REFERENDUM[B]
Today I got a little booklet in the mail from the provincial government. It was the official voter's guide to the referendum on electoral reform. Few things can get me as riled up as electoral reform. As I've said many times in the past, I don't understand our current voting system, at all. The method that prevails in this country – one which is wildly popular among the world's faux-democratic nations, like Myanmar and Indonesia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, Oman and Azerbaijan – is not how anyone makes decisions in their own life. First-past-the-post is not a favoured model for determining consensus or to deliver anything like an optimal choice. To the contrary, this is the method you'd use if you want to make it very likely that a winning party and it's leadership was not chosen, or therefor not supported, by a preponderance of the electorate. (Just as in every Canadian election in living memory.) This is the method you use if you wish to discourage people from voting for the person or party they like and, so as not to “waste” their vote, vote instead for a party that has sufficient popularity to win. We've all seen this in practice and may have done it ourselves. And there are many other legitimate concerns with our current mode, such as: that it's prone to manipulation through spoiler candidates, encourages counter-democratic gerrymandering, distorts regional representation, and more. So, what's not to like, right?
The metaphor I always use when describing first-past-the-post is a family get-together or staff dinner party. Let's say you're having such an event. Unless you're a sociopath, I'm going to assume you want everyone, or at least most people, to attend and for those who attend to have a good time. That's your basic goal. That being so, what you're not going to do is fail to accommodate most people. And you're not going to choose a venue explicitly disliked by the majority either. Even if you wanted make it “democratic”, and give everyone a say by polling them for their favourite food or restaurant, there's no sense at all in employing the first-past-the-post method. It just can't get you what you want. For example, if ten people are coming and four want to go for pasta, two want sushi, two want burgers, one wants Thai, and another is adamant that a fine dining experience would be best for everyone, under the first-past-the-post system you have an undeniable winner: pasta. But it's also undeniable that, by voting in this way, in your careless disinterest you needlessly created a scenario in which the majority, six of ten, will very likely be unhappy with the result. So merely having a selection of restaurants ignores people's actual needs and desires and makes no attempt to find common ground. That's obvious. (Sure, you can label this “democratic” all you like but it doesn't resemble “the will of the people” or even anything one could argue as “legitimate.”) In fact, what if the name, type of restaurant, and the region of origin for a restaurant's cuisine are all irrelevant or less critical than other factors? What if the only details that actually matter to anyone are the ingredients on the menu and the ability and likelihood of people to attend and spend some quality time with family or their colleagues? What if Gail uses a wheelchair and Carl is celiac, Jamu is vegan and Pat will need to bring her toddler if the event is after 6:30pm? Well, taking into account all these details doesn't mean you can't have a vote or that voting must be more complicated. You can and should narrow the options to the sushi place, Thai restaurant, and burger joint – all of which are accessible, suitable for kids, and have a variety of carnivore-, vegan-, and celiac-friendly items on their menu. Then by letting folks rank these restaurant options, rather than picking only one, you can weed out the least popular options and land on something that will, at the very least, work for everyone. That feels substantially more fair and reasonable than the alternative. Doesn't it? I think so. But is that enough? (That seems worth asking. No?)
Changing our voting system in this way is something we should have done generations ago. From where I stand that seems clear. I'm all for incremental progress, but none of the proposals on offer in this referendum address the biggest problems I see with our electoral system. From my perspective, there just isn't anybody in government who's a reasonable stand-in for you or me and, moreover, even if there were, in 2018 there appears little need to send the self-interested, ideologically skewed, pseudo-representative off to the capital. I mean, does anyone think they or any other individual can reasonably speak on behalf of an entire municipality, province, territory, or nation? What a silly idea. If so, you must also think one of the most cosmopolitan nations on Earth is composed of millions of fleshy androids, all running the same hardware and operating system. This mode feels deeply antiquated, and horrifically costly too. Can it be seen as anything but a hold-out from a pre-digital epoch? Today we should be moving on, transitioning to something more equitable and far more congruent with where we're all at; yet, our pending referendum puts up no twenty-first century options, nothing vaguely new, nor anything Canadian on the table. Instead, we have something like proportional representation via single transferable vote – formulated in 1819. Here's an election tool constructed back in an almost unrecognizable world whose population was almost entirely rural and illiterate. This is an idea perfectly designed for the organization and administration of a culture predating the invention and common usage of the postage stamp, safety pin, and match; long before the bicycle, typewriter, and sewing machine; earlier than the light bulb, telegraph, and radio; that had yet to imagine pasteurization, anaesthetics, the tin can, or even barbed wire! And if we go this route, gifting ourselves with this “new” electoral system, we would manage to elevate our democracy to a place Belgium, the Netherlands, and others arrived at around the start of the Industrial Revolution. This, to me, is like burning wood for heat and wax candles for light and then upgrading to coal and kerosine imported from Europe when solar heaters and LED lights are cheap, abundant, and ubiquitous. It's as though we're voting on whether or not we should mandate that everyone use only the post office or otherwise upgrade to the telegraph; and we're not even going to put on the table the telephone, text messaging, or email. That's what we're up to here, as far as I can tell. Is there are reason for this kind of quarter-hearted social scaffolding?
