Themes from Consultation Meeting in London
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: 73
Effective parliament
- There should be more cooperation in parliament. I’m sick of oppositional parliament. You can’t object to everything, but healthy argument leads to better decisions.
Effective parties
- A threshold of 5% would limit the influence of fringe parties and reduce divisiveness.
- There should be an Aboriginal political party, which would be exempt from a threshold.
- Small (or single-issue, or fringe) parties should be able to run — this is the meaning of diversity.
- Parties don’t always have the provincial or national interest in mind. They have their own narrow interest.
- Parties have too much power, which tends to centre on the leader.
Fairness of representation
- Results should be proportional (seat share should equal vote share.)
- If you use a fairer system, you automatically get better representation of your population.
- The government should represent the people’s will better.
- MPPs should serve all their constituents. People have felt that their own MPP would not present their petition and had to go to neighbouring MPPs for support.
- It’s important for people to be represented in their riding.
- We should have as many people represented as possible. This will lead to better decisions.
- The North is not getting enough representation.
- All votes should count equally. No one should be privileged.
- We should judge a democracy by how it treats its minorities.
- We should have three electoral districts specifically for Aboriginal peoples, instead of distributing Aboriginal representation across the province.
- Women’s representation in parliament reflects broader gender inequalities in society. Here, I believe that fewer than 20% of our representatives are women and men earn 1.5 times the amount women do. In Sweden, 48% of representatives are women, and men and women earn the same. The electoral system is possibly the single most important factor in increasing the representation of women.
Legitimacy
- Legitimacy comes when voters have confidence in the system.
- To be legitimate, governments should have the broadest level of support possible: a majority, not a plurality.
Simplicity & practicality
- The Citizens’ Assembly in BC failed because the proposal was too complicated. Keep any new system simple.
Stable & effective government
- We all suffer when parties only plan through to the next election.
- Minority governments and coalitions are stable and work in Europe and all over the world.
Stronger voter participation
- Democracy is more than just voting in elections. We need to have more input, e.g. by participating in political parties, and interacting with politicians.
- Young people are not engaged in the political process. Online voting may help.
- People don’t vote because they think their votes don’t count.
- We need to change our electoral system to encourage involvement. Barriers to voter participation should be eliminated.
Voter choice
- Everyone should be able to vote for something they believe in, as opposed to against something they are afraid of.
- Voters should be able to choose their representative directly, not have the party choose them.
- Preferential voting would promote conciliatory practices among politicians.
- A preferential ballot would let me know I’ve done everything I can to make my vote count. If I vote first for a smaller party that wins no seats, at least my later preferences can count.
Thoughts about Ontario’s Current Electoral System
Participants highlighted these advantages of First Past the Post:
- Our current system has served us very well.
- Our system can adapt to new political parties, such as the Reform Party.
- It prevents the proliferation of single-issue parties, which weaken the parliamentary system.
- It is unlikely to give disproportionate power to a small party.
Participants highlighted these disadvantages of the current system:
- In our system, the winner rarely has majority support.
- We have one of the lowest levels of representation of women among democracies.
- We’ve changed governing parties several times in the last few years. I would like to know the expense of such dramatic changes. We accept these expenses while complaining about others.
- In our system, if we vote for a candidate that doesn’t win, our vote doesn’t count. Many votes are wasted.
Thoughts about Other Systems
Participants made these comments about other systems:
- MMP gives us local accountability and local representation with the riding MPPs, but also proportionality with the adjustment seats.
- In MMP, proportionality should be calculated province-wide for maximum proportionality. This would make proportionality possible with only a small increase in the number of seats (e.g. 33 adjustment seats and 107 riding seats).
- Adjustment seats should be calculated regionally.
- In an MMP system with regions, all regions should be treated equally.
- MMP can include independents.
- In MMP, independents can’t win adjustment seats.
- Adjustment seats should have to be filled by quotas, such as 40% for each gender.
- The adjustment seats are an opportunity to represent people in ways other than geography (e.g. age, gender, etc.)
- List members should be chosen from riding candidates who lost (“best losers”).
- In MMP with closed lists, the list members are chosen by the party, not the people. This takes power away from the people and gives it to the parties.
- In MMP, how parties compose their lists for adjustment seats is something that voters consider when voting.
- I think of MMP like our federal system, with local MPs and senators. In MMP, the list members can deal with larger, non-local issues.
- In MMP in New Zealand, constituency members have much more work to do than list members. List members should be assigned to regions to help with constituency work.
- MMP would require larger districts or more MPPs, but that doesn’t mean the government will be too big. Right now, the number of seats represents a population from 15-20 years ago.
- MMP would increase the representation of the North.
- MMP increase the representation of women through increased district magnitudes.
- There should be a preferential element in an MMP system.
- In proportional systems, changes in government are gradual. There is more long-term planning.
- PR eliminates wasted votes and makes every vote count.
- It produces weak and ineffective governments.
- In PR, coalitions may result in small parties having too much power: “the tail wagging the dog.”
- Any PR system with closed lists will not solve the problem of adversarial politics or women’s under-representation. People will not know who they are voting for.
- In PR, closed lists consolidate power within the party.
- Could consider a system where the ridings and voting are unchanged, but seats would be assigned to parties proportionally. A party’s seats would be filled by its riding candidates in order of the proportion of votes they received.
Other Thoughts
Size of the legislature
- People may want changes to the electoral system, but they don’t want a large increase in the number of legislators.
- I think one MPP represents over 100,000 citizens—it’s a massive job. Smaller government means fewer services. I don’t want to see any decrease in the size of the legislature.
Other comments
- Parties should be required to register their candidate selection procedures with Elections Ontario.
- We need more representation for the environment.
- There should be a local residency requirement for MPPs.
- Candidates’ parties should be identified on the ballot, so people know who they are voting for.
- We should cap corporate donations.
- Our electoral system is too expensive. Politicians should offer service to the community, not try to develop a career. Politicians spend their last year of office trying to get re-elected. There should be a two-term limit for politicians. Politicians’ pensions are the real problem. Politicians should be seconded from government or business.
- The Assembly should act with caution and have a lengthy debate. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
- By-elections should be mandatory if a candidate changes parties. We should have recall.
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