Comments on: Ontario Will Vote on Proportional Representation

By: Law School Blog

Law School Blog — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:08:24 +0000

One thing that MMPR does not address is vote dilution, which results in unbalanced parity for urban populations.

More importantly, it severely hinders the proportional representation of minority groups that are often centered in urban areas.

See: http://lawiscool.com/2007/07/29/vote-dilution-means-minorities-have-less-voice/

By: Rob Dickinson

Rob Dickinson — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:45:37 +0000

A couple of points:

1) The double-super-majority requirement that B.C. had is definitely a huge threshold to require, as initiatives in B.C. can be approved with smaller majorities than what was required for the BC-STV vote.

2) Still, despite the high threshold, it is particularly impressive how close the British Columbia referendum came. One shouldn’t forget that the 58% overall and 97% of the districts result was achieved despite the fact that there was almost no money allocated or available for public education.

IMHO, if the B.C. campaign had been allocated any reasonable amount of money to educate about the BC-STV system to the provinces 4M people, it would easily achieved the required thresholds.

3) Point #2 above raises the obvious question – do the folks in Ontario have any real funds available to educate the public on their proposal. While the question will be considered on the merits, the proponents at least deserve to have some amount of resources to properly explain the proposal.

Rob

By: Steve Withers

Steve Withers — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:47:11 +0000

Agreed again. The 60% super-majority is bad and wrong. I wouldn’t mind if the government as also required to have a 60% majority in the legislature to pass laws. We would see a lot more multi-party negotiating than we do today. If they insist on this 60%, let’s also insist they use it themselves…..

By: Bob Richard

Bob Richard — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:40:04 +0000

I essentially agree with Wayne, in that this is still an uphill battle from now through October. But the B.C. and Ontario Citizens’ Assemblies are both pretty gutsy strategies on the part of the respective provincial governments.

In B.C., the strategy nearly failed. While STV-PR fell short of the province-wide supermajority, 58% instead of 60%, it won in 97% of the legislative districts (it needed to win in 60% of them). Many of those who voted “no” said they did so because they didn’t know enough about the issue to decide. And, indeed, the “yes” and “no” campaigns were both underfunded.

Judging from the press reports turned up by Google News Alerts, it appears to me that in Ontario discussion of PR is spreading beyond the chattering classes to parts of the electorate. If that’s true, it’s an extremely encouraging sign. The more education gets done, the more people are going to vote “yes”.

By: Wayne Smith

Wayne Smith — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:49:14 +0000

Thanks for this!

Unfortunately, the Ontario referendum will be subject to the same double super-majority threshold as in BC. In order for the referendum to be binding, the reform side will have to get 60% of the votes overall, and win 60% of the ridings.

The only reason for this high threshold is to make sure the referendum fails. Curiously, people elected under the current system tend to think the current system is working just fine.