Lately there has been a flare up in the media forums about the statements of the Ontario provincial Liberal leader, Del Duca, about his intentions regarding voting reform and particularly the Ranked Ballot idea. It seems the Liberals, federal and provincial, are once again trying to push one of their long standing aims, their pet zombie idea.
For those unfamiliar, there is a long standing campaign to change the political system in Canada from Single Member Constituencies (SMC) to Proportional Representation (PR). That is, to multiple member constituencies which insure that seat vote for each party corresponds with popular vote. Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is an organization considered to be leading this movement.
Another idea for changing the system of electing our political representatives is Ranked Ballot or as Liberals tend to call it, Alternative Vote or AV. “Ranked Choice Voting” (RCV) is starting to be used occasionally. This involved having the voter rank the candidates in order on the ballot. If none get an outright majority, one of several methods is used to add up the votes of the top two so that one of them must win.
A zombie idea means one of these ideas which are much against the public interest and have been debunked and rejected over and over. Often they are tried, fail, and are rejected but still keep coming back. The Liberals have been very persistent as well as devious about trying to push this AV zombie through.
Some will say that I should not blame the Liberal party as a whole for this because many of its members do not support “Alternative Vote (AV)”. Oh, yes, Liberal provincial governments mandated citizen’s assemblies which recommended a Proportional Representation (PR) voting system, and held referendums on it. Pierre Trudeau advocated Proportional Representation.
But PR went nowhere in Pierre’s time and his son rejects it and is a main driver for AV. This zombie is nurtured within the Liberal deep establishment, which crushed these provincial initiatives and sabotaged the referendums.
The object of the AV is obvious and endlessly pointed out. It is to create a system wherein the Liberals cannot lose. Obviously, such a system could only be put across through deception and coercion.
The apparent strategy in this latest attempt to put it through is to try to create confusion about exactly what is being advocated. I wonder if Del Duca himself really understands what he is saying.
By the way, it is amusing that he is promising to resign if he cannot put AV through in his first term. If he cannot do it in his first term, he is unlikely to get a second term; that is in the very uncertain event that he gets a first term in government.
Del Duca seems to have no idea of doing something this important through any process other than just ramming it through. But he also says he will convene a body of some kind to study different models of proportional representation.
He is also going to allow cities in Ontario to choose their own voting systems. It seems they are all supposed to choose AV/Ranked Ballots. One wonders what will happen if one of them decides to choose something like Single Transferable Vote (STV)?
STV would be the best voting system for most local governments in Canada. STV uses the rank ordering system in multiple constituency elections, thus creating a proportional system which would actually work.
The basic problem with all voting systems presently used in Canada is that they are based on SMS. Whether local, provincial, or federal, if we could get several members representing each constituency, that would give us a much better system. Getting seat allotments among parties to be exactly proportional to the vote, or even having parties at all, would be less important.
I must point out here that the real problem with the Canadian political system is that it is not a democracy. This idea of voting for “representatives” is a system of oligarchy. A democracy is about a system of public assemblies, with exotic things like sortition, referenda, direct vote being used; a complicated subject I am obviously not getting into here.
I simply wish that the noodle heads of Fair Vote Canada (FVC) would begin to consider that, while going to proportional systems would make for a smoother functioning oligarchy, the real problems with Canadian government will only be solved by a real democracy. I have had a long relationship with them and realized that their main malfunction is that they are oligarchs at heart. Their incompetence at leading a move for electoral reform is why we still do not have it.
Instead of proportional representation, we have had years of the Liberals looking for ways to give themselves permanent majorities. The strategy now is to create confusion as to what is really being advocated.
Once again, Liberal AV advocates are talking about it as though it is just one form of proportional representation. They will get people interested in the concept of PR, but then make it seem too confusing and switch people onto AV, hoping they will not realize that AV is something completely different from PR.
Liberals are pushing AV/Ranked Ballot for local governments, apparently with the idea that if it is accepted there, it can be accepted for legislatures. It is usually quite amusing and instructive when those pushing for AV in local government are asked to explain how it solves anything. They are unable to.
A study of the results of AV votes shows that the candidate in an SMS system who would win under a plurality would in almost all cases win under AV as well. Plurality means, whoever gets the most votes. FVC types pedantically call this “first past the post”.
AV also seems to be used as a diversion by local political networks. It is a fake reform which changes nothing but diverts people’s attention away from meaningful reforms. The real solution for the governance problems in all large Canadian cities is to adopt a legislative model; with PR of course.
But of course PR is not a good solution either. It is still a system of oligarchy, not democracy, and people are only starting in Canada to discuss real democracy. To repeat, we are not getting any such discussion from FVC.
