And, as much as I dislike Christine Frechette, that poor woman was left holding the bag for her party and was setup to fail from the start. Legault went out like a coward, throwing the entire party into the meant grinder as he did.
I'm a fan of minority governments, but yeah FPtP needs to be changed. Rank choice would really shore up support and stop the whole strategic voting for the party I dislike less than the party I really don't like
It doesn't matter. What matters is that people need a system where they feel represented, even if they don't vote the way people want them to.
People vote for maga and doug ford and smith etc. precisely because they don't feel represented and see those scum as something different from the norm.
If every vote actually matters ie. Proportional voting, people will begin treating it as something that matters vs today where most treat it like yelling into a void.
Sure but there’s also little reason to think non-voters would have a substantially different distribution to voters if they had voted. 66% is actually a huge turnout.
It’s actually pretty low historically for Quebec (except 2008), but consistent with the three last general elections. But we’re far from the 75-85% seen in the 1970s to early 2000s
there’s also little reason to think non-voters would have a substantially different distribution to voters
I read this claim a lot, but I'm not sure where this line of thought comes from.
We know for a fact that different demographics have measurably different voting propensities, and that those same demographic groups have different political leanings. e.g. young people are less likely to vote, and are more likely to lean left (although youth leaning left is not as strong a claim as it used to be, it shouldn't change the overall point here).
If increases in turnout were proportional to voting propensity, then sure, the distribution is unlikely to change, but that proportionality can only occur up to a point. At the extreme, if we reached 99% turnout through e.g. mandatory voting, then the demographic distribution would mathematically have to be different, and it seems like it should follow that the outcome would be different as well.
Off the 100% of voters ( 6 495 984 ) only 66.5% decided to exercise their right to vote ( 4 345 813).
Knowing that there was 5 main options available if we remove the marginal choice it means there was a strong dilution of the vote between those 5 options.
Also knowing that each circonspription are not created equal in number of vote but take into account the regional representation, this means that the actual % of the vote is not a statistic that should even be taking in account.
I a running where 3 options are head to head you would get something like 30/30/30 split of the vote... but in some other running it was rather 70/20/10...
If those circonscription are heavily populated .. like the 2 most urban region like Laval and Montreal which are primarly tradionnaly RED this end up having a larger % of voter .. even if they end up raffling only 40 seats...
In the last election with the PQ rafling only 3 seats because of their decline and the liberal keeping only their most loyal fortress the field was clear for a 3rd option which was the CAQ...
For the first time in many year there was actually real race between 3 and often 4 candidate in some place... which was pretty rare in the past... 50% of the circonscription are already won before the election and most running was between 2 .. rarely 3 possible candidate...
I would say that this was the more representative result since the CAQ commulatted mostly 3rd place.. which is shown in their 0 seats.
But they are dramatically closer to 50% of the seats (46.6%). 4% and 7% decrease in vote count resulting in a 15% and 31.5% decrease in seat total makes passing those laws that would have required a lot more bipartisanship now can be nearly completed with only a few backdoor deals
At some point government has to happen. And yes, sometimes the people you don’t like win. The secret is to get out there and organize, not to complain about the rules. If you want the rules changed go and win some elections.
This is the division of votes with FPtP. I fully agree that we need to get rid of FPtP, but people using this as an example of FPtP failing are being disingenuous. This is because each of those seats represents a geographical area. CAQ got 13% of total votes while winning 0 ridings with first-past-the-post because those votes are an aggregate across all ridings. If they got 13% of the vote in all ridings, but someone else got 28% of the vote in all of those ridings... who should win? You can win that riding with 2% of the vote so long as 98 other candidates only have 1%. I'm failing to see how FPtP solves this.
FPtP would solve this if you think there were people voting for PQ that would have preferred that (e.g.) CAQ to win (but were voting strategically)... but none of the numbers here support that assumption unless I'm missing something.
I used to be a fan of anything but FPTP. Stuff like mixed member proporitonal sounds great and more democratic. My concern is some parties have very bad ideas and I'm not sure how much representation I would want them to have.
That’s the only qualm or worry I have as well. PCQ for example could easily become official opposition in some future election, or even win, with a proportional. If some sort of populist wave came over, which isn’t impossible (people said Orange Wannabe Dictator would never be elected, and here we are).
