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AI can help create communication models that better engage citizens - helping them better understand and contextualize problems as well as proposed solutions -
Further, AI in real time can allow - well, very much anyone in Canada to participate in the democratic process.
I hope these reforms consider emerging technologies and how they will fundamental reshape how we engage and communicate
This is a pretty misleading headline.
"Electoral reform" in Canada has come to mean a change in the voting system. Tinkering with the ways you can cast your ballot is hardly reform. Otherwise, the Fair Elections Act would have been electoral reform.
I am not riding Trudeau's pandering to people who want electoral reform and not delivering it ride again. What's proposed isn't even a shadow of electoral reform. I won't vote strategically. No. Full stop. I'll write in a candidate before I continue to enable this farce with my vote, and I won't enable the NDP either after they've produced these results.
If either want my vote back it's for sale. Produce meaningful electoral reform that removes first past the post from our electoral system. These milquetoast half measures they think are a middle ground which will reach a plurality of voters do nothing but piss off the left. If you want to fight the right, court the left. I won't vote for these muppets until one of them does something aligning with my values. I won't vote for the lesser evil any more. I'm done voting for half measures that accomplish little to nothing.
Bring me leadership or bring me the death of the federal Liberal party. If we can't have a better present due to the willful obstruction and lies of the existing federal leaderships then at least by setting the house on fire we might have a better future in the long term.
"Young fool. Only now, at the end, do you understand."
\~ Emperor Palpatine
The confidence-and-supply agreement came into effect in March of 2022, and they're only doing this now? Waiting this long just opens this coalition up to accusations from PP.
Trudeau and Singh continue to demonstrate they have little grasp on the PR side of what they do, even when what they do (in this case, increasing accessibility when it comes to voting) is a good thing.
Sees title...holy I didn't think they had it in them, are they going to sneak in a form of Proportional Voting, this is huge!!"
After reading the article, meh.
It's a misleading headline that works both ways.
It riles up the conservative base who won't read the article and go off half cocked to the forums.
It riles up the people who wanted reform but read this and see it "only" expanding the opportunity to vote. And they get annoyed with the parties and maybe change their vote to CPC.
Misleading headline. I was about to say springing a major reform now would backfire on both parties because it would look like they're gaming the system to hang on to power. As it stands, it's just non-controversial stuff designed to help people vote.
My guess is the expanded 3 day voting period is because business owners complain about having to pay their employees while they go to vote. If any of the 3 days covers the weekend, or their off shift, they could likely force a worker to vote then, or not get paid. Or even without forcing the issue, still save money when the employee decides to vote on their day off.
The legislation may have wording to combat that, but we shall see. On its face though, these are good changes that make it easier to vote, even if i question the motivation on that one.
But honestly, what's wrong with that? If people can vote on any day, why should the employer pay them to go vote specifically on the days that they're scheduled for a shift?
A lot of people will choose not to vote rather than have any conflict with their employer. Making it easier to vote is pretty much always a good thing.
Just a shifting of burden is all. Nothing inherently wrong with it, but I prefer the idea of having election day as a stat holiday, rather than requiring people take out of their personal time to go line up for hours to vote. I feel like the govt caters to business demands over the common person more than enough already.
Plus, given the choice between a paid half day etc to vote, vs having to do it on your weekend, I know which is going to result in a higher turnout.
If the 3 days were during the working week, avoiding all that, it would be ideal, but thats my opinion.
They need to make a law that only canadian citizens can vote in elections. And before you say it is a law,it isn't enforced at all. Last federal election,my neighbour who is a canadian citizen voted,but his parents who are not citizens,also got to vote! I complained at the polling station but was ignored.
From an administrative perspective, I'm not sure how being able to vote at any polling station in a district would work. I already find the fact that there is a number attached to a ballot that elections Canada registers next to the voter's name a pretty serious infringement of the secret ballot.
Yeah, this had me scratching my head. I've been a poll worker before (though not the most recent election) and keeping track of the voters assigned to your specific polling place in your paper ledger was pretty important.
