Posts Tagged ‘elections’

On by-elections

A very interesting difference exists between Canada and the United Kingdom when it comes to the matter of calling by-elections.

A by-election occurs when a seat in the House becomes vacant furing the course of a parliament because the MP has resigned, passed away, or the incumbent becomes ineligible to continue in office. When this happens, an election is called in that constituency only, to fill the seat. It is possible to hold more than one by-elections on the same day if there are several vacancies to fill.

By-election procedure to fill a vacancy in the Canadian House of Commons

Under the Parliament of Canada Act, when a seat in the House is vacant, the Speaker of the House of Commons informs the Chief Electoral Officer by means of a Speaker’s warrant. If the Speaker is absent, or if it is the Speaker’s seat that is vacant, two members of the House of Commons may address the warrant to the Chief Electoral Officer.

After receiving the warrant, section 57 of the Canada Elections Act authorizes the Governor in Council to fix the date on which the Chief Electoral Officer is to issue the writ. The date of issuance must fall between the 11th and 180th days after the Chief Electoral Officer receives the warrant from the Speaker (or the two members of the House). The Governor in Council also fixes the date for election day, which cannot be earlier than 36 days after the Chief Electoral Officer issues the writ. (source: Elections Canada)

The “Governor in Council” referred to above is the Governor General, acting on the advice of the federal cabinet. In other words, it is actually the Cabinet (and in reality, the Prime Minister) which decides the date for the issuance of the writ. The earliest date possible for a by-election is 11 days after the Chief Electoral Officer receives the warrant from the Speaker. The latest date possible is 180 days – in other words, six months – after the warrant is received. The actual number of days the seat might remain vacant can exceed that, however, since the official countdown begins only after the Chief Electoral Officer receives the Speaker’s warrant announcing the vacancy, and not when the seat is actually vacated by the MP. As well, the date for the by-election cannot be earlier than 36 days after the CEO issues the writ. The Parliament of Canada Act (section 28) states that when a vacancy occurs:

“the Speaker of the House shall, without delay, (…) address a warrant of the Speaker to the Chief Electoral Officer for the issue of a writ for the election of a member to fill the vacancy.”

And going by the chart below, the Speaker’s warrants are issued very soon after the seat becomes vacant. The delay can occur at the next stage in the process – waiting for the Governor in Council – the Prime Minister – to choose an actual date for the by-election to be held. Sometimes, the PM won’t delay to announce the date. In other cases, they may put off the decision as long as they possibly can.

By-election procedure to fill a vacancy in the UK House of Commons

Traditionally the Chief Whip of the political party whose MP held the vacant seat will begin the procedure for a by-election. This is known as ‘moving the Writ’ and takes the form of a motion in the House of Commons. This isn’t always how things proceed, however. For example, in the case of the 2010 by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth, a seat which Labour had won in the 2010 election, it was the Liberal Democrats who moved the writ. The Labour candidate had been stripped of his seat by the courts which declared his victory void because he had knowingly made false statements attacking his Liberal Democrat opponent’s personal character during the 2010 general election.

A new Writ is moved within three months of the vacancy occurring. There have been a few instances of seats remaining vacant longer than six months before a by-election was called. Seats have also been left vacant towards the end of a Parliament to be filled at the general election. If there are several vacant seats then a number of by-elections can take place on the same day. (source: UK Parliament website)

Because the timing of a by-election is decided by the party which held the seat when the vacancy occurs, by-elections in the UK tend to occur quite quickly since the party is anxious to see if it can hold the seat.

The following charts look at by-elections called in the current parliaments in both Canada and the UK.

By-elections Canada, current parliament (since May 2011)

 

Constituency Date of Vacancy Date of Notice of Vacancy Date of Writ of By-election Date of By-election # of days seat vacant
Labrador 14 Mar 2013 19 Mar 2013 7 Apr 2013 13 May 2013 60
Victoria 31 Aug 2012 6 Sep 2012 21 Oct 2012 26 Nov 2012 87
Durham 31 Jul 2012 1 Aug 2012 21 Oct 2012 26 Nov 2012 118
Calgary-Centre 30 May 2012 12 Jun 2012 21 Oct 2012 26 Nov 2012 180
Toronto-Danforth 22 Aug 2011 30 Aug 2011 6 Feb 2012 19 Mar 2012 210
Average # of days seat vacant 131

UK By-elections, current parliament (since May 2010)

 

Constituency Date of Vacancy Date of Writ Date of By-election # of days seat vacant
South Shields 12 Apr 2013 15 Apr 2013 2 May 2013 20
Mid-Ulster 2 Jan 2013 11 Feb 2013 7 Mar 2013 64
Eastleigh 5 Feb 2013 7 Feb 2013 28 Feb 2013 23
Croydon-North 29 Sep 2012 8 Nov 2012 29 Nov 2012 61
Middlesborough 13 Oct 2012 8 Nov 2012 29 Nov 2012 47
Rotherham 5 Nov 2012 8 Nov 2012 29 Nov 2012 24
Cardiff South and Penarth 22 Oct 2012 23 Oct 2012 15 Nov 2012 24
Corby 29 Aug 2012 23 Oct 2012 15 Nov 2012 78
Manchester Central 22 Oct 2012 23 Oct 2012 15 Nov 2012 23
Bradford West 2 Mar 2012 6 Mar 2012 29 Mar 2012 27
Feltham and Heston 10 Nov 2011 25 Nov 2011 15 Dec 2011 35
Inverclyde 9 May 2011 8 Jun 2011 30 Jun 2011 52
Belfast West 26 Jan 2011 17 May 2011 9 Jun 2011 134
Leicester South 1 Apr 2011 6 Apr 2011 5 May 2011 34
Barnsley Central 8 Feb 2011 9 Feb 2011 3 Mar 2011 23
Oldham East and Saddleworth 5 Nov 2010 16 Dec 2011 13 Jan 2011 69
Average # of days seat vacant 46

If you’d like to see how the moving of a Writ plays out, you can watch the procedure for the by-election in Eastleigh from 7 February 2013. It doesn’t take very long – about a minute (it ends at the 9:35 mark).