Instead, FVC is actually an obstacle to serious political reform in Canada. Not only are most of its membership deeply oligarchic in their outlook, they are very incompetent as advocates. Worst of all, they let themselves be intimidated and partly coopted by their opponents.
Lately they have the idea that governments should convene “citizen’s assemblies” to decide a voting system. They fail to notice that governments around the world have caught on to the idea of such assemblies. They have learned how to rig these procedures to get the results they want.
Historically, countries which have adopted PR have done so after their electoral system had broken down. This was usually because enough parties had been able to get into the legislature that SMS became unworkable. It has not been due to the public’s desires.
FVC greatly overstates the advantages of PR. In fact, oligarchic establishments have learned to rig such systems pretty well. They can plant their people in all the parties, they can control the media, they can decide what parties get heard. The only real way forward for Canada as with all countries, is to develop real democracy.
So that is what is so rank about Ranked Ballots. It is about cementing the status quo into place by insuring that the Liberals cannot ever lose. This very probable result of AV has been shown by careful study of voting patterns riding by riding over several elections.
AV would achieve this result due to a distinct characteristic of voting in Canada, especially at the federal level. There is no duopoly; no slightly left party alternating in office with a slightly right party. The Liberals occupy the centre and until recently it has been very hard for any other party to beat them. That is starting to change and that is no doubt why the federal liberals are so anxious to get AV/Ranked Ballots passed.
It is at the federal level that the Single Member System (SMS) is getting dysfunctional enough to force a PR system. In Ontario it has been more like the duopoly, the two party system, of most other SMS systems. Yet the Ontario Liberals likely think they would also like to create an “immovable centre” position for themselves.
In most other provinces, it is easier for new parties to come up and replace older parties, but the situation soon resolves itself into a duopoly. Neither AV nor PR is likely to break out in these polities first.
As for local governments, it is likely that a lot of them will try AV out of frustration with their dysfunctional governments. To repeat, It will change nothing.
That Del Duca wants to push this sort of garbage tells us much about what kind of premier he would be.
Addendum
I have come to dislike “advocacy” organizations like FVC and individual activists. To me they are the slime that fills up the dead space created by the absence of a real democracy.
Lately I found a long time and repulsive proponent of ranked ballot once again trying to follow me on Twitter. I once again removed him. His name is Meslin and he has his face in the news a lot lately, in relation to PR and AV.
Lately he seems to have done a trip up Damascus road. He is now promoting PR and a citizen’s assembly. He is trying to ingratiate himself to FVC. But he still wants AV for local governments.
The response of FVC to Meslin has been very puzzling to a lot of people. At times they seem to have given up and given in to him. The vertebrates within FVC have stood up to him and kept him from hijacking the organization.
From the twitterings of some of the FVC’s council, they still know what Meslin is about and not to trust him. Others still seem to be trying to promote him and AV.
When I was involved with FVC some years ago, I had a front row seat on Meslin’s persistent, devious, very creepy activities inside FVC. He is the kind of obsessive attention seeker who should be sharply discouraged on all occasions.
The solution for the FVC people, the Meslins and the Del Ducas, is to have a real democracy. That is what I work for.
Readings (and Viewings)
FVC frequently holds these PR 101 webinars, usually hosted by Prof. Denis Pilon. If you want the concepts I discussed here explained in more detail, this is the place.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_MSKAYycdStCc9766LN3yqA
Foremost among the things which baffle me about FVC is the refusal to propose one system. They cannot get it that the public is not interested in being lectured at about all the world’s voting systems. This is the big reason why referendums on PR usually fail; it is the public throwing it back and saying, “come again when you’ve figured out what you are asking for.”
They have the ideal system for Canada worked out and handed to them on a silver platter, by the ex head of Elections Canada. No citizen’s assembly will come up with anything better than this. Yet they hide it deep in their website. Dig it out at this url;
https://www.fairvote.ca/rural-urban-proportional/
Below are writings I developed for the last board elections to FVC, when I ran. Unsurprisingly I did not get elected. But I will recycle this material for next time. It is available on my blog for those who would a detailed look at the history of the movement in Canada for voting reform, why it keeps failing, and where it needs to move toward.
https://yaxls.wordpress.com/2021/05/06/on-the-relationship-between-voting-reform-and-democracy/
https://yaxls.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/fvc-and-poor-old-me/
Here are a couple of books to curl up to on a long winter night in an SMC
“Against Elections” David Van Reybrouck (Explanatory of why representative systems are no good.)
“Democratic Illusion; Deliberative Democracy in Canadian Public Policy” Genevieve Fuji Johnson (Explanatory of how “Citizen’s Assembly” type initiatives usually get cooked in Canada.)