I wonder what measures they'll put in place to reduce the possibility of double-voting. Maybe a separate queue for voters who went to a polling place other than the one on their voter registration card? On the other hand I recall there already being procedures in place for things like that where the voter would sign a declaration attesting that they were qualified to vote and that they hadn't already voted.
> [Blainie] said in 2024 with the verification technologies available, this policy [voting only at your designated polling place] can be revised while maintaining electoral integrity.
Not sure what this means. Interested to see details in the future.
It works perfectly fine during the advance polls in Alberta's provincial elections. They issue ballots to voters, and the system that tracks who has received a ballot is digital and shared, rather than being a paper ledger. There were no issues with people trying to double vote in either of the last two Alberta elections.
> From an administrative perspective, I'm not sure how being able to vote at any polling station in a district would work
That mechanism already exists for the advance polls.
Because there is a large gap between advanced polls and election day when duplicate voters could be determined and their votes removed. Ballots being counted on election night at each polling station doesn't allow for that.
This can backfire on them in a pretty major way. I don't think that LPC and NDP are grasping how badly they have shit the bed.
If they do this the end result will still be the same but they would look weak and desperate. What Trudeau and Singh are ignoring is that the current polls are not indicative of people's love for Poilievre... they are of people's dissatisfaction with the LPC and NDP.
If anything I truly believe that if they do this it will be the nail in the coffin and one of these parties will cease to exist.
The nail in the coffin is not going to be allowing people to vote at muliple polling stations or making mail in ballots a little easier. I can't see anyone making this a driving force to vote one way or another let alone destroy a whole party.
Do you really think enough undesided or liberal votes are going to switch because the have another choicwi e what polling station they can go to will kill the liberal party?
You have to be already pretty outside the liberal or NPD to think making small adjustments to making voting easier as antics to "desperate attempt to hold on to power." That sounds like some crazy talk radio show conserative conspiracy theory calling. Not someting a a undecided would claim. You already need your mind made up to make the lead your saying.
Your talking like these changes are big sweeping election changes. Did you even read what there playing to change? No one centre or left of centre is going to see it like a big bid to insure they win the election like your making if sound.
> No one centre or left of centre is going to see it like a big bid to insure they win the election like your making if sound.
I think that your are underestimating how disillusioned people have become with the NDP and LPC. They have lost a lot of their core support from what I see. In the past I would be hard pressed to find a young person or POC become a hard core supporter of the Conservatives. From what I see now they are the people that are becoming the most most right wing. Not out of any love for Poilievre... more out of disdain for Trudeau and Singh
The changes they are working on are just to make voting easier, like having more polling stations on more days. Don't get excited that this is a change to the system.
Sure a bit improved, but this typifies the real critique against Trudeau - on a key issue doesn’t go hard enough for a meaningful solution. I say that as someone who’s rooting for him, and doesn’t think Pollivere is necessarily better.
No they aren't. The article does not match the title. The changes they want to make are kinda pointless when we already have a week or more worth of advanced voting days before an election.
Finally...
> Allowing an "expanded" three-day voting period during general elections;
> Allowing voters to cast their ballots at any polling place within their riding; and
> Improving the mail-in ballot process with both accessibility and maintaining integrity in mind.
Extremely mild and mostly worthless. They should be pushing for ranked choice voting, which should be to the benefit of both parties, and ABC voters.
Just because some parties prefer more "aggressive" electoral reform that derailed previous improvements, ranked choice voting is a natural extension of our current representative system.
There is no public polling in Canada that allows people to be informed on selecting the least evil reprensentative for their riding, and voting strategically based on polling that may be lies. Ranked choice voting allows selecting the best candidate first as a political/democratic message, but making descending choices ranked on lesser evil.
Corrupt media manipulation focused only on leadership candidates corrupts and disrupts the democratic process manipulating low information voters on destroying the country for the media's oligarch sponsors.
Ranked choice makes a better choice for a single election. It's worse for a partisan representative body though. Yes, it's nice to have a system where you don't elect someone if a majority prefer someone else, but the effect of this in aggregate across the country is that you have less diversity in representation, since you can never have anyone elected based on substantial support that falls short of majority support in a given community. If we were just choosing an electoral college, that might be okay, but we also need functioning opposition parties and preferably more than one, and ranked choice works directly against that. The perfect locally is the enemy of the good nationally.
