2019 Federal Election

[ijmorlan]

All of them. That’s how it is supposed to work.
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That's a rather fanciful and romanticised notion of what an independent representative can do.  I suspect those who favour independents are folks who are quite comfortable with the status quo.   I say that because a parliament full of independents (338 in the Canadian parliament) would, at best, accomplish absolutely nothing.  At worst, they would create chaos and anarchy.  

We have political parties to accomplish things.  Would it help if political parties were called "teams?"  We have political parties, or teams, if you prefer, because they are more effective than individuals.  That's why we have sports teams.  Can you imagine what would happen if the Kitchener Rangers were independents and not team players?  They would never win!  Same would be true in politics.  If independents is such a good idea why are there no democratic governments in the world made up of independents?  Because it's not a good idea.  That's why.

Regardless, I'd like to discuss the need for PR rather than political parties.

You asked who the independent representative would represent, and I said everybody. I think an independent representative is starting from a better place in representing everybody in their riding than a loyal party member, who is usually beholden to the party line. And I don’t see the problem with a parliament full of independents. They would be elected by their constituents, so if they produced chaos and anarchy presumably they would be replaced by others. And it is much easier to “fire” a representative under ranked choice than under our current system.

You say that no democratic governments in the world are made up of independents. Thousands of city councils are all counterexamples. And just because something isn’t common doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea — that’s just hopelessly inept argumentation. By your argument, first past the post is peachy keen, because it’s everywhere, even though it should be nowhere.

Also please note that I am not suggesting that we abolish political parties (how would that even work?) just that one thing I don’t like about PR is that it institutionalizes the concept of political parties. Right now, the actual voting system doesn’t mention political parties, other than to specify that the political party label of each candidate is written on the ballot. But even that is just a convenience — hypothetically, our elections could run exactly as they do with no mention of political parties in the rules for balloting. This is true because we vote for representatives. Under PR, or at least under many PR systems, we would vote for a political party, not for a representative.

If we switched to ranked ballots, small parties and independents would find it easier to make progress. Big parties would still attract many 2nd place votes as they do now, but those 2nd place votes would only count if voters’ real preference of a 3rd party or independent didn’t get elected.

Of course, I am making some possibly foolish assumptions about the quality of thinking that goes into voting. Some people are concerned about the supposed complexity of a ranked ballot, and if those concerns are valid, then indeed there is likely no good voting system. People who are too dull to understand the basic meaning of a ranked ballot are really people that ideally would stay home on voting day and keep their mouths shut whenever political topics (or any topics, really) arise in conversation.