Yesterday’s release of the electoral reform committee report was a giant headache for all sorts of reasons – the way in which the majority report was cute in their recommendations, the Gallagher Index nonsense, Monsef’s being cute in reply to the ways in which both the Conservatives and NDP were over-reading their own report, and the repeated demands that the Prime Minister respect his ill-considered promise that 2015 would be the last election under First-Past-the-Post. It was an utterly exasperating day.
While are all aware that I am team status quo because the system is not broken and any problems are not the result of the electoral system, I will offer a few observations. Number one is that the Gallagher Index is one of those devices favoured by poli sci undergrads, electoral reform nerds, and sore losers to “prove” that their preferred system is “mathematically” better than others, but it’s predicated on a couple of false notions – that in evaluating the current system that it’s a single event when it’s actually 338 separate events; and that the translation of votes to seats in this as-close-to-perfect proportion is actually desirable when it is in fact distorting the meaning of the vote itself. When we vote under our system, we are making a simple decision on who fills an individual seat, and because there are more than two candidates (and we don’t use run-off elections), it tends to rely on a plurality result rather than a simple majority. When you start demanding proportionality, you distort the meaning of that simple decision, and yes, that is actually a problem. That the report wanted a system with an Index of 5 or less, that’s not actually a simple choice of one or two systems. (If you want an explanation of the math, read this thread). Simulations of the Index under the Canadian system can itself be distortionary because of the regional nature of our elections, which why some use a “composite” Index that can produce different results from a strictly national Index figure when you try to correct for those.
The NDP/Green “supplemental report,” aside from being nigh-unreadable for all of its collection of demonstrably false talking points, recommends either an MMP system or this “Rural-Urban Proportional,” but in order to get their Index scores below 5, it means a large number of new seats particularly for MMP, while the RUP concept in and of itself is unlikely to be considered constitutional – using two separate electoral systems depending on your geography is unlikely to pass the Supreme Court of Canada smell test, but this is a decision they wanted to put on the government without that particular context. It’s all well and good to wave your hands and say you want a more proportional system, but designing one that works for Canada’s particular geography and constitutional framework is not as easy as it sounds, nor does it actually respect what you’re actually voting for. And so long as the loudest voices on this file are mired in sore loserism who figure that it’s the system that’s keeping them down and not the fact that they simply don’t have policies and candidates that can appeal more broadly, we’re going to continue to be mired in debates based on a load of utter nonsense. But hey, the government needs to make it look like they’re going to keep trying to tackle this file for another few months before they give up rather than just smothering this Rosemary’s Baby in its crib right now like they should, and just take their lumps for a foolhardy promise.
And if you won’t take my word for any of this, here’s Kady O’Malley evaluating the report, what happened today, and the trap that the NDP and Greens may be setting for themselves. Meanwhile, The Canadian Press’ Baloney Meter™ asserts that Trudeau’s election promise was “full of baloney,” while it can credibly be pointed to the fact that they acknowledged the need for consultations which gave wiggle room.
https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/804333379751739392
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