Former prime minster Justin Trudeau infamously broke his promise to reform the electoral system. Trudeau’s own preference was for a type of majoritarian system called the Alternative Vote (AV) AKA Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). However, the House of Commons Special Committee on Electoral Reform established by his government went in a different direction: it ultimately recommended that the government design a system of proportional representation (PR) and vote on it through referendum.
Grossly, electoral systems are classified into majoritarian and proportional types. In addition to AV there are two other well-known majoritarian systems: FPTP and the two-round system (used in France). Trudeau rejected the recommendation to move away from a majoritarian system and has negatively characterized proportional representation in different ways. In this townhall exchange, Trudeau explains his opposition to PR. "If we were to make a change or risk a change that would augment individual voices — that would augment extremist voices and activist voices that don’t get to sit within a party that figures out what’s best for the whole future of the country, like the three existing parties do — I think we would be entering a period of instability and uncertainty."
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Political stability, dissatisfaction with democracy, and political polarization are easiest to compare with simple data. With political stability, PR countries on average perform better. With democratic dissatisfaction, PR countries dramatically outperform majoritarian countries. On political polarization, PR countries outperform, with Ireland achieving the lowest polarization score in the whole OECD.
Further, when you examine the three comparison pairings listed above, the PR country performs better on each dimension for all three pairs. Trudeau feared that proportional systems would bring instability, polarization, and that voices which undermine what’s good for the country would be augmented, but it’s the majoritarian countries where these concerns are more severe.
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Trudeau’s thesis was that these problematic outcomes should be happening in PR countries, not majoritarian ones. Given the observation we see, there is no basis to say that majoritarian electoral systems can minimize these concerns, there is simply no supporting evidence for this.
The idea that PR (at least the MMP and STV systems) would definitely lead to these outcomes is also not supported by the evidence. To be able claim that PR would cause extremism, or that majoritarian systems protect against, you would at least need to observe an association that suggests this possibility, but we do not observe any such association.
What we do have an association for is that MMP/STV are protective against democratic and social decay, while majoritarian countries inflame these issues, which is the opposite of what Trudeau believed. This does not mean causality, but it does make a causal relationship possible.
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In proportional systems, coalitions tend to form, and different political parties sharing power helps alleviate the irrational decision-making of groupthink in a majority government. In addition, politicians must always be wary about losing their spot at the top because voters can easily select alternative parties without the inhibitions of vote splitting and vote wasting. In a proportional system, there is no shielding to give a false sense of security: politicians understand that if they are complacent, a disruptive political force can easily swallow them, so they must stay vigilant and proactive about emerging political issues to keep the public satisfied. In proportional systems, complacency and corruption can be easily punished by the electorate, which keeps politicians disciplined.
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You're talking about Jagmeet Singh as if he is the entire NDP, which illustrates my next point. You don't have a local representative in Canadian FPTP. You vote for the party, because any notable vote will be a three line (or at least two line) vote. See https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2019/bdp-lop/eb/YM32-5-2018-26-eng.pdf
That doesn't make any sense. Let's say I vote NDP, my candidate gets elected, but Liberals win a majority. My MP's views/opinions (which should be reflective of mine) don't matter in the slightest. I've lost representation.
If, instead, we have a system that doesn't favor majority governments, my MP's views do have to be considered for the coalition to survive. If the coalition members stick together, it's because they believe that is in the best interests of their voters.
Most of this entire discussion is missing the point. On the one hand a variety of views and/or options for political representation are needed. This is where first past the post utterly fails. It devolves mostly to a two choice system, as is becoming painfully obvious in the US. Or it might become unstable/unpredictable as seen in the UK where alternative parties are emerging, but probably to the detriment of the old parties. In the end it might well devolve back to a two party system, just two other parties. This is where some form of proportional representation system comes in. More than two parties are viable. But at the cost of stability. Back in schooly politics teacher liked to present Italy as the poster child for why (simple) PR doesn't work well. Though in recent years the Italian government has proven quite stable. Also, in Italys Case I'd love to run the experiment how they did with nothing changed except for organized crime being eradicated. Alas, in humanities controlled experiments like that aren't possible. But I'd not be surprised if spectacular corruption wasn't the bigger problem.
So what could the solution be? First I'd like to see corruption stomped out completely. I know, that's almost like wishing for world peace, and come to think about it, it's mostly the same characters that are in the way. Second, the solution is likely to be neither a simple majority system nor a simple proportional system. Ranked choice? My teacher was taken by the German system (a mixture of both), but that has it's own problems. Or something entirely different, like completely independent publicly funded media. Print, audio and audiovisual. And that media could run regular polls to publicly show which topics are important to people.
I think our problems stem more from the influence on populations rather than the actual modality in which our representation is formed. In Israel you have the corruptive influence of ultra-orthodox and nationalist hardliners mixed with some run if the mill corruption, in Italy you have a gigantic organized crime problem, with some rich people problem, in Germany the Springer group is trying to set up a Fox news situation and in the US you have the Fox/Heritage Foundation/billionaires and general corruption through money problem.
Jagmeet Singh represented the entire party.
And you absolutely have a local representative in Canada. And that can do an awful lot, they can bring forward local issues and you have someone to speak to if you've got a problem and you can hold them to account. This happens all the time. And god knows there's been more than one back bench revolt over the years, that's the thing that happens in every political party
So you're mistaken. We definitely have local representation and that's critical
And it does make sense that you're representing the population less. You've lost your local representative, you can't hold them accountable, the person who is speaking for you might not even be someone you like or know. You lose massive amounts of accountability and now it's the party and the internal politics that put people in charge and not the people directly. You are 100% less represented under that system then a system where you pick the local person and they are answerable to you
Even worse by forming a coalition a government would now be pursuing a policy that was never put forward and voted on by the People. They would have no mandate for the things they were doing yet they would be doing them anyway. And we saw that again with the Justin and jagmeet coalition where it was a hodgepodge of ideas that had never been presented to voters during the election. So once again far less representation by the people, politicians feel emboldened to do whatever they like to or whatever they need to in order to stay in power regardless of the people's wishes
And it's pretty hard to claim that our system favors majority governments when we had basically two in the last 26 years. Sure carney bought himself one recently but guess what, that can happen under proportional representation even easier than it did for Carney under the current system. And in fact under your system there would be no way for the voters of the writing where the person crossed the floor to hold that person to account next time, they can easily be in the next government
What's your proposing is an absolutely horrible system that removes accountability and representation.
There are vastly better ways to improve our system and representation and the whole governments to account then proportional representation. I get why a lot of people like it when they first look at it but it's a horrible idea