Proportional Representation: Why Some Canadians want it, others don’t

And an Argument Against it You May Not Have Thought of

The Canadian House of Commons and provincial and territorial legislatures in Canada are currently elected using what is commonly called a “first past the post” system. More accurately[1] described by political scientists as a Single Member Plurality (SMP) system, it awards each geographical constituency to the candidate who polls the most votes in that constituency.

This system is considered undemocratic and unfair by many Canadians because it is possible for a party to win a significant percentage of the votes cast in a province, or nationally, and not win any seats or a number of seats which represents a much smaller share of the seats available than its share of the popular vote. Moreover, it does not require a candidate to have a majority of the votes in his or her constituency to get elected, just a larger number than any other candidate. Supporters of third and fourth parties argue that their under SMP their votes “don’t count” and that larger parties can form majority governments with much less than half of the total vote

Proportional Representation (PR) systems offer an alternative to the SMP system. The form of PR most often suggested in Canada is called the Mixed-Member-Proportional (MMP) system. Under this system a majority of members in a legislature are still elected from geographical constituencies using the SMP system. The remainder, however, are allocated so that each party has a share of the total seats in the legislature proportional to its share of the popular vote, provided its share of the overall vote meets some minimum threshold (E.g. 5%). A MMP system will be used in this Sunday’s German election.

To see how MMP works, let us assume a jurisdiction with four parties whose share of the overall vote exceeds the threshold and sixty seats in the legislature. Forty of the members are elected geographically and the rest are selected from party lists. Party A wins 40% of the vote and twenty-eight geographical seats. Party B wins 25% of the vote and eight geographical seats. Party C wins 20% of the vote and the remaining four geographical seats. Party D wins 8% of the vote and no geographical seats. The remaining parties and independent candidates win a combined 7% of the popular vote and no geographical seats.

Under an MMP system Party D would get five seats (8% of the total), all of whom would come from the party list. Party C would get twelve seats (20% of the total), eight of whom would come from the list. Party B would get fifteen seats (25% of the total), seven of whom would come from the party list and Party A would get only its 28 geographical seats since they already represent over 40% of the total.

Instead of having the majority government it would have enjoyed under an SMP system, Party A would have to gain the support of at least one other party to form even a minority government. This would mean that Party D, with only 8% of the total vote, would be in a strong position to influence the legislative program of Party A or a coalition between parties B and C in return for its support in the legislature.

PR therefore not only makes it more difficult to form a majority government, which many argue is not only more stable, but more directly accountable to the electorate since it prevents partners in a minority of coalition government from blaming each other when things go wrong or fighting over who deserves the credit when things go right. It also can more often result in a situation where the balance of power is held by the party with the least popular support in the legislature. These very features, of course make it attractive to supporters of the Green Party and the NDP who usually receive a much smaller share of seats than they do of the popular vote.

The two systems also present a radically different set of incentives to each of the parties. The SMP system encourages parties to appeal to different geographical sections of the country or province and to be inclusive enough ideologically to appeal to at least 35-40% of the voters in each constituency. It also restricts the power of the party leader over his or her caucus because each member is elected by a geographical constituency instead of some, perhaps a majority, being chosen from a party list controlled by the party leader.

PR, on the other hand, encourages parties to be ideologically pure in order to maintain a guaranteed, though minority share of the electorate and thus of seats in the legislature in order to have bargaining power in the fragmented legislatures and parliaments PR would tend to produce more often than SMP. PR might even encourage the formation of more boutique ideological parties exacerbating the tendency to fragmented legislatures where negotiations between party leaders after the election would shape the legislative program and few governments could implement the platform they ran on in the election or be held accountable if they did not. PR also place enormous power in the hands of the party leader who would rank the list candidates on the ballot so as to ensure that his or her loyalists and favourites were at the top and potential party rivals at the bottom of the list. The current lamented tendency for members to place loyalty to the leader before representing their constituencies or their own values and principles would thus be strengthened.

The incentives argument is the main reason why I oppose MMP and other forms of PR. I suspect that most opponents of PR have come to that position for other reasons. Many supporters of the major parties think it weakens their party’s chance of forming a majority government. Many also probably share with me a distaste for rewarding parties who think that having a minimum level of popular support entitles them not just to representation in the legislature, but to more power in minority government situations than parties polling far larger shares of the popular vote. Most have probably never heard of the incentives argument.

For whatever reasons, MMP has not been popular with most voters and geographical constituencies where it has been proposed. During the past decade two provinces, Ontario in October 2007 and Prince Edward Island in November 2005, have held referendums on switching from an SMP to an MMP system. Both proposals were resoundingly defeated. In Prince Edward Island 63.6% of voters rejected the proposed change and in only 2 of the 27 constituencies in the province did a majority of voters favour it. In Ontario 63.2% of voters rejected MMP and in only 5 of the 107 constituencies in the province did a majority of voters favour it. Several constituencies which elected an NDP member rejected MMP.[2]

SMP has many flaws and there are alternatives to it other than PR, but so far in Canada voters seem to prefer the system they know, with its faults, to the risks inherent in PR. Churchill said during the 1930’s when Fascism and Communism were challenging liberal democracies struggling to meet the challenge of The Great Depression that “Parliamentary democracy was the worst of all possible forms of government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.” Voters may have a similar view of SMP. It produces incongruous results at times, but at least it offers political parties healthy incentives and has the flexibility to enable the voters to cure its excesses at the next election.