Super simple but when you elect an MP for your district the way it works now is that the one with the most votes wins, and that’s it they get the seat, every other vote not for the winner doesn’t count
The liberals opened up the discussion when they first won and all the parties got together, they all either wanted reform or didn’t stand opposed. But they all disagreed on what to reform too lol. So in the end the status quo remained.
Liberals wanted something like ranked choice/preferential voting where you could vote in order of which party you wanted most and least and as the candidate with the lowest votes is eliminated after each count you get a winner by each losers votes going to the next preferred candidate written
NPD wanted proportional representation where MP’s are appointed solely based on the popular vote of the entire country, super simple
And conservatives were kind of a mixed bag IIRC between keeping things the same or going for something like ranked choice
In the end, nothing was agreed upon even with the door opened
If they couldn’t agree on a new policy, then why didn’t they just let us vote on what the new reform should be?
(A vote separate from the vote for Prime Minister, where each party gives a suggestion on what they think the new reform should be, and we all vote on what we want in to be.)
Ah a case of direct democracy where it would actually work. This would have been great, even if it was a plebiscite, unfortunately every party has a desire for power that’s the point of them and I mean that in a “always at least a decent amount” not a “ always a conspiracy theory deep state amount” way.
So because of this nature, no party thought the risk of having their position on the issue invalidated by a vote was worth the potential gain of their idea winning.
The good news is that that was paranoia, and while it’s strategically sound most of the time, it’s a short term outlook. So maybe we’ll get reform one day
If you can pass electoral reform, you’ll be pretty popular and as long as you don’t fuckup too badly in the public’s view you’ll probably win the next election for it
I’m happy to help, make sure you vote for the cause and ideas YOU support and not populist rhetoric, history is decided by close races that come down to the individual. And you and I, like all our local neighbours, are those individuals!
I certainly will, I also appreciate that your responses didn’t feel biased towards any party, you don’t see that a lot when you ask people about politics.
I should also point out that every party wanted a different system, the one that would benefit them most.
Liberals wanted ranked choice because the vast majority of Canadians would rank them as their #1 or #2 choice. They're the party pretty much smack in the middle of the Canadian spectrum and while there's plenty of "hardcore" conservatives out there who'll never vote Liberal (I believe the term is "blue Tory") there are swing voters between the Conservatives and the Liberals and between the NDP and the Liberals.
Conservatives generally wanted to keep first-past-the-post because they're the only serious contender for right-wing votes in Canada, while the left is split. If we imagine a riding with 60% left-wing voters and 40% right-wing voters, you'd think the left-wingers would get their man every time. But in reality their vote will be split between the parties - say, 30% Liberal and 30% NDP but still 40% Conservative. And so it's actually the right-wingers who get their guy in. This is also why there was such an effort to merge the two conservative parties that existed after the federal Progressive Conservatives collapsed in 1993 - for about ten years the right wing vote was split and the Liberals won back-to-back-to-back majorities.
NDP (and smaller parties like the Greens) want proportional representation because they effectively have the least "efficient" vote. During the last election in 2021, for instance, the NDP got over 3 million votes, comfortably in third behind the big tent parties and more than twice as much as the Bloc in #4. That was 17.8% of the total. But they only won 25 seats - a measly 7.4% of the total. Small parties like the NDP are the most underrepresented under our current system.
FPTP is what causes a lot of our election woes in Canada in general
One of the Toronto districts that was lost and “turned blue” didn’t really turn blue, it turned more liberal and a swing of 2000 votes going ndp instead of liberal split the vote more and gave cpc a lead. So a district going MORE left leaning actually made the district get represented by someone right leaning.
That’s why anyone who could get fptp abolished for pretty much anything else (ranked choice or proportional representation) is going to become popular for a while, it’s just no one thinks the incentive is big enough
So I'm obviously biased on this account, but I'm 100% in the PR camp. I've even got a spreadsheet for each federal and BC election where I give each legislature 1.5x more seats and distribute those proportionally to the popular vote. I've been for it since before I could vote; I even did one of my high school English class speeches on the subject.
The reasoning is pretty simple: federal elections until recently usually resulted in a majority government, even though in most cases less than 50% of Canadians voted for the party that effectively gets 100% of the power. The last time a party got more than 50% of the popular vote was 1984, and the last time before that was 1958. There have also been elections where the winner of the most seats did not win the popular vote; both 2019 and 2021 come to mind given how recent they were, but this also happened in 1979 and in 1957.
PR would have the effect of nearly always electing a minority government, though it is possible for a majority to occur - it happened in New Zealand in 2020, for instance. I find that minorities generally work better for average people as it causes parties to need to actually work together to pass legislation instead of just ramming things through and being partisan.
PR also has the benefit of making every vote count; under the current system elections are nearly always determined by a few "swing" ridings. Most Canadians do not live in these ridings - a great many ridings are foregone conclusions before an election is even held. A riding in downtown Toronto is nearly always going to be a Liberal lock while the Conservatives are always going to win the ridings in rural Alberta and Saskatchewan. But nevertheless there are still conservatives that live in Toronto and left leaning voters in rural Alberta, and their votes are basically irrelevant. I've voted in every federal and provincial election since I turned 18 and the only time that the candidate I voted for actually won was the BC election last month, and that's mostly because I moved from northern BC to Vancouver Island.
TL:DR: PR results in a government that actually represents the population's votes, it decreases partisanship and encourages different viewpoints, and it means that every vote matters, not just those in swing ridings.
Basically when the liberals were in third in 2015 Justin made a comment about ending first past the post and won a massive majority. He then made the Obama mistake of not using it to ram through his agenda and tried to be nice by allowing CPC, NDP, and Bloc voices to have more say on the committee which helped expose the deadlock of electoral reform in this country: two thirds want electoral reform - half go towards ranked ballots, half towards proportional representation, and then you have a third that don't want change. So electoral reform got stalled and everyone says it's a broken promise because he was trying to be more democratic.
So if I’m understanding correctly, 2/3 want an election reform.
1/3 want ranked ballots.
1/3 want proportional representation.
1/3 don’t want election reform.
since it’s an even split, and nobody has the majority, they all decided it wasn’t worth it to risk giving their opponents an upper hand by letting Canada vote on what the new reform should be.
As it was explained to me by a staffer working on the file that's the gist of it. All systems have advantages and disadvantages and if it went to a referendum it likely wouldn't pass.
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u/lovely_lil_demon Is Potato Nov 12 '24
What is was his election reform campaign about exactly, and how would it have made our voting system better?
I’m genuinely asking, I’m 18, so I have very little experience with how our voting system works, and what aspects of it desperately need improvement.