Themes from Consultation Meeting in Toronto North
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: 60
Accountability
- When parties break election promises and are not held accountable, voter participation is affected.
- Manufactured majorities make it hard to hold parties accountable.
- Accountability comes from being able to throw a person out of office.
- Party discipline reduces accountability to constituents.
Effective parliament
- I would like to see a more consensual way of working in the legislature.
- We have to weaken party discipline in the legislature. Members need more opportunities to vote their conscience and to present private member business.
Effective parties
- I would like to see a system that is fair to all parties.
- Strategic voting prevents smaller parties from growing. There will always be pressure for people to vote for parties that win seats.
- In our parliamentary system, we invest authority not in the party but in the party leadership.
- I have concerns that parties with 5% of the vote would be excluded and not heard in our legislature. If we have a threshold, it should be smaller, perhaps 2%.
Fairness of representation
- Fairness of representation ensures that I do not have to vote cynically.
- Governments should represent the majority of voters. Only then will all voices be heard and concerns for the future, like transportation and the environment, be properly addressed.
- I like what I think they did in New Zealand: special seats for women, the Maori, and ecological concerns. You could vote for something you’re interested in (e.g. the North), no matter where you live.
- Women need more representation. The people currently making laws represent only half the population. Any new system has to facilitate the nomination and election of women.
- Minorities need more representation.
- It’s up to parties, not the electoral system, to do a better job of getting women and minorities elected.
- Right now, if minorities are concentrated in a specific community, they can get elected. This is fair because it reflects the local population.
- Rural and urban voters should be fairly represented. Our legislature should reflect the diversity of our population.
- Results should reflect our voting intentions in a proportional way. Seat totals should be reflective of the percentage of votes received across the province.
- Every vote should be weighted equally.
- Voters feel the need for both party and riding representation. Our system needs to balance these two types of representation.
Legitimacy
- Legitimacy is reduced when governments do what they will with a small percentage of the vote.
Simplicity & practicality
- A new system, no matter what it is, should be simple enough to win the support of the public.
- The size of the ballot is not important. Our system needs to reflect our diversity.
Stronger voter participation
- The lack of participation is preventing voices from being heard.
- People don’t vote because they feel that they can’t influence the system.
- I can’t blame my friends for not voting. They know that if they vote Conservative in Don Valley West it doesn’t matter because the Liberals are going to win.
- A new system should bring back the disenfranchised youth that are currently disengaged.
- Young people believe that voting is a waste of time and that politicians don’t do anything for us.
- Youth are very active politically, but they don’t think that voting is the way to have an impact on the system.
- If the system were fairer and allowed a real quality of choice, then maybe more people would vote.
- I don’t think that changing the electoral system is going to affect voter participation.
Voter choice
- How can we claim to live in a democracy when we vote not for what we believe but for the lesser of two evils? Lack of choice creates cynicism.
- A fair electoral system must allow voters to rank their preferences. Otherwise there will always be some degree of strategic voting.
- If we rank candidates, we should not be forced to rank all of them. We should be able to take short cuts.
- I would like a system that allows you to rank parties (as opposed to candidates).
- I think preferential ballots will only benefit the Liberal Party of Ontario. They will lead to one-party-rule indefinitely.
Thoughts about Ontario’s Current Electoral System
Participants highlighted these advantages of First Past the Post:
- It is easy for people to be involved in the current system.
- It is easy for people to be elected in the current system.
- There is not a great variation in the number of seats in the current system. Normally the changes are slight.
Participants highlighted these disadvantages of the current system:
- The current system encourages adversarial politics.
- It leads to unpredictable policy shifts.
- Our system creates false majorities, which can carry out policies against the majority of public opinion.
- In the current system, there is not enough choice and there are not enough parties.
- The current system encourages strategic voting and voting for what we don’t want.
- In the current system, not all votes are equal. It depends which party you support. My vote and my voice usually don’t count.
- There is a systematic bias that prevents fair representation. It results in few women, racial minorities, and Aboriginals from running and being elected.
- In the current system, often only the largest demographic group in a riding gets representation. Parties focus on winning strategies. This discourages diverse candidates.
- In our system women are grossly underrepresented; I believe Canada ranks 48 th in the world in terms of the percentage of women elected.
Thoughts about Other Systems
Participants made these comments about other systems:
- In MMP, the party list, not the leader, will be the star of the campaign. There will not be the regional limitations we have now.
- Regional lists could be used to help ensure geographic representation.
- Party lists can be used to improve demographic representation.
- MMP would give more parties seats. This is one way to make our legislature reflect the diversity of our population.
- MMP is simple. It keeps some aspects of the current system, but adds to it.
- It is a good balance of party and riding representation.
- In MMP, having two votes would encourage participation, let me vote for the best person and policy, ensure that my vote will count, and eliminate strategic voting.
- We should have an MMP system with 200 MPPs, a double ballot, and a 50-50 split between local seats and the proportional seats.
- PR would make representation fairer, because all demographic groups in a region, not just the largest, would be represented.
- PR of any kind would increase the representation of women.
- According to research, party lists will only increase the representation of women if district magnitudes are large (at least 7).
- Even with PR, strategic voting can still occur.
- I am impressed by the democratic nature of List-PR systems, but they also produce complex and fragile coalition governments and eliminate local representation.
- Any type of PR would increase voter participation because people would feel that they could influence the system. A proportional system should invest as much power as possible in the hands of the voters.
- There is no problem in knowing whom to turn to for help if there are multiple representatives. If you have many choices of who to see, you will likely be better served.
- Party lists would eliminate accountability and legitimacy, because the party will get to determine who represents us. Members will be accountable to the party, not the voters.
- It would not be easy for people to get elected on a party list.
- STV just seems to be really fair, and works with a smaller number of MPPs.
Other Thoughts
If the Assembly recommends a new system
- I don’t agree with the referendum threshold but I also feel that moving the government to change the threshold would not be possible.
- I don’t like the referendum threshold. I hope your work doesn’t go to waste.
- Saleability should be a ninth principle. You have to make sure that you can convince the rest of the public to accept your recommendation. You need a simple system with a simple message.
Size of the legislature
- We need as many seats in the legislature as possible in order to fairly represent women.
- An increase in the size of the legislature would cost more, but it would be a wise use of our tax dollars.
- We had 130 seats in the legislature before, so we can do it again.
- Electoral districts should be small; otherwise it will be impossible for people without name recognition to be elected.
Other comments
- Ballots should be forgiving; we should not reject ballots that have mistakes on them, but deal with them the best we can.
- In some other jurisdictions, women have designed systems that accommodate the family needs of MPPs (such as a daycare centre right in parliament).
- Voting should be accessible and secret for all, including those with disabilities (e.g. people with visual impairments). Electronic voting would help this happen.
- Studies have shown that candidates near the top of the ballot get elected more often than those at the bottom. In any system, candidates’ names should appear in randomized order on all ballots.
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