It’s safe to say that the sudden revival of interest in voting system reform — driven by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise that 2015 would be the last federal election conducted under first-past-the-post — caught most pundits and academic observers off guard. Given the failure of all voting system reform efforts in Canada between 2005 and 2009, it seemed that the issue was — like Monty Python’s parrot — sleeping, if not dead, and likely to sleep for a very long time.

Opinions vary about why the previous federal and provincial voting system reform initiatives failed. Anti-reform forces declared their efforts were decisive in discrediting the proposed alternative voting systems, the media concluded that Canadians just liked the status quo, a host of pundits announced that nobody really cared about the issue except wonks and special interests, while reformers blamed a lack of education and rules that rigged the process to fail.

Academic analyses of the various referenda suggested that a clear majority of the public did support some kind of voting system reform, but they also found that the same people were largely unaware that the referenda were going on — or what they were about. As a result, the majority ‘no’ votes were less a rejection of the reforms than a ‘I don’t know what this is so I’ll pass on it’ response from voters with low information.

Still, such an insight doesn’t really get to the root of why all the reform efforts failed. To revise a famous phrase: It’s the politics, stupid.

As I argued in my 2007 book, The Politics of Voting: Reforming Canada’s Electoral System, voting system reform is deeply political because it affects access to the levers of political power. Our voting system usually allows one party to have exclusive control of the government, with all the benefits and power that entails. A shift to a different voting system that might alter that — i.e., one that might force parties to share power — is deeply worrying to political elites and the powerful interests they represent, not to mention the more partisan members of the electorate that support different parties.

Thus, the debates about which voting system might be ‘best’ for B.C., Ontario, P.E.I. or Canada as a whole were never really about values or the performance of different systems — they were about power and how switching systems might affect who gets it. So the campaigns that argued against reform were stacked with recycled party hacks, often from opposite sides of the political spectrum but in agreement on one thing: the need to maintain voting rules that rigged the game in their favour.

The first victim of these campaigns was fact-based reasoning: Opponents of reform indulged in wild speculation about the possible impacts of different voting systems, fudged facts about other countries and their voting systems, cherry-picked evidence to make their cases, and generally tried to confuse the debate at every turn. The media, which should have been asking tough questions and helping to guide the public discussion, instead joined the pile-on, entering the debate on the ‘no’ side and using its formidable influence to sow confusion with misleading and frankly inaccurate coverage.

And here we are again, with an advanced voting reform initiative underway at the federal level. In light of previous, disappointing results, why would politicians return to this issue again? Again, it’s all about the politics.

If Liberals believe that everything has returned to the default setting of Canadian politics — i.e., a duopoly at the federal level where Liberals dominate and occasionally lose power briefly to the Conservatives — then no change is likely to occur. If Liberals believe that everything has returned to the default setting of Canadian politics — i.e., a duopoly at the federal level where Liberals dominate and occasionally lose power briefly to the Conservatives — then no change is likely to occur.

Interest in voting system reform reflects ongoing instability in the national party system. As Liberal fortunes fell post-2004, the NDP increasingly promoted the issue, aided by the stark under-representation of Greens throughout the second half of the decade. Liberal interest in voting system reform escalated dramatically when the party fell to third place nationally in 2011, with a majority of Liberal MPs voting in favour of an NDP motion for proportional representation in 2014.

When the NDP re-affirmed its support for voting system reform after becoming the Official Opposition, it argued that — if elected in 2015 — it would simply introduce a form of proportional representation. The Liberals matched that promise. With their surprising election win, the Liberals surprised us again by embarking on a process that seems committed to reforming the voting system.

So what’s going to actually happen? Probably nothing, if the recent past is any guide. But a lot will depend on how federal Liberals understand their electoral and governing prospects going into the future.

If Liberals believe that everything has returned to the default setting of Canadian politics — i.e., a duopoly at the federal level where Liberals dominate and occasionally lose power briefly to the Conservatives — then no change is likely to occur. On the other hand, if the Liberals are worried about ongoing future strategic losses to the Conservatives on vote splits with other parties (e.g. the NDP, Bloc and Greens), then a switch to something like the majoritarian alternative vote could be in the cards as a minor reform that would likely shunt minor party votes back to Liberals but leave everything else in the political system basically the same.

Finally, if Liberal voter research is telling them that their recent victory was weak and tentative and that the decades-long instability in the party system is not over, then some form of proportional representation (or a modified less-than-proportional system) might start to look attractive to the government. Half a loaf, after all, is better than none — particularly if being seen as occupying the centre of the political spectrum means your party likely will be a participant in most governments.

Since the Liberals announced their plan to move forward on voting system reform, responses have fallen into three broad categories. One response insists that everything about changing the voting system is constitutional in nature and would, at the very least, require the sanction of a referendum.