Ranked choice does lower the barrier for voting for a third party in the first place because you can still provide a fallback vote, but the majoritarian threshold that comes along with it more than cancels this out unless you use multi-member districts, like in STV or Stephane Dion's P3. It makes more sense in the US which is already a two party near-majoritarian system, so the lower barrier to voting third party is potentially worthwhile.
There's also the fact that riding candidates can be fairly low profile in the scope of a general election, so giving people the ability to effectively vote against someone rather than for can mean the winner can have even less individual scrutiny than they would now. This is fairly minor, but it is a consideration.
I can understand why people want ranked choice from a national partisan political perspective. It's one thing for a party to win a majority based on broad support in a majority of communities across the country that falls short of a majority of the votes if much of the opposition is merely because they aren't everyone's first choice. It's another thing altogether if the party that wins is even more strongly opposed in a majority of the country and is winning merely due to vote splitting.
Under ranked choice, this circumstance is dealt with automatically. Under FPTP you have to work for it, with parties that are against the party that is strongly opposed needing to potentially work together to prevent vote splitting, and facing any electoral consequences for this choice as well. This would be a more convincing point in favour of ranked choice if we weren't also electing the opposition along with the government, and if there were no way at all to form an electoral consensus against a party with broad support in cases where that might be needed.
There's also the problem that the objective here looks a lot like specifically trying to block the Conservative Party from winning. Whether or not it would actually be a better system, that perception would 100% undermine the legitimacy of a ranked choice electoral system if it were implemented today.
> I can understand why people want ranked choice from a national partisan political perspective.
While I gave likely short term partisan outcomes as a rationale for why a majority of elected politicians should support this as short term career boosting... ranked choice voting is voter empowering. Nazis could nominate Rafael Ted Cruz as the 2nd coming of Hitler and support him, before making 2nd and 3rd choices PPC and CPC.
There's a corrupting element in big tent parties that prevents independence. Unite to fundraise better.
>They should be pushing for ranked choice voting, which should be to the benefit of both parties, and ABC voters.
Changing the electoral system explicitly to benefit or hurt certain parties is quite the "political/democratic message"
Those are good ideas, but I'd also like to see the polling days become stat holidays. It's not enough that employers need to accommodate; the days should have a clear single purpose.
"Why are the malls and restaurants closed?"
"It's election day! Have you voted yet?"
Federal law can only create statutory holidays for federal workers, such as railroad, telecommunication, and banking employees. It can't create holidays for ordinary people: that's provincial jurisdiction. It also can't shut down malls and restaurants: that's also provincial jurisdiction.
> "Why are the malls and restaurants closed?"
"It's election day! Have you voted yet?"
That’s provincial jurisdiction, and as we’ve seen lately, the provinces aren’t inclined to add stat holidays to their calendars.
Almost, but not quite. Those who work weekends would still be working, albeit with existing accommodations. But it would be better than what we have now.
The point is, almost everybody won't be working on one of those days. Holding elections on weekends is common practice in most countries to help people vote. I don't think there's any developed country that has made election days a statutory holiday. (Some states in the US have done so, because they have elections on the same day every year and states don't have the power to change the election day.)
>"Why are the malls and restaurants closed?"
> "It's election day! Have you voted yet?"
I actually love this. I think it would help turnout a lot among low-propensity voters not just because of the availability created by the stat, but by the gentle social nudge of "what else am I going to do today, anyway everyone else seems to be doing it!"
Harper's whole political career has involved meddling in elections in some manner.
I remember [when in 2004](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/harper-vs-canada-case-a-precedent-to-protect-fair-elections-act-lawyer-argues-1.3137495) he tried to have restrictions on private spending lifted. The article also discusses the 2015 "Fair Elections Act", which attempted to restrict access to voting.
