The Case for PR

[c9]

PR stands for Proportional Representation. It means populating the government with MPs according to popular vote, rather than our current First Past The Post system. There are many different types of PR, and I don't claim to know which one is best. But I know it's gotta be better than this chart I made:

Comments

[sassy-red-head.livejournal.com]

Did you take a look at this?

http://community.livejournal.com/canpolitik/312703.html

[c9.livejournal.com]

Neat, I had not seen that yet.

[bartok.livejournal.com]

I was doing the totals regarding PR during the election, and it was very surprising to note that with a PR system we would have:

Liberal: generally about the same prop.
Cons: generally about the same prop.
NDP: would hugely benefit
BQ: would significantly lose seats
Greens: do we really want these hippies in parliament?

I can't see the Cons getting in on it. They want a majority, and in PR those are almost impossible. (1984 being a notable exception) Since PR was brought in down here in 96 there have been no majority governments. The current situation is downright awful, with the left-leaning Labour party in coalition with the anti-immigration NZFirst and family values United Future Party (the Greens were completely shut out of cabinet). It's hard to say if the grass is indeed greener...

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

I'm confused. Everyone herein linked is talking about PR like it's instant run-off. As I understand it, you can use either first-past-the-post or instant run-off to elect either single-member/district or proportional representation governments.

Or I could be on crack.

[c9.livejournal.com]

There are at least 100,000 different varieties of PR. My current favourite is the one that is least scary: simply add 100 seats to the House of Commons (to total 408, so a majority is 205), and distribute them on the basis of popular vote. Result:

	2004	2006	Cam's PR
Con	99	124	160
Lib	133	103	133
NDP	19	29	46
BQ	54	51	61
Other	1	1	8

Why bother if the result doesn't really change? The HoC gets incrementally more representative, parties can use that extra to appoint MPs from areas with no rep (a couple Liberals in Alberta, a Tory in PEI, etc), and your vote is more powerful. I'm sure there is a downside too somewhere.

[(Anonymous)]

Guess my point was just that at least one of the links (possibly others) seemed to confuse PR with IRV. They're not the same thing: one is a method of distributing seats in a legislature, the other is a method of electing people or parties to fill seats.

Sometimes when you talk about PR, people get turned off by the IRV aspect, but it's important to note they're not really linked and you can have one without the other.

Personally, I like IRV, I just don't like coding for it :-)

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

Argh, this new security measure is really pissing me off.

[c9.livejournal.com]

NOthing's changed in days. Just log in and deal with it. :)

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

That's just it... it seems I have to log in every time I open my browser, whereas before it was tied to my IP. I still have that option checked... it just seems to be ignoring it.

And Firefox magically stopped asking me if I wanted to save my password, but that one's my fault I'm sure. Somehow.

[p00kster.livejournal.com]

I think one of the downsides is that a proportionally elected MP is not accountable to anyone but his/her party. I'm not that worried about this, however you could have parties choosing who will be represented, even though this individual might not have popular support.

Alternatively, I think it'd be cool to look at widening constituencies and running about 7 seats per constituency (the Swedish way). You'd rank the individuals and their parties and then a not-so-complex formula would be used to determine who gets how many seats. This system isn't purely proportional, but it's a nice mix of majoritarian and proportional. As long as you got approx 10% of any vote in a riding, you'd be represented. This system might not let very small parties in, however it would let some parties such as the Greens get some seats in ridings where they are more popular. It would also work out to be way more proportional than Jack's plan.

[c9.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I should actually call it Jack's PR, since it's also Jack Layton's favourite.

[canuckboy.livejournal.com]

That chart would be much more effective as a bar chart. It's confusing!

[c9.livejournal.com]

Fine, you make the charts then. :)

I just liked the idea of seeing the connections over time.

[canuckboy.livejournal.com]

send me the data and I will.... :P

you've got my email, right?

[c9.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't think I do. It's all in Excel so you can play with the data however you like. Just email me at c dot a dot m at unb dot ca.