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The preferential ballot favours the party with the most first preference votes

I have written several posts looking at the growing popularity of the preferential ballot/the alternative vote (AV) here in Canada – see this recent one, for example. I even attempted a redo of the 2011 Canadian federal election using the preferential ballot rather than our current FPTP. As I explained in that post, and in others, the big problem in attempting to forecast how the election would have played out using AV was the absence of data concerning voters’ preferences. Some polling firms would (and still do) regularly ask people which party was their second choice, but no one ever looked at voters’ potential 3rd, 4th, etc. choices.

However, a new poll by Abacus Data has done just that. According to Eric Grenier, in this article in the Globe and Mail, the poll asked respondents to rank seven parties from 1 to 7 (in other words, it used full preferential rather than optional preferential). I cannot find this data on the Abacus website. Mr. Grenier examined the numbers and posits that using a preferential ballot “would limit the ability of the Conservatives to win elections”:

With a preferential ballot, however, the Conservatives would come out further ahead. They would lead in 147 ridings on the first ballot (after distributing the marginal support for the smaller parties), compared to only 108 for the New Democrats, 76 for the Liberals, four for the Bloc Québécois, and three for the Greens (primarily due to an anomalous result in the poll in Atlantic Canada).

The Conservatives would have majority support in 60 ridings and win those automatically, while the NDP would win 23 seats on the first ballot and the Liberals 11. But that Tory advantage would disappear once the instant run-off was conducted.

The Conservatives would lose their first ballot lead in 30 ridings, and be reduced to only 117. The New Democrats would move ahead in 18 more seats and take 126, while the Liberals would win 17 more ridings and increase their total to 93. The Greens would hold on to two of the three seats in which they led, while the Bloc Québécois would lose all four.

I am not entirely certain how he comes to that conclusion. The last paragraph quoted above is particularly confusing to me.

Despite Mr. Grenier’s assertions at the outset of the article that the preferential ballot “is used in many jurisdictions around the world”, the only really comparable example available to us is Australia. Full preferential (where voters have to rank every single candidate on their ballot for the vote to count) is used at the federal level to elect the House of Representatives, and in some states, while a couple of states use optional preferential, where voters can choose to rank as many or as few candidates as they want. Indeed, many opt to rank only one candidate and optional preferential becomes a de facto FPTP ballot. This is what happened when AV was used in some provinces here in Canada in the past.

What Mr. Grenier seems to overlook is that the preferential ballot, in particular optional preferential, always favours the party which receives the most first preference votes – at least going by Australia’s long history with this form of voting. Grenier rightly notes that the Conservatives “would have majority support in 60 ridings and win those automatically”. However, things are a bit more complicated after that. Going by Australia’s experience, Conservative candidates would not, as Grenier posits, “lose their first ballot lead in 30 ridings” based on second preferences. It all depends on how close those Conservative candidates are to the 50%+1 needed to win the seat under AV. The closer they are to that mark, the fewer votes transfers they require. Consequently, a Conservative candidate with 45% of the vote on the first ballot count, would most likely still win the seat because they need far fewer votes to boost them over the 50% mark. Even if they were further from the 50% target, say at 40%, but the 2nd place candidate was well behind, say at 30%, the Conservative would still most likely win. Only in instances where two candidates were quite literally neck and neck on the first ballot count would the outcome be up in the air.

Readers interested in preferential voting should regularly read Antony Green’s Election Blog. Green is an Australian elections expert who blogs about both federal and state elections in that country, which, I reiterate, is really the only jurisdction at all comparable to Canada which uses the preferential ballot. As Green explains in this post:

At the 2010 Federal election, 64 of the 150 seats were won by a candidate with a majority on first preferences, and a further 75 won by the highest polling candidate at the start of the count after the further distribution of preferences. Optional preferential voting would have had little impact on these 139 contests.

However, in the 11 contests where the candidate leading on first preferences did not win, optional preferential voting could have changed the result.

(…)

The lesson here is that optional preferential voting always advantages the party with the highest first preference vote.

In other words, in the 2010 federal election in Australia, a majority of seats (139 out of 150) were won by the candidate who was ahead after the first count. Sixty-four were won by a majority on the first ballot, and 75 were won on subsequent ballots – by the candidate who’d been in first place on the first count. That is using full preferential. Only in 11 instances did the candidate who’d been leading on the first ballot fail to actually win the seat. Had optional preferential been used instead, in only 3 cases would the candidate in the lead after the first ballot have failed to win.

It is good that a polling firm here in Canada has finally started to explore voters’ preferences beyond their 1st and 2nd choices, but I don’t think Mr. Grenier fully understands how AV tends to play out – at least based on what happens in Australia.

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Election Watch 2013

There will be some noteworthy elections coming up in 2013.

AUSTRALIA

Unlike most parliaments in the UK and Canada, which normally last 4 to 5 years, the Australian House of Representatives sits for a three-year term.The next election will be held on 14 September 2013. The 2010 election resulted in a hung parliament, with both Labor the the Coalition tied with 72 seats each. Labor ended up forming a minority government, with the support of Green and Independent MPs.

Recent polls (12 December 2012) have Labor trailing the Liberal-National Coalition in terms of overall popular support, 36% to 54%, and in terms of first preference votes among committed voters, the Coalition leads there as well, 46% to 32% for Labor. However, when asked who would make the better PM, Liberal Party leader Toby Abbott trails incumbent PM Julia Gillard 34% to 43%.

For all things pertaining to elections in Australia, both at the federal and state level, I strongly recommend following Antony Green’s blog. For a general overview, you might find this article interesting.

CANADA

There won’t be another federal election until October 2015, but there are a few provinces which may be heading to the polls this year (one definitely will be).