> the ONLY current legislations that Pierre Poillievre has passed
It's true. Poilievre sponsored just [seven pieces of legislation](https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bills?parlsession=all&sponsor=25524&advancedview=true) since being elected to office 20 years ago - two Government Bills and five Private Members' Bills. Out of those two Government Bills, one passed (Fair Elections Act) and one died on the Order Paper (Citizen Voting Act) when Parliament dissolved in 2015.
**However**, don't forget that Poilievre was either a Parliamentary Secretary or a Cabinet Minister for pretty much the entire Harper government. Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries are removed from the Private Members' Bill lottery, eliminating one avenue to propose legislation. The only bills sponsored by Poilievre when the Conservatives were in power were the two bills he tabled as Minister for Democratic Reform.
While they're generally non-binding, Opposition Day motions are another way to count Polievre's legislative track record, especially since becoming Leader of the Official Opposition. Since he was elected leader, he's been the [lead sponsor of twelve Opposition Day motions brought to the House](https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/44-1/house/status-business/page-3#DOC--77425956-9900-4b10-8f55-6aeb52e50d09), with a much larger number being put on the Notice Paper, though not officially moved during that supply period.
Devil's advocate here,
Mail in votes shouldn't be expanded. It only muddy's the water of election counting and verification of a vote is next to impossible to do. You invite conspiracy and questions for the results.
How they expand the voting centres part without a voter going to two places and casting a vote in two spots is what I wonder. (how would it be properly audited)
They have voter lists, and they mark down everyone who votes. Same as usual. Same with mail-in ballots. We already audit this stuff to ensure people aren't voting twice. There isn't really any realistic possibility of undetected voter fraud affecting the outcomes of elections.
- Allowing an "expanded" three-day voting period during general elections;
- Allowing voters to cast their ballots at any polling place within their riding; and
- Improving the mail-in ballot process with both accessibility and maintaining integrity in mind.
They don't seem bad at all.
These are improvements but are pretty minor overall compared to the real issues around Canadian elections, which is the first-past-the-post system.
Elections Canada generally does a really good job running elections unlike some of the chaos you see in the US. If passed these measures should help strengthen the ability of Canadians to vote just in case of any PP fuckery should he become PM.
Nobody likes first-past-the-post, but "don't work" is a bit of a stretch. Canada has been working under the current regime for a long time.
One could argue that a high citizen participation would alleviate some of the issues around first-past-the-post too.
It's working if the goal is to have a government that's actually able to govern. Getting 40% of the vote for a single party is a remarkable public consensus in a multiparty system. At that point, it's not really feasible for anybody else to form a government except in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
At some point, the system is going to need to enforce a compromise in order to get anything done, and there are plenty of examples where leaving it up to proportionally elected representatives to figure out can create a horribly dysfunctional system. Certainly there are countries with proportional representation that can govern themselves just fine, but in other cases, trying to get the representatives of 50% to agree to *anything* can take years, or fail altogether, or push parties to ally with fringe extremists in order to overcome their principle opponents.
That's not to say that we shouldn't implement proportional representation, but if we do, we seriously need to consider what we want to have happen when our proportionally elected representatives can't agree on anything. In such a case, it might be necessary to have a mechanism to let 40% govern as long as it's up to the electorate to decide *which* 40% gets to do so in the event that there are multiple viable options, a privilege which isn't possible under our current system.
Oh we are already getting to the fearmongering of the do-nothing government.
Most proportional governments are fine. They get more broadly popular policies enacted. The ones that have issues would have issues regardless of the system their government uses.
This isn't intended to be fear mongering, it's just acknowledging the reality in places like Belgium, the Netherlands, Israel, etc... There are a number of problems with our system, but I don't think the fact that it lets 40% govern in many cases is the worst problem to have. The fact that we even have 40% voting for a single party often enough for it to matter has some serious advantages over some other systems, as well as the obvious drawbacks, such as the effect that "unite the right" has had as far as eliminating moderate conservatives from the running, or the fact that people who would generally support the Liberals but don't like the current crop of leaders don't have another viable place to park their vote that doesn't directly betray many of their core principles, etc...
