ROTHENBURGER — Flogging the poor prop-rep horse
COLUMN — In May 2009, I wrote a column about the Single Transferable Vote. I likened it to buying fruits and veggies at a super market and tossing them into a blender.
“In 2005, I voted against BC-STV because I didn’t understand it,” I wrote.
“In 2009, I will vote against BC-STV because I understand it.”
In 2015, it makes no more sense than it did then, but people keep trying to resurrect this dead horse and flog it some more, hoping it will get up and stagger towards the finish line.
The NDP, especially, are at it again. Saanich North and the Islands MP Gary Holman says if the New Democrats win the B.C. election in 2017, they’ll hold a referendum to see if people want to switch to a proportional representation system for 2021.
He sees it as more fair than the current first-past-the-post system, a.k.a. winner take all.
People who think proportional representation is a solution to all the problems in our democratic system point to lousy turnouts and the fact that the parties forming government seldom if ever win with a majority of the vote. The Conservatives have a majority government in Ottawa even though they got only 39 per cent of the popular vote, while the Liberals won re-election with 44 per cent.
(Holman, by the way, won his riding with 33.3 per cent of the vote.)
In Ottawa, federal party leader Thomas Mulcair is flogging the same poor, over-worked pony. Last year, an NDP motion favouring prop rep, as it’s called for short, was defeated, but he succeeded in getting some Liberals to side with him.
A public opinion poll in 2013 showed that 70 per cent of those surveyed supported prop rep. Since few people understand how this complex, convoluted voting system actually works, I’m skeptical of any poll that supports it.
When it comes to actually having to vote on it, Canadians have rejected it several times. Ontario, Prince Edward Island and B.C. have all turned it down. As mentioned above, B.C. voters have done so twice, though it’s been close.
Those who like the idea keep coming up with new flavours of it. Mulcair likes the mixed-member flavour, in which each voter gets two ballots, one for local representation and one for a party. This is different from what was voted on it B.C. last time, which had all kinds of crazy nuances.
According to Mulcair, prop rep is an elixer for just about everything. “Furthermore, countries with proportional representation also score higher on indicators of health, education and standards of living,” he wrote in an article in Common Ground. “They are more likely to enjoy fiscal surpluses and have healthier environmental policies, economic growth and decreased income inequality.”
At least 36 countries have adopted proportional representation and they have bigger voter turnouts, more women and minorities in government and higher citizen satisfaction, he says.
Former B.C. cabinet minister and curmudgeonly columnist Rafe Mair agrees with Mulcair. He says prop rep pretty much guarantees that no party gets a majority, and he thinks that’s a good thing.
“Because of our long tradition, this causes many to set their hair on fire,” he wrote recently in The Tyee. “But what this means is that a minority government must govern with the consent of a majority of Parliament as a whole, not just government lickspittles who vote as they are told.
“A minister of finance, for example, can’t rely on his or her budget automatically passing but must have support of a majority of the House — what on earth could be wrong with that?”
Rafe says MPs and MLAs are powerless under the current voting system. He says prop rep would do away with imbalances in constituencies caused by trying to balance population with geographical size.
The B.C. NDP have been in favour of prop rep for quite some time. Current leader John Horgan spoke in favour of it back in 2013 when he was House leader. And, I believe, it’s still the official policy of the party.
I guess they figure if we’re forced to vote on it enough times, eventually we’ll give in, like an innocent suspect under a hot light, and tell them what they want to hear.
But it’s worth remembering the oft-quoted words of the late South African anti-apartheid parliamentarian Helen Suzman, who said, “I used to be a fan of proportional representation, but I am not at all now I have seen it in action.”
Mel Rothenburger can be reached at armchairmayor@gmail.com. He’s also on Twitter @MelRothenburger and facebook.com/mel.rothenburger.7.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
On a related topic, the people of BC desperately need someone like you or Rafe Mair to lead a campaign to embarrass our provincial government into reforming the method of salary negotiation with teachers. The pathetic and infuriating nonsense of last fall should never have been allowed to happen, nor should it again. Only the two combatants have a vested interest in maintaining it.
Please do the province a huge favour by enlisting Mair and anyone else to raise this issue while it is not an emergency disrupting kids and families. My simple premise is that public service (a notion our governments seem to have forgotten) should NEVER be interrupted – police, fire, schools, hospitals, ambulances , transportation – service-must never be withdrawn because the combatants can’t agree. Remove the process incumbents and replace them with neutral powers and processes that ensure continuity of service and fairness. Please consider the challenge
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Mel, I am surprised at the superficiality of this article; you usually delve far deeper. Ask yourself, is it any wonder that only governing parties like the first past the post idea? They have never been sympathetic to real representation. in fact, we all know that elected members automatically and immediately become representatives of their party leaders, rather than representatives of those who elected them . What is so difficult about recognizing that there are not just two or (at most) three sets of interest or perspectives in our society? Why do we have this unspoken need to imitate the American bi-polar (pun intended) and grossly divisive and literally ignorant model? Look at the rich diversity of our society, and ask yourself why it should not be represented in our legislatures.
