Proportional Representation gets a big boost in Ontario…

I just read this excellent news over at DemocraticSPACE.com that the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly overwhelmingly chose Mixed-Member Proportional representation as the model of choice to use to reform Ontario’s way of voting members in. They have …

Didn’t the BC citizens assembly propose an STV system? I wonder why the large discrepancy between the choices of the two assemblies? Any thoughts?

Olaf,

B.C. and Ontario are different, and their needs are different. In my humble opinion, both citizens’ assemblies made the right choice.

My understanding is that the 80% figure represents which model the delegates wanted to explore as an alternative to FPTP. This is very different from suggesting that 80% support MMP as an alternative to FPTP. One could support the idea of exploring MMP as the best alternative, but still ultimately support retaining FPTP.

IP,

B.C. and Ontario are different, and their needs are different. In my humble opinion, both citizens’ assemblies made the right choice.

I’m aware that they’re different provinces inhabited by different people on different geographical space. Care to elaborate on how this difference logically leads to one choosing the STV system with the other rejecting it almost completely?

I’m also intrigued by the difference in degree of relative support for MMP and STV between the OCA and the BCCA. One factor may be that the BCCA had more time to deliberate – in a paper presented to the American Political Science Association meeting in 2005, Andre Blais and colleagues showed that the BCCA gave STV a ranking of 5.1 out of 7 for the first 7 months of the process, and that it only rose to 6.3 after 12 months (in contrast to the steady or slightly declining support (5.4, 5.3 and 5.2) for MMP over the same 12 months). Those preferring STV to MMP increased from 22% after 3 months to 28% after 7 months to 72% after 12 months.
According to Blais, the determining factors behind the BCCA’s changing rankings were the high priority placed on voter choice and an increasing appreciation of or desire for strong local representation. The OCA has only been meeting since the fall; this is entirely consistent with the BCCA’s evolution of thought. Of course, there’s no guarantee that further deliberation will change the OCA’s mind about STV, but it is one possible reason for the difference.

1. The bureaucrats in charge of the BC CA steered them towards STV.

2. The Green Party’s “form” letter campaign annoyed the CA members who got annoyed at the attempt to manipulate them.

3. I doubt the citizen’s will approve MMP in Ontario, the dilution of local representation in a land area as large as Ontario will push voters towards a “no” vote.

George,

Please provide a reference for your assertion that the bureaucrats steered the BCCA towards STV. That is NOT what the assembly members I know say happened.

It also doesn’t follow that annoyance at an attempt at manipulation translates into a lack of willingness to consider MMP – in fact, the BCCA’s perception of MMP did not change significantly over the course of the assembly; it was simply that STV rose in their estimation over time.

Finally, Ontario and BC have virtually the same land area, but Ontario has over three times the population of BC; concerns about representation in sparsely populated areas played a significant role in BC, but a larger portion of Ontario’s population is in more compact urban areas, so this may be less of an issue in Ontario than in BC, at least as measured by the fraction of the population who will feel any effect. It will be interesting to see how the OCA handles this issue.

That is outstanding news! As a BCer and ex-Ontarian in exile I think the Citizens Assembly made the wrong choice on the west coast and the right one in Ontario. MMP all the way!

Still, almost anything is better than our antiquated first past the post system, so I would probably consider supporting STV agian just for the sake of it ending the horror. ;)

Hello Greg
Someone sent me this link and I thought it was important to clear up some things in your post. It is true that the members chose MMP to design for weekend two of deliberation. In no way at all does this mean that “Citizens’ Assembly members endorsed a mixed-member system” as you write.

It also is incorrect to infer from this that “it seems unlikely that they will vote to keep our current system.” Members have just begun deliberation and from what I observed are keeping an open mind about everything.

The decision on the first weekend merely means that of the alternative systems, members believe that they should work up an MMP as the first model. It certainly does not foreclose them working up another model on weekend 3 and indeed they will make that decision next weekend. Nor does it mean that they might choose to retain the current system after they have looked at alternatives.

As a wise man once said, “It ain’t over ’till it’s over”!

Thanks for the comments, Jonathan. I understand, as the CA’s academic advisor, that you have to qualify weekend one’s deliberations as only the first phase and that no binding decisions have been made. That’s understandable. But you must admit that when one of the CA members says “throwing a dart is better than our current system,” and most CA members smile and nod in agreement, one can be relatively confident saying that it’s unlikely the CA will recommend the status quo. You can’t say that in your capacity, of course. But as an observer, I am commenting on what I see at the CA’s deliberations.

I have serious reservations that the CA will have time to design a complete MMP system, evaluate it, abandon it, then go through the same process for an entirely different type of system. As someone who has designed several MMP systems, I am quite certain that the CA has underestimated the amount of time it will take to design a complete MMP system. And it must be complete (with details) for you to be able to assess its feasibility. Certainly, it cannot be done in 2 days (which is what you suggest — i.e. that if the CA doesn’t like what they have after weekend 2, they could shift to another model on weekend 3). In fact, if you assess what you have after only 2 days, you are biasing the process in favour of a system that is simple to design, rather than a system that achieves the desired principles. MMP is a simple system once designed, but it takes time to work through the intricate details of the design.

I don’t have to remind you that the CA has just 10 weeks to get 104 people to decide on countless highly detailed variables, all of which are inter-related and which make different trade-offs with respect to the CA’s most important principles. This is challenging at the best of times, but to do so in such a short amount of time makes it that much more difficult. For example, among the variables are:

1. How big is the legislature?
2. How many local seats?
3. How many regional seats?
4. What is the local/regional mix?
5. Is proportionality province-wide or regional?
6. Is there a threshold?
7. Should a threshold be province-wide or regional?
8. How many regions?
9. What are the boundaries of those regions? (this one is a huge question)
10. What range between the size of regions is acceptable?
11. Should the mix between local/regional be the same or different across regions?
12. How long are the regional lists?
13. Should dual-candidacy be permitted or not?
14. Should there be minimum and maximum list sizes?
15. Should regional lists be open-, closed- or flexible-list?
16. How do you deal with overhang seats?
17. What should the ballot look like?
18. How will the new ridings look like?
…and this are just the beginning…

And you need to produce a system where, legally, all ridings and regions have roughly the same voice (i.e. have roughly the same number of people per MPP, notwithstanding exceptions granted to the North), which means going through each census subdivision to ensure that it works (i.e. that all regions and all ridings have roughly the same ratio of local and regional MPPs to people, and still ensure the regions and ridings are genuine communities of interest). I’ve done this for my system (submission #1546) and it is extremely time consuming (note I didn’t include these detailed calculations and new riding maps in my submission, but I will forward these to the OCA’s technical team today or tomorrow for their information — it gives you a clear idea of what the ridings would look like under MMP; I will CC you on this).

The point is, every one of the above questions will take time to debate and decide. And the details matter — changing one detail (i.e. open-list vs closed-list, small regions or big regions, 33% list seats vs 40%, etc) can significantly impact the CA’s chosen principles. It will literally take the rest of the CA’s mandate to decide upon these details, let alone begin drafting the final report.

Best,
Greg