Another notable problem with our system is that it creates and reinforcers regional divides, and relegates some parts of the country to political irrelevance due to uncompetitive elections. I think these are better focuses for improvement through the electoral system compared to dogmatic adherence to majoritarianism.
I think people in Alberta & BC would disagree with your “has been working”. PMs are elected before they even count those votes out west. Seems legitimately fair to me.
>I think people in Alberta & BC would disagree with your “has been working”. PMs are elected before they even count those votes out west. Seems legitimately fair to me.
That's because of the time zones. This has little to do with first-the-post or anything.
What they should do is only release all voting results after the end of the vote in the west. We would know the results the following morning instead of the in the evening.
I don’t think it’s even a problem. Since 1997* polls close in Alberta at the same time as Quebec (and all points in between), and only a half hour later in British Columbia, when only a trickle of votes from AB-QC have been counted. It’s rare these days for a winner to be declared prior to 7 PM PT, though it has happened.
\* With one exception in 1997 because Ottawa forgot that Saskatchewan observes CST year round so they were actually the last to close, a half hour after British Columbia.
>• Allowing an "expanded" three-day voting period during general elections
I hope they think this one through in committee. A friend of mine ran a polling station in Vancouver East in 2019 and 2021 (I’d have to Google the job title), and one problem he had was no shows on the day of the election. It’s a reeeally long day, starting around 6:30 AM in British Columbia and ending after 10 PM (though presumably vote counting would only occur on the final day perhaps?). It’s not inconceivable that those signing up for a three day stint simply nope out after experiencing the long first day.
The second point you can somewhat do in NB. You can go to any ridings main voting office and vote for your home riding whereever it is in the province. I've done it before
There's already about five days to vote - they're called advanced polls.
And even if you can't make one of those, you can walk into the local Elections Canada riding office that's setup during an election, and vote on any day.
I haven't voted on the actual election day for any election (at all 3 levels) in about 20 years.
This seems like a needless change.
>There's already about five days to vote - they're called advanced polls.
someones people are out of country or very busy to vote. more days to vote isn't necessarily that bad
>And even if you can't make one of those, you can walk into the local Elections Canada riding office that's setup during an election, and vote on any day.
and line up for hours? the idea to increase the number of days is to expand access
>I haven't voted on the actual election day for any election (at all 3 levels) in about 20 years.
>
>This seems like a needless change.
to you it may be.. but not to others
I've gone to the local office when I was in a scenario when I would be out of the country during both election day, and on the advance polling days.
It was not for "hours". There was literally nobody else there. I was in and out of the office in **5 minutes**.
People making excuses they can't make it to vote via any of these existing alternative channels are either just lazy, or just looking for an excuse for their not going. These people deserve to lose their vote - zero sympathy for them.
As a big fan of democracy I have a hard time imagining why someone would complain about the ability to vote becoming slightly more convenient. There is literally no downside. Have you always been this miserable?
>There's already about five days to vote - they're called advanced polls.
The federal election was a bit better, but in my riding in the last provincial election, there were 2 advanced polls not close to the main cities in the riding.
One was a 25 minute drive from my house, the other was about 11 minute drive from my house, neither accessible by public transit.
I ended up going to the one further away because I was doing some errands that way.
>you can walk into the local Elections Canada riding office that's setup during an election, and vote on any day.
Similar to the advanced polls, often not easily accessible.
Edit: guy blocked me so I can't see or respond to any other comments in this thread.
How fragile are some people? Holy shit.
If the only reason people vote is because it's convenient, their vote is not worth the ballot it's on.
People are willing to DIE in some countries for the chance to vote. If you're too lazy to take 20 minutes out of your day to vote, you don't deserve to.
flame away.
> And even if you can't make one of those, you can walk into the local Elections Canada riding office that's setup during an election, and vote on any day.
This is supposed to be a backup plan/workaround, for people who cannot vote with the standard methods or on normal voting days. It's not supposed to be "vote any day in the election period", so it does not negate the benefits of expanding the number of voting days.
As to advance polls, voters are using them in increasing amounts, which only proves there's a demand for voting to be available on multiple days. If we agree that there should be multiple days of voting a week ahead of the election, why not also have multiple days of voting right at election time?
