Themes from Consultation Meeting in Ottawa

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: 150

Thoughts about Principles

Accountability

  • We need more accountability. Parties should keep their election promises and candidates shouldn’t cross the floor.
  • Parties are not accountable. They avoid local contact with voters. This makes accountability impossible.
  • People want their representatives to be accountable and accessible.

Effective parliament

  • Our representatives should be able to express their views and represent the needs of their ridings. Party discipline in parliament makes this difficult.

Effective parties

  • There should be a threshold of 5% to avoid having too many parties.
  • We need more viable parties. More parties should be able to win seats.

Fairness of representation

  • Representation by population and geographic representation give us fair representation. Demographic representation and proportionality are not necessary and would create barriers.
  • Results should be proportional (seat share should equal vote share) to better reflect voters’ intentions.
  • Women and minorities should be better represented.
  • We need more women in parliament. Women are more likely to take leadership roles on issues like childcare, gun control, and healthcare. Public policy needs to reflect women’s concerns. Barriers to women entering politics should be reduced. Women would enhance the quality of debate.
  • We should have one male and one female representative for every riding.
  • We shouldn’t ignore rural voters.
  • Government should reflect a number of views.

Legitimacy

  • An electoral system is legitimate only when all citizens are meaningfully represented.
  • An electoral system is legitimate if it reflects voters’ preferences.

Stable & effective government

  • An election every two or three years is not my definition of stability.
  • We should consider stability between governments, not just the length of one government’s mandate. Governments need to be able to do long-term planning.
  • Cooperation with other parties under minority governments is not part of our political culture. Minority governments lead to back-and-forth policy reversal between different governments. They are unstable.
  • Though we are used to majority governments, we can learn to live and prosper with coalition governments.
  • Coalitions prevent policy reversals. They are less willing to undo the policies of their predecessors. Coalitions are able to do long-term planning.
  • Coalitions are more willing to listen to new ideas and are less polarized. They reflect a number of views, which is useful for decisions that are complex.
  • Coalitions can make decisions by consensus that can’t happen any other way (e.g. decisions about constitutional issues).
  • Coalitions counter the excessive power of the Premier.
  • Coalitions can get stuck in long discussions and end up making decisions based on the lowest level of consensus.

Stronger voter participation

  • Many people don’t vote because they think their vote won’t mean anything. More people would vote if they thought their vote counted.
  • Voting is a responsibility. We should consider mandatory voting.

Voter choice

  • Voters should be able to make a choice that reflects their views.
  • We need to have more viable parties, so that we can have more choice.
  • Preferential ballots are more complex than our current ballots.

Thoughts about Ontario’s Current Electoral System

Participants highlighted these advantages of First Past the Post:

  • Our system produces stable government.

Participants highlighted these disadvantages of the current system:

  • In our system, women and minorities are vastly underrepresented. Our system does not recognize the diversity of voters in Ontario.
  • If we don’t vote for the most popular candidate in our riding, our votes are wasted. This encourages strategic voting. Many people feel disenfranchised.
  • In our system, governments are elected as second choices, not first choices.
  • Winners can be elected with a minority of votes. Candidates who are disliked by the majority can be elected.
  • Our system is vulnerable to bias by vote-splitting.
  • Our system gives seat bonuses to successful parties.
  • In our system, governments need few votes to get elected. This makes parties structure their activities around gaining power.
  • Our system has produced three Prime Ministers in four years and policy incoherence due to frequent minority governments.

Thoughts about Other Systems

Participants made these comments about other systems:

Alternative Vote (AV)

  • AV reflects the will of voters.
  • AV produces a majority decision.
  • It maintains local accountability.
  • It is simple.

Mixed Member Proportional (MMP)

  • MMP combines local representation with proportional representation.
  • It is relatively simple.
  • MMP would increase the representation of women and minorities through the use of party lists.
  • I think MMP would increase accountability and voter participation.
  • MMP would give representation to small parties through the adjustment seats.
  • We should have an MMP system with adjustment seats assigned in regions of at least eight seats. Regions must be large enough to have diverse representatives.
  • Adjustment seats should be filled by the “best losers” in the local races (as opposed to a party list).
  • We should have an MMP system with a single ballot. We should elect riding members the same way we do now, and increase the number of seats in parliament as necessary after each election to make the results proportional.
  • We should have open lists to better reflect voters’ wishes.

Proportional Representation (PR) systems

  • PR is unstable because it produces too many elections.
  • According to research, PR does not lead to unstable and ineffective government. Many PR countries have had fewer elections recently than Canada.
  • Experience in other countries shows that PR does not lead to a fracturing of parties. Generally, PR systems have only slightly more parties than we do, because there are thresholds. Thresholds help stability.
  • PR lets most non-extremists participate in power. It is more inclusive.
  • PR systems produce coherent decision-making which allows for economic growth. I think PR countries have generally performed better economically than countries with majority systems.
  • PR gives small parties too much power. They can form coalitions and take over the government.
  • PR reduces accountability. It gives parties too much power.
  • In PR coalitions, smaller parties do not have too much power. The larger parties still have a majority of Cabinet seats.
  • Any form of party lists makes it difficult for independents to be elected.
  • List PR calculated in small multi-member districts (e.g. five representatives) would be effective. It would eliminate most wasted votes and attach every MPP to a region.

Single Transferable Vote (STV)

  • STV is too complicated. The BC Assembly couldn’t explain it to voters.
  • STV allows voters to indicate their preferences. This gives voters more power.
  • In STV, the party in the middle tends to get the transfer vote from each side. Small parties tend not to be represented.

“Approval Voting”

  • Ballots are as now, but you can choose more than one candidate.
  • Candidates do not compete against each other because voters can vote for more than one of them.
  • Two-thirds of seats are riding seats, and the rest are “cluster” seats.
  • The riding seats are filled by a plurality formula.
  • Unused votes and extra votes cast for winning candidates are used to fill the “cluster” seats proportionally.
  • In this system, small parties can be represented and every vote counts.

Other Thoughts

If the Assembly recommends a new system

  • The referendum should require only a simple majority to pass.
  • There should be a public education campaign before the referendum.
  • Any recommendation should be able to win strong public approval.

Size of the legislature

  • I would like more seats, but it may be a hard sell. 130 is a reasonable number because we used to have that many seats.
  • More seats would help reduce riding sizes, which are too large in the North.

Other comments

  • There should be voter education in schools.
  • Party nomination processes should be fair and transparent. Spending limits should be introduced. There should be incentives to encourage the nomination of women.
  • Parties should be required to advertise their proportions of male and female candidates.
  • “Adequate sharing” should be a principle. We need to share this planet with each other.
  • The Premier should be elected by parliament. This would force parties to cooperate and give parliament control over the executive.
  • We should consider replacing elections with the random selection of citizens to make decisions. This would directly reveal the voters’ preferences and eliminate the distinction between voters and their representatives.
  • We should limit the influence of corporations in politics.

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