MIXED MEMBER PR

It would appear that more and more people are becoming disturbed with the present 'first-past-the-post' electoral systems and are starting to speak out, even in the USA. This is momentous, since it is almost illegal, even with freedom of speech, to say anything negative against the status quo.

As mentioned in past articles on Proportional Representational government, there is no single blueprint available to review the variety of systems adopted throughout the world. There is only one driving force behind the concept for PR however. It is 'the desire to have one's views represented.'

The principle of PR is described as follows in my trusty Canadian Dictionary:

Proportional Representation: "An electoral system in which the number of seats that each party is given is proportional to the votes cast."

The Encyclopedia Britannia says it a little differently:"The case for Proportional Representation is fundamentally the same as for representative democracy. Only when an assembly represents the full diversity of opinion within a nation can its decision be regarded as the decision of the nation itself."

I received several responses to the 100 or so letters I wrote this summer to selected Canadians regarding Proportional Representative government. The following insightful response is particularly important to me since it came from Preston Manning's office and bore his signature.

Mr. Manning said, "I appreciate your interest in electoral reform to make the House of Commons more truly representative of Canadians. As you may know, the Reform Party has led the charge in calling for measures to improve the democratic accountability of our key institutions, including the House of Commons."

"With respect to your specific question about our position on Proportional Representation, our official policy is as follows: The Reform Party supports the use of a referendum to determine if the present First Past The Post system of selecting Members of Parliament should be replaced with a more representative form of representation. A decision in the affirmative would be followed by a second referendum, at a later date, to choose amongst several alternative systems."

Some forms of PR are based on voting for candidates; some are based on voting for political parties. This paper will only review MMPR (Mixed Member Proportional Representation).

Germany had the first system known as MMPR. This system was a compromise that was reached by Germany and the Allies after WW2.

In MMPR, the electorates get to vote twice. The first vote goes to a candidate in a riding much similar to the way we do it here. This first vote gives the voter a representative from his local riding. The second vote goes to a the political party of the electorate's choice in a much larger geographical sized riding. In this second riding, multiple candidates are elected to represent the citizens.

After the Elections Officer tabulates the results, the party then assigns members of the party to the allocated seats, in proportion to the percentage of the vote that was received. This second feature is the PR in MMPR.

Now this is a significant innovation. In a 10 seat district elected by Proportional Representation, a party that wins 10% of the popular vote wins a seat and representation. In our current Canadian system, this same 10% popular vote wins you nothing, which makes your opinions and vote virtually irrelevant time and again.

Germany's successful experience with the system has led to many nations adopting variations of MMPR in recent years. These include Japan, Italy, Mexico, Hungary, Russia, New Zealand and Venezuela. I believe that Scotland uses a form of PR in its new Parliament and Britain uses it in elections for the European Union representatives as well.

I believe that you can see PR in action in the recent debates on genetically modified food. The countries with strong industry backed policies were pushing for no restrictions or interference what-so-ever in their sinister tactics. (This included both Canada and the US.) The countries with PR governments (which means every county in Europe except for England and France) wanted constraints. This is because the governments (in part) better represent the views of the whole country.

In the next week or two we will review Single-Transferable-Vote systems.

Have a nice day.