Pie Palace

I’ve been putting some thought into Ontario’s referendum on electoral reform. The more I think about it, the more I think it was a lost cause from the start. Let’s visit a few reasons…

No Official Explanation of the Proposed System

During the closing days of Ontario’s referendum on whether to adopt a new electoral system, I heard two ads on (cough) CFRA.

The ad first came from the No side. It featured two people talking, aghast that those evil minions in Queens Park wanted to add seats to the provincial legislature. There was no discussion of what those new MPPs were meant to do, or how those politicians would actually be selected, only that “party insiders” would choose them. Instead, it closed by saying that Ontario doesn’t need any more politicians. Simple, visceral, approaching accurate, and playing on peoples existing fears.

The second ad came from the Yes side. It provided a quick summary of how the new system would work, playing up the proportionality of the result. It had to jam why the system was worth supporting into an explanation of how the system would work.

These ads show one of the weaknesses of the referendum structure: the pro and con sides were expected to explain the proposed system at the same time as they agitated for or against it. This allowed the No side to sidestep the reasons why the new system was proposed, and spin with fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

In an ideal world, Elections Ontario would have been responsible for explaining the new system, and why the Citizen’s Coalition proposed it. Instead of their useless how-to-decide pamphlets, they should have sent out similarly sized explanations of the new system, and why it was selected. Perhaps they even could have bought a little air time on radio and TV to explain the mechanics.

The Media Loves Conflict, But Abhors Conflicting Ideas

The referendum happened at the same time as the provincial election. For political reporters, that gave two potential races to follow.

In the election, there were a bunch of well-known politicians doing what the media expects them to do: disagree. Reporters just had to show up at pre-planned events and provide a play by play of the arguments. Best of all, the “defining issue” of the campaign was visceral – should Ontario fund religious schools? It’s an issue that everyone has an opinion on, and is easy to report, as anyone with a child or a religious view is fair game for an interview.

Meanwhile, in the referendum, there were two conflicting ideas, that required a fair amount of background work to understand. Understanding the proposed system required a certain amount of legwork. What’s worse there were no easy events to hang stories on: the Yes side was too disorganized, and the No side benefited from an uneducated public. Instead of reporting easy “he said, she said” stories, reporters were reduced to talking to boring university professors, and people with funny accents from other countries.

The referendum was a bigger issue than the election, as its result would have a much larger impact; but it was much harder to report. Reporters have deadlines, and want to make their stories “interesting” (ie, conflict filled and easy to understand) within a 24 hour news cycle. What did the media cover? The easy story was the election, allowing reporters to forget about the referendum.

Wherefore art thou, proposal?

The Citizen’s Assembly was similarly ignored by the media. In the coverage that I heard and saw, I didn’t hear a peep from the people who proposed the new system. Most importantly, I didn’t hear why they chose MMP over the existing system (FPTP), or over the other possible systems.

In the media’s defense, the Citizen’s Assembly was chosen from regular folks, who may not have had time or interest in being interviewed. Although I doubt that all 102 weren’t interested in taking the occasional phone interview.

This brings us to my proposal for our next referendum on electoral reform:

1. The referendum must be stand-alone. It should not occur at the same time as elections, hockey playoffs, summer, or the Olympics. The media can’t be trusted to do a decent job with any distraction.
   
2. If possible, media outlets should be forced to carry public service announcements explaining the new system.
   
3. There must be three organizations involved in the referendum: Elections Ontario, which is responsible for explaining the new system, and why it is proposed; a “pro” side, responsible for trying to get the system passed; and a “no” side, responsible for explaining why the system should not be passed.
   
4. The referendum period must be long. 35 days is not long enough to discuss actual ideas. The referendum period should be long enough that each organization in the election has a chance to present their position, and effectively respond to the positions of the other organizations. Ideally the period would be a three or four months long.

It looks like Ontario has a new (old) government. Not much is new on that front. But the good news from the election is that the Greens portion of the popular vote skyrocketed to 8%, which is an impressive gain.

The bad news is that MMP didn’t receive the support it needed to pass, which precipitates a few questions: did the MMP initiative fail because people understood it and didn’t like it, or because they misunderstood it and didn’t like it? Was the system properly explained? Should the pro-reform use this as a starting point to pushing for future reform?

Jim Harris and I go way back. When I was but a wee ankle biter, I had no idea who he was. Similarly, he had absolutely no idea who I was. Our relationship amiably continued in this manner for a number of decades, until I finally met him. It turns out he’s a pretty good guy. As former leader of the Green Party of Canada he has a weird ex-officio status where I read the spam emails he pumps out. Since he’s part of the Vote for MMP campaign, I continuously find out how great MMP is. As if I need to be reminded.

The Vote for MMP campaign has a $10.10 campaign. They’re asking people to donate $10.10 (or some multiple of $10.10) for the Yes campaign. This isn’t your usual corporate-backed campaign with big blobs of money being donated by a few rich individuals. They’re asking for an tiny little bit of money from each citizen of Ontario. So open your wallet! Give ‘em $10 and a dime. Your kids will thank you.

