Proportional representation poses questions, concerns
Last week, I wrote a column about proportional representation. Mostly, it was about trying to outline the different systems as there are many different forms of government which qualify as PR. Indeed, there are more systems than listed on the government website.
But I did state “the vast majority of democracies employ a first past the post approach” which is, in fact, not correct. What I should have said is the “vast majority of people who vote in democratic elections vote under a first past the post system.” My apologies for my misleading language.
With respect to the actual numbers, “first past the post” is used by 63 countries or 26 per cent of the democracies in the world, according to ACE The Electoral Knowledge Network. This is the website included on the B.C. Government How We Vote homepage and it has a lot of interesting information. An awful lot of information.
But there is one thing I do find a bit troubling about the site. According to the data from ACE, the number of countries with voting systems is 245 – which is 50 sovereign states more than recognized by the United Nations. What this would suggest is there are either countries using multiple voting systems or someone can’t count.
In any case, the most popular voting system – based on the number of countries using it – is list proportional representation.
According to ACE, it is used in 85 countries or 36 per cent of the democracies – including Norway, Sweden, Germany and Brazil.
The third most popular electoral system is parallel or mixed-member majoritarian at 33 countries or 14 per cent, according to the website. Countries using this approach include Russia, Mexico, and Japan. I am not sure I would count Russia as a democracy, but the website does.
The single transferable vote is used by only two countries – Ireland and Malta – while a single non-transferable vote electoral system is used by only Afghanistan, Mongolia and Vanuatu.
In all, ACE lists 10 different electoral system used in various democracies around the world which is more than the five presented on the government site. Certainly some form of list proportional representation would appear to be the most popular or dominant alternative electoral system.
Any list proportional representation electoral system is going to generate a legislature with seats closely matching the proportion of the popular vote. By its very nature, it has to.
Consider the simplest form presents the electorate with the names of the major politic parties.
Each person votes for a party and then the 84 seats in the house are divided up, based on the number of votes each party received.
For example, in the last provincial election, 40.36 per cent voted B.C. Liberal, 40.28 per cent voted NDP, and 16.84 per cent voted Green giving a total of 97.48 per cent of the popular vote. No other party received more than 0.60 per cent of the vote although 1.12 per cent of the population or 22,107 voters did choose an independent candidate.
The first question with these results is what to do with the missing 2.52 per cent? On a proportional basis, this represents two seats in the legislature. Should they be allocated to the independents? Or should the relative percentages of the major parties (those with over, say, five per cent of the popular vote) be changed accordingly?
Assuming the latter, our legislature would consist of 35 BC Liberals, 35 NDP, and 14 Green Party members. One can understand why the Green Party is very much in favour of some form of proportional representation.
Presumably, the NDP-Green Party coalition would have been formed and they would have a comfortable majority with which to lead the province as opposed to their present slim majority.
But what is not clear is who those 35 Liberal and NDP MLAs would be, and who the Green Party select. This is where list proportional representation gets tricky as the lists can be open or closed. In open lists, all 84 candidates are actually on every ballot and voters need to select – in ranked order – from the candidates. In a closed list, the party makes the decision who the selected MLAs are within their own ranks.
In theory, a party would have some form of internal procedure for selecting its list but it would not necessarily be open to public scrutiny or comment.
Perhaps more to the point, there is no need for a party to select people from around the province.
Nor is there any way to ensure MLAs represent the different regions.