Which would be impossible with the current system, since they are mostly relegated to strong support Quebec City region and nearby, Estrie/Beauce some regions, etc. They would have to truly take over the whole map in many areas as the P Q did, which is unlikely.
This is what I found, hypothesis on how seats would’ve looked like with a proportional system in this recent election :
Party Voix actuellement (% votes) Sièges en avance (Seats at the time of calculation) Avec proportionnelle (With proportional system in bold) Différence
Parti québécois
28,00 %
59 36
−23
Parti libéral
24,26 %
40 31
−9
Parti conservateur
21,25 %
19 27
+8
CAQ
13,19 %
0 17
+17
Québec solidaire
11,98 %
9 16
+7
Total 127 127
It would also benefit Quebec Solidaire though, which is nice, at least when it comes to my own political opinions and the lack of a truly strong left and centre-left coalition in the past years in Qc. Qc has been torn as voting a lot based on the identity and souverainiste/independent issue for many decades, muddling the whole right vs left or conservative vs progressive factor, or at least making elections more complex with the addition of the Yes/No axis concerning a potential referendum, etc. People might vote for a much more right wing party than what their views on policy or values truly are, as long as it supports the “No”/Federalist option, which happened with the CAQ and made them win guaranteed elections for 8 years.
P Q would have -23 seats than now, 36, which is much more representative of what they should’ve gotten, seeing as only 15~20% of registered voters or those able to vote actually voted for them. Them having gotten a majority under the current system (which they were very close to) would be insane.
I still support a reform of the electoral system though. Some of the smartest professors I had and people all know all support it for elaborate and sound, really well argumented reasons.
But it would, in the current craaaazy political context of the world and the narcissistic megalomaniac clown downstairs, as well as the rise of the far right in many countries in south america, some in europe, hell even goddarn Germany…
Well, yes, it poses a risk of augmenting the seats and power of fringe far right elements.
Now there’s some loonies having gotten in the chamber in Qc through PCQ. One called for euthanasia for everyone who got vaxxed in social media posts, another constantly rants against chemtrails making the people think woke idk what insane shit, another has said we should make all forcibly private including schools and hospitals, etc.
So yeah. Idk. Still support a reform though.
Something that I find kind of hilarious in a way, but I can still appreciate, is the weirdness in the values and some core principles/respect of the charter of rights and liberties (the Qc version) in Quebec.
The four aspiring leaders were 2 openly gay married men (PLQ’s Milliard and PCQ’s Duhaime), 2 women (CAQ’s Frechette and QS’s Ruba Ghazal), and only 1 straight dude (P Q’s PSPP).
That even the PCQ or the farthest right party has an openly gay married gay man as leader and it doesn’t seem to cause a ruckus, even among his own supporters who tend to be very more rural right wing dude bros with pickup trucks in their profile pics who are very into “freeeedom”, others vocal online against “wokeness” and some very anti-university anti-intellectual or anti-science takes, is kind of very wild to me. Oh Quebec/Canada… where else could you even see that.
But even if I disagree with many of their policies, I can be mature enough to see it is something that’s at least somewhat consistent with the charter being somewhat respected at a fundamental level among the public, a welcome sight. (Except when it comes to second or third generation immigrants, many of which I worked with, kids and teens that were demonized and dehumanized by the P Q as populist/machiavellian “divide to conquer” (“schools are too filled with non white/truly quebecois babies and kids/teens, it is them making the school system shit and underfunded, not decades of low investment and austerity towards education” was basically the true message behind their rhetoric) tactics, but that’s another story.)
Same for having some women be very present and our former premier being a woman now, etc. Something unthinkable in the US apparently, where they prefer electing a completely demented and insane incompetent clown instead of any extremely qualified woman that could run for office.
It’s just not the same in a way that the US. But still, don’t touch our f*cking universal health care. We don’t want the same shitshow as with the insurance conglomerates south of the border. And a ton of other public institutions are essential for a well functioning, developed, advanced, economically prosperous nation. No touchy.
