With the election promise of our most recent trip to the polls as being the last one to be exercised under the First-Past-the-Post system, questions about just how the government will go about consulting and designing our future voting system have started dominating the public discourse. It’s probably a good thing to get passionate about – after all, the prospect of people sleepwalking into a new electoral process is probably the worst thing imaginable. But what has become a surprisingly polarizing issue are the demands that any changes be put to the people with a referendum, and those opposed to it are some of the most curious group of all.
Let me get my own bias out of the way first – I’m team status quo when it comes to our electoral system. It’s a system that’s easy to use, efficient, accountable, and where all votes count equally and aren’t proportioned by fancy math. It keeps a direct connection between the voter and the MP, and it allows for Canadians to “throw the bums” out every so often, which cannot be said for many other electoral systems. Unfortunately, it’s also a system that has been maligned as being antiquated and distortional, because people mistakenly draw a connection between the numbers of seats won with the percentage of the popular vote, despite the fact that it’s a logical fallacy to do so. (Federal elections, after all, are 338 separate but simultaneous elections, and not a singular event). It’s the same kind of poor thinking that leads people to think that we directly vote for party leaders.
When it comes to Justin Trudeau’s promise to reform the voting system, he has promised broad-based consultations but has not promised one system over another. In the past, he stated his preference for ranked ballots over proportional representation, but has charged his new democratic reform minister to engage in broad-based consultations to come to a consensus on a model that they want to move forward on. He has not ruled out a referendum, nor has he promised one, and that lack of a definitive answer has made the Conservatives in the Commons completely apoplectic with outrage.
Astonishingly enough, it’s the proponents of electoral reform who are similarly driven to complete outrage over the fact that a referendum would even be considered. Through tenuous logic – likely of the same dubious sort that leads them to use the argument about seat counts matching the popular vote – they have decided that since the majority of Canadians voted for parties that are in favour of electoral reform, then there should be no need for a referendum. After all, there is a government mandate for change. It’s a cute argument, but one full of holes.
For starters, each party with a desire for a reformed electoral system has a different one in mind. While the Liberals seem largely keen on ranked ballots, the NDP are set on a particular model of mixed-member proportional representation, and the Greens in favour of a more pure PR system. In other words, nobody has a system in mind that they can agree on to consider it an actual mandate. It also brings to mind something that was said over Twitter about trying to determine public policy by way of Venn diagrams of where party policies overlap. It’s not pretty, and it’s not actually how you govern a country.
What much of the disagreement around a referendum boils down to is the fact that it may very well kill the idea, as it has done in several provinces in Canada, as well as the UK. Whenever it has been put to a vote in this country, it has failed to meet the established threshold necessary for it to come about. Yes, it came close in BC once, where it got over 50 percent, but not the sixty percent needed to pass the test (and really, a fundamental change to our electoral process should require more than just fifty-percent-plus-one to be implemented), but in the subsequent referendum, it did not even achieve 50 percent. It’s what the Conservatives are hoping for, and what reform proponents fear most.
One of the most terrible suggestions put forward this week was by NDP MP Nathan Cullen, who said that a referendum should only be held after an election under a new system. In other words, it’s asking for forgiveness instead of permission, and predicated on the notion that it wouldn’t pass by popular vote in the first place, so therefore we need to essentially force it on the country first. I’m not sure how that’s in keeping with our liberal democratic ideals.
The most curiously galling argument of all, put forward by those who demand electoral reform, basically boils down to the fact that voters are too stupid to choose electoral reform, so why should we let them have the choice – as though that very same logic could be extended to the whole notion of voting in and of itself. If voters are too stupid to choose the “right” electoral system, then surely we couldn’t trust them either to choose the “right” political parties either, and it cannot be ignored that most of those demanding electoral reform are from either the left or from smaller parties who hope that a change in the system will give them a greater share of power in the country, likely through coalition governments. And if it’s tasteless to want to change the electoral system in order to advantage your own party or political preference, it’s even more tasteless to demand it under the rubric of disadvantaging the party that you don’t like, as though their electoral victories are somehow illegitimate.
If we’re going to have this discussion on electoral reform, then the status quo should be an option. Changes without a referendum disregard that simple and yet crucial notion, and would adversely silence the voices of those Canadians who think the system works just fine, undermining the whole exercise.
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Other articles by Dale Smith
Advice for new MPs
Post-election options are different from 2008
The arrogance of ending First-Past-the-Post
Follow Dale Smith on twitter: @journo_dale
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