I disagree with the assertion that if my chosen candidate isn't elected, my vote is wasted or lost or has no value. I live in a constituency that, for most of my voting life here, elected candidates antithetical to my ideas of good government. But, over time, those candidates I agree with slowly gained support and for the last while we have elected people representing ideas I support. And she represents ALL of her constituents in Ottawa and, imo, very well.
That's exactly right. They need to hear opposing ideas and knowing that some number of people vote against them, and for another party's ideas, is useful!
There are too many people that think of politics as if it were a sport, and only care if the people wearing their favorite corporate team jersey "win".
The best candidates are those who will represent constituents to the parties and in parliament, and not those who represent parties to constituencies and parliament. For most of Canada, the corporate party headquarters is some distant place that only generates alienation. The team jersey must be secondary if they are to actually do their job.
I wish Canadians better understood the difference between Parliamentary Party Caucuses and the corporate "fan clubs" that operate outside of Parliament.
Canadians spend far too much time believing Canada uses the same institutions as the USA, and that we have a Presidential system. Huge damage is done by having corporate Party Leadership conventions like the USA, rather than having leadership be accountable to the parliamentary caucus as is done in every other Westminster Democracy.
And even the NDP leader claims he is running for the position of Prime Minister, even though Canada doesn't directly elect the executive branch.
I don’t know how anyone can watch the corporate manipulation of politics in the USA and say “Hey, I want more of that in Canada” --- and yet you see it from all the current parties in parliament.
And too many Political Parties act like it's a game to win often ignoring that winning is not the end but a beginning.
I attribute this win attitude to two things:
1) news reportage on "The Leader" based on ease of focus and the example set by the US (as you point out).
2) the inordinate influence of political "scientists" originally hired by parties to advise how best to present their ideas that has now morphed into: "how do we compromise our ideas in order to get elected?".
I shared such a large chunk of this article via Notes that I must have exceeded the character limit for an actual comment on the post! (What can I say? I love this post so much.) Nothing enrages me more than talk about strategic voting during an election cycle -- especially talk about strategic voting that denies all the cynical political choices that have led us to the point where this substitutes for actual political discourse. "We're not as bad as the other guys!" should never be a rallying cry for a political party, but it is. Over and over again. (Where is the screaming emoji when you need it?) We deserve so much better and we'll only arrive at better when we recognize how much damage is being done to our democracy each time we're forced to play this game and finally force our political parties to do better. Thanks so much for writing this, Nora.
Since the 1980s , the two major parties are indeed two sides of the same coin. They are both corporate-positive entities. Only the NDP is truly supportive of workers. I am hoping the Liberals get a minority government, with NDP needing to prop them up again. Progressive legislation needs that coalition.
I recall it once being usually called "tactical voting" which seems more accurate. It's an effort to avoid the worst outcome right now rather than building the profile of your favoured choice for the long term. There can be reasons to do it, but they are not strategic reasons, they are tactical. I suspect that since the practice tends to favour more "establishment" parties, PR people at some point pushed calling it "strategic" because they wanted to encourage the practice and "strategic" sounds better and smarter than "tactical".
I have been meaning to lay some more on this thread, but I have been busy with something else for a bit. I am planning my own blog post on the subject, and answering the stuff churned up by these comments will helping me focus my thinking on it.
What I will do will be a good complement to Loreto’s excellent post. The topic was strategic voting. She made the point that voting does not matter, neoliberalism has rendered it meaningless.
So the usual types of sealioning twits see it as an opportunity to pile on about voting reform. That includes the idea of ranked ballots. I laid out a link to my own post a couple of months back about it, to inform people about the uselessness of the voting reforms debates from my own experiences within FairVote Canada.
It probably taxes the reading ability of these sealioners. Urk! Urk! Urk! Clap! Clap! Go eat some fish.
None of the twits who then started demanding to know my “objections” to STV went to it first. No fresh visits at all. Some nimrod pointed out that I am in fact promoting the idea of STV, which I am denouncing.
Pardon me for sounding very cynical here. It is only because I am very cynical about internet debate and discussion. It is always really loathsome, but it is sometimes necessary or useful to wade into it.