Those of you who visit the PiePalace website may have noticed the Vote For MMP bling in the right hand column. I’m voting for Mixed Member Proportional representation because:

1. I want to see smaller parties in Ontario’s legislature. In the last provincial election, the Greens got 2.8% of the vote (that’s 126,651 votes) but no seats¹. Meanwhile, the Liberals got 46% of the vote with 2,090,001 votes. On average each Liberal seat cost 29,028 votes. Even though the Greens got more than four times that, we didn’t get a single seat.
   
2. I want to be able to vote separately for local representative and the party of my choice. So far I’ve been happy with my Green Party candidates, but it’s possible that another party would field a candidate that I prefer. In that situation, I don’t want to have to hold my nose and vote for a candidate I don’t like.
   
3. I’m tired of seeing false majorities. During the last election, the Liberals received only 46% of the vote, yet took 70% of the seats. I would much rather see a coalition government that included a number of parties.

There’s an interesting swirl of activity going on around the MMP campaign. The Yes side seems to be relatively well organized: their website looks pretty snazzy, and it has a pretty well written explanation of why MMP is good. Meanwhile, the No side seems to be relying on fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

1. All numbers from Wikipedia. The Elections Ontario website wasn’t serving historic data when I wrote this post. (back)

This may be old news, but the folks supporting mixed member proportional representation in Ontario have themselves a website. Bully for them, I say! Here’s hoping they get themselves a win.

The folks at Fair Vote Canada are holding a MeetUp on Tuesday, June 19, at the Royal Oak on the Canal. Here’s the text of their mailing:

This is your chance to gather with like-minded electoral reformers to relax while chatting about the state of our democracy. It’s also an opportunity to learn a little, swap ideas, and maybe even get mobilized for the ongoing Referendum Campaign – the largest in Ontario history. Even if you’re not familiar with the Fair Vote movement or electoral reform, come out anyways (and bring a friend). The atmosphere is always casual and everyone has a great time!

We’re usually on the main floor – take a left after coming in. But depending on number of attendees, we may move upstairs to accommodate more people. Be sure to look for us both upstairs and downstairs.

The theme for this meeting is organizing the “Vote YES to MMP” Campaign for the Oct 10th referendum on electoral reform. Local and province-wide strategy will be discussed, and plans for reaching over 1 million local voters will be struck.

The Pub Night is at the friendly Canal Royal Oak Pub at Colonel By & the Queensway (221 Echo Drive. Website: http://www.royaloakpubs.com/canal.html ).

The meetup group used to have about 9 members, now it has 69. Here’s hoping that’s a sign of things to come.

I like democracy. I like having the right to vote for a party I believe in. But my vote doesn’t usually count for much. I’ve been voting Green since the late ’90s ¹. Since then, the only tangible result of my vote has been about $4 awarded to the federal Green Party in federal funding.

Even though roughly 500,000 Canadians voted Green in the last election, we didn’t win any seats. Why? Because our votes were spread evenly across the country, instead of clumped into a few ridings in one of this country’s many regions. If there was a mass migration of Greens into ridings in Ontario, we’d be able to take roughly 12 seats²

So I’m happy that Ontario has put together a Citizens’ Assembly to look into ways of improving our provincial electoral system. The result was presented (with little media attention) in mid-May. The system has the following features:

1. Ontario will have 129 seats in the provincial legislature.
   
2. 90 seats will be “local” (ie, associated with a given riding).
   
3. 39 seats will be “list” (ie, parties submit an ordered list of people to represent them).
   
4. List members will be awarded in a manner that tops up the number of their local seats. If a party gets 40% of the popular vote, but only 30% of the local seats then they will be given an extra 10% more seats from the list seats.
   
5. Voters will be presented with a ballot that has two parts: a local vote, and a party vote.

I’m not entirely happy with the proposal. The whole idea of “topping up” strikes me as overly complex. The percentage of list seats is quite low (it’s only 30% of the total) – I would rather see it at something closer to 50%.

Having said that, the proposal is better than our current system. It lowers the barrier to entry felt by smaller parties, while preserving local representation. As such, I’ll be doing what I can to support it.

It looks like the Yes Campaign is being run by the folks at Fairvote Canada. I’ve sent of my email asking to get involved. I encourage you to do the same.

1. After a brief flirtation with spoiling my ballot, and an even shorter flirtation with the NDP (back)
2. This is an extremely conservative estimate. The assumption behind it is that a riding in Ontario has 75,000 registered voters. If 40,000 people decide to vote Green in each riding, then we could spread the 500,000 Green votes across 12 ridings. Of course, most candidates win with a minority of the votes (40%ish, say), so we could probably squeeze another few Green seats out of those 500,000 votes. But keep in mind that most seats have fewer than 75,000 voters registered in them. In PEI, the average is closer to 27,000. (back)