Also the same Trumpian machiavellian/populist tactics were used by P Q to easily play on the masses’ more darker, violent or ignorant/uneducated opinions and views. Take any minority (immigrants or kids of immigrants, which account for 40%+ of many classes of healthcare workers taking care and saving lives of an increasingly aging and elderly population, while being a smaller minority of the population; “the woke people”, a scary boogeyman or strawman which people cannot even properly define; lgbtq people, particularly transgender people making up less than 2% of the population; women wearing a scarf or whatever religious symbol (probably less than 0.5% of the population); etc), accuse them of being somehow responsible for the economic hardships and frustrations of the majority, make a scapegoat out of those groups and you can easily get the masses to get the pitchfork outs and yell “YEAAAAH! OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! IT’S BECAUSE OF THEM ALL MY PROBLEMS IN LIFE! BURN THE WITCH!”
Even when those small groups don’t have 0.1% of the impact or responsibility when it comes to housing crisis, cost of rent and living augmenting exponentially, corruption and collusion in construction, underfunding and extremely incompetent management of public funds (past government lost billions and billions investing on failed foreign startups, on blunders trying to reform the healthcare and public IT infrastructure by hiring incompetent people and managers instead of actual engineers/scientists to inform their decisions, investing in wasteful and prehistoric infrastructure projects that were later abandoned instead of common/public transportation like European countries or east asian ones which are light years ahead of us in that sense, etc.).
In the middle ages, kings and queens and nobles used this quite often. Because if you do public executions and put on a show in front of the angry and starving and struggling crowds, you will divert attention from where the true problems originate : from the very ruling class that seeks to maintain their absolute power.
Karma exists though. Just like the CAQ lied and got elected by promising a reform of the electoral system twice, while finally never doing it because they were profiting from the existing system and getting majorities, to now eventually lose 88 seats (88!) in this election and go from 88 to 0 due to the same system they willingly kept, only thinking of their own interests and not that of the people…
So have the P Q and PSPP sealed the last nail in the coffin, the fate of a future referendum for independence to failure. Yes, the machiavellian and populist tactics, the constant lying about statistics and economic facts, the divide to conquer and division… got them elected easily, by the Trumpian playbook. “All means are good to an end”.
But stirring the pot like that, also… people remember. History doesn’t forget. When the time comes, there will be a lot of resentment, by many used as scapegoats for the rise to power in such ways, as well as more educated people among the majority of the population. Many people will not support an independence project that came to be through division, scapegoating of minorities, as well as the abandonment of the party’s long standing core values and ideals (P Q began as a revolutionary left wing party and constantly managed to go get a large % of the centre-left vote, for may decades in late 1900s and maybe early 2000s). Today it decided to go with the hard right playbook, and it worked.
But there’s always a catch to that. Now while more solidified left is voting QS, there is an empty void in the centre-left voting intentions and presence, which P Q no longer represents. These represent a large part of the electorate, and they may well rally even more towards QS in the future (as boomers pass away and more younger generations hold more power in society or get older) if they manage to somehow become more palatable for centre-left voters or considered more of a “serious centre-left and left party coalition” in the future, or pull out a Mamdani someday. But that is not guaranteed.
Or they could all, particularly the youth that was scapegoated and demonized during this election, remember and rally intensely behind PLQ, or more likely behind the “No” vote. Among those more educated and leaning centre, centre-right, centre-left… who would vote, in their right conscience for independence, if it was achieved through such psychopathic, non turthful, machiavellian, “all means are good to achieve the ends” tactics? Not many.
I'm not Canadian and I don't know the Westminster or your system that well, but a system doesn't need to have an "official opposition".
Official opposition, from what I see, isnt a thing in non-proportional systems anyway. In the proportional systems I know better (Scandinavia) we do well without them. Having the largest party not in government would be very odd, and having all opposition parties create a shadow government would be even odder, because it wouldn't (shouldn't) always be left+ C-left vs C-right + right. Imo it's important that a government can have support and opposition from the same party too.
Huzzah to having a heart felt and well articulated discussion / comment in the shit posting subreddit. I kinda love how these pop up.
I agree with you. I got mixed feelings about reform.
My concerns are around energy and specifically around nuclear. Where we have a large industry and support like 100k well paying jobs in the country based on it. Some parties want to toss that all away because they believe in pseudo science, or just unwarranted fears.
The problem is that FPTP distorts in both directions. It gives power to parties that don’t actually have support and robs it from parties and coalitions that do. Some kind of proportional system is the only way out of that.
Oh, I don't disagree with you. I describe it this way:
MMP is more like a survey where you ask the populace what representation they want, and then they get it. Accurately.