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It’s disappointing that you chose to highlight the words of one (white) woman in South Africa who liked Parliament better under apartheid, complaining that the new regime was “anti-white.” By the way, South Africa uses pure party lists, which is a system that has never been recommended by anyone for Canada (unless you meant to endorse it with this editorial ;-) ) This highlights one of the problems with your article: you talk about proportional representation as though it were one system. In reality, PR is a family of voting systems that includes STV, MMP and several others. Each one is different: the main similarity is that they translate votes to seats in a fair manner (i.e. 40% of the vote earns 40% of the seats). Rather than focusing on one questionable anecdote, would it not make more sense to use proper statistical data to examine whether or not citizens of countries which have switched to proportional representation choose to keep it or return to FPTP? There are several examples (at least 2 in Ireland, one in New Zealand, for starters) where citizens have chosen to keep their proportional systems, and I am not aware of any country that has chosen to go back to FPTP (please enlighten me if you’re aware of any). Are these results not more salient to the discussion than your example? It seems to me that the chief criterion you apply to a voting system is whether it is easy to explain and easy to understand. The results don’t seem to matter as much to you, which I find troubling. Do you apply this same logic in all facets of your life? It seems to me you use a computer that works more efficiently than a pencil and paper, without needing to understand all the cool stuff that happens inside, because you accept and trust that it simply does what it needs to do in order to honour your wishes. While the ballot counting is simpler to explain under FPTP, the results given by that system are far more difficult to explain than results under PR. Do you honestly think that it’s a good situation when a minority of 39% can govern with 100% power? When the system hands majority control (100% power) to a party that didn’t even get the most votes (as happened in BC in 1996 and Quebec in 1998)? Canada is one of only a handful of OECD countries (UK, USA, France) still using winner take all systems — the rest have evolved and switched to systems that do a much better job representing ALL voters, not just the loudest voices in each riding. Not one of the new democracies that has formed in the past 50 years has chosen FPTP, and every single body that has seriously compared electoral systems (in Canada and around the world) has recommended some form of proportional representation. Canada will eventually get over our fear of change and dump FPTP, simply because modern systems work better. If people would like a simple primer on electoral systems, the government of New Zealand did an excellent (impartial) series of videos when that country was contemplating electoral reform 20 years ago — I highly recommend it: http://youtube.com/user/ReferendumNZ. Have a look, Mel, it’s not too late for you to change your mind and become part of the solution!
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Lest there be any misunderstanding, Helen Suzman was a leading anti-apartheid member of the South African Parliament, visiting Nelson Mandela when he was in prison. She was also the only woman in parliament for many years. Among the many, many articles written about her, one from the Financial Times said after her death in 2009, “During more than three decades as a member of parliament she was often the lone voice opposing the draconian legislation that embedded racial discrimination and transformed the country into a police state. As South Africa became gradually more isolated in the world, she was frequently subjected to insults, catcalls and even antiSemitic slurs at the hands of the pro-apartheid majority.” A biography of her written by Robin Renwick and published last year said Suzman at first supported proportional representation for South Africa’s new constitution in 1996 but she said in 2008 a hybrid system would have been better because under the constituency system MPs are more accountable to their electors.
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Quite right — she was a remarkable woman who achieved much. Using one inflammatory sentence to some up her views on PR does her a disservice. Perhaps you could have included this quote: “For all my criticisms of the current system, it doesn’t mean that I would like to return to the old one.” Again, I must emphasize that South Africa adopted a pure party list system that has never been suggested for use in Canada (largely because of the lack of local accountability it allows and to which she refers). Let’s talk about systems that actually have been recommended for Canada, shall we, instead of muddying the waters with systems that we all agree are unsuitable. Do you consider MMP a hybrid system? If so, perhaps we can find some common ground?
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Thank you for your comments, Gisela – I agree.
The FPTP system is outdated and not effective – it may have worked reasonably well in bygone days when politicians were more honest and honourable. In fact, many believe FPTP is not democratic. The party leader who forms gov’t is not elected by voters, yet he/she holds dictatorial powers over the gov’t agenda, and over our elected representatives.
Politicians do not like PR because it makes them more accountable, and forces them to take a firm stand in representing their constituents – and to resolve issues rather than engage in negative partisan combat. Again, it was politicians who made the big, but false issue, about how the votes would be counted. Simple – that is why we have computers.
Our fast-moving, modern society deserves a representative electoral system that represents the voters in a fair and just manner. It is about the voters, NOT the politician.
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