I recall all the squawking about different voting systems. It put most people off, who would otherwise have been interested in voting reform. The thing is, all these different systems would have produced about the same result, in the end.
STV is needlessly complex and still produces the same outcome. The advocates for it are the most obnoxious and persistent of all these voting system cultists. Other than that I have no particular objections to STV.
I think I got confused at one point about whether people were talking about STV or rank balloting. The ranked balloters are another degree again of obnoxiousness. It is obviously the Libera party’s idea. They think it will keep them in power forever.
Loreto’s point was the fallacy of strategic voting. Mine was the fallacy that changing the voting system will get us anywhere.
I also got into the need to start looking into better models of democracy, ie direct and discursive democracy. Trying to get voting reformers to engage with this is to talk to a brick wall.
What I want to get into is the strategies for getting to a real democracy. I think Loreto is planning some work on the same topic. The dialogue is between working through the present system or simply overthrowing it. In other words, building a new party, or a revolution.
Hopefully me and Loreto will in future complement rather than contradict each other.
People want to think their votes count because it's the only political outlet or avenue they have. Even the NDP has no plan to organize anyone between elections on any topic. thanks.
Well, Loreto has written something really good again, which I need to respond to. As usual, rather than go over it all, I have my own archived blogpost on the subject I can send people to.
My point is that voting reform solves nothing. Elections are about oligarchy, not democracy. The people who keep yakking about voting reform have a basically oligarchic mentality. That includes the STV types as much as the pro reps.
They think they are being treated unfairly. A real democracy is not about being “fair” to every interest group around. It is about choosing the best people to govern in the common interest.
It is about defining what that common interest is, without reference to any special interest which thinks it needs its own party so it can be treated ‘fairly’.
Contrary to FVC misinformation and misclassification, STV isn't about oligarchy or parties.
Ranking ballots (Single Transferrable Votes) is entirely "about choosing the best people to govern in the common interest" and moving away from special interest.
Please don't fall prey to an association fallacy, and lump ranked ballots in with what FVC and related special interest groups are lobbying for. They actually only mention PR-STV (STV in multi-member districts) because they want something that is entirely the opposite (party lists, party-top-ups, party block voting, party tickets), and want to generate confusion in language.
Yes, you are an agent for the STV promotion machine. I will suggest to Loreto that she block you. I am very familiar with what both FVC and STV are about. Have had a front row seat.
I would like to ask for some clarity. You may decide to block discussions about democratic institutions before they can really start, associating me with ideas and worldviews I don’t subscribe to, which seems odd given the article you posted about wanting to have a more deliberative democracy.
I believe my views on Canada or Western/Anglosphere worldviews in general are off-topic for this thread, but from reading your post it felt to me that we had more in common than you seem to believe.
Just so you know, I get inspiration from leagues of domestic (meaning Indigenous) nations such as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the oldest known Participatory Democracy. Within the Canadian context I also get inspiration from Nunavut and NWT that don’t use the identical British systems that the rest of Canada uses.
What is it about STV do you have a problem with, other than the association fallacy with FVC and their misrepresentations around "Proportional Representation"? I was also a campaigner in the past with FVC, and also recognized that FVC is a barrier to other reforms beyond how we elect members to parliaments. They even got involved in municipal politics, trying to impose their corporate party silo ideologies there as well.
I believe we will never get to other reforms until we deal with how current systems manufacture brand-centric divisiveness that puts people into ideological silos that we are unable to have conversations across. I see no mechanism to move towards participatory democracy, or anything like the "deliberative democracy" you wrote about, until we break up these corporate silos.
Your article didn't talk about STV (ranked ballots) at all, and only addressed the failures of FVC and any narrow focus on PR. I also don’t believe that electoral reform alone will fix the other systemic problems with our Democratic Institutions, but believe it is a critical entry point.
What you have said so far in this conversation feels like when I speak to some supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada and I ask what they like about it: It is not the Conservative Party of Canada. And then I talk to a Conservative supporter and they say: It is not the Liberal Party.
They have fallen pretty to a false binary logical fallacy. I don't like either of those parties, but I know that is not a reason to vote for the "other one". I can extend that to saying I don’t like any of the parties with seats in the previous House of Commons, all with their top-down corporate leadership style.