British Columbia

British Columbia will be electing a new parliament in May of this year. The incumbent Liberals are not doing well at the polls, and Premier Christy Clarke’s decision not to hold a fall sitting probably won’t help matters.

Ontario and Quebec

Ontario’s last election was in October 2011 while Quebec’s was in September 2012 but both resulted in hung parliaments. Ontario ended up with a minority Liberal government, but Premier Dalton McGuinty unexpectedly prorogued the Legislature in October and simultaneously announced his resignation as party leader. The Liberals chose a new leader on 26 January 2013. The House will return on 19 February 2013. While the new leader has stated she is determined to make the minority parliament work, one can never rule out an election.

Quebec ended up with a minority Parti québécois government. The government’s budget passed by one vote in late November. Polls show a close three-way race between the PQ, Liberals and Coaliation Avenir Quebec. Minority parliaments rarely last much more than a year, so the situation in Quebec bears watching.

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia’s last election was in 2009. It is one of the few provinces which does not have fixed election dates, but since the government is coming into its fourth year in office, an election is likely in 2013. An election must occur by June 2014.

Nunavut

The last election in Nunavut occurred in October 2008, and so the current parliament is entering its 5th year. Nunavut does not have fixed election dates, so an election will be held some time this year, no later than October 2013.

UNITED KINGDOM

UK local elections

The 2013 United Kingdom local elections are due to take place on Thursday 2 May 2013. Elections will be held in 35 English councils, including all 27 non-metropolitan county councils, the 5 unitary authorities covering ceremonial counties, and 3 other unitary authorities, and to a single Welsh unitary authority. What will be interesting to watch for is how the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) performs. The party has surged in recent polls, often polling ahead of the Liberal Democrats, and recently finished 2nd in two by-elections for parliamentary seats. In the 2011 local elections, UKIP took control of Ramsey town council, and maintained its seven councillors across England, and one in Northern Ireland.

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Legislating free votes

I have written a number of posts on that touch on the issue of whipped votes and MPs toeing the party line (for example, see here, here, here, here and here).

During the current election campaign in the Canadian province of Alberta, the Wildrose Party has promised, if it forms the government, that it will introduce the Alberta Accountability Act, which will legislate into being such initiatives as fixed election dates, voter-initiated recall and referendums, as well as free votes in the legislature. On the issue of free votes, the Party explains:

  • Government MLAs being forced to vote as instructed by the Premier is an undemocratic tradition that has evolved over many years. Legislation overriding this tradition, making free votes mandatory and separating votes of non-confidence from votes on proposed bills, is necessary to make our parliamentary democracy accountable and relevant to voters.
  • If the government can’t garner the willing support of a majority of MLAs for a piece of legislation, the legislation should fail. The government, however, should only fall if it loses a stand-alone confidence motion.

This is an interesting proposal, but I don’t really see how free votes can be legislated into being, as this fails to address what is probably the key reason why whipped votes and party discipline have “evolved over many years.”

The main reason why most votes in the majority of parliaments in Canada are whipped (and even when they’re not, still largely breakdown along party lines) is due largely to the advent of strong, tightly organized political parties. MPs and MLAs tend to vote with their party, even on votes that aren’t whipped, because they owe their very existence as an MP/MLA to the party. It is the party executive which decides who can present themselves to be nominated as candidates for the party in each riding, and sitting MPs/MLAs need their party’s continued support to remain the party’s candidate. There are known instances where party supporters in a certain riding might be very unhappy with that party’s candidate, and seek to have his or her nomination challenged, but are overruled by the party executive. Is it really any wonder why most elected MPs or provincial MLAs almost always vote the way the party whips tell them?

If the Wildrose Party is serious about addressing the issue of ensuring MLAs feel free to vote on the merits of a piece of legislation, what they need to do is work on weakening party control over who gets to run for that party. The easiest way to do that would be to introduce a system of open primaries, as I discussed in this post (which includes links to other posts which discuss open primaries). Without reforming how candidates are selected to run for a party, I have my doubts that legislating free votes will really result in MLAs voting freely.

I also don’t see how one can legislate an end to whipped votes. Even if all votes are declared “free votes”, as I’ve explained above, without reforming party control over the selection of candidates, I still think more MLAs would be rather hesitant to openly defy their party’s stance. They would have to take into consideration what their own party campaigned on, what was promised in their party’s manifesto, and remain true to that, even if the bill were a “good” one. This would be especially true for the party forming the Official Opposition. There is no rule that the Official Opposition must vote against the government every single time, of course, but the main point of the Official Opposition is to oppose. It would look rather odd if the main Opposition party largely voted in favour of legislation which was the exact opposite of what they campaigned on during the election.

Similarly, there are other ways parties enforce party discipline other than via whipped votes. MPs/MLAs who regularly (or even only occasionally) defy their party whip won’t get selected to sit on committees, or to be part of cabinet or the shadow cabinet. And to be blunt, I don’t see how you can really force every party in the legislature to not whip its vote, even if you have legislation stating that all votes on legislation are free votes. The parties will still find ways to make it quite clear to their individual members how they are expected to vote.

The issue of whipped votes is indeed a serious one in Canada, but I don’t think what the Wildrose Party is proposing is the way to go about putting an end to the practice. The issue is much larger, and starts with political parties themselves and how they control their candidates from the very outset, even before they get elected to the legislature. Open primaries would achieve more, I think, than would what the Wildrose Party is proposing. Another initiative which might help MLAs feel more independent would be to adopt some of the reforms around committees that the UK House of Commons has implemented, such as having committee chairs elected by the legislature and committee members elected by their respective caucuses rather than appointed by party whips. You have to remove the party controls at all levels, not solely on votes in the Chamber.

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Keyword post: Do ministers continue to hold office during an election?

During an election campaign, the ministry continues to hold office until a new ministry is sworn in. There are, however, limitations on what a minister can do during both the election campaign and the period of government formation following a general election. This is commonly referred to as the “caretaker convention”.

