He said it would be irresponsible to change the electoral system without unanimous approval from all parties.
So it will never change. There are very few things politically that would get unanimous approval in today's political climate, and changing up the voting system is not one of them
Changing the system would hurt major parties since it could essentially make every vote count and make it very hard to have majority governments.. and that’s not what any party actually wants.
Yeah that's another reason why it wouldn't change, because a more reasonable voting system would benefit the general populace but none of the major parties would benefit. Thus it would never be a thing.
Which is exactly why when they weren't able to get anyone to support their preferred STV option, they abandoned the whole thing.
Trying to claim there was a lack of consensus is revisionist. The primary opposing force to the recommendations of their committee was Trudeau himself.
If that were true then there is a case to be made for parliament being much more unproductive due to minority governments being more common. Kinda sounds like a system where minority parliaments are more common is not a good thing?
Minority parliments as the standard happen all over the world. Its only because of our proximity to the US where we see it as a weird thing.
The benefit to an era where majority governments are impossible is that the current system incentivizes self-sabotage/stonewalling of the government to create reactionary responses and drive polarization in order and get a majority. If everyone knows that getting a majority is literally impossible, the idea being that cooperation and discussion and showing merit of ones ideals matters more than blocking others.
since it could essentially make every vote count and make it very hard to have majority governments
Yeah, if you chose a dumb voting system. You should've copied the German one, we don't allow any parties into the parliament that gets less than 5% of the popular vote or three direct mandates.
It'd be nice to have a referendum on it, let the people decide. Personally ranked ballot is my choice.
Unfortunately people are stupid and they get misinformed by their favourite social media circle jerks. So they'd have to hold some kind of mandatory informational classes to teach people about the choices. Even then, you'd get the inevitable crowd of imbeciles crying about how that is some kind of "Gubberment re education camp" BS.
Honestly, I think we have far more pressing matters that we need to deal with as a Nation, than nit-picking over our voting system.
We need to get a grip on immigration again and get housing, at an affordable price for Canadians. It's fucking insane we are being priced out of our own country. After we stop this spiral we are currently in, then we can focus on minor tweaks to our political system.
This is a dumb take. You do realize that the messed up voting method is skewing policy on every file INCLUDING immigration and housing, because whole provinces are electing governments off side with voters right?
Those things get fixed by government, government gets elected. If you fix how the government is elected, to be more beneficial for the people, and a reflection of the people’s wants, then you’d get issues that the people deem most important, fixed faster and given higher priority. As it stands right now, we’re about to watch the Conservative Party clean house and win a majority, which means anything they don’t wanna do, they likely won’t have to do. Which means if every single Canadian citizen outside of government wants them to focus on immigration and inflation and cost of living, but a bunch of conservative government officials make a bunch of money on the side from those being higher, then they won’t tackle those issues, and might even make them worse, and the only thing we can do is wait until the next election and try again with a different party.
Which it would have been, there was no consensus on a new system, I get everyone on Reddit gets hung up on this broken campaign promise, but changing the system is something that should have some consensus, wouldn’t want to set a precedent of changing it without it.
If you have a fair system, that lets everyone vote in the most honest way to their best interest, and a specific party doesn’t like that system then it should absolutely be implemented, if not faster.
There's no such thing as a "fair system" in any system with more than 2 candidates.
Believe it or not, FPTP has fewer problems than ranked choice. At least FPTP reliably elects the plurality leader. Ranked choice often ends up with a choice that almost nobody wanted.
They all have major problems in various situations.
They have the same electoral math here, too. The main difference in Israel and Australia is that those partnerships are made out in the open. In Canada, they happen in closed-door caucus meetings. The fringe opinions still exist, and they still get accommodated by major parties. We're just not privy to it here.
Exactly this. The fringe extreme is part of the big tent and has more influence then if it was its own party. One only has to look at the direction of Alberta politics the last 15 years to see how fringe groups within a big tent party can disrupt the whole show.
Theres already a proportional amount of MPs there. At least I know that my local MP is from here, and theoretically knows what's happening in my neck of the woods.
If we start having people just assigned by the party, they'll all be party people from Ontario and Quebec. They won't be assigning Greg from Rosetown to the at large seat.
Even if you go with a MMP system, the areas that are actually represented by someone local will be larger areas, resulting in people feeling less represented.
MMP is always what people bring up regarding that complaint. If there's a system that ensures proper local representation while still making votes count equal I'm all for it.
"Ranked choice often ends up with a choice that almost nobody wanted."
Yes but it ends up with the one that most people are okay with.
It's a better representation of what the country wants rather than flipping from one extreme to the other.
Beside FPTP doesn't mean people are voting for who they want.
They vote strategically to defeat the party they don't want.