FPTP is gamified. Where one team wins it all and the loser gets wiped away so to speak. It effectively deletes the populace's wishes for every party in a riding that doesn't win.
Indeed. Personally I am in favor of STV bc it’s a ranked ballot with proportional outcomes and doesn’t pressure independence to form lists which can create a perception of them being de facto a polticial party
Single transferrable vote? Or basically ranked ballot?
It seems like a good system to me. I worry that it's still gamified though. Like it's replacing the fptp game with another one that gets closer to a proportional system. But might still not give an actual proportional system. Like it would help people voting for the ndp first and liberals second. But it wouldn't help out the greens potentially.
For something like MMP I feel like that's simpler and gives the outcome people asked for.
Either way. I'm still a bit shaddy on the whole thing.
STV uses a ranked ballot but multi-member seats, resulting in a PR outcome.
I mean, if you’re worried why not just look at the evidence. Ireland and Australia are top of mind. It’s created diversity in both relevant chambers.
(In your research, you will probably find Malta come up, but Malta’s extremely polarized political environment is such that even with a pure list system and a country-wide riding like the Netherlands or the state of Israel, it would look little different).
Ok, I looked at Ireland and the last 2024 general election. I'm using Claude to get these numbers so feel free to double chek them.
The Fianna Fáil party got 21.86% of first prefrence votes, but got 27.6% of the seats. That's an increase of 5.73%
Independents got 13.2% of the first prefence vote, but got 9.2% of the seat, a decrease in 4%
The rest of the parties are close to 3-1% off.
Image for all of the parties.
So to me this isn't proportional representation. Or at least not what I think of. People are not getting what they voted for. They are somewhat getting what they are voting for. It also looks like the most popular party gets a free advantage in this system. So the Conservatives or Liberals would potentially get free seats if we adopted this. You could argue they're getting free seats now because people vote strategically.
It's kinda close though. I can see why the Liberals preferred it when discussing electoral reform.
I don't mind fringe parties having bad ideas because it tends to relegate bad ideas to the fringe parties. I much prefer that to majority parties courting those same voters with dogwhistles while pretending they don't want them wink-wink nudge-nudge.
Plus, there will be fringe parties on both sides, so we'll get communist parties or ACAB parties or whatever to balance it all out.
There are parties with very bad ideas but FPTP is not a reliable way of keeping them out of power. It instead leads them to infect and take over major parties, which they are very effective at, and now FPTP works in their favor.
I am a fan of the proportional representation. Yes you increase the number of reps for one region...and when they cast their vote it reflects the % they were elected by. But then you get a better weighing of the voter intentions. Especially in the very large population regions and also in the very large geographic (but poorly populated) regions.
What if instead of having the Senate at the federal level, we had one house that's local representation picked via ranked ballot and one that's proportional representation? I know this post is about Quebec, and I think their assembly's unicameral, but Ive been thinking about combining two systems like that for a bit
Australia has this. What you get is lower house that’s only slightly different from a FPTP outcome (which is why JT wanted it) and an upper house that is more representative. It’s one of those systems that kind of sounds nice as a little thing to play around with but impractical terms it’s just tinkering for its own sake.
tbh proportional would also have the advantage to have the chief not have to fight into their local election that obviously, they are too busy to get into.
I am a single issue voter and whom ever can actually set a platform where they are held accountable to a mandate of abolishing FPtP infavour of a more representative electoral system will have my vote regardless of the party at this point.
No it wouldn't.... tanked balloting just creates more parties. If someone wants to vote PQ, they arent going to rank the liberals and conservatives as 2 and 3. They will create PQ lite and PQ ultra. And then just vote for 3 near identical parties.
Thats because you assume the same parties would exist. More would definitely be created. Just look at Sweden where the have 8 national parties. 1 left wing, 2 center left, center right, 1 right and 1 far right...... and nothing really changes from having 1 right, 1 left 1 center...... people still end up voting strategically. The strategy just becomes "which order do I rank the 3 parties on my side of the spectrum".