The Government of Canada’s Guidelines on the Conduct of Ministers, Secretaries of State, Exempt Staff and Public Servants During an Election provides a good explanation of the caretaker convention. As has been discussed many times on this blog, the government must command the confidence of the legislature at all times. Constitutionally, a government retains full legal authority to govern during an election and has the responsibility to ensure that necessary government activity continues. However, during an election period, a government must exercise restraint in its actions. The reason for that is quite simple – because the legislature has been dissolved for the election, there is no elected chamber to hold the government to account, and the government can’t assume that it could command the confidence of the legislature in the next parliament.

So while a government must exercise restraint during an election period and the transition period following an election, it can and must continue to make decisions and take actions ” where the matter is routine and necessary for the conduct of government business, or where it is urgent, and in the public interest – for example, responding to a natural disaster.”

In some instances, if a major decision might be required, for example due to an emergency situation that arises, it might be necessary for the government to consult with the opposition before proceeding. This would be especially necessary in instances where the decision taken might be controversial or difficult for a new government to reverse.

The Government’s guidelines enumerate the activities to which a government should limit itself during an election campaign. These should be activities which are:

  1. routine; or
  2. non-controversial; or
  3. urgent, and in the public interest; or
  4. reversible by a new government without undue cost or disruption; or
  5. agreed to by the Opposition (in those cases where consultation is appropriate).

For example, such a circumstance occurred in the United Kingdom following the 6 May 2010 general election, which resulted in a hung parliament. On 9 May 2010, at a time when party negotiations to form a new government were still ongoing, the Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP, the incumbent Chancellor of the Exchequer, attended an emergency meeting of the European Council of Finance Ministers in Brussels, called to address financial stability in Europe. At that meeting, the Chancellor agreed to the creation of a new European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism, as part of a comprehensive package of measures to preserve financial stability in the EU, providing for the EU Budget to guarantee EU borrowing to support Member States in need, up to the level of €60 billion. Other commitments reached at the meeting did not involve any financial commitment from the United Kingdom.

However, before attending the meeting, Darling consulted the Rt Hon George Osborne MP and the Rt Hon Vince Cable MP, at the time the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesmen. Darling later explained to a Select Committee: ”Whilst there is no formal obligation to consult, I believe it is a matter of courtesy that it was right to ensure that the then Opposition was fully informed”.

Contrast that to the Pearson Airport Agreements which occurred in Canada. In 1993, the Government of Brian Mulroney initiated a project to privatize Terminals 1 and 2 of Pearson International Airport in Toronto against the advice of Air Canada, Canadian Airlines International and the rest of the Canadian airline industry. It was proceeded with against the advice of public servants, and in the face of concerns expressed both openly in Parliament by the Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien, then leader of the Official Opposition, and privately in correspondence between a Conservative Member of Parliament for Mississauga (where the airport is located) and the Minister of Transport.

Officials negotiating the deal were under great pressure to meet a deadline that was imposed by Prime Minister Mulroney so that the deal could be closed before he left office in June, 1993. Ultimately, the deadline could not be met. The agreements were finally signed in the middle of the election campaign, and at the express direction of the new Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell.

Opposition Leader Jean Chretien had repeatedly warned that if the Liberals formed the next government, they would cancel the deal, and that is exactly what happened. As discussed above, the caretaker convention imposes certain restrictions on what a government can do during an election, largely confining it to routine matters. This rule was not observed in the case of the Pearson Airport deal. The signing of the Pearson agreements “was a constitutionally inappropriate exercise of power… [that was] enough to justify whatever steps have to be taken to terminate the agreement.” As the Senate Committee which investigated the matter acknowledged:

These contracts would have established a precedent dangerous to Canada’s democratic process, a precedent whereby a government could conclude controversial agreements during an election campaign — even when it is clear that Government is about to lose. These contracts would have bound the Canadian government to a 57-year lease under terms that, as a matter of responsible business management, were not in the country’s best interest. Furthermore, the privatization of Canada’s largest, busiest and most profitable airport was inconsistent with the stated Government public policy and the policy which was being applied at all other major airports in Canada.

Under the caretaker convention, a government cannot take actions which are controversial (which the Pearson deal was), which binds a future government, or that will entail significant costs to reverse. Therefore the decision taken by the new Liberal Government to cancel the Pearson Airport Agreements was entirely justified.

 

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Artificial preferences

There continues to be interest among many Canadians in the Alternative Vote (AV). Most recently the Liberal Party of Canada adopted a resolution calling for the implementation of a preferential ballot for national elections. This blog attempted to redo the May 2011 election using AV, and other bloggers have produced similar posts. This blog continues to get queries from individuals about that AV projection post.

It is fair enough to say that AV is not the preferred option of most who favour electoral reform for one very important reason: it is not at all proportional and will do little to rectify the main failing of First-Past-the-Post (FPTP), namely, the election of a legislature where the number of seats won by the various parties in no way reflects how people actually voted. In some instances, AV can actually lead to even more disproportionate results than FPTP.  Please read this post for a more detailed look at the many problems associated with preferential voting and why it really isn’t an ideal reform. The only issue AV would address is that of MPs being elected with minority support in their ridings. Under AV, it would not be possible to win a seat with less than 50% of the vote cast in a giving riding. Votes would be redistributed based on indicated preferences until one candidate emerged with at least 50% support.

Despite AV’s many glaring shortcomings, the above does redeem it in the eyes of many. However, they may be overlooking a very real issue with AV – and that is the practice known as “plumping”.

Under AV, voters are supposed to rank the candidates on the ballot paper in order of preference. Australia, for federal elections to the House of Representatives, uses compulsory preferences: voters are required to rank each and every candidate on the ballot. Failure to do so results in a spoiled ballot. The Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales use optional preferential voting, meaning voters can rank as few or as many candidates on the ballot as they like. This is where plumping comes into play.