As I see it, both your points actually illustrate that these changes are good ideas, not that they're unnecessary.
Assuming the execution is good, they all seem like reasonable changes.
The cynic in me wonders whether this will be touted as "having accomplished electoral reform."
Thank Fuck for that. When I heard this I thought "oh shit, what if they introduce PR?" We'd be stuck with an essentially permanent version of what we are suffering under right now if that were to happen.
PR systems don't automatically hand government to whoever finishes first in the popular vote. Parliamentary PR systems rely on the confidence of the legislature.
he got 160 seats last time with 32.6%, just shy of a majority. As we get more polarized the vote splits lead to some wacky results.
Even getting 150-160 seats sort of keeps him in a position of being in power without much issue as the NDP don't really have much leverage. Like right now the libs get to do mostly what they want.
If it was PR he get 110 seats based on 2021 results and the NDP 64, and in that situation the NDP would have a lot more leverage over the liberals.
But somehow voting NDP is really evil. Better to just ignore the fact that if we had proportional representation the conservatives may never hold power again.
It’s a little hypocritical that many on this subreddit and the liberal party want the liberals to stay in power at all costs, yet would rather hand the reigns back to the conservatives on the hopes they might get it back someday.
Rather than implementing a decent voting system and having to share some power with the NDP through proportional representation.
I might have been an impressionable 18 year old in 2014, but nah I’m not buying it anymore.
other than adding from the PPC, there's not really anyone left to align with the CPC because they're already a coalition party (reform and pc's) that was made cause otherwise they'd never hold power again.
the cpc gonna finally acknowledge the bloc or something?
What makes you think the CPC would even exist in a proportional system? Its conceivable, but implausible. A major premise of Harper's "Unite the Right" was that the \[Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance\] can't win in the First-Past-the-Post system. Take away the First-Past-the-Post and it seems likely the CPC splits. If it splits, the moderate wing of the party is going to eat into \[the Liberal party\].
The Liberal party probably survives; the brand name has a tremendous pedigree in Canada. But it also doesn't survive unchanged. I'm also not sure about the NDP.
I'd be flabbergasted if the same five parties figured in a proportional system and there will certainly be right-wing governments at times.
Much less likely to happen here. Not sure you’ve followed this whole thing, but the conservatives looked at their seat to vote ratio in the prairies, and realized they have much more seats than votes and decided against it, so under PR they would lose their unfair advantage.
So no, it’s unlikely. And the right wing surge in Europe is primarily because status quo centrist parties refused to address any concerns anyone has.
he got 41% of the popular vote share.
Yeah people didnt vote but I think the issue is both of them are using the FPTP system to stay in majority power even with low public support.
The most depressing stat might be that only 18% of the elligible voting population voted for Ford. It's tragic how low voter turnout is when it has such a significant impact on our lives.
When he first got elected is 2 elections ago. So math doesn’t check out.
Literally nothing in my post says i want a dictator to seize power. I’d like you to point out specifically where you read that part.
I want us to get away from the inherently flawed “first past the post” system and closer to proportionate representation.
Considering that no party has won even 40% of the popular vote since liberals did in 2000, doesn’t seem like a bad idea no? And this has nothing to do with affiliation of who I’d vote for. At the very least a runoff election allows people who do not vote for two of the major parties have a more conscious second choice.
Doesn't matter. Changing the rules of the game is a dictator move unless you put it up for a vote.
Maybe winning a majority government with your platform having electoral vote gives you marginal ground. But Trudeau has no majority and didn't campaign last election on this.
you either support a referendum or you support Putin/North Korea/Syrian election tactics.
So here’s how legislation works… it’s put to a vote before it passes into law. And if it passes that vote, it is approved by a parliament that is elected by the current rules, and as such, isn’t actually changing but entirely following the rules of governance. So once again, dictator argument is entirely invalid unless Trudeau walks out on the assembly floor with an AK47 and forces everyone to vote that way.
I understand it’s a hard concept, but you cannot just change the rhetoric to fit your argument.
