So what would it have looked like under preferential voting, using a ranked ballot? The answer, according to experts, is that we don’t know. Polling is not sophisticated enough to determine the real preferences that voters would have been allowed to express.

A great deal of the recent campaign was spent telling people to vote for their second choice for fear of what the results might be otherwise. And in fact, research shows that about half of Canadian voters sacrifice their first choice and vote strategically when given the opportunity. Under preferential voting, voters can state their true first, second, and third choices, without fear that “splitting the vote” would mean that someone ends up being elected who most voters don’t want.

The effect of this system on Canadian elections would be very positive. Scaremongering voters away from smaller parties would be ineffective, since you can vote for a less popular candidate knowing that your vote is not wasted, since your second choice gets counted if your first choice has no chance of winning. Negative campaigning is not rewarded, since candidates need second choice votes from the supporters of other candidates, so they try to not alienate them. Since you can only win if over 50% of the voters support you, candidates must build consensus within their community. What creates consensus may be different in different ridings, so candidates are less likely to just follow their party.

Besides more consensus and less negative campaigns, it tends to result in more women and minority candidates being elected. All of this is proven by rigorous research with a control group. The US uses preferential voting in about 20 jurisdictions, about 20 more will use it in November, and about 50 more are preparing to use it after that. Having some cities and states using it, and others not, means a built in control group.

It would be easy for Canada to adopt ranked voting. It is the second most popular electoral system in Canada. It is used by almost all federal and provincial parties to choose their own leaders and candidates. Unlike other electoral systems, it does not necessarily benefit some parties more than others. It might hurt parties who currently benefit from strategic voting or negative campaigning. Those who will benefit are individual candidates, whatever the party, who choose to campaign differently. This is why national trends don’t tell us who would have won. The ability to rank candidates means that local campaigns have a greater influence on the decision of local voters. And since they don’t have to vote strategically, they can finally vote their true preferences, whether it is based on the party or on the candidate, or both.

In a lot of cases, the vote is split several ways. Nineteen MPs won with less than 35% of the vote, one with only 28.5%. 67 of them won with less than 40%. We don’t know whether that means that a large majority of voters didn’t want them to be elected, the electoral system doesn’t ask the question. A disproportionate 34% of the 50 results where the winner had the lowest percentage of votes were in Quebec, possibly because they had more major party candidates per riding.

Strategic voting is important in Canada, with surveys showing that about half of Canadians vote strategically for their second choice to prevent someone from being elected when they have the opportunity. Strategic voting is a great way of correcting the flaws of a system that doesn’t ask what your second choice is, and therefore risks electing someone who most voters don’t want. Unfortunately, it can easily backfire. Without enough information about the level of support for each candidates in individual riding polls, even if half the voters are voting strategically for their second choice, they could easily get the result that they were most trying to avoid if they do not all agree which other candidate to support in order for the strategy to work.

Preferential or two-round voting would improve the legitimacy of those 215 MPs. In the case that an MP doesn’t have the clear support of 50% of the voters, voters would be asked for their second choice, to ensure that the MP they elect is actually their choice, not a numerical accident based on poor information about local voting intentions.

British Columbia held its third referendum on Proportional Representation. This one had several unusual features, designed to give PR every advantage. The government was contractually obliged, as a condition for the support of the 3-member Green Party caucus, to actively campaign for PR during the referendum. It was a mail-in ballot, not held with regular elections, which should have reduced turnout among those less committed to the issue. It was two questions, one essentially yes or no and the other ranked, with four different electoral systems, a complexity which should have deterred those who were less familiar with the topic, particularly since two of the proposed systems were unknown outside PR activist circles, and required a large investment of time for research on the part of voters. Of the four systems, only FPTP had the additional burden of requiring 50% on the first round, while subsequent rounds used preferential voting. Of course, preferential voting itself was not one of the options. The structure of the questions reduced the risk that someone might vote for FPTP because of an objection to a specific proposed system, since several alternative systems were proposed. Despite all of these advantages, voters rejected PR by an even larger margin than they had in the two previous referenda.

Preferential or ranked voting, on the other hand, made great strides in Canada and elsewhere this year. On October 22, the date of Ontario municipal elections, the first first ranked elections took place without a hitch in London. On the same day two municipalities allowed referenda to be held on electoral systems and in both cases preferential voting won. Kingston voters said yes by a margin of 63%, and Cambridge voters said yes by 56%. Neither referendum is binding, but Kingston council has already decided to act on the result and will implement ranked voting at the next municipal elections.

The New Brunswick Liberals had promised a 2020 electoral reform referendum on preferential voting, but that government lost a confidence vote, and apparently the new government does not intend to hold this referendum. In total, three wins in Canada and one setback.