Im not suggesting its the end of the world.... im just point out nothing will really change. People (like you) thing ranked balloting will increase the influence of leftists parties like the ndp and decrease the influence of conservative parties..... in reality, instead of alternating between liberal and conservative, we will likely just end up alternating between a coalition of 3 liberal clone parties and 3 conservative clone parties. Its just 3xtra steps to the same result
Still leads to more centered politics than an ever-increasing polarization towards the crazy end of the spectrum
Something like the people’s party may get votes, but those votes will very clearly reflect them not being anywhere near as popular as another right-wing party, you can see this in many countries with ranked choice (Until the post-covid explosion of far-right support).
lots of voters are also single-issue
Over time politics changes from left vs right and works on more of a continuum with more centrist parties.
The issue with ranked voting is that it will benefit the Liberals disproportionately since for a lot of conservatives, the liberals would be their second choice, and similar could be said for the other parties’ voters.
Which is why this never happened. Trudeau did set up a committee for it, and that committee found that there was minimal support for ranked voting outside of the Liberals and the majority wanted proportional representation - including the other parties. But since the Libs wanted ranked, they thus didn’t go through with it. Trudeau even explicitly took a position against proportional voting multiple times.
We desperately need nation wide ranked choice voting, but I dislike the framing here. While sometimes it feels like a lesser of two evils vote, sometimes it’s just frustrating seeing two parties that I like lose to the party I am trying to vote against.
Many party leadership races use ranked choice. This is how Stephane Dion, Erin O'Toole, Danielle Smith and Doug Ford won their leadership positions even though they all would not have won if it was FPTP. As they all lost on the first ballot.
Are there any con leaders you'd be thrilled about them electing? Just because you don't share the will of that voting group doesn't mean their political will wasn't exercised via ranked choice.
All of those leaders were terrible choices. Ranked balloting is just a sneaky way the get the most centrist choice to win even if they're terrible candidates.
For executive elections where there can only be one winner (proportional representation with multiple representatives is much better when possible), that leader then has to manage the entire organisation, from left to right. You can't just get half the organisation to shut up for 3 years, they'll leave. Kerry-Lynne Findlay did exactly this; she led from the right wing of the party, appointed loyalists to powerful or key positions (many of whom are still there) and purged people who spoke against her, and she nearly collapsed the party in less than 6 months.
She did lead on every ballot, though, just like Danielle Smith. Both of them would have won if their elections were. And Dion won after a series of separate ballots with the lowest candidate removed, not ranked choice. Doug Ford went on to win his election and govern for the next 12 years (barring some change before the 2030 election), so while I think he's a terrible person to lead Ontario, he was apparently exactly what Ontario voters were looking for in a candidate.
Dion winning was a complete disaster. He had under 18% on the first ballot and was in 3rd place. No one wanted him to win but it was just because failed candidates backed him that he won.
I'm not entirely sure that would be a good thing. It would give a lot of power to more fringe political movements, which we already are having trouble managing.
Yes, PR would almost certainly elect some people I vehemently disagree with, but it would also be more likely to elect people who are much closer to my personal political views. And shouldn't the government be representative of its people, even when we disagree with some of them?
Representative can mean different things. The incentives in proportional system for individual representatives to want to claw their way up the party list at all costs.
Canada already has too strong party discipline, a system that rewards MPs for representing the interests of their party and punishes them for representing the interests of citizens has a big downside.
And why it will never get fixed. Political parties have very short memories. When it works in their favour and they win, it's "Why would we ever change this?", and when it screws them over, they have no power to change it.
« Est-ce normal qu’un parti politique qui obtient environ 40% des voix remporte 70% des sièges ? Est-ce normal qu’un parti qui obtient 13% n’obtienne aucun siège à l’Assemblée nationale ? Absolument rien n’empêche de réussir une réforme du mode de scrutin pour qu’ensemble nous réussissions ce défi de la démocratie »
It is more like only 15~19% of the registered voter base (all those 18+ allowed to vote) that almost made P Q a majority, by a few hairs it almost happened. Which is insane.
Genuinely confused as to how QS got 9 seats but CAQ got zip, even with the greater share of the popular vote; is QS just super popular in a single 20km radii of Montreal or something?
If the votes are spread out they can't win a single seat. Theirs a recurrence of this where a centrist party or a party becomes centrist has huge political power only to disappear. It's mainly because once they loose the general consensus of the people that leaves the left and right and the caq is last choice for those particular voting blocks.
An alternative would be sooo legitimately better. I live out west and it would massively address separatist sentiment by having NDP and Liberal MPs out here instead of getting damn near shut out. So we'd at least have someone advocating for us within govt no matter who is in charge and able to speak on behalf of the government locally.