"Strategic voting is probably the second best reason for why Justin Trudeau abandoned electoral reform (the first being that the Liberals know how to work the system as it is more than how it could be in the future)."
Justin Trudeau wanted to end strategic voting, using ballot ranking (Single Transferrable Vote, in single and/or multi-member districts) which is the only way to end strategic voting. Party-centric systems do not solve that specific problem, but solve an entirely unrelated problem (party proportionality).
Party Proportionality is the tunnel-vision focus of those who want to be governed by top-down hierarchical corporations rather than by people representing communities and regions (who happen to work in party caucuses).
These party-focused lobby groups have even mischaracterised STV as not being ranked ballots, when in fact it is the original ranked ballot proportional system. The party-focused systems were created later to favour the interests of different political parties.
STV (Ranked Ballots) would have harmed the Liberal Party of Canada Corporation, as that coalition party would no longer rely on strategic voting to keep the coalition together, and it would break into its constituent parts (along with the current Reform/Alliance/Conservative party).
That is in fact what the Trudeau cabinet was pushing for, even if there were other Liberal partisans that might have wanted something different.
It is a myth that relies on misunderstanding the role of parties within parliaments and governments to believe STV (Ranked Ballots) would benefit the Liberal party over all others. While single-member STV was not what the Trudeau cabinet was promoting (that is misinformation from the opposition), I even discussed how the claims are false even with single-member districts.
It was the NDP and Greens (and multi-partisan Fair Vote Canada) that insisted on systems that would benefit the PARTIES over the interests of voters and filling parliaments with the best PEOPLE.
I wish people who are hearing hyper-partisan story telling would recognize it as such, and stop repeating it.
If you want to learn more about electoral reform and its impact on parliaments, you pretty much have to go to sources outside of Canada as the top-down hierarchical corporate parties have taken over the debate in Canada.
This UK campaign site compares systems, and for "Voter Choice" and "Local representation" the ranking system puts STV as the top. Only if you ignore all other criteria, and only consider party-proportionality does Party List PR (What is called Pure PR in Canada) or Additional Member Systems (What is called Mixed Member Proportional in Canada) show up as options with STV being third (and still extremely close to MMP)
I agree that this is a problem, but that the centralization of politics into the offices of corporations running outside of the House of Commons. You seem to be suggesting that if you only voted for a nominated candidate from a different corporate brand that everything would be fine, but the NDP and Greens (other brands on offer in many districts) operate the same way (and in many ways, the NDP is the most hierarchical and corporate of the options).
Voting for a different team jersey won't solve these systemic problems. Systemic changes are needed! The current NDP and Greens have put up barriers to strengthening Democratic Institutions, so voting for those corporate brands isn't strategic to solve these problems. The coalition party that Poilievre is leading would not be a threat today, and may have actually already broken into constituent parts, if the NDP and GPC hadn't opposed Ranked Ballots which could have been in place in time for the 2019 election.
If only Justin Trudeau hadn't purposefully misled the public by repeating on over 50 occasions, "making every vote count" which was FV's saying to do with proportionality. Trudeau lied to the people to get New Dems and Greens to vote them in 2015. Nobody wanted "ranked ballot". Ranked ballot within each riding does not make every vote count.
I feel like it would be helpful for Canadians to look outside of the party-centric thinking in Canada (NDP, GPC, FVC, etc) and take a closer look at what is being said in other countries.
Fair Vote USA writing about "proportional representation"
You said, " Nobody wanted 'ranked ballot'. Ranked ballot within each riding does not make every vote count."
I exist.
Many other people who have been electoral and democratic reformers for decades with a different criteria for success than FVC exist.
That means it isn't correct to claim that "Nobody wanted ranked ballots", even if you personally did not.
It is a False Binary logical fallacy to believe that only two groups exist: those that want to keep the current system and those who agree with FVC's specialized criteria for success for a replacement.
The term "make every vote count" has different meanings depending on someone's understanding of a wider variety of voting patterns than the subset that FVC considers.
