Why didn’t the Citizens’ Assembly opt for open lists?
Much of the opposition to Ontario’s election reform referendum has centered around the “unaccountable elites” who will occupy list seats. Why didn’t the Citizens’ Assembly opt for a more ostensibly democratic institutional design?
Mixed member proportional representation comes with two tiers or groups of seats. One includes the single-member districts we all know and love. Another group of seats is allocated to candidates on province-wide lists. Seats in this second group go to parties in order to make overall seat shares proportional to parties’ province-wide vote shares (here determined from the second list votes that voters would cast).
One could think of any number of ways to decide who gets onto the lists. One way is to have open lists. That is, voters decide which nominees are more likely to win seats by ranking or checking off individuals in the lists. Another way is to have closed lists where parties decide.
And one could think of a number of ways to make that internal decision-making process more or less democratic; the Citizens’ Assembly largely left these details for later. Opposition to MMP nonetheless has zeroed in on the fact that these members will be chosen by parties, not by voters in ridings. They will be unaccountable elites, to borrow the dominant frame.
At Fruits & Votes, Chris Lawrence “wonder[s] why the citizens’ commission didn’t propose an open list system rather than a closed list for the PR tier.”
According to the Citizens’ Assembly’s final report (pp 125), closed lists were chosen to make lists more representative and the ballot easier to use:
The groups also agreed that the party lists should be closed,although some individual members supported open lists. With closed lists, each party prepares an ordered list of candidates. Starting from the top of the list, the party’s candidates are elected and fill the party’s share of list seats. Some groups were in favour of stipulations for creating party lists, but the Assembly would discuss specific stipulations in Weekend Three. Members felt that a closed list, with some stipulations, would be simpler and more transparent than an open list, and more likely to increase representation of women and other under-represented groups.
In a sense, insulation from the demands of democratic popularity would have freed parties’ hands to construct fairer lists.
As far as the concern about elites goes, one observer notes that party leaders choose who gets to run in each riding anyway. My inclination is to corroborate this. I do not remember witnessing any primary elections in Canada - other than leadership elections - and Google searches are not (yet) showing any evidence that Canadians have primaries to determine who will stand in individual ridings.
Chris Lawrence on 10 Oct 2007 at 2:26 pm #
Thanks, Jack!
I think I can see the way closed list MMP is a bit more egregious than SMP/FPTP to people upset with party hacks getting nominations. If the Liberals or Conservatives put someone high on their list, they’re virtually assured of being elected; that’s not the case if the candidate is a sure vote loser in a constituency seat.
Jack on 10 Oct 2007 at 3:29 pm #
That does seem to be the fear in the coverage; (closed) list seats will lead to straight party hacks answerable to leadership but not to any voters.
Of course, leadership nominates the riding candidates anyway.
I hypothesize that the (closed) list objection was a red herring that descended from on high. People approach referenda with antipolitics in mind, ready and willing to vote no. Stoking fears about evil list elites will resonate. Nobody’s really discussed why the Citizens’ Assembly opted for closed lists (i.e. ethnic, gender and geographic diversity), and it’s a shame.
To highlight the positive, at least opposition has coalesced around this point rather than the usual, simplistic argument that PR is “too complicated” for voters.
Bob Richard on 11 Oct 2007 at 7:43 pm #
Many of the anti-MMP comments I saw used a neat way to spin the “party hacks” argument. They described the candidates who win list seats as “appointed” (by party bosses) rather than “elected” (by citizens).
The “too complicated” argument was used, of course, but less prominently than the two main arguments always used against PR. (1) Under FPTP, you have a “relationship” [sic] with “your own” [sic] member of the legislature. That person is “your” personal representative. (2) FPTP keeps “fringe” parties at bay. You know the drill.
I think people in the English speaking countries find this personal representative stuff genuinely appealing, in a way that arguments about percentages of votes and seats don’t really touch, precisely because they revolve around numbers. We need another way to state the case for PR and against the personal vote.
MSS on 12 Oct 2007 at 5:07 pm #
The alternative argument that folks here are looking for might start with the notion that you have a good chance of getting two (or perhaps more) “personal” representatives from your district under MMP. That is, the candidate who does not get the plurality in the riding might get elected anyway, and will be another representative who will be attentive to your interests (but perhaps from a more closely aligned partisan perspective).
I am not sure if that case is stronger with closed or open lists. But the incentive of dual-nominated list members to represent districts, even if elected off the list, is a real strength of MMP that does not get played up enough.
On the specific question of open lists in MMP, one of the most commented threads at Fruits & Votes (”MMP and dual candidacy,” permalinked on my left sidebar) was about just such an idea. The idea I presented there might not be good for the argument I suggest working on above. But it, too, was meant to be a starting point–for addressing a somewhat different problem.