What Ontarians need from the Citizen’s Assembly on Voting Reform; a chance to vote for the Real Thing.

A closed list proportional system for Ontario.

1) The Ontario legislature will consist of one member for every 100 000 of the population. (This means 125 members given the present population.)

2) To run in an election, a political party must;

a) be legally incorporated.

b) have a party constitution, approved by the chief electoral officer, which sets out a nominating process, and a democratic process for recalling one or all of its sitting MPPs.

c) pay a fee and be registered with the chief electoral officer, who will determine the fee and other regulations governing political parties. The fee should be large enough to discourage parties which have no realistic chance of getting one seat.

d) within a set time after an election call, to be determined by the chief electoral officer, the parties must present to the chief electoral officer two lists of qualified candidates, one male and one female, ranked in order and differing in number by no more than one.

3) In an election;

a) the ballot will list each party or independent candidate next to a check off box. If no party is checked in its box, or more than one party is checked, it is a spoiled ballot. A list of each party’s candidates must be posted in the polling place.

b) the ballot is deposited in a ballot box. At the end of the voting period, the ballots are counted by the returning officer or deputy in front of scrutineers.

c) the voting will be done at polling stations near enough together so that no one must travel an unreasonable distance to a polling station. Where required, polling officials may take the ballot boxes to isolated locations or to where people are shut in.

d) the ballot boxes will be metal and equipped with tamper proof seals so they can be left over night. The voting may be held over several days as arranged by the chief electoral officer.

e) The chief electoral officer will be responsible for hiring his or her own staff. An enumeration will be done for every election. No one will be allowed to vote twice, and everyone votes where they are living on the day on which they vote. No one may vote without either an enumeration card, or else a permit from a returning officer or deputy, given after proof of identification and residence is shown and copies made.

4) seats will be allocated to parties by the Sainte-Lague formula. The party’s seats will be filled in rank order from their two lists, with the female list going first. If a party runs out of names on its list, its remaining seats are dealt with as per article 7.

5) An MPP cannot change parties or become an independent member after election. A party may remove one of its MPPs at any time. An MPP who is removed by his/her party, or resigns, or dies, is replaced with the next candidate in the opposite gender list of that party.

6) A person may run as an independent if he/she pays a reasonable fee and gathers a reasonable number of signatures, showing an adequate support base to be capable of winning a seat, as determined by the chief electoral officer. An independent candidate’s vote tally is applied to the Sainte-Lague formula the same as the tally of a party. If the independent wins more than one seat, the extra seats are dealt with as per article 7.

7) If at the end of the Sainte-Lague series there are vacant seats because there is no list candidate to fill them, then the Sainte-Lague series is continued, with the exhausted party or the already elected independent excluded, so as to allocate the remaining seats.

Notes;
a. I decided to include a provision for independent candidates in this because so many people at the forums are obsessed about independents. I do not think there would be many independents; if you have a strong enough organisation behind you to win a seat, it would make more sense to start a party.

b. If some geographic area really wants its own ‘representation’ in the legislature, it would make sense for them to start a party, for example the Scarborough east party or the Kenora party.

c. The idea of an ‘open list’ is foolish. If you do not like a particular party’s candidates, or its internal politics, then do not vote for that party.

d. I thought about giving aboriginals and francophones protected seats, because they are founding nations of this country. Of course, protected seats would have to end there otherwise everyone will want protected seats. But it would be too controversial and could jeopardise getting proportional representation passed.

e. electronic voting is nonsense. There is no way by which voting machines can be made secure. But there is no reason why everyone has to vote on the same day.