General Politics Discussion

[ijmorlan]

Proportional representation does break down if there is an anomaly or a geographic voting block. In certain circumstances a small block voting heavily for one party can garner far more influence over the rest of the house. Ideally there would be a balance of proportional representation and geographic representation.

I think you’re talking about riding-based systems like what we have, where for example the Bloc gets many seats due to its support being all in a small area. Under proportional representation it doesn’t matter how a party’s support is spread out: they get the same number of members elected.

That being said, it is not axiomatic that number of seats should be proportional to number of votes. Some arguments for proportional representation essentially boil down to the tautological argument that seats should be proportional to number of votes, and therefore proportional representation is the best system. I could just as well argue that the person who gets the most votes should win. It’s pretty clear to me that almost anything is better than first past the post however.

Personally I think we should start by replacing all first past the post elections with ranked ballots. That means MPs, MPPs, mayors, councillors, school board trustees, condominium directors, …. This would be an improvement in how we select these roles but doesn’t really change much about the system — only what we write on the ballots and how we count the ballots. In principle you wouldn’t even have to change the ballots: just write 1, 2, 3 in the circles instead of an X in a single circle (although this would be a pain to count and is not actually a good idea). Then have a separate discussion about improving the way we select large groups of people (House of Commons, legislatures, city councils) and possibly bring in proportional representation or other systems.

Also, bring back the per-vote vote subsidy, but this time do it right by simultaneously cancelling the per-dollar vote subsidy that we have always had.