Plumping is the practice of voters indicating support for one and only one candidate. In other words, the voter treats their ballot the same as they would under FPTP – they select one candidate only and refuse to indicate any preferences for any of the others.

The ramifications of this are clear. If a significant percentage of voters refuse to take advantage of an AV ballot and rank candidates in order of preference, this impacts the number of ballots available for vote transfer on subsequent counts. A candidate may well eventually win with 50% of the vote, but the number of votes in play by the final count may be far fewer than the total number cast.

As discussed in this post, AV was used in three provinces in Canada many decades ago (and only briefly in one province).  Professor Harold J. Jansen has studied the use of AV in those provinces and one of his findings is that plumping was very prevalent as the following table shows:

Incidence of “Plumping”: Proportion of Voters Indicating only a First Preference

Manitoba

Alberta

British Columbia

Year

% Plumped

Year

% Plumped

Year

% Plumped

1927

40.7

1926

42.8

1952

33.5

1932

53.9

1930

43.5

1953

27.9

1936

57.6

1935

47.0

1941

Data n/a

1940

38.0

1945

68.1

1944

63.7

1949

65.9

1948

63.7

1953

51.4

1952

52.3

1955

29.8

(Source: Harold J. Jansen, The Political Consequences of the Alternative Vote: Lessons from Western Canada, Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 37:3 (September/septembre 2004) 647-669)

The above numbers are rather disturbing. If well over half of voters refuse to indicate any preferences, that rather undermines the one main advantage of the Alternative Vote. Proponents of AV tend to ignore the fact that a significant percentage of voters really don’t have any second choices. They support one party and one party only, and any “choice” they would make to indicate a preference for other parties would simply be false.

This was an argument against AV that I regularly encountered during the lead-up to to the AV referendum held in May 2011 in the UK. It was especially prevalent on Conservative blogs and forums. Take for example, this piece by Robert Halfon written for ConservativeHome in September 2010. In it, Halfon writes (emphasis mine):

Similarly, the Alternative Vote places an artificial construct on voter’s intentions, forcing them to make second preference choices – before they actually know the result, which inevitably would disproportionately favour the Liberal Democrats as being the ‘centre’ party.

(…)

The beauty of TSB (The Second Ballot system) is both its fairness, and simplicity.  Instead of having an ‘Alternative Vote’ and artificial second preferences, a ballot is held a week or two later in which the top two candidates slug it out for pole position.  Not only does this give electors a few extra days to consider their options based on the first result, it ensures that they are not forced into making a ‘saccharine’ second choice (which AV would force them to do), before they know whether or not their first preference candidate will get over 50% of the vote.

You may well disagree with Mr. Halfon that any preferences indicated on an AV ballot would be “artificial”, but that is indeed the reality for a great number of voters. They don’t want any party but the party they support to win, and so would most likely opt to plump their ballot. If past experience in Western Canada is anything to go by, the only real advantage of AV over FPTP would be undermined by voters refusing to rank more than one candidate and instead treating the election as FPTP election. If only a minority of voters are ranking candidates, a candidate may still end up with over 50% of the votes still in play, but that might result in a “false” majority.

The obvious way to avoid plumping is to adopt compulsory preferences as used in federal elections in Australia, in other words, forcing voters to rank every single candidate on the ballot paper. This would certainly give more credence to Mr. Halfon’s claims of artificial choices. People might grudgingly force themselves to seriously rank 2-3 candidates, but some ridings in Canada have 8-10 candidates on the ballot. Most of these individuals represent fringe parties, or are running as independents. I doubt very much that most voters would be putting serious thought into how they rank the majority of the candidates on their ballot paper. Being forced to vote that way might actually lead to a decrease in voter turnout.

Beyond the issue of plumping, which rarely gets discussed by proponents of AV, Jansen’s paper explores many other aspects of AV based on Alberta’s, Saskatchwan’s and British Columbia’s experience with that voting system. His conclusions include the following points:

  • AV differed little from FPTP in most aspects of its operations;
  • none of the three Western provinces experienced any increase or decrease in turnout that could be attributed to AV;
  • AV contributed to higher rates of ballot rejection in all three provinces;
  • it was associated with an increase in the number of parties seeking office (electoral parties), but not with an increased number of parties represented in the legislature (legislative parties);
  • AV did little  to encourage less adversarial politics or to encourage coalitions to form between the parties (hence the propensity of voters to plump their ballots);
  • there is little evidence that election outcomes under AV would have been any different under FPTP – only a minority of contests required multiple counts and of those, only a tiny fraction of candidates who were not leading after the first count managed to attract enough second and subsequent preferences to win.

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On candidate selection

Recently, a Canadian Member of Parliament elected as a member of the New Democratic Party (NDP) from the province of Quebec announced that she was crossing the floor to join the Liberal Party. The MP, Ms. St-Denis, explained that she found herself increasingly disagreeing with the positions the NDP were espousing in the House of Commons, and more in agreement with the positions taken by the Liberals.

In this instance, no one can accuse Ms. St-Denis of political opportunism. The NDP is currently the Official Opposition in Ottawa, while the Liberals, historically Canada’s most successful political party, were reduced to third party status in the last federal election. Ms. St-Denis joining their caucus increases the party’s seat total to 35.

More interesting, perhaps, was the reaction on various blogs, Twitter and other online forums. NDP bloggers immediately dismissed her as a “nobody” joining a dying party – good riddance. Many also decried her actions as “undemocratic”, a betrayal of what her constituents wanted and had voted for, and challenged her to resign her seat and seek re-election as a Liberal. Others called for a ban on floor-crossing.

However, as Graham Fox, the President of the Institute for Research on Public Policy, noted on Twitter:

“The logic behind banning floor-crossing would also mean that leaders should not have the power to throw MPs out of caucus.

If we don’t want MPs to have the ability to “violate the voters’ decisions”, why would we allo party leaders to have that power?”

