from racoon blog at poverty-activist-toronto.ca
I was at a forum last week where voting reform was discussed. This is a slightly different kind of politics forum from what I usually attend. This was on the forty somethingth floor of a downtown office tower. I somehow got into this because I could show I was a part time University student, otherwise they would have charged me fifty bucks. Larry Gordon was there from Fair Vote and surprised to see me there.
This was The Suits getting together to discuss politics. It was some business group that normally gets together weekly to discuss Canadians foreign policy, presumably as it effects their overseas business operations. But this night they wanted to know how developing a proportional representation voting system might improve Canada's ability to develop coherent foreign policies.
Well, I could answer that pretty well. It would make Canada's foreign policy more consistent and less aligned to the Americans. We would not have conservatives getting into office and pissing on everything liberals have done and trying to be yankier than the yankees. We would not have Liberals who are eager to sell out Canada's economic interests in exchange for political leverage with foreign countries.
The thing that stuck out for me was Don Newman arguing for runoff voting like in France. Newman used to be a talking head at some broadcasting company, back when I owned a TV. He is the typical Liberal establishmentarian. He ran out the usual arguments in favor of the present system first, leads to political instability, Israel and Italy, etc.
I got up and told him that it was time the establishment came up with some new arguments against Proportional Presentation, the old ones are getting a bit stale. Italy has gone away from PR (1993), tried single member constituencies for awhile, found that corruption and instability increased further, and returned to PR (2005).
As for Israel's parliament, well; have you ever heard the old joke, often told by the jews themselves, about how you get two jews arguing and you will end up with three opinions?
But the killer argument for PR remains; why does the whole world use it? Almost every country on earth, outside the English speaking world, and a couple within it, use some form of PR. Countries that emerge from tyranny and set up democratic constitutions almost invariably adopt PR. Countries that have a PR system rarely revert back to single member constituencies.
But Newman floated the idea of France and its runoff system. In this system there is a primary election, then if no candidate has a majority, there is a runoff between the top two candidates. I hear that some nimbuses in the Liberal party want to establish a runoff system. This is a way to guarantee perpetual Liberal majorities and will never be tolerated by the other parties. It shows how out of touch the Liberal establishment is with reality.
I did a little thought experiment a while back. I looked at fifty randomly chosen results from the last federal election, and asked what the result would have been if they had been held under a runoff system. I assumed that a Conservative would vote for Liberals as a second choice but never for the NDP. I assumed that a Deeper would vote for a Liberal as second choice, but never a conservative. The Liberal would almost always be the second place in the primary vote. This means that unless the Conservative or NDP candidate won an outright majority, the Liberal has to win.
But now, to the case of France. Prior to 1958, France had a PR system for a long time. They acquired it gradually during the third republic, which began in 1870. The power of the French legislative was still balanced by the Presidency. The third republic fell to the Nazi invasion of 1940. After the liberation of France in 1944, General DeGaulle tried to impose a strong presidential system but the public swept that aside and established the fourth republic with a strong PR based legislature and a president with very limited authority.
The criticism of this was that it was unstable and indecisive. Yet it managed to accomplish a lot in the short time it was in existence. It oversaw the reconstruction of France after the war, it laid the foundations for the common market which became the European Community, and it produced a better social system and a better system of economic regulation than had existed.
It was said that it did not deal decisively with the colonial wars France got into after the occupation, in Algeria and Indochina. This meant it did not deal with them in a way the military and economic elites liked. There was an army revolt in Algeria in 1958 over the idea of giving some civil rights to the native Algerians. DeGaulle used this to stage a cunning kind of coup in which he posed as the person who could get the military back under control.
He used the fear of the army rebels to convince the public to approve a constitution he had designed, in a referendum. It included a strong president with control over the army and foreign affairs, and a legislature using a runoff system. There was a Senate which was chosen by an electoral college appointed by local governments, which tend to be very conservative in France. All in all, a very undemocratic system.
After ten years, that was not enough for DeGaulle and he held another referendum to increase the power of the Presidency further. The public finally stood up to him, he lost, and he had to resign.
In 1986 public pressure forced the adoption of PR in legislative elections again. The right wing won the subsequent elections but their control collapsed in 1988, requiring a new election, which the socialists won. The socialists decided that PR favored the right wing, and changed the system back to runoffs over considerable public opposition.
There is still great public pressure for a change away from runoffs in France. There is a malaise in France similar to that in Canada, where the public is alienated from a political elite which is out of touch. There is increasing unrest among immigrants from France's former colonies who are unable to integrate into French society. Fewer people vote all the time and fringe parties are gaining in strength.
A serious flaw in the runoff system is becoming apparent. If there are many candidates in the primary elections, an extremist or crook could get into the runoff with as little as 17% of the vote. That is what happened in 1995, when many French were disgusted with having to choose between a "crook and a fascist" in the runoff. The crook won.
I hung around for a little while after this forum and snagged some hors d'oeuvres at this reception. They made me thirsty. I asked the bartender for water. He handed me something that tasted salty and awful. I asked him what it was and he said "Perrier water". I suggested tap water might be a better idea. I do not know how people can drink that Perrier stuff; it makes you even thirstier.
There was quite a view from the top of this building. I could see right down almost to my apartment. But I decided I should head back there; from the brief attempts at small talk, it was clear these were not my kind of people.
Now, here are my predictions; Iggy and Jack Flash are going to have to force an election this year. They will face revolts in their parties if they do not; their membership is fed up with them letting Harper win. The voting results will be about the same as before. But afterwards, the knives will be out for Iggy. He either makes an alliance with the deepers or else Bob Rae and friends will muscle him out of the way just as Stephan Dion was pushed aside.
Then they will go on for awhile like that. Iggy is really almost as right wing as Harper on most issues, and that will soon became obvious. He will not be able to cooperate with the deepers or the left wing of his party for long. The coalition will collapse or else Bob Rae will be Liberal leader. If there is a collapse there will be another election and Bob Rae will soon after be leader of the Liberals. The voting will again have the same effective result. One way or another, Rae days will arrive. Then things will start getting interesting.
Eventually they are going to figure out that they are going to have a permanent coalition whether they want it or not. They can forget about ever having majority power again. The only way they can make their coalition work is if they have a PR system and can be reasonably sure of the result of the next election. They can stop maneuvering for advantage in the next vote.
But once they get that problem solved they will run into the problem the French had with the fourth republic. You really do need a presidential type figure with enough power to order an election or to force parties to cooperate. This figure cannot be appointed by the parliament he or she is supposed to be regulating.
We need to replace the governor general with an elected president. But this will require a constitutional amendment which is supposed to be impossible in Canada; you cannot get the provinces to agree. But is it not strange that in France and almost everywhere else, constitutional changes are decided by referendae?
Here is the underlying problem with Canada, a constitutional system without a mechanism for amendment. This is the real problem that voting reform people need to be focussed on. I do not think that changing the voting system by itself will solve much. The principle of constitutional amendment by citizen assembly and referendum is what needs to be established.
I do not think the people at this forum would like that idea much. Change is supposed to be decided in office towers high above the streets. That could be why the discussion never got around to processes for changing the voting system.
What is really important is the process, more than the final result.