Themes from Consultation Meeting in Kitchener-Waterloo
This is a summary of thoughts expressed by members of the public who attended this consultation meeting. If a point was made by more than one participant, it is included only once in the summary. The comments below sometimes contradict one another because they reflect the diversity of the viewpoints of participants.
Number of public participants: 112
Accountability
- We need both parties and politicians to be accountable.
- MPPs pay more attention to the media than to their constituents. They watch polls instead of consulting us.
Effective parliament
- An effective parliament is more important than an effective government. All parties matter, not just the government.
- All MPPs are important and should be heard. Parties should not inhibit our representatives. There should be more free votes.
- The Premier and party leaderships have too much power; this means decisions are made by fewer people.
Effective parties
- New parties emerge to meet needs that are present, and to provide alternative viewpoints. They should be able to gain representation.
Fairness of representation
- All aspects of fair representation are important: demographic representation, representation by population, and proportionality (seat share equals vote share).
- Geographic representation—having local representatives—is important.
- In any system, there is a trade-off between geographic representation and proportionality.
- Each vote should carry equal weight. Votes should count no matter who they are for. All voters should know what their vote means.
- The electoral system should reflect what people want. Representation should reflect votes cast. All voices should be heard.
- If my vote doesn’t result in representation, I’m effectively disenfranchised.
Legitimacy
- Legitimacy involves having confidence in the system, and believing that we are being represented and listened to.
Simplicity & practicality
- The electoral system must be simple enough that people understand it, and transparent so that people trust it.
- A good system that is easily understood will be better than a perfect, but complicated, system.
- Anything more complex than our current system will confuse people.
Stable & effective government
- Large policy swings resulting from changes in majority governments lead to instability. We need long-term stability.
- Under any electoral system, we will have minority governments sometimes.
- Minority governments are unstable because parties think they can win majorities. When coalitions are common, parties don’t expect to win majorities and coalitions are stable.
- Coalitions work well in many places, but may be difficult to form with our political culture.
Stronger voter participation
- Young people don’t vote because they think their votes won’t have an impact. Changing the electoral system would change this.
- I don’t think changing the electoral system will increase voter participation.
Voter choice
- People should be able to vote for what they want, not against what they are fearful of.
- It is discouraging when you can’t vote for the party you want because you know its candidate will not win.
- Three choices is not enough choice.
- If there are ordinal ballots, people shouldn’t be forced to rank all candidates. There should be a way to say: “below a certain rank I don’t like anyone else.”
Thoughts about Ontario’s Current Electoral System
Participants highlighted these advantages of First Past the Post:
- Our system is simple and transparent.
- In our system, we vote directly for our local representative, who is someone who lives among us.
- Our system produces stable and effective one-party majorities.
Participants highlighted these disadvantages of the current system:
- Our system produces seat bonuses and seat deficits. This means votes don’t count equally (e.g. the Liberals can win one seat for every 29,000 votes, and the NDP can win one seat for every 90,000 votes).
- Our system produces results which do not reflect how people vote.
- Our system produces majority governments with minority support.
- Our system produces policy swings when governments change, which are costly, frustrating, and lead to instability.
- The current system prevents small parties from electing representatives and growing. The barriers to entry are too high. Our system is also tough on independents.
- Our system denies many people their right to representation. Since I have been voting, I have never once cast a ballot that resulted in someone going to the legislature to represent me.
- We don’t have influence on a government that we’re not represented in. In our system, there is too much power concentrated in the governing party.
- Our system rewards divisive politics because small changes in support result in large changes in seats.
Thoughts about Other Systems
Participants made these comments about other systems:
- AV is simple and similar enough to our current system to be accepted. It would be a modest, pragmatic change.
- It ensures that representatives have a majority of support in their ridings.
- AV produces majority governments which are stable and effective.
- It eliminates strategic voting and wasted votes.
- In AV, voters might not get their first choice but can still get something they are happy with.
- AV does not allow parties with low levels of support to get elected.
- People may not understand how the rankings in AV are used.
- In MMP, every vote counts. Even if your riding candidate isn’t elected, you affect the assignment of the adjustment seats.
- Voting in MMP is simple.
- MMP is not simple, because there are so many alternatives. The details are difficult to deal with.
- MMP could work with a single vote, with adjustment seats assigned to parties who are underrepresented in the riding seats. This would not require changing the ballot.
- I recommend MMP with a double ballot. A double ballot increases voter choice.
- We can combine MMP and AV. One way is to use the first choice in AV for the party vote. Or we can have a double ballot with AV for the local tier.
- Proportionality should be calculated province-wide. Seats should be added if necessary to ensure proportionality and avoid thresholds.
- Proportionality should be calculated by regions (5 regions of about 20 seats each). This would tie the adjustment seats to the region.
- In MMP, it is easier to achieve gender parity by twinned ridings or zippered lists. Similar measures could increase Aboriginal and minority representation.
- Adjustment seats should be filled by “best losers” (the runners up in local races). This would eliminate the need for party lists, though it might make it harder to improve demographic representation.
- Candidates should be allowed to run on both the list and local level. Not permitting this would take high quality candidates out of the process.
- In each riding, parties should only be on a double ballot if they run local candidates.
- PR makes every vote carry equal weight, makes all votes count, and gives representation to everyone.
- It produces results which reflect what people want to say with their ballots. This ensures accountability.
- PR encourages voter participation.
- PR encourages effective government and reduces policy swings.
- A PR system would reduce the incentives for divisive politics, because small changes in support wouldn’t have much impact.
- Any PR system would remove incentives for parties to be large and increase the representation of smaller parties.
- I hate party lists: closed lists are a recipe for corruption, and it’s too hard to rank candidates on open lists. Lists give too much power to party leaderships.
Other Thoughts
If the Assembly recommends a new system
- The 60% threshold for a referendum to pass is too high. It should be 50%+1.
- The Assembly will have to argue and explain, and give compelling reasons to vote for reform. The proposal must be clear and simple.
- There must be an effective education campaign before the referendum.
Size of the legislature
- We should not reduce the number of ridings. We want people to have more of a voice, not less.
- The cost of increasing the number of seats is inconsequential. It’s more important to have an effective legislature.
Other comments
- We need to focus on democratic life between elections. Technology can help us participate. Effective civic engagement should be a value on the list.
- Some issues, such as representation of minorities, may be better dealt with by the parties and political culture rather than the electoral system.
- The Assembly needs more time to make an informed decision and to educate the public. The Assembly should let the public choose among all systems, not just the recommended one.
- We need to reform the parliamentary process itself.
- We should consider how the electoral system affects the relationship between the federal and provincial governments.
- Independents should be allowed to sit on commissions.
» Return to Summaries of Public Meetings