Note: I assume you meant Fair Vote Canada (FVC) when you used FV. Fair Vote USA is appropriately calling for Ranked Choice Voting, recogniging the critical problems caused by hyper-partisanship https://fairvote.org/
----
For clarity, I am not a Liberal Party or Justin Trudeau supporter. I wanted Justin Trudeau gone by 2021.
I want to avoid that association fallacy, as that is the first thing I regularly get when I clarify that Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party are not solely or even primarily to blame when it comes to the failure of electoral reform.
While I was previously a campaigner for the GPO and GPC in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I actually blame the NDP and GPC (Elizabeth May) more for this specific failure than I do the Liberal Party.
While FVC may have been using “make every vote count” to mean a very narrow thing (relating to votes for PARTIES, ignoring any other demographic trait of candidates and any other criteria for success), they didn't invent the term.
Whether Justin Trudeau purposefully misled or was naive, we will never know.
FVC has been misleading/lying to people about what the term "ranked ballots" mean.
The core concept to understand is District Magnitude (DM), which is how many people are being elected within a district at the same time.
Single Transferable Vote (STV) is ranked ballots. In Canada, FVC claims that it is only STV if you have a district magnitude greater than 1 and that it is something else entirely if you have a district magnitude equal to 1. Alternate Vote, Instant Runoff Voting are additional terms for STV when district magnitude is 1, similar to how both Single Member Plurality (SMP) and First Past the Post (FPTP) refer to the same thing.
FVC talking points confuse people into thinking that STV is an example of "Proportional Representation” equivalent to other systems they group under that term, and that AV/IRV is something else entirely.
The reality is that SMP, DMP, MMP are a class of similar systems (All use a single-X that minimizes information from voters), and it is STV (in various district magnitudes) that is the something-else entirely.
Ever since P.E. Trudeau put party names on the federal ballot and granted parties even more centralized control of the nomination and other processes, Single Member Plurality (SMP, FPTP) has essentially been Party Lists with a district magnitude equal to one. MMP, the favored system by NDP/GPC/FVC is party lists with a mixture of DM=1 and DM>1.
FVC is never clear on district magnitude in their lobbying, and whether it would be regions within provinces, provinces, Canadian regions, or Canada-wide. The district magnitude matters, as the larger the district magnitude the more existing regional divides and alienation get worse, and the less likely parliament and Canada can function (Look at the regions claiming they want to separate from Canada).
BC-STV also mixed DM=1 and DM>1, but is far superior to MMP in pretty much every way if you want a fair voting system rather than a voting system that privileges people who only think along party lines and don’t care about what people sit in parliament.
Michael Gallagher, who created the Gallagher index, was a witness at the ERRE committee to talk about STV. The NDP and GPC didn't ask him questions about the index at all, and if they had he would have been able to clarify the meaning of the index and how STV is about something else entirely. Their adding a “low Gallagher index” as a criteria did not come from testimony, or for the good of the country, but only for the special interests of their parties.
The term "make every vote count" has different meanings for different people. For those narrowly-focused on parties, it means anyone who votes strictly along party lines gets their preferences privileged over anyone else who votes differently.
As someone who isn't tied to ideological silos or parties, I recognize that ranked ballots even in single member districts makes my vote count better than it would with MMP.
That said, multi-member district STV is far superior to single-member district STV.
The conversation should have been about district magnitude, and whether to have provincial or canadian-regional at-large members to deal with the massive differences in population density.
Instead of partnering with the Liberals to get reform, the NDP and GPC partnered with the CPC to block reform (A referendum on the Gallagher index will always return and expensive "no" as that is not a reform a majority of Canadians want).
I disagree with the assertion that if my chosen candidate isn't elected, my vote is wasted or lost or has no value. I live in a constituency that, for most of my voting life here, elected candidates antithetical to my ideas of good government. But, over time, those candidates I agree with slowly gained support and for the last while we have elected people representing ideas I support. And she represents ALL of her constituents in Ottawa and, imo, very well.
That's exactly right. They need to hear opposing ideas and knowing that some number of people vote against them, and for another party's ideas, is useful!
There are too many people that think of politics as if it were a sport, and only care if the people wearing their favorite corporate team jersey "win".
