, in a country that is essentially a three party system, which method of selection of your governments would you like to live with?  

“Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.”
  - George Burns