In the US, ranked voting had several major wins, despite strong resistance from politicians. In April, Maine’s legislature had passed a measure to block the implementation of ranked voting that a 2016 referendum had approved. By June, Maine voters had forced a new referendum and then passed a “people’s veto” to overturn this implementation delay. As a result, this year’s primaries as well the federal congressional elections in November were held under the ranked voting system in Maine for the first time. Incumbent politicians fought this in the courts repeatedly and were repeatedly rebuffed.

Several more municipalities in the US switched to ranked voting this year, and more decided to switch. The New Mexico Local Elections Act made it easier for cities to adopt ranked choice voting. Santa Fe had its first ranked municipal election in 2019, and Las Cruces decided to switch in 2019. In mid November, Utah allowed municipalities to experiment with other election methods, and so far four cities have announced their intention to use ranked voting. During the November election, Fargo North Dakota approved a referendum to change to Approval voting, and Memphis voters reconfirmed instant runoff voting in a second referendum, which incumbent politicians were trying to repeal. In June, San Francisco held a special election for mayor using ranked voting, which was won in the 9th round by London Breed, the first black woman to hold the office. This is one more data point in the emerging trend that jurisdictions using ranked ballots elect more women of colour and other minorities.

In West and North Africa, several countries are introducing or returning to two-round elections at the insistence of grassroots movements, including Gabon and Togo, and with the movement continuing but not yet successful in places like Tunisia.

What the successful electoral reform campaigns had in common was that they were not initiated or supported by political parties. Most were citizen-initiated referenda passed without any support or help from parties, and over the objections of incumbents. Smaller and urban parties benefit from PR voting and therefore propose it in their platform. Voters reject it because they don’t like party-initiated changes to voting that will benefit that party. Ranked voting, on the other hand, benefits voters at the expense of parties. Most parties wouldn’t benefit, and the parties that think they might benefit are mistaken.

The solution to electoral reform is to reject the changes that parties are pushing and instead have voter-led initiatives to introduce electoral systems that parties do not like.

We could go through the methodology of each of those studies and explain what it is really saying, given the high correlation between the voter’s opinion of the person and their opinion of the party, but there is a much more conclusive test: when the MPs who change parties run again under the new party banner, do they get re-elected or do the voters punish disloyalty to the party they voted for, and vote for the same party again?

The majority of floor crossers get re-elected, between 50 and 60% win again under the new party.  In general, incumbents who stay with the same party have a 75% chance of being re-elected.  Incumbents have something like a 10% greater chance of winning than non-incumbents.  How much of that incumbency advantage is from the individual and how much from the party, that is to say if a different person from the party of the incumbent runs, how much advantage do they have?  The data say none of the advantage transfers to the new candidate.

Like it or not, the evidence is clear that the candidate as an individual is very important to voters.  Some voters vote for the individual and some for the party, and probably most consider both factors and even others such as who do they wish not to represent them.  The logic of most electoral reforms breaks down unless you believe that each voter votes for a party and consents to have their vote transferred to a different individual of the same party.

One of the advantages of single-member systems like preferential systems and to some degree FPTP is that they allow voters to vote for individuals or for parties or for any other criteria they wish.  Electoral reform that presumes that votes are for parties takes away the franchise of a large part of voters.  On the other hand, reform like preferential voting, which allows them to express their second choices, which they never had the opportunity to express in the past, increases their franchise.

The good news is that BC has decided to use preferential voting in its referendum.  The bad news, part of it anyway, is that preferential voting can only be used if you support proportional representation.  The bad news continues:  preferential voting is not one of the four options that voters can choose from.  One is first past the post and three are complicated versions of proportional representation.  More bad news, the four options are not equal.  First past the post will require more votes to win than do the proportional options.

There will be two questions.  The first is a choice between first past the post and one of the three proportional representation models.  Unless first past the post gets over 50% of the votes in the first round, it gets eliminated.  The second question is the ability to rank the three proportional systems.  Those who do not want proportional representation will not be able to vote on this second question in good conscience, so the decision will be made by the remaining voters.  Two of the three PR options are obscure ones that have never been used in any other elections anywhere.  It also seems that the election will be a mail-in ballot with no minimum threshold.  This means that only those who are motivated to vote and who believe that they understand the options are likely to actually vote.

We do not support first past the post.  However, we urge our members and supporters in BC to lie on the ballot and claim that they do support it, and to void the second ballot if the rules allow it.  The combination of constraints on the voting and the absence of a preferential alternative make is clear that this referendum is not intended as an honest consultation of BC voters, this is an attempt to guarantee a result that will give a permanent electoral advantage to some parties and a disadvantage to others.

The polls show that this election is not about which candidate or government voters want, it is about which one they do not want.  According to a recent poll, a third of total voters, and half the voters for candidates of one party are voting only to prevent someone from being elected.