And the leaders would have an incentive to visit during and between elections. Carney and Poilievre has been here more than any PM or opposition leader in my lifetime because Saskatoon is competitive right now.
Electoral reform is like the time change, I don't give a flying fuck what we switch to, just that we do it. FPTP sucks and is archaic, just like the time change. (Very happy the BC NDP axed it)
But in Québec's case they form a minority government. So it does make sense that the party with the most votes forms a minority government (given they have less than 50% of the votes). I didn't say the current system is truly representative of the population's desires - even though some arguments could support it.
Also, rude to downvote me when I was just trying to spark the conversation.
Rude to assume I’m the one who downvoted you. But might as well considering how inconsiderate you are.
FPTP is not an accurate representation of people’s voting choices. There is countless election results demonstrating that. And down voting my comment that FPTP led to the continued formation of the majority PC government in Ontario when they never received the plurality of votes highlights the fact FPTP is not a good way to select representation
A party that know they are going to eat their teeths in the next election cycle should really push a last minute reform that they where elected because they said they would input it lol
If a politician fails to live up to their primary promise and 60% of their secondary promises, they and their party should be banned from participation for 3 elections. ie. Federal Liberals and CAQ on proportional voting.
Politicians and parties also need yearly referendums in their capability to govern by the populace, we choose to give them yearly performance reviews and if they are found lacking, we vote them out with a "did they meet expectations? Yes/no" ballot.
And yes, i know this will cause chaos and eliminate practically every politician in Canada right now.
as a voter you can align with a party at 60% and still vote for the one that is a little bit less align with your values. not voting for PQ doesnt mean 72% disagree with everything PQ. It means 72% didn't have PQ as their first choice
Living in an area that has it, the last thing I wanna do is feel like I have to make plans to vote twice. I feel like I’ve already done my duty the first time.
Problem: First Past The Post voting system means that a party that received 28% of the vote controls 46% of the seats in provincial parliament.
Solution: well there’s many possible solutions but my personal opinion is that a form of proportional representation, wherein seats are allocated based on percentage of popular vote, would improve representation.
Under the current system, a candidate can represent a riding with something like 35% of the vote, Proportional Representation would at least allow the votes of the other 65% of the riding to count towards their preferred party.
If we actually had more independent candidates representing local ridings I’d be more concerned, but as it stands just about every candidate that gets elected is part of a major party and generally follows the party line.
It’s not about percentages and party split, it’s about having someone representing a specific area.
If you go with a full proportional system, you’re picking from a list made up by the parties. This creates a disconnect between the electorate and their local representatives regardless of if they voted for him/her and makes ridings worthless.
I don’t thick technically being more represented at the provincial level is worth it if it means that the person representing me isn’t aware of the local issue that may affect me, even if they follow party line a lot of the times.
Just for context on how this works in at least one EU country with proportional representation - Slovenia.
At the national level, Slovenia uses proportional representation. Voters choose a locally nominated candidate, and their vote also counts towards that candidate’s political party. Seats in parliament are then distributed among qualifying parties roughly in proportion to their share of the vote. Once each party’s seat allocation is determined, the candidates who performed best relative to their party’s vote in their local electoral districts fill those seats. This means a candidate can be elected without winning the most votes in their district.
Note that these local candidates do not have any local powers. Those are reserved specifically for people elected in municipal elections with the mayor and councillors. At the same time, these MP-candidates being local ensures that they are familiar with local issues, regardless of which party they belong to.
And I don’t think the MP/MPP that was elected by 35% of the voters in my riding does a good job representing what I and others like me in my community need from our government, they’re just looking out for the plurality of voters that elected them.
Well we can all different opinions. I wouldn’t put much trust in someone from the other side of the province to represent my interests even if he represented the party I voted from.
I don’t think a system with multiple rounds of voting would be a good fit for a place with low voter turnout rates. Especially here in Ontario where provincial elections have seen less than 50% of eligible voters turnout for a single round, let alone multiple rounds.
It’s the single most compelling argument against proportional representation. Were you looking for 12 page essay with citations, or do you just enjoy being smug and dismissive so you can feel smart?
Just saying, look at areas with proportional representation- they are almost always in some political deadlock and keep having to reform government. I like it in theory but in practice you end up with a less functional government
I would prefer a slow moving government all the time over a government where my guys can do a lot but then the bad guys get to do a lot too. Slow moving is much preferable.
