Electoral Reform – Proportional Representation

Proportional Representation or PR for short has become the buzz word for those who are advocating for Electoral Reform (and that group includes myself) but what exactly do we mean when we say we want PR? The broad definition is “a method of voting by which political parties are given legislative representation in proportion to their popular vote.” , in Canada we have to add “within the limits set by our constitution” as some provinces have a minimum representative threshold. We must also add “as close as possible within practical limits” after all we cannot put fractions of MPs in the house to exactly follow the popular vote!


The next thing to be considered is ' legislative representation in proportion to their popular vote', your local representative will still be just one individual from one party but theoretically representing a variety of voters, we cannot send parts of people to Ottawa. There are some voting methods that attempt to make our local choice more representative of the general consensus which I will cover in later posts, this first article is more of a general look at PR.


In trying to clarify the various choices that may possibly be put before the citizens to choose at some point in the distant future I have been accused of making a simple choice complicated, that it is a simple matter of ticking off FPTP, PR and/or some other choice. That may well be so but to make such choices without fully understanding how such a system would work and what ramifications it may have upon our governance is pure folly IMHO. The details of such choices to be made by our citizens must be fully understood by as many voters as possible, simply saying I support PR is, in my view, not sufficient. We must say I believe THIS specific type of PR is what I support, what actual choices we will eventually be given is, at this point, anybody’s guess and thus we should examine a variety of systems most of which are in use in some country across the world in some form or another. This is what I will try and do (again) in the coming months.


One final note upon the details that the PR option must consider, and one that had a large part in sinking previous attempts to bring in change. That is the need to somehow select 'extra' MPs to sit in the House in order that the number of MPs from that party is closely proportional to the popular vote and how to select them. Will they be selected by the party leader, by the number of votes they received, by the percentage of the local vote they got or some other system? Again I will cover this in more detail in a future post but my readers can see that as always 'the devil is in the details' and it would be impossible to put all the various options before the citizens, this does not mean we should not know of the choices and advocate for one or more of them. We can only do so if we are aware of such details.


I do not deny that having the various factions who support Electoral Reform not being able to agree amongst themselves makes it more difficult to move forward, but that is democracy, as is having the debate based upon as accurate a picture as possible of the various systems. The first step will be to have a majority of our politicians commit to considering change and committing to putting some kind of proposal before the citizens. Those that are elected due to the vulgarities of our current system are unlikely to support such initiatives, particularly the current federal lot who seem more focused on 'gaming' the system to remain in power.


Finally the other scary factor for many folk, and particularly most political parties, is the fact that election by popular vote will almost certainly result in a greater chance of minority governments and require our representatives to work together, be more cooperative and seek consensus in order to move forward. Moreover they may even have to form 'coalitions' (gasp!) with others in order to govern. In Canada that concept seems to be totally alien despite it being a common practice across the world. That those whom we elect work for US and not the Political Party with whom they are associated seems to have almost totally skipped their mind. And that my friends is as much of a problem as the manner in which we select them! Support Democracy - Recommend this Post at Progressive Bloggers