He added in French (translation mine):

“Bien que chocantes, les defections politiques ne sont pas necessairement anti-demo, et rappellent que les partis ne comptent pas pour tout.” (While upsetting, political defections aren’t always undemocratic and remind us that political parties don’t count for everything.)

In response to that, @jesse_helmer replied:

“I have trouble squaring calls for reform that would weaken part [sic] discipline with opposition to switching parties.”

These are important points. If you support the idea that MPs should have more independence – for example, if you would prefer to see fewer whipped votes in the Canadian House of Commons (almost all votes are whipped), if you would like to see an end to scripted questions during Question Period, and MPs, especially backbenchers, free to ask whatever questions they want, even if it embarrasses their party, if you would like to see an end to party whips controlling who sits on committees, etc., then it makes little sense to support banning floor-crossing, which is probably the ultimate freedom an MP has to voice his or her disagreement with the direction in which their party is moving.

Similarly, if you argue that it is “undemocratic” for an MP to cross the floor because he or she was elected as a member of that particular party, then it is equally undemocratic for a party leader to kick an MP out of caucus and force them to sit as an independent, since that would also be going against what voters had voted for.

I have previously written about some of the main arguments for and against floor crossing, and so I won’t repeat myself in detail here. The question you have to ask yourself is what is the role of an MP? Is it simply someone who toes the party line no matter what and votes as they are told to vote on every given issue, or do we want MPs to use their own judgement, analyze each issue and vote as they see best, even if that includes deciding that they no longer agree with their party, or that their party’s positions aren’t in the best interest of their constituents?

There is another issue at play here, however, one that has been largely overlooked. The last election, the one which saw Ms. St-Denis elected, happened only recently, in May 2011. In a column from La Presse, Vincent Marissal writes that Ms. St-Denis is apparently one of four new NDP MPs from Quebec who aren’t entirely happy being NDP MPs, but whether the other three will quit the party may depend on the outcome of the current NDP Leadership contest:

Pourrait-il y avoir d’autres défections? C’est douteux pour le moment mais, à Ottawa, des néo-démocrates ont laissé entendre que Mme St-Denis «était l’une des quatre députés» susceptibles de quitter le bateau. À suivre, surtout si Thomas Mulcair mord la poussière dans la course à la direction. (translation: “Could there be more defections? It’s doubtful at the moment, but in Ottawa, the New Democrats hinted that Ms. St-Denis “was one of four MPs” susceptible of jumping ship. This is to follow, especially if Thomas Mulcair bites the dust in the leadership race.”)

Many people have been asking why she ran for the NDP in the first place, when she clearly seems to be more of a Liberal in terms of policy positions. Ms. St-Denis admits that she ran not expecting to be elected, which was a safe-enough assumption on her part. Historically, the NDP has never won more than a few seats at any one time in the province of Quebec, and the party didn’t have much of an organization (or many members) in that province. However, the May 2011 election saw some seismic changes in Canada’s political landscape, most notably the demise of the pro-independence Bloc Québécois (reduced from 47 seats to 4 seats). The BQ’s support largely went to the NDP, which had gone into that election with one MP from Quebec and emerged after the election with 59 of the province’s 75 seats.

Because, historically, the NDP never expected to win many seats in Quebec, they often ran placeholder candidates in many of the ridings. These candidates are often chosen at the last minute, and may not be very well vetted since the party is mostly focused on being able to say they are running a full slate of candidates. The NDP isn’t the only party to do this, of course, and most of the time, there’s no chance that these candidates will win. But sometimes they do win, and the party finds itself with new MPs who may not be fully committed to the party and its policies.

Another factor is that there is strong evidence that a lot of the former BQ voters in Quebec who turned to the NDP weren’t really voting for the party per se, but for its leader, Jack Layton, who passed away this summer. Mr. Layton was extremely popular and quite well known in Quebec – more popular and better known than his party and its policies, it’s probably fair to say. Ms. St-Denis acknowledged that, saying people in her riding had voted not for the NDP but for Jack Layton, and Layton was dead, implying that her move from the NDP to the Liberals didn’t really matter because voters hadn’t really voted for the NDP and its policies.

And it’s also fair to say that the NDP’s policies never really received much media attention. Since 1993, the NDP has been the 4th party in the House of Commons, which meant that media attention was largely focused on the parties (and policies of the parties) which had a real chance of forming the government: the Liberals and Reform/Canadian Alliance/Conservatives. That they finished second in the May 2011 election, becoming the Official Opposition for the first time in the party’s history, caught almost everyone off-guard. Late in the election campaign, when it became increasingly clear that something was going on, both the media and the other parties were left scrambling – the media trying to figure what the NDP stood for, and the other parties what to attack them on. Therefore it really shouldn’t come as a surprise if some of the people who ran for the NDP in Quebec, never expecting to win, weren’t that familiar with what the party actually stood for – some of them didn’t even campaign at all in the ridings in which they were candidates.

As I have written repeatedly, in various posts, the Canadian House of Commons is already extremely whipped, with MPs already quite subservient to their party leadership (particularly in contrast with MPs from the UK). Party discipline does not need to be strengthened in the Canadian House of Commons, if anything, anyone interested in political reform should be looking at ways of weakening the power of party whips and party leadership, and giving MPs more freedom to carry out their roles and obligations as individual Members. Banning floor crossing runs counter to increasing MP independence. More attention should also be given to candidate selection. Parties should focus less on trying to run full slates and more on the quality of their candidates. Perhaps the phasing out of the vote subsidy will force some parties at least to do just this because they won’t have the financial resources to run a full slate, and there won’t be any financial incentive to have a warm body on every ballot. In the end, perhaps that will be a good thing.

 

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The Speaker’s Seat

In an earlier post, I wrote about some aspects of the UK House of Commons Procedure Committee’s report reviewing the election process for certain positions in the House of Commons. One part of the report which I did not comment on concerned the brief discussion of creating a “Speaker’s Seat”.

