National Post (National Edition)
KEEP AN ELECTION SYSTEM THAT WORKS
MAN, THOSE RANKED BALLOTS ARE SUPER. JUST ASK DOUG FORD
We all know, thanks to what the Liberals and New Democrats have told us, that the system Canada uses to choose most of its legislators is a horrible, awful, bad, outdated and unfair relic of a colonial past.
Yes, it’s worked pretty well so far, if you consider a peaceful, prosperous country to be evidence of success. But seriously. Smarter people know that first-past-the-post (See? It even has a weird name … first past what post? And why is there a post anyway?) should be jettisoned in favour of something newer, more sophisticated, more technologically advanced. More representative of the people, which is what democracy is all about, right?
You said it. If Justin Trudeau had his way, Canadians would already be heading into the 2019 federal election with a shiny new electoral system in which votes, candidates, seats, ridings — all sorts of things — could be put on lists, shifted around, and tallied up according to a formula developed (and probably only understood) by bigger brains who are expert at these things. Proportional representation. It’s all the rage. Just ask anyone in Germany, or Italy. Or Ontario. Or, um, maybe not.
Just to make things easy, let’s look at Ontario first, where they just recently picked a new leader for the opposition Progressive Conservatives. Rather than get together in a big hall and hash out a winner like in the old days, the Tories, under pressure of time and scandal, adopted a convoluted, point-based system that was supposed to even out the popular vote with geographic representation, while enabling people to mark their choices according to who they liked most, second-most, third-most and not at all.
Somehow, despite bowing deeply to technology, the whole thing still came down to mailing out packets in the old slap-a-stamp-onit-and-hope-it arrives method, putting itself at the mercy of the same snail mail Post Office that is so stuck in its ways it finds community boxes too much to deal with. Has anyone explained to the Tories that millennials don’t even like answering door bells, much less traipsing down to the corner to pick up the mail, which can’t even be answered immediately by “reply all?” Evidently not.
This super new, high-tech, more representative operation not only left everyone standing around a big ballroom wondering what in the heck was going on, it managed to produce a winner who somehow came out on top despite placing second in both key categories. Doug Ford is now leader of Ontario’s official opposition, even though rival candidate Christine Elliott won more votes and carried more ridings. If you recall, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton because he won more votes in the Electoral College even though she beat him by three million ballots. Elliott topped that, winning in both categories and still losing.
Don’t ask how. It has something to do with a point system. Every riding comes with points, the points are distributed among candidates, a candidate who ... oh, never mind. My colleague Colby Cosh, who evidently gets headaches a lot less easily than me, says it all worked according to plan, kind of, except for the fact that NDP-held ridings where there are few Tories ended up with more clout than PC ridings with lots of party members. And other colleague Andrew Coyne says Ford won “because he won in ridings where the party has fewer members.” Maybe next time candidates should concentrate on ridings with no members at all. In any case it took all day and umpteen lawyers to sort it out behind the scenes before anyone in Ontario Toryland knew what had happened. Everyone, even the people doing the counting, thought Elliott had won.
It’s not the first time the PCs surprised themselves with their choice. In the last go-round, Patrick Brown came out of nowhere to upset Elliott, the candidate favoured by caucus members and the party establishment. He did so by hustling his butt around the province signing up new members. Theoretically this was a victory for the grassroots, but saddled the party with a little-known outsider who enjoyed limited support in his own caucus and developed a party platform half the party despised. The whole operation appeared predicated on the belief that the best leader is the one who can flog the most memberships. If that’s the case, they ought to put more effort into recruiting used car salesmen, or door-to-door peddlers of hot water heaters.
TheTorysystemisnottheonly model designed for more proportional representation, of course. There are dozens of them, in fact. Like a Gumby doll, rep by pop can be twisted into all sorts of unique and interesting renditions. As a class, however, they do have a tendency to produce results that are big in the head-scratching department. Germany, for instance, traded its solid-if-dull government for a weakened mish-mash of a coalition and accorded 90 seats to the sort of extremist antiimmigrant party that makes you wonder if the country has fully expunged the demons of its brutal past after all. In an Italian election this month the most seats went to a party created by a comedian who refuses to hold office but is willing to act as “guarantor.” No one “holds power” in Italy, they just argue about how to divvy up the spoils.
Ontario’s experience is another reason to be thankful that Justin Trudeau mishandled his plan to “reform” Canada’s electoral system by making it more complicated and unpredictable. Sometimes it’s nice to just have institutions that work.