September 4th, 2007
Electoral Reform Primer: Part I
By David Pal // 6 Comments
Video produced by the Citizen's Assembly
Accompanying the Ontario election will be a referendum on electoral reform, giving voters the chance to choose between the province’s current first-past-the-post voting system and a new system, mixed member proportional (MMP). To complement the work of Elections Ontario and the various supporting and opposing groups, Spacing Votes will be exploring this proposed political system and the kinds of changes it could produce to politics in Ontario.
MMP differs from the more straightforward proportional representation (PR) practiced in countries like Israel. It aims to introduce a measure of proportionality to the Ontario legislature while still retaining the province’s basic political architecture -- the traditional system of electing candidates through local ridings (hence the designation "mixed"). Similar systems are used in Germany, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales.
The Ontario Citizen's Assembly, a group convened by the Ontario Legislature that studied potential electoral reform and which consisted of 104 people – 52 men and 52 women, one from each riding in Ontario plus an appointed, non-voting chair – voted 94-8 to recommend that MMP be proposed to Ontario voters through a referendum. This referendum, similar to the 2005 B.C. vote on a single-transferable-vote (STV) electoral system, will require a larger majority than traditional votes. At least 50% of voters in 64 ridings will have to support MMP, while the overall support province wide will need to be at least 60%.
Under MMP, voters would have two votes on one ballot -- the first for a local candidate, who could be Liberal, PC, Green, NDP, Independent, etc., elected in the traditional first-past-the-post fashion, and the second for a party, which would involve choosing from all of the registered political parties in Ontario. Parties should receive a number of seats roughly equivalent to their overall popular support – a figure measured through the party vote. If, for example, the Liberals have 35% of the party vote, they should receive around 35% of the seats in the Legislature.
For the sake of mathematical ease, let’s momentarily imagine that the legislature contained only 100 seats. If for instance, the Liberals received 35% of the party vote, but only 25 local seats (25%), they would need an additional 10 seats to give them a proportional number. Under the current system, the Liberals would have fewer seats than their popular support merits, as they’d simply be left with the 25 seats they received through traditional first-past-the-post voting. Under MMP, the Liberals should receive 35% of the seats in the Legislature, receiving around 10 “top-up” seats to bring them in line with their popular support.
The proposed system does this by reducing the number of local, riding-based seats to 90. It adds 39 party seats (also called list or top-up seats) that would be added on to local seats to bring seat distribution in line with the popular vote and ensure proportionality. After all of the winners of the local seats had been determined, Elections Ontario would assess whether there is a gap between a party's local seats and their share of the party vote. If there is such a gap, such as in the example above, a party would receive one or more of the 39 party seats to fill it in. A party would need at least 3% of the party vote to get any of the 39 seats, a measure aimed at eliminating parties with extremist or very niche-oriented views from affecting the political process.
Therefore, a party could win zero local seats, but as long as they had at least 3% of the popular vote, it could still be represented in the legislature through the party seats. (The Greens are the best example of this scenario.) Conversely, if a party has a larger or equal number of local seats versus their popular support, (i.e. if a party received 15% of the party vote but won 20 local seats, or another party obtained 20% of the party vote and 20 local seats) they would receive no extra seats.
Parties would be required to submit a numbered list of candidates for these seats. The lists would be publicized before the election, although voters would have no impact on which particular candidates would be chosen; seats would be given out according to the party's own determined list of rankings. Candidates could run on both the list and in a local riding. A candidate could conceivably lose in a local riding and become an MPP through the list, but a candidate victorious in a local riding could not give up their seat in favour of a list seat.
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This scheme is tempting because it could conceivably lock the Tories into political oblivion, but I worry that eventually the Liberals and Tories would form an alliance and the NDP would be consigned to the margins.
A very hard call.
This is about as grass-roots as an MMP model can be. Germany's is 50% local, 50% list. At 70% local, this model gives priority to strong local representation while correcting the disproportional results typical of the winner-take-all system.
Result: every vote counts, and we voters actually get what we voted for.
Unlike the 1998 Quebec election where the Liberals won the vote but the PQ got more seats. Or the 1995 Ontario election where the Liberals apparently got creamed, but did they really? Johh Gerretsen who had been Mayor of Kingston found himself the only Liberal elected between Toronto and Ottawa by 137,000 Liberal voters, facing the Mike Harris government was a strong majority elected by -- only 45% of the voters. "Obviously we need proportional representation" said Gerretsen.
Twelve years later he's Minister of Municipal Affairs and will be voting, he says, for MMP. "No one is ever 100-per-cent right and nobody is ever 100-per-cent wrong," Gerretsen says. "Governing is the art of compromise. There's nothing wrong with having the governing party take into account smaller parties."
Wise man.
With first past the post, we end up with majority governments who were voted in with less than half the popular vote. I wonder what strange anomalies might be possible with MMP. Everyone votes Green on their second ballot, wanting to give the Green party a few seats, so they end up getting all 30 of the extra seats. 
Would the target be for the proportion of seats to be equal to the proportion of votes on the second ballot? Or is the target proportion the proportion of popular vote across the two ballots? ie: if you vote for the same party twice, they get one vote from you, but if you vote for two different parties, then each vote counts as 1/2 a vote - so in the extreme scenario above the Greens would only have 50% of the popular vote, plus half of whatever votes they got on the first ballot - which would still be more than the 30 seats they would ultimately get. Or maybe the proportion obtained on the second ballot is the target among the 30 seats and not overall (a party that gets no local MPP's but gets 50% of the vote in the second ballot would get 15 seats)??? OK, so I'm still fuzzy on the mechanics of it.
It would be interesting to see how many people vote for different parties on the first and second ballot, though...
It would be interesting to have created a trial MMP vote this time to show people how things could turn out. Then there could have been discussion and debate and a vote at the next election.
Personally I think MMP is different more than it is more democratic. To suggest that MMP will mean that every vote counts and that voters will get who they voted for is a bit pie in the sky as it will lead to coalitions formed after the election, single issue parties trying to get one or two seats, and MPs that are not directy connected to any constituants. As well I think that what is being presented for vote is somewhat less than thought out; there are many details that are still open to debate. It would have been better to have a concrete system to vote for.
Overall I don't feel that there has been much open debate about the merits and drawbacks of the MMP system and that is a shame. All we have had is indifference by 98% of the electorate and a few blogs run by MMP zealots. This Spacing posting though is a well crafted step in the right direction.
Just what I wanted. More rutting greedy MPP hogs to divide up the spoils of my hard work.
Nice summary of the system - thanks David. I do find it annoying that a candidate could become an MPP without anyone specifically voting for her. I always rather admired the grass-roots quality of the localized system.
That said, it would be nice to see the Greens represented in the Legislature.
Comment by Duncan
September 4, 2007 | 6:18 pm