kevin p. siu

I realize this is a little late – if you want my verdict, scroll down and read the bold text. Otherwise, I give my arguments below.

It’s taken me a while to come up with something to write about on the issue of our latest referendum – that of whether to adopt Mixed-Member Proportionality over First Past the Post. The difficulty of this issue lies in our unique circumstance as well as history.

If you do not know exactly what these two systems are, I won’t go into too many details. The Toronto Star has a nice primer here.

The proposed MMP model is essentially identical to the New Zealand model, which they adopted in the early 90’s after a referendum. New Zealand serves as a particularly useful example to Ontario, as it has a similar population distribution and political landscape.

MMP was suggested and adopted in New Zealand, after two successive elections where the party with more votes lost the election due to their inability to capture enough seats. The citizens of New Zealand were not particularly satisfied with either party in the first place, and with those skewed election results, they decided election reform was necessary. Soon after MMP was adopted, there were some party break-ups and new parties joining the fray.

After Dalton McGuinty promised to look at electoral reform last election, he created the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. This spring, they narrowed down their list to the final candidate to replace FPTP. Which brings us to here.

The question one first needs to ask when considering whether to move to a new system is – what is wrong with our current system? Critics of FPTP often cite this figure: over 50% of the votes in Ontario were ‘wasted’ – meaning that those votes did not end up voting anyone into power. This is an inherent flaw of FPTP – to win a riding, a candidate needs only the most number of votes, not a majority approval. If an NDP candidate had 30% of the vote, the Liberal candidate had 29%, and Conservative candidate had 28%, and the other %’s were eaten up by Greens and others, the NDP candidate would win – even though he would have less than a third of the votes in his riding. Thus, 2/3 of the votes would in this case be ‘wasted’.

But in the context of Ontario, no election has been won where the winner got less votes than another party. In fact, the last 3 elections have been won with about 45% of the vote – which isn’t bad, although critics will say even those aren’t “true” majorities. (I would argue that minus the spoiled ballots and fringe parties, that’s about an even majority)

Do we really need electoral reform? Before jumping into a new system, one also has to consider the price we’re paying for that. While it is true that MMP will give us a more ‘proportional’ view, it is not necessarily a good thing. As it stands in our current political climate, any election under MMP will be won by the centre-left parties (Liberal and NDP). Naturally, if, say, the Conservatives get more votes than the Liberals, but the Liberal and NDP parties decide to form a coalition (a very likely scenario), then those conservative voters will still call foul since they technically had the ‘most votes’ but couldn’t form government. Is it so wrong that the winning party received a majority government? Well, that’s a question for another debate.

In addition, the MMP proposal calls for about 20 more seats in parliament. With Ontario’s finances in problematic shape, funding an extra 20% on politics may not seem the best idea to improve democracy. (And – will more politicians help solve problems at Queen’s Park?)

A third problem – in New Zealand, after an election it is not immediately clear who will form government. After one of their MMP elections, it took 9 weeks – more than 2 months – to form a government. All that time, we would still be paying the politicians, for doing little to nothing. While this may assist in forming a political consensus, it may not get anything done.

You gain some, you lose some. What is obvious is that the system is not as broken as most people seem to think. The biggest problem in Canadian politics is the lack of interest. A 58% voter turnout is dismal, and nobody seems to care. That’s in part why I’m writing all this anyway. I’m trying to get you to vote.

What’s my verdict? Well, I think some alternative methods, such as the approval voting system might work better in Ontario. (Thanks Awdan for bringing that up in one of my comments). For tomorrow’s referendum, I will be voting Yes. Why? It’s not because I support MMP – but because I know the referendum is set up to fail. It requires 60% approval and a majority in 60% of the ridings. I’m voting yes because it’ll send a message to the politicians that we care – that they still need to take a hard look at themselves, because the system isn’t perfect.