First past the post voting makes it difficult to achieve this primary objective of a large part of voters.  There is no built in mechanism to ensure that voters can prevent someone from being elected if voters don’t want them elected.  In fact, elections such as this are the ideal conditions for the votes of the electorate to have exactly the opposite effect from what was intended.  With voters casting strategic ballots but without accurate information about the intentions of other voters in their own riding, and possibly being misled by province-level polls and misleading information from parties, it is possible to accidentally elect the very candidate that the majority was trying to avoid electing.

If in your riding the majority wants to prevent Candidate A from being elected, and the majority think that Candidate B is much better than Candidate C, there is no way for strategic voters to communicate to each other that Candidate B is their preference, and many may vote for their less preferred Candidate C, mistakenly believing that this minimizes the risk of accidentally electing Candidate A.

Proportional representation has even less of a mechanism for ensuring that a particular candidate or government is not elected.  A majority consensus not to elect someone is not sufficient to stop them being elected, only a small percentage of votes is required for someone to be elected.  Even with a strong feeling against an entire party, the results will be roughly the same as the absence of a strong feeling against them: their supporters will vote for them and there will be a stalemate from the voters, after which politicians will decide among themselves who governs, making deals based on their own self-interest.

Preferential voting is the electoral system that lets voters pass a negative judgment and effectively prevent someone from representing you if that is the wish of the majority.  It does this without guesswork as to the intentions of others and without requiring access to information that is currently very difficult to get.  It prevents the accidental election of the candidate that the majority was trying to stop.  And it does all this without sacrificing your ability to vote for your first choice.  It is equally applicable for a positive vote or a negative vote, for a vote for or against a party or for or against a candidate.

However, mathematics is unforgiving, and there are few electoral systems that guarantee more proportionality without going in the wrong direction on the democratic values that we hold.

We care about getting consensus from voters, and we don’t care much about consensus from politicians.  We care about fairness to voters, not about fairness to parties.  We don’t care, and don’t even know, which party will most benefit from preferential voting, nor what type of party, nor whether parties in general benefit or independents, we only care that voters be tasked with choosing who represents them.  We care that minority views of voters be heard, but not necessarily minority parties.  When it comes to who represents us in Parliament, we definitely think that those being represented need to consent – that there is a difference between extremists that the majority of voters wants to block and those who are not the first choice of many but where there is no strong feeling to keep them out.  We don’t want to task other politicians with keeping extremists away from power, trusting that they will do so even if it goes against their self-interest.  We want major decisions to be made by voters, not by mathematical flukes or by politicians having a weak mandate. And oddly enough we want people who have different values from us to also be able to vote according to their political values, as long as we are not prevented from voting according to ours with equal legitimacy.

We are often distressed, in other countries, when elections held according to whatever system are held and a clear consensus from the voters does not appear, especially when the decision about who will govern and according to what policies gets made not by the voters but by the leader of a small party looking out for their own self-interest.  There are countries where after every election, it is consistently up to the leader of the third or fourth party, sometimes having obtained little consensus from constituencies, that makes that determination after the election.

It is often that last criterion about letting others vote according to different values that make us reject most classic proportional systems.  We do not want someone to be forced to vote for a party if their primary motivation is the individual MP.  If they are given one vote for the candidate and one for the party, we find it unfair that the party-minded get to cast two votes according to their values while the candidate-minded get only one, particularly if that one plays no role in determining who will govern.  We want those who value voting against someone rather than for something to have that opportunity.  We think that obtaining a 50% consensus is important for all MPs, not just the PM.  Most proportional systems let MPs get in with an even smaller percentage of the vote than they typically get now, but we want to increase it to 50%.

It’s unfortunate, but it’s difficult to find a system that increases the legitimacy of elections in the eyes of some without decreasing it in the eyes of others.  We have only found one.  It starts with changing to preferential voting while keeping single-member districts.  It means that you do not get through vote-splitting an accidental winner that most voters did not want.  Right now that possibility is already reduced thanks to the many voters who vote strategically to prevent this outcome when given the opportunity, but with preferential voting that result would be guaranteed.

Those voters who value proportional results would then be free to organize strategic voting designed to increase the proportionality of the outcomes.  Those who don’t value proportionality are free not to participate in this strategic voting.  This would require more accurate riding-by-riding polls than what is typically released by polling firms, and therefore steps would need to be taken to make sure that this information becomes available to voters.  We would not be offended if the results turned out to be perfectly proportional since this would be achieved without forcing anyone to vote according to values that are not theirs.