The best candidates are those who will represent constituents to the parties and in parliament, and not those who represent parties to constituencies and parliament. For most of Canada, the corporate party headquarters is some distant place that only generates alienation. The team jersey must be secondary if they are to actually do their job.
I wish Canadians better understood the difference between Parliamentary Party Caucuses and the corporate "fan clubs" that operate outside of Parliament.
https://www.davidgraham.ca/p/leadership-by-caucus
Canadians spend far too much time believing Canada uses the same institutions as the USA, and that we have a Presidential system. Huge damage is done by having corporate Party Leadership conventions like the USA, rather than having leadership be accountable to the parliamentary caucus as is done in every other Westminster Democracy.
And even the NDP leader claims he is running for the position of Prime Minister, even though Canada doesn't directly elect the executive branch.
I don’t know how anyone can watch the corporate manipulation of politics in the USA and say “Hey, I want more of that in Canada” --- and yet you see it from all the current parties in parliament.
And too many Political Parties act like it's a game to win often ignoring that winning is not the end but a beginning.
I attribute this win attitude to two things:
1) news reportage on "The Leader" based on ease of focus and the example set by the US (as you point out).
2) the inordinate influence of political "scientists" originally hired by parties to advise how best to present their ideas that has now morphed into: "how do we compromise our ideas in order to get elected?".
I shared such a large chunk of this article via Notes that I must have exceeded the character limit for an actual comment on the post! (What can I say? I love this post so much.) Nothing enrages me more than talk about strategic voting during an election cycle -- especially talk about strategic voting that denies all the cynical political choices that have led us to the point where this substitutes for actual political discourse. "We're not as bad as the other guys!" should never be a rallying cry for a political party, but it is. Over and over again. (Where is the screaming emoji when you need it?) We deserve so much better and we'll only arrive at better when we recognize how much damage is being done to our democracy each time we're forced to play this game and finally force our political parties to do better. Thanks so much for writing this, Nora.
Since the 1980s , the two major parties are indeed two sides of the same coin. They are both corporate-positive entities. Only the NDP is truly supportive of workers. I am hoping the Liberals get a minority government, with NDP needing to prop them up again. Progressive legislation needs that coalition.
I recall it once being usually called "tactical voting" which seems more accurate. It's an effort to avoid the worst outcome right now rather than building the profile of your favoured choice for the long term. There can be reasons to do it, but they are not strategic reasons, they are tactical. I suspect that since the practice tends to favour more "establishment" parties, PR people at some point pushed calling it "strategic" because they wanted to encourage the practice and "strategic" sounds better and smarter than "tactical".
Best article ever Nora, IMO. Thank you for writing it.
Hello, again. I have not gone away yet.
I have been meaning to lay some more on this thread, but I have been busy with something else for a bit. I am planning my own blog post on the subject, and answering the stuff churned up by these comments will helping me focus my thinking on it.
What I will do will be a good complement to Loreto’s excellent post. The topic was strategic voting. She made the point that voting does not matter, neoliberalism has rendered it meaningless.
So the usual types of sealioning twits see it as an opportunity to pile on about voting reform. That includes the idea of ranked ballots. I laid out a link to my own post a couple of months back about it, to inform people about the uselessness of the voting reforms debates from my own experiences within FairVote Canada.
Its still at https://timrourke.substack.com/p/about-voting-reform Either read it before answering me or fk off!
It probably taxes the reading ability of these sealioners. Urk! Urk! Urk! Clap! Clap! Go eat some fish.
None of the twits who then started demanding to know my “objections” to STV went to it first. No fresh visits at all. Some nimrod pointed out that I am in fact promoting the idea of STV, which I am denouncing.
Pardon me for sounding very cynical here. It is only because I am very cynical about internet debate and discussion. It is always really loathsome, but it is sometimes necessary or useful to wade into it.
I recall all the squawking about different voting systems. It put most people off, who would otherwise have been interested in voting reform. The thing is, all these different systems would have produced about the same result, in the end.
STV is needlessly complex and still produces the same outcome. The advocates for it are the most obnoxious and persistent of all these voting system cultists. Other than that I have no particular objections to STV.
I think I got confused at one point about whether people were talking about STV or rank balloting. The ranked balloters are another degree again of obnoxiousness. It is obviously the Libera party’s idea. They think it will keep them in power forever.