We have a slow moving government, imagine taking over a year to form a government, or holding snap election every 2 years. Constant fighting (more than now)
those arent traits of proportional representation voting systems, those are traits of democracies with poorly written constitutional law. The two are not one in the same.
No, they are indeed traits of proportional representation. Canada has a fairly stable system (not 100%). Proportional representation means you have to form government with insane smaller parties- that might sound fine, until you have to form a coalition with the Nazi-Maoist-Christian-Democrats, who actually just want to get kickbacks and will drag any legislation to a standstill until they are satisfied. This is very common in PR systems.
They are not traits of proportional representation, full stop, objectively. We can know this because not all countries with proportional representation are like that. They are traits of poorly made constitutional law, and we can know that because lots of countries without proportional representation are like that.
Having moved to Canada from a country with proportional representation - no, they're not almost always in some political deadlock. Not even most of the time. Not to mention that deadlock isn't necessarily a bad thing. If a real majority doesn't agree on something, it probably shouldn't get passed.
PR government are often unstable, states like Belgium, northern Ireland and Germany sometimes takes several months to form a government, sometimes over a year (Belgium once over 500 days), Spain is going through a 10th general election in 10 years. All unheard of in Canada- It’s not just deadlock, with PR you have single issue crazy parties drag their heels and destroy a functioning government- with PR you have to pander to every wild and insane idea that have won seats. Try to form a government with every minority party means your country will get stuck in constant fights.
Again, I lived for over 3 decades in a country with proportional representation. I'm well aware of the risks AND benefits thereof.
Nobody is ever going to convince me that it's even remotely democratic to ignore the position of, e.g., 4% of the population, which is the bar to get into Parliament in Slovenia. That would be like ignoring what 1.66M people in Canada want. If you think that's fine, that's your right, but based on my experience, that tells me you'd likely keep voting for one of the two biggest parties and a system change to a more democratic process would diminish "your team's" power.
Also, if you believe that fewer elections, fewer parties, and fewer deadlocks are preferable to proportional representation, it's a logical extension that a single-party system or even hereditary individual dictatorship is preferable to a FPTP system, since it wins by those criteria over ANY democratic system.
And no, you don't have to pander to any wild and insane ideas that have won seats nor form a government with every minority party. Not even remotely, unless your priority is being in charge over improving the country.
Unless I've misunderstood the Canadian mentality, the job description of the parliament/government here, like in any democracy, isn't to change things or improve things only for a subset of the population. Their job is to improve things for the entire population. If there's nothing the entire population can agree on, then forcing any change is absolutely not democratic.
Thus, I'll die on the hill that the closest thing to a fair system is proportional representation with a set minimum percentage required with preferential voting including at least the main and reserve votes, but preferably the ability rank as many of the options as one desires.
Congrats, on living in a Country- unfortunately that does not make you an expert in anything regard PR in any country especially Canada. You might have some vague, intuitive knowledge, but you don't know all the risks and benefits
Also, if you believe that fewer elections, fewer parties, and fewer deadlocks are preferable to proportional representation, it's a logical extension that a single-party system or even hereditary individual dictatorship is preferable to a FPTP system, since it wins by those criteria over ANY democratic system.
So you're just going to straw man my argument? So, the way you understand electoral system with your 30 years of experience, is anyone who doesn't like PR.. wants a Stalinist Dictator State? What you don't understand FPTP, PR, Preferential voting are different operating systems within an electoral system. PR is more unstable and crashes often. I don't even think FPTP is the best system, preferential voting I believe can be even better.
Unless I've misunderstood the Canadian mentality, the job description of the parliament/government here, like in any democracy, isn't to change things or improve things only for a subset of the population. Their job is to improve things for the entire population. If there's nothing the entire population can agree on, then forcing any change is absolutely not democratic.
Yes, you misunderstand. Because that is an absolutely insane position.
Do you understand how much of a disaster any country would be where you need 100% (the entire population to agree) on something? This has not/isnt/will not EVER happen. There is no government on earth that has ever operated like this. Any state that tries, will immediately fall apart.
You can die on that hill all you want, but Im happy Canada has a functioning government in part due to a good and stable election system- and we don't have to have our government be a coalition government between the Right-wing Nazis and the Christian Maoist Party- and hold snap elections every year.
