This is the second installment of The Democracy Papers that were written in 2007 in answer to the Ontario referendum that year on electoral reform. The referendum was defeated but the need for reform continues to rankle. We believe Canada must have an elected Constitutional Conference. Electoral reform is just one of the topics to be brought to the gathering. For this reason, the Democracy Papers are being updated.
Chapter 2 – The wasted vote and other myths.
In 2007, there were many myths told as to why we should have mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting in Ontario. This form of proportional representation was on the ballot for the provincial election. The referendum question was: whether the voter favoured the first-past-the-post electoral system or would they like to have MMP voting that was proposed by Ontario’s Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform?
The first of the myths told by the pro-MMP people is the suggestion that you have been wasting your vote when your candidate does not win. This myth is spurious. They are saying that your opinion has been treated as worthless. You went to vote so that your voice would be heard. You went to vote to express your belief in democracy. You went because you and the other people in your area had a choice to make as to who would represent you. Win or lose, you were expressing your democratic opinion.
You can be pleased when your candidate wins. You can be disappointed when your candidate loses. Your vote is never worthless. Candidates, politicos and statisticians spend many hours pouring over those results. Winning and losing candidates learn from them. They can help the loser to be a winner next time. They can show trends. They can be extrapolated by parties to forecast results in newly formed ridings. They are used for years to help academics learn from the past to forecast the future.
The most seriously flawed myth is that the selection of list candidates (the people whom they want to appoint to the legislature to represent parties) will be open and democratic because the parties have to disclose their process of selection. The process of choosing all parties’ candidates has been corrupted for years.
The rule in Ontario is that no person can be a candidate for a party without the signed approval of the party leader. That means that despite the occasional attempt by a riding association to make the decision on their own, the leader’s campaign committee is the de facto selection committee. Any other explanation is nothing more than window dressing.
In most cases of mixed member proportional voting, you can count on a list that consists mainly of persons running for election in electoral districts. These are people the party leader and advisors want to be sure are in the legislature. If they lose in their electoral district, the list will be their second chance. It guarantees that many of the list candidates to be selected are losers. They have been rejected by the voters in their electoral district and are now available to be appointed.
The silliest myth of all is the one that the selection of list candidates will bring more women and minorities into the legislature. The implication is insulting. The political parties have done a much better job in recent years of encouraging women to run for office. The financial barriers have been mainly overcome with the use of taxpayers’ money. Many well-qualified women have run for office and won in their ridings. If you think there should be more, get to work and be sure they are nominated and then work even harder to make sure they are elected.
Minorities are a different matter. This has good and bad implications. There are no barriers. Ethnic background, race, religion, sexual persuasion or physical handicaps are not a problem but only representing a specific minority group is a problem. Every group is welcome vote for whom they wish to be in the legislature but, in the legislature, these elected people need to deal with many diverse issues and they need to be able to represent everybody in their electoral district.
The myth that is the most confounding is the one that proportional voting systems such as MMP promote broader participation in government and more ready acceptance of government policies. That, they believe, would seem to make it very worthwhile. It would, if we really want a lacklustre, do-nothing government.
The myth continues that MMP-type government will feature bargaining, will be inclusive and will include compromise. There are a few ingredients of good government that are missing. They forget about ideas, drive and ambition. And they forget about leadership. If you want this bland, non-competitive type of representation, you could have got the same thing by making the citizens’ assembly that selected it the Ontario government. The assembly would do just as good a job.
©Copyright 2007, 2011, Peter Lowry
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