Loreto’s point was the fallacy of strategic voting. Mine was the fallacy that changing the voting system will get us anywhere.
I also got into the need to start looking into better models of democracy, ie direct and discursive democracy. Trying to get voting reformers to engage with this is to talk to a brick wall.
What I want to get into is the strategies for getting to a real democracy. I think Loreto is planning some work on the same topic. The dialogue is between working through the present system or simply overthrowing it. In other words, building a new party, or a revolution.
Hopefully me and Loreto will in future complement rather than contradict each other.
I did not read this drivel. The influencer techniques are predictable.
Minority governments are the best.
People want to think their votes count because it's the only political outlet or avenue they have. Even the NDP has no plan to organize anyone between elections on any topic. thanks.
Well, Loreto has written something really good again, which I need to respond to. As usual, rather than go over it all, I have my own archived blogpost on the subject I can send people to.
https://timrourke.substack.com/p/about-voting-reform
My point is that voting reform solves nothing. Elections are about oligarchy, not democracy. The people who keep yakking about voting reform have a basically oligarchic mentality. That includes the STV types as much as the pro reps.
They think they are being treated unfairly. A real democracy is not about being “fair” to every interest group around. It is about choosing the best people to govern in the common interest.
It is about defining what that common interest is, without reference to any special interest which thinks it needs its own party so it can be treated ‘fairly’.
Contrary to FVC misinformation and misclassification, STV isn't about oligarchy or parties.
Ranking ballots (Single Transferrable Votes) is entirely "about choosing the best people to govern in the common interest" and moving away from special interest.
Please don't fall prey to an association fallacy, and lump ranked ballots in with what FVC and related special interest groups are lobbying for. They actually only mention PR-STV (STV in multi-member districts) because they want something that is entirely the opposite (party lists, party-top-ups, party block voting, party tickets), and want to generate confusion in language.
Yes, you are an agent for the STV promotion machine. I will suggest to Loreto that she block you. I am very familiar with what both FVC and STV are about. Have had a front row seat.
I would like to ask for some clarity. You may decide to block discussions about democratic institutions before they can really start, associating me with ideas and worldviews I don’t subscribe to, which seems odd given the article you posted about wanting to have a more deliberative democracy.
I believe my views on Canada or Western/Anglosphere worldviews in general are off-topic for this thread, but from reading your post it felt to me that we had more in common than you seem to believe.
Just so you know, I get inspiration from leagues of domestic (meaning Indigenous) nations such as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the oldest known Participatory Democracy. Within the Canadian context I also get inspiration from Nunavut and NWT that don’t use the identical British systems that the rest of Canada uses.
https://www.ntlegislativeassembly.ca/legislative-business/how-legislative-assembly-works/consensus-government
What is it about STV do you have a problem with, other than the association fallacy with FVC and their misrepresentations around "Proportional Representation"? I was also a campaigner in the past with FVC, and also recognized that FVC is a barrier to other reforms beyond how we elect members to parliaments. They even got involved in municipal politics, trying to impose their corporate party silo ideologies there as well.
I believe we will never get to other reforms until we deal with how current systems manufacture brand-centric divisiveness that puts people into ideological silos that we are unable to have conversations across. I see no mechanism to move towards participatory democracy, or anything like the "deliberative democracy" you wrote about, until we break up these corporate silos.
Your article didn't talk about STV (ranked ballots) at all, and only addressed the failures of FVC and any narrow focus on PR. I also don’t believe that electoral reform alone will fix the other systemic problems with our Democratic Institutions, but believe it is a critical entry point.
What you have said so far in this conversation feels like when I speak to some supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada and I ask what they like about it: It is not the Conservative Party of Canada. And then I talk to a Conservative supporter and they say: It is not the Liberal Party.
They have fallen pretty to a false binary logical fallacy. I don't like either of those parties, but I know that is not a reason to vote for the "other one". I can extend that to saying I don’t like any of the parties with seats in the previous House of Commons, all with their top-down corporate leadership style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
Would love to know your objections to STV.
I get it is not a magic recipe for perfection.
But individually if your ballot only was counted using STV why would you object?