Moreover, what we're voting for is either the status quo or a method that holds up the same party politics and prescribed voter disengagement we've always had. Why do this? Why not use the tools at our disposal to engage voters while eliminating the sad and disruptive facade of party ideology, the perverted personality contest that gives voice to the worst of our biases, and the total illegitimacy of most of the people and parties we elect? Why not create a system where we could be our best selves and describe the world we'd like to live in, and do so from a sober moment of calm reflection, rather than have all of our futures mangled by some real or imagined existential threat, trade war or industrial upheaval, or the whims of a lone wolf politician or the radicalized wing of a party's leadership?
Too, why is our electoral system premised on the hope that, with no help from the media, millions of people will commit to the sixty hours necessary to research and weigh the available candidates and policy points? Is there any evidence that even 1% of voters have ever done this? Every election cycle I hear conversations in which someone is attributing a policy stance or political ambition to a party or a leader with the weakest of such schemes on offer, or to which said person is actually opposed. You’d think that if your stated intention is to vote for the party offering the largest cuts to corporate taxes you’d figure out what party is intending to do so most aggressively. But apparently that’s too much effort.
But then we may wish to ask why we program a system of governance that operates in line with party policy, or on the political whims of one person, and not through something approximating citizen consensus? No government, in the history of Canada, has ever had majority support from the electorate. This is not how our electoral system was designed or, no surprise then, functions.
And why is the work of governing executed by a selection of particularly egoistic and argumentative ex-lawyers, accountants, and business people preoccupied by their own private agendas, profiteering, and post-career schemings? (We've all watched people enter politics middle-class and leave after a decade on a government salary as a millionaire industry lobbyists and business consultant.) Why is this a deliberate design feature? Why not have this work done by politically disinterested public servants who would at least be immune to the legally sanctioned bribery and unmoved by any of the arbitrary distortions created by election cycles?
Why, too, do we still live in a place and at a time when the minister of the environment, say, is not required even to be so much as scientifically literate? Where the minister of education needn't have an education, nor have taught at any level? It's wacky. To me that's worse than not having ministers of the environment or education at all. I mean, you wouldn't have a minister of finance lacking in basic numeracy skills. What, exactly, is the difference?
I'd like it if we removed the needlessly wasteful and adversarial party system and provide the electorate dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of questions about their preferences on a wide range of issues. Instead of voting every four years (based almost entirely on who was least embarrassing during the final debate or otherwise being subconsciously compelled by your bias for gender, race, or sexual orientation, height, weight, hair style, or regional accent, etc...) why not give people all the time they need to complete a survey (that may be filled out in full or in part and updated at any time) to uncover where we as nation actually sit on relevant issues? What, are you one of these people who would argue that the current state of technology is sufficient for my taxes, banking, global financial markets and international trade and diplomacy, and all of humanity's daily communications – but is insufficient for my vote or some survey results? Uhh, okay.
And what of referendums? To me, our electoral system and government is something like professional sports. There are these bureaucrats who form various teams, each with their own coaches, management, and ownership. The public, who fund the whole project by paying for stadiums and buying tickets, merchandise, etc are allowed to watch games, vote on a game's MVP, and choose the make-up of the annual All-Star team. Some wish to call this “participation”. But that seems more silly than serious. The only thing more so would be if the pitcher and designated hitter (who've played for twenty years, were selected to the team for the skills they bring, and are paid $3 million to expertly fill this position) walked off the field in the eleventh inning of the World Series, calling random members of the public to take their place. This, to me, is what a referendum is.
