proportional representation

[Doug Stewart]

Make every vote in Parliament a FREE vote. Then if the leaders don't listen to
 the people then members of the leaders party can vote against the party.



On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Tony Yarusso <tonyyarusso at gmail.com> wrote:
> FWIW, the system often proposed for Canada is very different than the
> proportional representation used in eg. Sweden and more like that of
> Germany and New Zealand, possibly with some elements from Australia.
> The idea of a strict party vote doesn't appeal to most Canadians, and
> being a large (regionally fractious) country it doesn't make much
> sense.  So, a brief summary of a more likely alternative:  Mixed
> Member Proportional Representation with Single Transferable Vote for
> local constituency seats.
>
> The ballot would have two parts.  On the first part, you would see a
> list of local people running for your riding, as you have now.  In the
> simple form (proposed by the Law Commission of Canada's report), this
> would work exactly the same as now, with a First Past the Post system.
>  If the addition of STV is used, you would rank these candidates in
> order of preference.  When votes were counted, if no candidate had
> more than 50% of the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes as #1
> would be dropped and an "instant runoff" would ensue, counting other
> ballots the same way and the ones for this candidate using their #2
> choice, repeating until someone emerged with more than 50% support.
>
> The second part of the ballot would be for a party.  Here you would
> vote for the party of your preference, with one mark, and it would not
> need to be the same as the party affiliation of the candidate you
> ranked #1 on the first part.
>
> STV on the first part of the ballot would go a long way towards making
> the outcome of local riding seats better reflect the will of voters,
> eliminating the "spoiler effect".  However, there would still be some
> discrepancy between the seat results from that and the popular vote.
> The second part of the ballot therefore would be used to apportion a
> smaller number of "top-up" seats to make the final result match the
> popular vote as closely as possible.
>
> This results in a Parliament that accurately reflects the will of the
> people, while still maintaining the concept of local riding
> representatives and electoral accountability.  It also makes sure that
> it is still possible for both independent candidates in a local riding
> and small parties nationwide to get a fair shot.  IMO, this would be a
> rather nice balance of the pros of each system all around.
>
>  - Tony
>
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