Month: February 2017

He said no to the electoral reform proposed… and he cited the insistence on MMP on the left as evidence they weren’t willing to compromise. Thus, there is the possibility that a new mixed form could enable reform. It is 1/4th+ of what he wants and it would tend to let his party either have a majority or be the biggest party in a coalition, which is what he really wants. However, presuming he and his party prefers to have a majority, it’d force him to be more mindful of minority groups than they would if it was AV alone….

And, as you pointed out, the vulnerability of FPP to whisper campaigns and gamiing of the system by the CP is reason enough to seek out new hybrids that might be more fit…

Mr. Trudeau has not said “no” to MMP, he has said “no” to electoral reform. Inventing a hybrid isn’t going to change that. (MMP is itself a hybrid.)

You seem to disprove your own suggestion my article’s premise is “fanciful splitting of hairs” with your own quotations.

Post WWII Germany was completely at the mercy of the Allied Powers, and MMP was imposed by the allies with the intention to prevent a recurrence of the war just ended. I have not attributed specious quotations to Mr. Churchill; indeed, it is no secret he was well acquainted with different electoral systems and favoured Proportional Representation. (In fact Mr. Churchill’s idea was to implement PR in cities but not rural areas. Which is effectively what we implemented in western Canada for two or three decades in the mid twentieth century.) Both of these things are known.

A credible source, The Electoral Reform Knowledge Network (ACE), refers to the installation of MMP in Germany as an “External Imposition”. The same source also refers to some compromise. So, the premise of this blog seems like a fanciful splitting of hairs.1. https://aceproject.org/regions-en/countries-and-territories/DE/case-studies/germany-the-original-mixed-member-proportional-system 2. https://aceproject.org/main/english/es/esb03.htm

Winston Churchill stated on a number of occasions that, in general, he preferred proportional representation. I am not personally aware of any specific Churchill statements in respect of Germany, although he certainly may have done so..

From ACE:

” External Imposition

A small number of electoral systems were more consciously designed and imposed on nation states by external powers. Two of the most vivid examples of this phenomenon occurred in West Germany after the Second World War, and in Namibia in the late 1980s.

In post-war Germany, both the departing British forces and the German parties were anxious to introduce a system which would avoid the damaging party proliferation and destabilisation of the Weimar years, and to incorporate the Anglo tradition of constituency representation because of unease with the 1919-1933 closed list electoral system which denied the voters a choice between candidates as well as parties.

During 1946, elections in the French and American zones of occupation were held under the previous Weimar electoral system. In the British zone a compromise was adopted which allowed voters to vote for constituency members with a number of list PR seats reserved to compensate for any disproportionality that arose from the districts. Thus the Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMP) system, which has since been emulated by a number of other countries, was born. This mixed system was eventually adopted for all parliamentary elections in 1949 but it was not until 1953 that two separate votes were introduced, one for the constituency member, and another based on the Länder, which ultimately determined the party composition of the Bundestag. The imposition of a five percent national threshold for party list representation helped focus the party system on three major groupings after 1949 – the Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and Free Democrats – although in all a total of 12 parties gained representation in those first post-war national elections.

If Trudeau has said NO to MMP then it’s time to explore alternative mixes of proportional representation and a majoritarian system. I’d like to proffer the Alternative Mixed Proportional system.

It’d have lots of 4-seat ridings and one at-large seat. The at-large seat would use the Alternative vote. The alternative vote would also be used for one out of each of the 4 seats in every riding. The other three seats would be determined with the simplest, purest proportional representation system possible s.t. there being only 3 seats: Largest Remainder with a Hare quota.

3-seat LR Hare is very similar to First Past the Post, which is 1-seat LR Hare. It has one vote per voter and one candidate per party. A common outcome would be for the top 3 parties/candidates to win one seat each. However the locally top party can win 2 seats if their candidate’s percent of the valid votes is 33.3% greater than the 3rd place candidate’s percent of the votes. In that case, the second seat would be held by a vice-candidate. It’s unlikely that a party would win 3 seats, as that would require for the top candidate to beat the 2nd place candidate by more than 66.67% of the vote.

Here’s some concrete examples:If the percents were 40:30:20:10 then the top 3 would win one seat each. If the percents were 50:35:10:5 then the top party would win 2 seats, since 50-10>33.3. If they were 80-10-8-2 then the top party would win 3 seats.

In Canada, AMP would give Trudeau/LP one-fourth plus of what they want and overall tend to let two outcomes happen if there is a dominant party: it’d either have a majority or it’d be the bigger party in a coalition. But to get the majority, it would need to win quite a few 2 out of 3 seats in a 3-seat LR Hare election and that would require them to be attentive to the issues of local minority groups, like First Nations people. This would not be as true if only the Alternative Vote were in use.

So no doubt Canada needs electoral reform, but there are true hybrid systems that are neither purely proportional nor purely majoritarian and it seems that is what you should focus on….

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