As I have previously mentioned in other posts, unlike Speakers in other Commonwealth countries, the MP elected Speaker of the UK House of Commons resigns from his or her political party. They also run for re-election as “the Speaker” and not as a member of a party. There is a long-standing convention in the United Kingdom by which the three main parties do not run a candidate against a Speaker seeking re-election; however smaller parties will contest the seat.

There has been a proposal raised at various times to create a Speaker’s Seat specifically for a Speaker seeking re-election:

The concept of a Speaker’s seat (sometimes referred to as St Stephen’s seat) envisages that any Member once elected by the House to the Speakership would cease to represent a normal parliamentary constituency, resulting in a by-election, and would be automatically returned at the next General Election, if he or she so chose, to stand in the Speakership election.

In other words, once elected Speaker, that MP would, in effect, cease to be an MP with a constituency to represent. A by-election would be called and a new MP would be elected to represent the constituency from which the Speaker hailed. In a general election, the incumbent Speaker would be automatically returned to the House from this “St. Stephen’s seat”, which, since it isn’t associated with an actual constituency, would not be contested by any other candidate.

The idea of a Speaker’s seat has been proposed time and again in the United Kingdom to counter a couple of perceived issues. The first is that constituents in the Speaker’s riding are, to a certain degree, not represented in the House of Commons to the same extent because their MP, the Speaker, cannot speak on their behalf in the House. Also, because the Speaker resigns from his or her political party upon being elected Speaker, and because the major parties do not contest that seat during general elections, voters are, to a certain degree, disenfranchised. Their only options are to re-elect the Speaker, or to vote for candidates from minor and fringe parties.

It is certainly true that Speakers are constrained in how they can represent their constituents. They cannot participate in any debates in the House, they cannot bring forward petitions, they cannot engage in any activity which might be perceived as partisan. This is true (to varying degrees) of all Speakers in all Commonwealth countries. However, this does not mean that they cannot represent their constituents and work on their behalf. For example, they can still raise their constituents’ concerns with the relevant agency or government department, and because they are the Speaker, they will often receive replies far more quickly than would be the case for a backbench MP. They can also attend events and undertake visits of a non-party political character throughout the constituency.

As for the question of voters being disenfranchised, this one is more problematic, as it is certainly true that voters in the Speaker’s constituency will not be able to cast ballots for candidates from any of the major parties. The Committee notes that the question of creating a Speaker’s seat was studied at length on at least three occasions: in 1938, 1963 and again in 1982. In each instance, the proposal was rejected largely on the grounds that “it was wrong in principle to create a new category of membership of the House, especially one that introduced indirect election, and that it would reduce the accountability of the Speaker to the Commons.” Speaker Lloyd is quoted in the report, stating in his farewell address to the House in 1976:

“I firmly believe that the Speaker should be elected for a constituency, as are other hon. Members, so as to keep personally in touch with the hopes and fears and the personal and individual needs of many thousands of ordinary men and women, meeting them face to face from time to time and to know the problems of the area which he represents”.

While the Committee did not undertake a detailed examination of this issue, they did conclude from their review of the arguments and history of the debate that the perceived advantages of creating a special Speaker’s Seat were outweighed by the disadvantages:

There are great benefits to the House and to the Speaker in the Speaker’s retaining responsibility for a normal constituency and being thereby fully aware of the issues currently causing concern to constituents. The access that the Speaker, like Ministers who are also unable to speak out in debates, gains to the Government in order to raise matters relating to his or her constituents compensates in no small measure for the lack of a constituency voice on the floor of the House. We are also concerned that the proposal would remove the important democratic check on the re-appointment of a Speaker by either the public or the House and would create a new separate, distinctive and privileged category of Member to the detriment of the House. Finally, we recognise that the existence of a Speaker’s seat could lead to worse consequences for a returning Speaker, if not re-elected by the House, than at present since there could be no possibility of a return to the backbenches in such circumstances and the traditional honour of a seat in the Lords could cease to be available in the foreseeable future. For all these reasons, we do not support the concept of a St Stephen’s seat for the Speaker.

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Youth Voter Participation in the May 2011 Canada General Election

In an earlier post, I looked at the main reasons put forward by the 7.5 million eligible voters who did not cast ballots in the May 2011 election, as identified in a survey by Statistics Canada. Elections Canada has recently released findings on youth voter participation in the May 2011 general election, with “youth” being defined as young adults aged 18 to 34.

The survey was conducted following the May 2011 election and consisted of a national random survey of 1,372 youth and young adults aged 18-34, as well as a non-random sample of 1,293 youth from five subgroups: Aboriginal youth, ethnocultural youth, youth in rural areas, youth with disabilities and unemployed youth not in school.

The survey found that the most commonly cited reasons for voting focused on the importance of voting: it was a civic duty, and it was an expression of opinions and views. The most commonly cited reasons for not voting were: too busy (with work, school, family); travelling at the time; and insufficient knowledge about the parties, candidates and issues.

Of those three reasons, the most “legitimate” to me is the travelling excuse. The election took place on 2 May, when many university students would have been in the process of travelling back to their home town from university, or perhaps travelling to another part of the province/country for summer employment. However, even this excuse is tenuous. Canadians have more than one voting day open to them. As I stated in that earlier post, Canadians have opportunities to vote in advance polls, which are generally held on the 10th, 9th and 7th days before the actual election day (this is based on a 36-day timeline, counting down from the issuing of the writs (day 36) to election day, day 0). This means that a student could have voted in an advance poll on April 22, 23 and 25. Voters can also vote in person at their local Elections Canada office for most of the election period. These offices are set up in every single riding in the country after an election is called. Granted, this is a bit more of a hassle because it requires completing an Application for Registration and Special Ballot, but it is still an option. As well, voters can apply to vote by mail, again by completing the aforementioned Application for Registration and Special Ballot. My only point here is that if one knows one will be unable to vote on the actual day of the election, there are other options available.