To me STV is better for each individual and to object to it for others needs some good reason.
It’s too little doesn’t make it bad in itself.
"Strategic voting is probably the second best reason for why Justin Trudeau abandoned electoral reform (the first being that the Liberals know how to work the system as it is more than how it could be in the future)."
Justin Trudeau wanted to end strategic voting, using ballot ranking (Single Transferrable Vote, in single and/or multi-member districts) which is the only way to end strategic voting. Party-centric systems do not solve that specific problem, but solve an entirely unrelated problem (party proportionality).
Party Proportionality is the tunnel-vision focus of those who want to be governed by top-down hierarchical corporations rather than by people representing communities and regions (who happen to work in party caucuses).
https://www.davidgraham.ca/p/leadership-by-caucus
These party-focused lobby groups have even mischaracterised STV as not being ranked ballots, when in fact it is the original ranked ballot proportional system. The party-focused systems were created later to favour the interests of different political parties.
STV (Ranked Ballots) would have harmed the Liberal Party of Canada Corporation, as that coalition party would no longer rely on strategic voting to keep the coalition together, and it would break into its constituent parts (along with the current Reform/Alliance/Conservative party).
That is in fact what the Trudeau cabinet was pushing for, even if there were other Liberal partisans that might have wanted something different.
It is a myth that relies on misunderstanding the role of parties within parliaments and governments to believe STV (Ranked Ballots) would benefit the Liberal party over all others. While single-member STV was not what the Trudeau cabinet was promoting (that is misinformation from the opposition), I even discussed how the claims are false even with single-member districts.
https://r.flora.ca/p/claims-that-alternate-vote-exaggerates
It was the NDP and Greens (and multi-partisan Fair Vote Canada) that insisted on systems that would benefit the PARTIES over the interests of voters and filling parliaments with the best PEOPLE.
https://r.flora.ca/p/justin-trudeau-electoral-reform
I wish people who are hearing hyper-partisan story telling would recognize it as such, and stop repeating it.
If you want to learn more about electoral reform and its impact on parliaments, you pretty much have to go to sources outside of Canada as the top-down hierarchical corporate parties have taken over the debate in Canada.
This UK campaign site compares systems, and for "Voter Choice" and "Local representation" the ranking system puts STV as the top. Only if you ignore all other criteria, and only consider party-proportionality does Party List PR (What is called Pure PR in Canada) or Additional Member Systems (What is called Mixed Member Proportional in Canada) show up as options with STV being third (and still extremely close to MMP)
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/
This Australia site discussed PR-STV and why it is superior to Party List PR including MMP.
https://www.prsa.org.au/municip1.htm
"Votes though, don’t matter. "
I agree that this is a problem, but that the centralization of politics into the offices of corporations running outside of the House of Commons. You seem to be suggesting that if you only voted for a nominated candidate from a different corporate brand that everything would be fine, but the NDP and Greens (other brands on offer in many districts) operate the same way (and in many ways, the NDP is the most hierarchical and corporate of the options).
Voting for a different team jersey won't solve these systemic problems. Systemic changes are needed! The current NDP and Greens have put up barriers to strengthening Democratic Institutions, so voting for those corporate brands isn't strategic to solve these problems. The coalition party that Poilievre is leading would not be a threat today, and may have actually already broken into constituent parts, if the NDP and GPC hadn't opposed Ranked Ballots which could have been in place in time for the 2019 election.
If only Justin Trudeau hadn't purposefully misled the public by repeating on over 50 occasions, "making every vote count" which was FV's saying to do with proportionality. Trudeau lied to the people to get New Dems and Greens to vote them in 2015. Nobody wanted "ranked ballot". Ranked ballot within each riding does not make every vote count.
I feel like it would be helpful for Canadians to look outside of the party-centric thinking in Canada (NDP, GPC, FVC, etc) and take a closer look at what is being said in other countries.
Fair Vote USA writing about "proportional representation"
https://fairvote.org/?s=proportional%20representation
Same with the UK reform group, which also recommends STV as they have more than party proportionality as a criteria for success.
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/
You said, " Nobody wanted 'ranked ballot'. Ranked ballot within each riding does not make every vote count."