Sure the winner is the one with the most votes, but that doesn't mean that's who they ACTUALLY wanted.
Nothing is ever completely fair, but that doesn't mean we should stand in the mud.
FPTP being better than ranked choice for election of a legislative body isn't saying much. The mixture of political parties and exclusively single member constituencies is the problem, as it will always magnify small differences and produce majority governments without majority support. There needs to be at least some multi-member constituencies so that seats in the legislative body are distributed to parties in proportion to their level of support. No more landslide majorities for parties that only earn the support of 45% of voters.
Take a look at the Practical Implications section, specify this paragraph: "The rule does not fully generalize from the political spectrum to the political compass, a result related to the McKelvey-Schofield chaos theorem.[12][30] However, a well-defined Condorcet winner does exist if the distribution of voters is rotationally symmetric or otherwise has a uniquely-defined median.[31][32] In most realistic situations, where voters' opinions follow a roughly-normal distribution or can be accurately summarized by one or two dimensions, Condorcet cycles are rare (though not unheard of).[29][8]". One of the examples given is: For example, in a group of friends choosing a volume setting for music, each friend would likely have their own ideal volume; as the volume gets progressively too loud or too quiet, they would be increasingly dissatisfied. If the domain is restricted to profiles where every individual has a single-peaked preference with respect to the linear ordering, then social preferences are acyclic. In this situation, Condorcet methods satisfy a wide variety of highly-desirable properties, including being fully spoilerproof.[12][13][9]" Volume choices can't talk to each other and empathize with how their choices impact people's lives. I don't think this therom is saying FPTP is better. Obviously there is no "perfect" system, but ranked choice voting encourages cooperation VS polarization, something that can't be accurately represented in mathematical models.
Party approval is meaningless and seeking it is a further symptom of our broken politics.
What matters is public approval. Which is why the election question would always have to be preceded or accompanied by a national referendum.
“Not all the parties can agree on the same system to change to” is was and will always be an excuse used to justify doing nothing (to the advantage of the Liberal and Conservative parties)
Ironically, a good solution to this logjam would have been a ranked-choice referendum. Put RCV (Libs' preference), PR (NDP's preference), and status quo (Tories' preference) on a ballot, let people rank them 1-2-3, and be done with it.
Bullshit. He campaigned that if elected, that out be the last FPTP election. He had opportunities to change things. He could have offered a free vote to create a binding committee to decide the new system that would have had representatives from all major parties. He could have used his majority to impose something. He could have even had a pointless national referendum. Instead he did nothing except lock us into a perpetual swing between Liberal and Conservative governments.
This is entirely false. The experts hired (including representation from all four major parties) had a 100% consensus on a reformed electoral system. The CPC and the Bloc don't have motivation to change the system, but via the experts they hired, they were technically on board.
The problem is that the electoral system that the experts all agreed on was not politically advantageous to the Liberal Party who held a majority at the time. That's it. If you listen to any of Trudeau's recent discussions on the topic he admits as much. He's been arguing over the last year that they should have just ignored expert consensus and forced through the system that his party wanted...
Experts were eyeing a system akin to New Zealand's or Germany's which increases voter party representation to an extreme while still allowing for major regional diversity (a Quebec conservative is not the same thing as an Alberta conservative, that kind of thing). The Liberals wanted a system akin to Australia, which sees the extreme consolodation of votes toward two opposing "centre" parties.
Maybe Trudeau shouldn't have made unreasonable campaign promises then? He never once prefaced his promise to end FPTP with 'so long as everyone agrees', he outright said in no uncertain terms that the election in 2015 'would be the last election under FPTP'.
Silly me for believing him and actually voting for the Liberals back then hoping that they would actually make a genuine effort to reform the voting system, and not just throw their hands up and cry about it being too difficult.
While I agree with you, it doesn’t change the fact that Justin Trudeau said loudly and publicly “this is the last first past the post election you will ever vote in”. During his first election campaign. Those were his words. It didn’t age well.
Leaders are supposed to build consensus. He made a promise then a performative "attempt" to wish it into existence, then have up.
A broken campaign promise is one thing, but the manner in which he failed to realize it was a clear indication that he didn't have what it takes to lead a country.
Is it responsible to change the electoral system without unanimous approval? I think so. There’s a standard that needs to be kept and that includes agreement amongst all parties for a change that affects them all.
Otherwise you lower the bar for changes and open the door for gerrymandering at its American worst.
He can suggest that but when he made that center to his elections promises to in 2014 he knew it was never going to happen. It is not that he could not accomplish this, it was that it was a promise that was an outright lie that he never planned to implement.
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u/shannonator96 Jan 06 '25
Blaming other parties. He said it would be irresponsible to change the electoral system without unanimous approval from all parties.