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?
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Ontario just hours from MMP referendum

This is it. By this time tomorrow, Ontario will have decided whether to replace its single-member winner-take-all system with mixed-member proportional representation. It’ll be the second time a Citizens’ Assembly convened, studied the options and recommended a PR alternative. It’ll be the second time a ballot question on PR faced a threshold higher than the vote shares of the single-party governments that stoked interest in reform. Will it be the second time a referendum fails?
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Indicators from Ontario

In my last post on the upcoming MMP referendum, I highlighted some challenges the ‘yes’ side faces:

1. A threshold of 60% of votes province-wide.

2. At least 50% voting ‘yes’ in each of 60% of ridings.

3. Most voters don’t know what mixed member proportional representation is, and voters who don’t understand a ballot measure generally default to the ‘no’ position.

Canoe.ca has some numbers for us (emphasis mine):

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In two weeks, Ontario votes on fairness

The referendum about to happen in Ontario is important – and not just because it novelly challenges the hegemony of plurality electoral rules in Anglo-America. It could be a referendum on fairness.
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Allocation of list seats under Ontario MMP

WARNING: This post will be of interest to a narrow group of readers. My aim is to put the information into the blogosphere in an easily Googlable form.

Roy Rupert asks of my blogfather:

“What is the secret formula for apportionment? Hundreds of web sites – not one bit of hard facts!”

I believe I have found the answer in the final report of the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. See page 156 of the PDF aforelinked. The answer is Hare quota with largest remainders.

$500 to oppose unstable minority governments

Ontario, Canada’s upcoming referendum on mixed member proportional representation made the Economist today.

So far, the ‘no’ side has raised $500 CDN for a lit piece. And that’s it.

A “Vote for MMP” campaign has set up an office in Toronto and claims a dozen chapters in the province; its opponents have managed to raise just C$500 ($470) to print a leaflet. Both are relying on a C$6-7m educational campaign by the election agency.

For the referendum to pass, that educational campaign has to convince 60% of voters and majorities in 60% of ridings. Maybe that’s why the ‘no’ side doesn’t seem too worried.

According to the Economist, “unstable minority governments” are the main opposition talking point. They really mean coalition governments, and there’s nothing inherently unstable about one of those. I’d argue a “minority government” is something else, and the article gives a good example of one:

At the last provincial election in 2003, the Liberals won 46.5% of the vote but 70% of the seats.

Ontario will vote on “personalized PR”

This will not be news to some DP readers. On October 10, voters in Ontario, Canada will decide whether to switch to a mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting system for provincial parliamentary elections.

MMP was born in post-war Germany, where its name roughly translates to “personalized proportional representation.” The basic idea is to have two tiers: a dominant collection of single-member plurality districts and some set of list seats. List seats are allocated to parties in order to even out any disproportion of seats to votes resulting in the districts.

In other words, the district elections “personalize” the PR resulting from the list tier; having ‘one’s own MP’ counterbalances the party-strengthening tendency of list PR. Much opposition nonetheless is based on a fear that party control of who gets to be on the lists will shift the balance in favor of elites at the expense of voters. An op-ed in today’s Toronto Star holds this as a principal reason for MMP’s 2005 defeat in Prince Edward Island.

There are variants of MMP. Party lists can be polity-wide, or they can apply to smaller multi-member districts. List votes can be determined from voters’ district votes, or voters can have two votes (allowing them to support a party and split their ticket at the district level, if they so choose). The list and district tiers can have a fixed number of seats each, or the magnitude of the list tier can fluctuate (as happens in Germany).

The Ontarian proposal calls for a two-vote system with fixed shares (90 districts, 39 list seats). To win list seats, parties must cross a province-wide 3% threshold. If a party wins more district seats than entitled to by its province-wide vote share, it will keep the seats (versus fluctuating the size of the legislature, above). Specifics are available at a very user-friendly website the government has put up as part of its public information campaign.

To pass, the proposal will require a 60% super majority province-wide and simple majorities in 64 of 111 ridings (single-member districts). A 2005 proposal in British Columbia to switch to the single transferable vote required a 60% province-wide and majorities in 60% of the province’s ridings. That vote fell barely 3% short province-wide. Another referendum is expected in 2009.

Both Ontario and BC’s proposals came from Citizens Assemblies – a group of ‘average people’ recruited (and modestly compensated) to learn about electoral systems, review the options and make a recommendation.