The second approach says that as there is no perfect or ‘right’ voting system, the issue is simply a matter of taste that depends on what you prefer in terms of electoral outcomes.

The last approach argues that voting system reform is a means to significant and necessary democratic reform and, as such, is not really up for legislative debate or a public vote — that changing from an undemocratic system to a more democratic one is the only acceptable option.

The first position is being pushed by the federal Conservative party and most of the media, for obvious political reasons: They desperately want to avoid any change in the voting system that would open up the political market to more competition. The second position is defended by the federal Liberal party and most Canadian political scientists (the vast majority of whom are not actually specialists on voting systems); it’s a stance that allows for change if necessary but not necessarily any change.

The last position is held by the rest of the federal parties (the NDP, Greens and Bloc Quebecois), most reform advocates like Fair Vote Canada — and myself.

The first argument — that the voting system is constitutional in nature and can’t be changed without a referendum or a constitutional process — is simply wrong, not to mention logically inconsistent. Parliament has the right to change the voting system.

Critics complain that PR is all about giving parties what they want — but this is just empty campaign rhetoric. PR is about empowering individual voters to get what they want. Critics complain that PR is all about giving parties what they want — but this is just empty campaign rhetoric. PR is about empowering individual voters to get whatwant.

Various attempts to argue that different sections of the Constitution limit voting system reform are either uninformed or specious. They amount to special pleading for maintaining a voting system that is seen to benefit the Conservative party. Attempts by Conservatives and the media to seize the democratic high ground by insisting that any change of voting system requires approval by the public in a referendum fall afoul of the glaring and obvious inconsistencies of such a position — given their support of phoney majority governments. We are somehow expected to believe that it’s “democratic” to insist that a majority of voters sign off on changing the voting system — while it’s still OK for just 39 per cent of voters to pick the party that will dominate the legislative and policy agenda for four years. Some democrats.

The second position — that voting system choice is just a matter a taste — is untenable on democratic grounds. Democratic institutions should not be chosen on the basis of ‘preferences’ but on how well they accomplish what we know voters want to accomplish in using them. Voting systems that consistently frustrate a significant number of voters in their efforts to gain representation and mirror our social and political diversity — while allowing a minority of votes to commandeer the majority of legislative voting power — should not be on the table.

You don’t get to ‘prefer’ non-democratic outcomes. And while it may be true that there is no one perfect voting system, there clearly are imperfect ones — like Canada’s first-past-the-post system.

The third position — that voting system reform is a matter of urgent democratic reform that should be implemented by the government as soon as possible — is the only one that has any serious academic support (i.e., from those who actually study how voting systems work in Canada and elsewhere). Canada’s traditional single member plurality voting system fails to represent what most individual voters say with their votes. It misrepresents legislative results for parties in terms of their popular support, and tends to create phoney majority governments that do not enjoy the support of a majority of Canadian voters, leading to all sorts of problems.

By contrast, the experiences of western countries which have used different forms of proportional representation suggest we can do better — that we can create more accurate and inclusive representation in our legislatures, with governments that really do reflect a majority of the Canadian electorate. Critics complain that PR is all about giving parties what they want — but this is just empty campaign rhetoric. PR is about empowering individual voters to get what they want, by equalizing their voting power.

There really are no compelling democratic arguments for keeping our current voting system. Indeed, most of the arguments against reforming it sound a lot like 19th century arguments against giving working people the vote: that they’re too ignorant, that they might vote for parties that elites don’t like, that it might lead to unpredictable outcomes, etc.

Nor does putting the issue to a vote necessarily make the decision more democratic. As we have seen from last decade or more, referendums are easily manipulated by political actors who want them to fail. They’re vulnerable to information distortion, neglect or bias from media and those opposed to change, and do not typically lead to reasoned and informed public debate.

Furthermore, expectations of public involvement on question are unreasonable and out of line with how voters actually cope with issue complexity. Voters know little about electoral institutions of any kind. Canadians and their voting system are intimate strangers: Despite making contact at every election, the public knows little about how the system works, or its effects. Our political parties, as representatives of the public, must take the lead on this question; voters will take their cue from the party they support. (In other words, if their party supports the reform, they probably will too; if their party opposes it, they won’t.)

Given the federal Liberal government’s stated commitment to a new voting system — to making every vote count, improving the representation of diversity in the House of Commons, changing the winner-take-all culture of political interaction on Parliament Hill — some form of proportional representation would appear to be the logical choice for change. Only a form of PR can make every vote count by equalizing voter power.

Most voters supported parties committed to voting system reform in the last election. The Liberals have the power to introduce a more democratic voting system. All that really stands in the way is political will — or the lack of it.

This article is a revised version of the 2016 preface to Dennis Pilon’s just-released e-book version of The Politics of Voting: Reforming Canada’s Electoral System.

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