The above also applies to those who didn’t vote because they were “too busy”. As I wrote in my earlier post:

I find it rather difficult to believe that these family obligations and work/school conflicts were issues during the advanced polls and on election day. On election day itself, polls are open for twelve hours, ranging from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. depending on which province or territory you live in.

The study identified the key barriers to voting, both motivational and access barriers. Motivational barriers to voting among youth were: lack of political interest and knowledge, a belief that all political parties were the same and that none of the parties spoke to issues relevant to youth, and a lower sense that voting is a civic duty. I will address the matter of access barriers shortly, but first I want to look at these motivational barriers in greater detail.

It might be somewhat tempting to lump the first two – lack of political interest/knowledge and belief that all parties are the same – into one. If one has little interest in or knowledge of politics, it will be more difficult to identify and appreciate the differences between the various parties. Also, if one has little or no interest in politics, one will not be moved to make any real effort to investigate the parties and where they stand on key issues. However, these are two distinct issues. The first is the most problematic, and certainly not limited to young people. A lot of people aren’t at all interested in politics, and there is little anyone can do to change that. You can’t force people to take an interest in something in which they have no interest. Believing the parties are all the same, however, could be addressed if parties campaigned more intelligently and if the media made a greater effort to point out the differences in the various party platforms.

The principle means available to any voter interested in knowing a party’s stand on issues is, of course, the party’s electoral platform, or party manifesto. Unfortunately, these documents tend to be fairly lengthy and, to be blunt, rather tedious reads. They are also, understandably, quite biased. I don’t know how many voters actually do read any party manifestos prior to voting, but I am willing to wager that the number is a very small one. To properly compare party positions, one would have to read the manifestos of all the parties contesting the election, and even then, how each party organizes its various pledges might make comparison rather difficult since parties might use very different language to describe essentially similar pledges, or describe their pledges in very vague terms that make comparison difficult. I do believe, however, that there is a very strong desire out there for straightforward, non-biased comparisons of where the parties stand on key issues.

Soon after the writ was issued for the 2 May 2011 election, I noticed a sharp increase in the keyword search activity on this blog from people looking for party platform comparisons. In response to that, I began scouring various media sources to see if any had put together any sort of chart or guide comparing the main parties’ positions on key issues. I did find a few, which led to the creation of this post, which essentially re-directed people to these other sites. I could have prepared a comparative chart myself, but opted instead to simply link to sites which had already done so. The reason was quite simple: I didn’t have the time to wade through the various party manifestos to prepare such a chart myself. The number of hits to this one particular post continued to increase throughout the campaign, to the point where the number of unique visitors to this blog quadrupled in the dying days of the campaign period. This reinforced my belief that all voters, not just youth, want simple, straightforward, non-biased comparisons of what the parties are offering. I attempted to create similar posts for the myriad of provincial and territorial elections that have occurred this fall, and in each instance, the posts in question proved to be hugely popular.

On a related note, the Elections Canada survey also found that young people who relied on television as their main source of information about the election were less likely to vote. This does not surprise me. Other than formal reports about the election campaign on nightly newscasts, election-related material on TV consisted of the leaders’ debate and political party campaign ads. The ads run by the main parties were, for the most part, negative ads. They did little to promote reasons to vote for the party running the ad; instead, they attacked the other parties. And since each party was the target of an attack ad from one (or more) of the other parties, a political novice would be left with the impression that none of the parties were worth voting for. The leaders’ debate wasn’t much more edifying. It too mostly consisted of the leaders attacking and criticizing each other.

I am assuming that the Elections Canada survey is referring to TV watched during the election campaign period, but even if we look at political coverage outside of the election period, it too was hardly an endorsement for any political party. Anyone watching proceedings in the House of Commons, particularly during Question Period, would hardly be left feeling very positive about any of the parties and would most certainly not having any sense of where the parties stood on key issues, or how their views differ.

The most common access barriers cited by young voters were lack of knowledge about the electoral process, including not knowing about different ways to vote and not knowing how or when to vote, followed by difficulty getting to the polling station, difficulty providing identification or proof of address, and not receiving a voter information card. Most of these are systemic issues that could fairly easily be addressed by Elections Canada. The problem of not being able to get to the polling station could be addressed by increasing the number of polling stations and adopting something Australia does: allow voters to vote at any polling station in their constituency, rather than at one designated polling place. This way, polling booths could be set up in malls, in the lobbies of businesses, perhaps even in subway stations, etc. Since everything can now be computerised, I fail to see what logic there is in continuing to force people to vote at one designated spot, usually a church basement or school gymnasium, which might not be the most convenient place for many. Online voting is another option that should be looked at. Elections Canada has called for tests of online voting, and hopefully, this will happen.

Most of the other barriers mentioned would indicate that people don’t know the Elections Canada website exists. All of that information (and more) was available on the Elections Canada site – everything from explanations of the electoral process, the different voting options available, when to vote, where to vote, what to do if you’d not received a voter information card, etc. Given the search word activity on this blog, I can’t say that I’m surprised that many don’t know Elections Canada exists, never mind that it has a website. I don’t know how Elections Canada can address this – perhaps it should consider making itself known on social media sites by setting up a Facebook page, having a Twitter account, etc., since these are media young people use a great deal.

Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand is calling for a national strategy to target young voters to try to engage (or re-engage) them in our democracy:

“What is it that makes Canadians interested in politics?” Mr. Mayrand asked. “What is it that turns them off from time to time? And what is it that we can do about changing the culture around this?”

Not easy questions to answer, certainly, but questions that need to be asked – and acted upon.

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Saskatchewan 2011 Political Party Platform comparisons

As was the case during the recent federal election here in Canada, many people are now looking for a site comparing the platforms of the political parties contesting the upcoming Saskatchewan election (7 November 2011).

This blog cannot engage in a discussion of the policies of political parties, either at the provincial or federal level. However, as was the case this spring, it can refer you to other sites that can do that. I will update this list as needed.

Saskatchewan Political Party Platform comparisons:

Platform comparison from Canadian Voter

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