CV&D 5/29/97 Update

[New Democracy]

5/29/97

To: Organizers / Key List /  Educators
Fr: Rob Richie, Center for Voting and Democracy

With Canada's winner-take-all elections approaching,
I thought folks might be interested in the enclosed commentary
from the Toronto Star. (The Toronto Globe and Mail -- Canada's
largest-circulation newspaper -- has editorialized in favor
of proportional representation several times in recent years.)

In addition, note that:

* The second round of France's winner-take-all, run-off election
system will take place this weekend. The results of the first round
were intriguing -- only 12 out of 577 seats were won in the first
round, meaning that no candidate won 50% in 565 districts. When
given the chance to vote more freely, voters will do so -- political
monopolies as exist in nearly all U.S. legislative districts are not
a natural political condition. It is coerced through an inherently
unfair, participation-killing electoral process.

* Poland voters have approved a new constitution that calls for
continued use of proportional representation for elections to
its Duma, the lower house of parliament.

* Northern Ireland used preference voting (single transferable
vote) to elect its local governments this month. As is the case
with proportional representation, every election was a competitive
election. Even though voters had just participated in elections to
the British House of Commons, even though local governments
don't have as much power as national governments and even
though that oh-so-"complicated" preference voting system was
used, voter turnout was approximately 55%-65%, rising to over
70% in some areas. Catholic and Protestant candidates generally
won their fair share of representation.

* Former Irish prime minister Garret Fitzgerald had a commentary
in the Irish Times on the British election. He was straight to the
point on the fairness of the British electoral system: "By no possible
standard can this be judged to have been a voting landslide. The
total Labour vote rose by only one-sixth. What made it seem like
a landslide, of course, was the absurd first-past-the-post voting
system, as a result of which this one-sixth increase in the Labour
vote increased its parliamentary representation by a half."
    Ireland will use preference voting in its national elections
next month.  Meanwhile, President Bill Clinton and British
prime minister Tony Blair met today in the United Kingdom,
I'm sure spending some time marvelling out how winning
43% of the vote (Labour's popular vote percentage this
year and Clinton's percentage in 1992) can result in such
large victories..... Blair at least is committed to a national
referendum on proportional representation for electing
the House of Commons.

* Judge Stanley Sporkin in the U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia threw out a challenge to a limited voting system
adopted in a settlement to a voting rights case in Cleveland
County, North Carolina -- voters will have four votes in a 7-seat
at-large race, which lowers the "winning threshold" (percentage
of voter that guarantees a seat) to 36%.
        Judge Sporkin apparently took note of the amicus brief
filed by Edward Still and Gerald Hebert on behalf of the Center.
He used some of their arguments and wrote: "The fact that
limited voting provides a greater opportunity to elect minority
candidates more readily does not render this election feature
constitutionally suspect. A limited voting plan is not an
unusual voting procedure at odds with traditional principles
of voting.... It does not guarantee any seats on the Board of
Commissioners to blacks, nor does it give black voters
any more voting power than other voters."
       I hasten to add that this version of limited voting is
not an ideal system, as a 36% threshold is still quite high.
But versions of limited voting certainly are worthy of
consideration in voting rights cases at the local level.

* Student voters at Lane Community College in Oregon
have pased a constitutional amendment to elect the
student senate by preference voting PR.
     Meanwhile, The Libertarian Party of Illinois -- the third
largest party in Illinois -- formally endorsed PR in April at
its state convention.After a unanimous endorsement from
the State Organizing Committee a few weeks prior, party
members voted overwhelmingly to endorse PR.

Onto the Canadian commentary....

An Arbitrary, Unjust System
by David Beatty, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

[first published: Toronto Star, May 15, 1997]

For most Canadians, voting in the upcoming election will be an act of
irrelevance and futility. Everyone knows Jean Crétien's Liberals will be
returned to power. The only question is how many seats they will win.

This fact should be disturbing to democrats of all political stripes.
Crétien cannot (but no doubt will) claim his government received a strong
endorsement from the people. The reality is, a clear majority of Canadians
will almost certainly vote for another party.

The explanation for how a government can be swept to power despite the
wishes of the majority of voters lies, in large part, in the rules we use
to
conduct elections. Our system is based on two ideas. First, we say
political
representatives should speak for communities and geographical areas as well
as for specific causes and ideals. Second, the person who is elected is the
candidate with the most, but not necessarily (indeed rarely) a majority of
votes. It is a system in which the winner takes all.

Of course, there is nothing exceptional in the prospect of the Liberals
winning any more seats than their share of the popular vote. In the last
election, Crétien won 60 percent of the House of Commons seats even though
he received only 40 percent of the vote.

Although it is not unusual for there to be a large discrepancy between the
distribution of seats and votes in Canadian elections, it is less and less
common in the rest of the world. More countries are adopting election laws
based on "proportional representation." This principle is designed to
ensure
that all parties get more or less the same percentage of legislative seats
as they did of the popular vote.

Many former Soviet bloc countries have remodelled their election rules on a
mixed system, developed in Germany, which combines the principle of
proportional representation with the idea of geographic or territorial
units. And, just since our last federal election, South Africa, New Zealand
and Japan have done the same.

The great attraction of a system that uses the principle of proportional
representation is that, by equating the number of seats a party has in
Parliament with the number of votes it attracts, it guarantees everyone's
vote counts, more or less, the same. Even votes cast for a losing candidate
count toward the number of seats each party is entitled to claim.

For example, if 5 percent of Canadians voted to support the Green party in
the upcoming election, even if it didn't win any ridings, the party would
still be entitled to six seats in the House of Commons. Under the current
system of winner-take-all, by contrast, the votes of their supporters will
count for nothing and they will have no one to represent their views.

Canadians whose votes will not count when they cast them on June 2 have
good
reason to feel aggrieved. Compared to other democratic societies, our
system
of electing politicians is arbitrary and unjust.

As discouraging as the current situation appears to be, it is premature to
give in to despair. Even if it is unrealistic to expect politicians to
dismantle a system that got them elected, there is reason to believe that
if
these parts of our electoral laws were challenged under the Charter of
Rights, they would likely not survive.

Compared to a system based on the principle of proportional representation,
winner-take-all systems are a flagrant violation of the equality rights
which the Charter guarantees. As we have seen, proportional representation
ensures that everyone's vote counts equally. Our system, by contrast, gives
no representation to a "losing vote."

Some might be dubious about a Charter challenge. They might feel our
current
law is preferable to a system of proportional representation because it
produces a more stable and therefore more effective government. Others
might
be skeptical that our Supreme Court would be receptive to such a claim
because it has already said there is nothing unconstitutional about the
large variations in the number of voters that distinguish many urban and
rural ridings.

It is difficult to imagine how the first concern about stable government
could ever be proved. The truth is, Germany has enjoyed one of the most
impressive records of effective government over the last 50 years and there
is no evidence of political instability in the numerous countries that have
followed its lead.

The concern about the will of the Supreme Court is a serious one, but even
here there is reason to be optimistic that the court would see the merits
of
the case. Even the Supreme Court of Japan, which has a history even more
cautious than the judges in Ottawa, struck down an equally arbitrary and
antiquated law with the result that, last year, Japan's national elections
were organized along the lines of German's mixed system.

The prospect of successfully ridding our election rules of their most
egregious inequities should appeal to democrats across the country. At the
very least, a constitutional challenge filed by supporters of one of the
minor parties during the course of the campaign would be a more meaningful
way to participate in the election than casting a losing vote.