Any takers for this electoral reform solution?
Last week’s report of the electoral reform committee may not have achieved much — the government could not have more forcefully rejected it had it thrown it in a trash basket and burned it — but was still revelatory, in at least three ways.
One, it exposed just how divided the opposition remains, notwithstanding the four-party consensus in favour of a referendum on proportional representation. That, note, was what the majority report recommended: a referendum on PR, not PR itself, with the status quo as the default option — a position that was somewhat at odds with the “supplemental” report the NDP and the Greens immediately attached, suggesting they weren’t as keen on a referendum as all that, or that if there were to be one there should be two models of PR on the ballot and not one.
On the other hand, two, the opposition parties were united in rejecting what is widely believed to be the Liberals’ preferred plan, ranked ballots, the one option that was conspicuously absent from the report.
Last, the government’s reaction made clear, if it were ever in doubt, that it wanted no part of proportional representation, or a referendum for that matter. The report laid out a broad path for the government, with plenty of wiggle room in it; had it any desire to do so, the way was open to it to proceed with all- party support. It did not.
So we would seem to have reached something of an impasse. The Liberals want ranked ballots; the opposition unanimously re- jects it. The NDP and the Greens are adamant for proportional representation; the Liberals and Conservatives as adamant against it. Or at least, the Tories insist, it must be approved by referendum. But the Liberals will not have one, and the other opposition parties will accept it only in certain circumstances. And in any case there probably isn’t time to hold one — not if the objective is to have a new system in place by the next election. And not if an informed public, fully apprised of the choices before it, is part of the plan.
And yet, the alternatives to impasse look equally unpromising. For the Liberals to do nothing at all, in the face of their explicit campaign promise to abolish firstpast-the- post, would leave them looking both cynical, for breaking the promise, and foolish for making it. That’s risky: after Kinder Morgan, they must be conscious of their left flank. Equally, they cannot simply impose their own reform plan unilaterally — not without inviting at least one opposition party and probably all of them to fight it to the death. This is no mere dispute about policy, after all. For the parties, it’s existential.
Is that where we are, then? Unable to move forward and unwilling to sit still? Or is there, improbable as it sounds, a way out of this that can satisfy all of the parties’ agendas at once?
Maybe we’re trying to do too much at one go here. Maybe it’s too much to ask people to choose between such abstract, unfamiliar concepts as first-past-the-post, ranked ballots, and proportional representation. Certainly it’s too much to expect the parties to agree on it: it’s a zero- sum game. So maybe we need to break things down a little further.
The fundamental difference between winner- take- all systems like first-past-the-post and proportional systems, as I’ve suggested before, is very simple: it all comes down to whether you use single-member ridings or multi-member. That’s the difference, for example, between ranked ballots, which isn’t a proportional system, and the single transferable vote, which is. STV is simply ranked ballots plus multi-member ridings.
So what if we broke the decision into two parts. First: should we change the way we vote, from a simple x to a ranked ballot, without getting into changes to the size of the ridings or the number of MPs in each?
That’s not terribly complicated, either to understand or to implement, meaning it could be done in time for the next election — especially if it were done without a referendum. That would certainly please the Liberals. Not only is it the system they most probably prefer, but it would allow them to say they had kept their election promise.
And the opposition? Why might they agree to this plan, notwithstanding their hostility to ranked ballots? In return for the second part; an all- party agreement — it would have to be ironclad — to hold a referendum on proportional representation on a day fixed after the election: say, in the fall of 2020.
The Tories would presumably accept this: a referendum has been their only demand. For the other opposition parties, it might well be worth accepting a few years’ delay, in exchange for a referendum that had some chance of passing.
There’d be more time to educate people on the alternatives, for starters. And we’d already be halfway there, having adopted ranked ballots in the interim. The referendum question would distill the issue to its essence: single- versus multi-member ridings. Rather than forcing people to weigh the philosophical merits of whole electoral systems, they would be faced with a relatively simple, nuts-and-bolt issue: do you want just one MP to represent you, or several?
That’s much more digestible, less intimidating. Having made the switch from first-past-the-post, moreover, we would have eliminated the biggest obstacle to reform off the top: that instinctive popular attachment to the “devil you know,” whatever its defects — the unexamined belief, not only that whatever system happens to be in place now must be the best, but that it is the only system there is.
So that’s one possible way out of this. I see it as being not just win- win, but win- win- win- winwin. The Liberals get to keep their promise. The Tories get their referendum. The other parties get the best shot they are ever likely to have at PR. Any takers?