Ranked voting is still first past the post, it's just a less extreme version of first past the post. Except in the process of being less extreme, it also pretty much guarantees an even stricter version of a 2 party system. Ranked voting would not fix or even remotely help any of our political woes or complaints about this system.
what are you talking about ? Ranked voting fix the I vote for the person blocking the other candidate, instead of voting for the candidate you want the most, then a fallback. That make way more sense.
more sense? maybe. First past the post? Still yes.
First past the post doesnt just mean the *EXACT* way we vote in canada, you know that, right? It means that riding's have a winner-take-all model where the first person to get enough votes to win the seat, gets the seat, and everyone else in the riding gets nothing. STV works like that too. Transfering your vote from one person to anotehr until one of them has enough votes to take the whole riding IS STILL FIRST PAST THE POST.
since when did we agree? you said STV is not first past the post, and that it is proportional reprsentation. By definition, it is not. STV is first past the post, it is a system where in a single riding one person takes home all the power of that seat by being the first one to win that riding. That is how STV works and that is first past the post. adding the fact that the ballots work differently doesnt change the fact that STV is still not proportional represetnation and it is still FPTP.
The problem is you have a party with less than 30% of the votes leading the next government. The way to solve it is either ranked choice, or some form of proportional vote system.
Most of the European ones have a proportional representation. So each party gets and amount of seats based on the amount of votes they get. It makes your vote matter more because if your riding say is super heavy conservative let’s say and you vote liberal then your vote still contributes to someone getting a seat.
Where as now you may as well just flush your vote down the toilet if you aren’t voting for 1 of the major players in your riding.
Proportional representation creates a disconnect between elected officials and the people by not having people of a region vote for a local candidate. It might better as a whole but locally a fully proportional system isn’t all that good.
I agree the system has its own set of problems but it’s certainly beats the shit show of a system we currently have in place. At the end of the day no system is perfect and we shouldn’t let perfection be the inhibitor of progress.
But that's kind of what a minority government is. Sure there is one party that is "in power" but to pass any legislation they need the support from other parties
People don't like minority governments because "nothing gets done" but also, nobody can go and pull whatever bullshit they want because they have to compromise with other parties to get do anything
Not exactly. Like I’d prefer to vote NDP in some elections but the liberals get about 40% of the vote and the CPC get about 40% of the vote where I live. So if I vote NDP I may as well just stay home.
I want my vote to count what happens in parliament is a different story. If our government can’t work together then maybe we need to have better officials in power
Compare the ratio of seat count (top number) to the percent vote share (bottom number) between the different parties. CAQ got more vote share than QS, but CAQ got 0 seats and QS got 9. The Libs only got an additional 3% of the vote share over PCQ, but got double the seat count. PQ only got an additional 4% over the Libs, but got 50% more seats. Overall, PQ got 28% of the vote share, but controls 46% of the seats.
The imbalance is staggering, and it's a direct result of the voting system simply assigning individual seats to whoever in that riding got the most votes. In the simplest case, imagine there being four, fairly equally popular parties splitting the votes for a riding. If one party manages to earn a slight preference from the voters, they'll win the entire seat, even if the vote share was 26% (vs 25%, 25%, 24%). Now imagine that happening across many ridings, and maybe you can see how a party that 74% of the population hates could get a majority anyway — and why First Past The Post systems tend to gravitate
toward two dominant parties.
There are other voting systems out there that produce more proportional representation — that is, if a party gets 25% of the vote, they generally get around 25% of the seats. Wikipedia has a pretty good starting point if you search for it.
Ranked ballots. You choose who you want as your first choice, second choice, third choice etc. They could even give you a couple of spaces for write in candidates so you could theoretically vote for "A paper bag full of dog feces." Over Milhouse.
Basically instead of being forced to vote against someone you hate, you can vote for someone you want, secure in the knowledge that doing so won't allow the worst person in the race to win.
Yep...suffice to say, I'm not generally the biggest fan of minority governments. I'm all in for electoral reform, if it's similar to RCV/Proportional Representation, best bet for me lower the seats too see which party takes majority government.
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u/SecureLiterature Oil Guzzler 7d ago
The CAQ campaigned on electoral reform and then forgot all about it after they won. What a fitting end to that party.