Submission CHAMBERS-0779 (Online)

A proposal for adopting the Alternative Vote [AV] and adding some proportionality through additional seats to be assigned to parties under-represented in the legislature. [2 pages]

Proportional representation and local-candidate systems, like our FPTP system, are often set up in discussions to be opposing in their competing faults and benefits.  Most mixed systems do not fully maximise the benefits and avoid the faults of the two competing systems, although they may represent an improvement (New Zealand, etc.). Here is an idea for a mixed system that I think does a pretty good job of maximising the benefits, and it has lots of adjustable components to fine-tune the system and balance various stakeholders' interests:

RIDINGS
Keep the ridings as they are now so that all citizens are represented by a local representative; this is important for accountability of politicians and fairness to all citizens to be equally represented (small differences in riding sizes aside). What I would change about this part of the system is a move to a majority alternative vote system [AV] for each riding. While this is supposed to favour the large parties, I think it ends strategic voting which hampers small-party candidates on the first count (especially for third place parties such as the federal NDP). This will then help secure more funding for those smaller parties (at least federally under the new funding system, which is another great measure to make sure no vote is wasted).

PROPORTIONALITY
I assume that history shows that voters tend to favour larger parties on the second ballot, although I wouldn't have thought so. In order to balance this out, and to make the system proportional, have a certain amount of additional seats available, 10-15% of the total, that will be awarded to parties, not on a proportional basis, but to shore up the parties with less than their proportional share of the vote. This tends to favour the smaller, national parties who get vote share but not ridings. These members would have to come from the defeated candidates (and perhaps runners-up in nomination battles for elected candidates) so that parties do not get to arbitrarily make lists, and to avoid really complex ballots. These members would not directly represent that riding, since they lost to an opponent elected to represent the riding, but these members could informally be regional representatives for their party in those regions where their parties' riding representation is weak. This helps to balance out regionalism (particularly a factor at the federal level, but an urban/rural split is common in provinces). In order to keep a functional and stable governing party, these candidates could be unable to vote on money bills, since these additional smaller party candidates could force more minorities. This will allow the government to maintain power, but non-money bills will have more diverse opposition to check the power of the government. This is a negotiable point; the exact voting rules of the proportional candidates can be adjusted to make the system the most functional.

EXAMPLE
If this was applied to the recent federal election, the NDP would have been given about 21 additional seats and the Green party 10 (assuming 4% is above the threshold we decide on, and based on 10% additional seats, or 31 additional seats from 308 ridings). This would make the representation more proportional, with the Liberals, Conservatives and Bloc not getting any since they got more than their proportional share of ridings.

CONCLUSION
I think this gleans the advantages while missing the pitfalls, and it has some variables to fine-tune to make sure the result is functional, such as the minimum threshold a party must reach to get proportional seats, the rules for removing candidates in additional AV counts, the percentage of seats added for proportional representation, etc. It does not make the assembly perfectly proportional, but it makes it quite proportional, while maintaining accountability and stability, causing little change to the voting system (just ranking candidates), improving the significance of every ballot, countering regionalism, making every local representative supported by a majority of their riding, and opening up the assembly to more minority voices without giving them a disproportionate voice by holding the balance of power. Please consider this system- I don't know if it has ever been tried, but all its components have, and it is easily implemented and adjusted.