I exist.
Many other people who have been electoral and democratic reformers for decades with a different criteria for success than FVC exist.
That means it isn't correct to claim that "Nobody wanted ranked ballots", even if you personally did not.
It is a False Binary logical fallacy to believe that only two groups exist: those that want to keep the current system and those who agree with FVC's specialized criteria for success for a replacement.
The term "make every vote count" has different meanings depending on someone's understanding of a wider variety of voting patterns than the subset that FVC considers.
Note: I assume you meant Fair Vote Canada (FVC) when you used FV. Fair Vote USA is appropriately calling for Ranked Choice Voting, recogniging the critical problems caused by hyper-partisanship https://fairvote.org/
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For clarity, I am not a Liberal Party or Justin Trudeau supporter. I wanted Justin Trudeau gone by 2021.
https://r.flora.ca/p/lets-work-to-fix-parliamentary-flaws
I want to avoid that association fallacy, as that is the first thing I regularly get when I clarify that Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party are not solely or even primarily to blame when it comes to the failure of electoral reform.
While I was previously a campaigner for the GPO and GPC in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I actually blame the NDP and GPC (Elizabeth May) more for this specific failure than I do the Liberal Party.
While FVC may have been using “make every vote count” to mean a very narrow thing (relating to votes for PARTIES, ignoring any other demographic trait of candidates and any other criteria for success), they didn't invent the term.
Whether Justin Trudeau purposefully misled or was naive, we will never know.
FVC has been misleading/lying to people about what the term "ranked ballots" mean.
The core concept to understand is District Magnitude (DM), which is how many people are being elected within a district at the same time.
Single Transferable Vote (STV) is ranked ballots. In Canada, FVC claims that it is only STV if you have a district magnitude greater than 1 and that it is something else entirely if you have a district magnitude equal to 1. Alternate Vote, Instant Runoff Voting are additional terms for STV when district magnitude is 1, similar to how both Single Member Plurality (SMP) and First Past the Post (FPTP) refer to the same thing.
FVC talking points confuse people into thinking that STV is an example of "Proportional Representation” equivalent to other systems they group under that term, and that AV/IRV is something else entirely.
The reality is that SMP, DMP, MMP are a class of similar systems (All use a single-X that minimizes information from voters), and it is STV (in various district magnitudes) that is the something-else entirely.
Ever since P.E. Trudeau put party names on the federal ballot and granted parties even more centralized control of the nomination and other processes, Single Member Plurality (SMP, FPTP) has essentially been Party Lists with a district magnitude equal to one. MMP, the favored system by NDP/GPC/FVC is party lists with a mixture of DM=1 and DM>1.
FVC is never clear on district magnitude in their lobbying, and whether it would be regions within provinces, provinces, Canadian regions, or Canada-wide. The district magnitude matters, as the larger the district magnitude the more existing regional divides and alienation get worse, and the less likely parliament and Canada can function (Look at the regions claiming they want to separate from Canada).
BC-STV also mixed DM=1 and DM>1, but is far superior to MMP in pretty much every way if you want a fair voting system rather than a voting system that privileges people who only think along party lines and don’t care about what people sit in parliament.
Michael Gallagher, who created the Gallagher index, was a witness at the ERRE committee to talk about STV. The NDP and GPC didn't ask him questions about the index at all, and if they had he would have been able to clarify the meaning of the index and how STV is about something else entirely. Their adding a “low Gallagher index” as a criteria did not come from testimony, or for the good of the country, but only for the special interests of their parties.
The term "make every vote count" has different meanings for different people. For those narrowly-focused on parties, it means anyone who votes strictly along party lines gets their preferences privileged over anyone else who votes differently.
As someone who isn't tied to ideological silos or parties, I recognize that ranked ballots even in single member districts makes my vote count better than it would with MMP.
That said, multi-member district STV is far superior to single-member district STV.
The conversation should have been about district magnitude, and whether to have provincial or canadian-regional at-large members to deal with the massive differences in population density.
Instead of partnering with the Liberals to get reform, the NDP and GPC partnered with the CPC to block reform (A referendum on the Gallagher index will always return and expensive "no" as that is not a reform a majority of Canadians want).