Collaborative Proposal Creation
Create, improve and sponsor proposals in a respectful, fully bilingual environment. Grow proposals in the "Hothouse", for promotion to the "Workshop", to become official GPC policy.
Proposal text
The Green Party of Canada will consider a Single Member Party Proportional Voting system alongside other Proportional Representation systems, and that a nation-wide Citizen’s Assembly will be held on democratic reform and will include presentations on all Proportional Representation systems.
Type of Proposal
Public policy that the party would represent
Objective / Benefit
The objective is to implement proportional representation in the voting system.
If your proposal replaces an existing policy or policies, which one does it replace?
N/A
List any supporting evidence for your proposal
N/A
Does this proposal affect any particular group and what efforts have been made to consult with the group or groups?
N/A
Jurisdiction: Is this proposal under federal jurisdiction?
Yes
Please indicate the language the proposal is being submitted in.
English
This proposal is being evaluated
Posted on the Continuous Motion Development Vote tab for member review prior to the all-member vote.
We're building a new kind of politics. One that is open, participatory, and people-powered
If you believe in what we're doing, please consider making a small donation to help us build it
Report inappropriate content
Is this content inappropriate?
Comment details
You are seeing a single comment
View all comments
Conversation with David Piepgrass
It seems clear from e.g. James M's response that it is not obvious what this proposal means.
My understanding of the proposal is basically "proportional representation without proportional seats". Typically under first-past-the-post, the biggest party will get 39% of the votes and 52% of the seats, the next will get 36% of the votes and 32% of the seats, etc. This proposal says "sure, party A gets 52% of the _seats_, but only 39% of the _power_ because each seat's voting power is prorated by the popular vote of the party as a whole (so each seat held by the biggest party has 39/52 = 75% its normal voting power)
There are many potential ways to do proportional representation or systems similar to proportional representation. I support all of them, and which one is best I haven't tried to figure out because the fine details are not important as long as Canadians have no chance of getting a PR bill passed. Therefore I am reluctant to back this one in particular.
Indeed I think neither the general public nor party members can predict, in advance, after looking at an idea for 5 minutes, how well it will perform. Instead I'd like a system that allows experimentation. Imagine if, instead, a bill was passed that included 4 PR or PR-like systems (two already used elsewhere in the world, and two new ideas). The bill specifies one system for the next election. But also, on the day after every election, voters can optionally return to polls and express approval or disapproval for each possible system, on a scale of 1 to 5 (blank = no opinion). Then, the top-rated system would be used at the beginning of the next election. Hopefully over the next hundred years we'd figure out which of the four works best.
See also: Simple Direct Representation https://medium.com/big-picture/simple-direct-representation-cd43becd9837
Not quite sure that I understand your logic in not backing this proposal because we aren't going to get PR anytime soon, and how well it will perform could be asked of any number of other proposals. What a number of people seem to be missing is that our SMPP is just another proposal that could be added to the list of possibilities. It is not meant to replace anything that anyone else prefers. I personally am not a fan of other systems that keep getting bought up, but I am not going to vote anything down simply because I don't think that it is going to work as well as my own preference. That's not for me to decide. Whichever system is going to be used is going to be determined by a Citizens Assembly. All this proposal is trying to do is to simplify the process so that PR is generally better understood by the general public. If the Citizens Assembly wants to change to another system at any time, we have no problem with that. One of the current preferred proposals involves changing electoral boundaries and having a second person to vote for. To me, that system is particularly convoluted. We think that we need to start off with a simpler system, which is why we made this proposal.
Loading comments ...