New Zealand spent a month without knowing who would form the government.  Candidates of the National Party won 41 of the 71 electorate seats and Labour won 29.  New Zealand First won none.  However, compensatory seats are awarded to parties who don’t do well in getting their candidates elected in constituencies, so the final seat count was National 56, Labour 46, NZ First 9, Green 8, ACT 1.  A month after the election, it was the leader of the anti-immigration NZ First party, who had just lost his own electorate seat and 25% of his party’s total seats, that decided that the Labour leader should be Prime Minister instead of the National leader.

In Germany, nearly two months after the election, no decision has yet been made on who will form the government.  Angela Merkel’s CDU party won 185 of the 299 electorate seats, their nearest rival 59 seats, but again compensatory seats went to 5 other parties, making it impossible to form a government of less than 3 or 4 parties.

In FPTP, and even more so with preferential or two-round voting, when there is a difficult choice to be made like who should form the government, it is voters who make the required compromises.  Either through strategic voting in FPTP or explicit second or third choices in preferential and two-round, voters use their second choices to ensure that the government is among their top choices even if it’s not their first, and mostly to keep someone out of government.

In proportional systems, it is not voters who make the decision of who governs, but certain party leaders.  Based on mathematical flukes that were not the conscious decision of the electorate, the decision will be made by the leader of one or more small parties.  The amount of support that these parties require to be empowered to make that decision is quite small. Taking away that power from a small party is difficult.  Even if nearly 95% of the population agrees that this party leader should not be the one making that decision, that is typically not enough to take away their king-making power.

The theory of those systems is that political leaders are better than voters at the pragmatic negotiations to make that decision.  From the point of view of those who have a great deal of confidence in their first choice party, that makes some sense.  But in practical terms, voters routinely make those pragmatic decisions to support someone else for the greater good.  When was the last time you saw a politician do that, compromise for the greater good?  Do leaders of small parties make the same compromises and decisions that voters would have?  Evidence shows that they don’t.  When asked who they most approved of, the government or the opposition, voters in FPTP and preferential systems chose the government and those in proportional systems chose the opposition.  On average, proportional systems put the “wrong” side into government, and those governments are more likely to include a party that the majority disapproves of.

It is the opinion of 123 Canada that it is voters, not leaders of small parties, who should decide who is the government.  Allowing voters to express their second choices is an excellent way to do this.  Rather than giving power to leaders of small parties, it gives power to their supporters, the individual voters, by asking them, not the politicians, “if not your first choice then who?”

France elects its president directly, with a two-round system.  In the first round four candidates got between 20% and 24% of the vote.  All but the top two were eliminated, including the candidates of both major parties.  The second round was between newcomer Emmanuel Macron, whose party is barely 8 months old, and Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National.

Imagine what would have happened if instead, the choice of president had been by proportional parliamentary elections like in many European countries.  The Front National and Debout la France would have campaigned under a joint list.  That is what they are planning to do for the parliamentary elections, and with DLF just under 5% it would be the logical thing to do.  This joint list would have received more votes and more seats than other likely joint lists.  Under European tradition, this would have meant Le Pen can form the government.  With France’s current system, the far right is virtually shut out, very rarely do they get a 50% consensus of a riding.

The BC election’s results, before recounts, is 43 to 41 to 3, a minority.  The campaign was dominated by talk of vote splitting and strategic voting.  The party that won 3 seats has three conditions for voting confidence in a government.  Two are about eliminating types of donations that the other two get and they don’t, and the third is a change to Proportional Representation with no referendum.

This illustrates what a lot of people fear about electoral change: that small parties will dominate and change the rules to their benefit, and that policies that a large majority did not support might become enshrined because it would be backroom deals between politicians after the election, and not the voters themselves, that determine what political compromises are made.  We don’t know how the election would have turned out under Preferential or Two-round voting, since without strategic voting and if 50% was required to win, the results could have been different, but we prefer that each candidate present prior to the election which compromise they will make to earn 50% support, and then let voters decide.

Otherwise you can end up with a situation like Italy.  Italy had two referenda in the 90s to replace their PR system with a single-member district system.  These referenda showed a massive majority, 91% and 97% wanted to get rid of PR.  The legislature never acted.  Small parties, required to form a coalition, made it a condition that PR stay.  The ruling party, named “Abolish PR” on ballots, merely tweaked the system.

This is a rare day in Canadian electoral history: every riding has a true majority.  Welcome to the House of Commons, Bob Benzen, Stephanie Kusie, Mary Ng, Mona Fortier, and Emmanuella Lambropoulos, who at the time of writing all seem headed to win with over 50% of the vote.

In this instance, Preferential or Two Round voting would not be necessary.  However, many elections are won without a majority mandate from voters.  In those cases, the mandate of the MPs can be clear cut.  First Past the Post allows an MP to be elected even if the majority of the voters do not want to be represented by that MP.  Allowing voters to express their second choice means candidates will seek the consensus that they need to get the true majority support.