Friday, October 26, 2012

Proportional Representation

I'm a supporter of Fair Vote, an organization trying to introduce proportional representation in Canadian elections.  I thought up an scheme I'd like to see adopted.  My scheme would divide parliamentary seats into three categories.

Category A (about 70% of seats) would be seats chosen in the same "first past the post" way as before. (The three Territories, which each have one seat, would see no change.)

Category B (about 25%) would be a full quarter of each province's seats,  allotted to the different parties so that the total of A and B would be distributed in proportion* to the popular vote in that province.

Category C would be the rest of the seats.  Ontario would receive four seats in this category, Quebec three, BC and Alberta two each, and every other province one each.  These seats would go to the party with the largest nationwide popular vote, except in provinces where a party scored a landslide and its A seats alone were greater than its proportional share of A and B seats.  In that case, these seats would be distributed between the other parties to allow their full proportion of A and B. (If their totals are still below their proportional share, they'll lose out in equal* number.)

(*=or as close as possible)

To show how it would work, I'll first take the number of seats each province had in the 2011 election and divide them into (A/B/C).

Ontario:  106 (76/26/4)
Quebec:  75 (54/18/3)
BC:  36 (25/9/2)
Alberta:  28 (19/7/2)
Saskatchewan: 14 (9/4/1)
Manitoba:  14 (9/4/1)
Nova Scotia:  11 (7/3/1)
New Brunswick:  10 (6/3/1)
Newfoundland:  7 (4/2/1)
PEI:  4 (2/1/1)

Now I'll imagine the electoral results under this system. (I'm assuming that the parties would win the A seats in much the same proportion as they actually did with all the seats.)

Ontario:  Con 52 (52/0/0), NDP 27 (16/9/2), Lib 27 (8/17/2)
Quebec:  NDP 43 (43/0/0), BQ 15 (3/11/1), Lib 8 (5/2/1),
Con 9 (3/5/1)
BC:  Con 17 (14/1/2), NDP 11 (8/3/0), Lib 5 (2/3/0),
Green 3 (1/2/0)
Alberta:  Con 18 (18/0/1), NDP 4 (1/3/0), Lib 3 (0/3/0),
Green 2 (0/1/1)
Saskatchewan: Con 8 (8/0/0), Lib 1 (1/0/0), NDP 5 (0/4/1)
Manitoba:  Con 8 (7/0/1), NDP 4 (1/3/0), Lib 2 (1/1/0)
Nova Scotia:  Con 5 (3/1/1), NDP 3 (2/1/0), Lib 3 (2/1/0)
New Brunswick: Con 5 (4/0/1), NDP 3 (1/2/0), Lib 2 (1/1/0)
Newfoundland:  Lib 2 (2/0/0), Con 3 (1/1/1), NDP 2 (1/1/0)
PEI:  Lib 2 (2/0/0), Con 1 (0/0/1), NDP 1 (0/1/0)
NWT:  NDP 1  Yukon:  Con 1  Nunavut:  Con 1

Total result:  Con 128, NDP 104, Lib 56, BQ 15, Green 5

(Actual result:  Con 166, NDP 103, Lib 34, BQ 4, Green 1)

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