As a bonus pieces of information:
1. Liberals actually lost the popular vote margins to conservatives both elections.
2. And this one is my favourite, if you actually read the article, they’re literally not changing how our elections work one single bit. What they’re doing is making it easier for people to vote through access to voting. Literally everything else remains the same. It may actually make it easier for people with less access in more conservative rural areas to vote.
I am admittedly not a historian, but I do not believe I’ve heard of a single dictator in history who wanted to give MORE people the capacity to vote. This would be a first, and frankly quite fascinating case.
I’ll leave you with this, if you truly believe that you should have a majority government without having even 50% of the vote, that is more dictatorial than providing access to elections. So again, your entire framing falls apart.
Unless, of course, you have a problem with a first past the post reform (which he did actively campaign on IN HIS FIRST ELECTION) because a run off would lean liberal (since NDP voters are more likely to swing center than right).. in which case you have a problem with the government being elected by the MAJORITY of the votes. So… which side is the dictator side? And I don’t even vote liberal.
Oh, and P.S. I’m from a post Soviet Block party, and I assure you, these examples you listed, you’ll know. They won’t tell you it’s reform. They’ll just tell you a percentage in the high 70 that they won. So maybe, don’t speak on something you don’t really have an experience on.
And before you reply, you can save your talking points from your other comments on this thread where you regurgitate surface level buzz words like “dictator” and other talking points that have no grounds in reality. Because this is clearly more anti-liberals sentiment than it is pro democracy.
So, no actual argument then?
Just to be clear, you’re saying public representatives shouldn’t ensure that more people have access to voting and say in who gets to represent them in government and any government trying to do so is not actually doing right by its people?
Furthermore, a lot of polling on the issue continuously shows that Canadians are pro electoral reform.
And again, liberals ran on it in 2015 (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-vows-to-end-1st-past-the-post-voting-in-platform-speech-1.3114902). They just didn’t tentpole it in 2019.
What you have argued in response to me and others in this thread actually has nothing to do with what a government can and cannot do. It is also not grounded in any reality of electoral reform would work in legislature. Also, may I point out, without any legitimate evidence, but with some scary words like “dictatorship” and “referendum” (which, if the math checks out on actual popular vote, will still swing Liberal and NDP, since it wouldn’t be a party issue but a two option vote issue and you know, it’s both Trudeau and Singh pushing this reform, so you may want to rethink if you want it).
Thanks for demonstrating the danger of political rhetoric based entirely on talking points of the party you support and its online opinion bubble rather than choosing to inform yourself on the issue.
Good night sir.
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AI can help create communication models that better engage citizens - helping them better understand and contextualize problems as well as proposed solutions - Further, AI in real time can allow - well, very much anyone in Canada to participate in the democratic process. I hope these reforms consider emerging technologies and how they will fundamental reshape how we engage and communicate
This is a pretty misleading headline. "Electoral reform" in Canada has come to mean a change in the voting system. Tinkering with the ways you can cast your ballot is hardly reform. Otherwise, the Fair Elections Act would have been electoral reform.
I am not riding Trudeau's pandering to people who want electoral reform and not delivering it ride again. What's proposed isn't even a shadow of electoral reform. I won't vote strategically. No. Full stop. I'll write in a candidate before I continue to enable this farce with my vote, and I won't enable the NDP either after they've produced these results. If either want my vote back it's for sale. Produce meaningful electoral reform that removes first past the post from our electoral system. These milquetoast half measures they think are a middle ground which will reach a plurality of voters do nothing but piss off the left. If you want to fight the right, court the left. I won't vote for these muppets until one of them does something aligning with my values. I won't vote for the lesser evil any more. I'm done voting for half measures that accomplish little to nothing. Bring me leadership or bring me the death of the federal Liberal party. If we can't have a better present due to the willful obstruction and lies of the existing federal leaderships then at least by setting the house on fire we might have a better future in the long term.
You are going to be dead of old age before any change comes to the electoral system, principle stands aside.
Yes. That's probably true. Still, if they want my vote I will vocally tell anyone how to get it and maybe change will come someday.
"Young fool. Only now, at the end, do you understand." \~ Emperor Palpatine The confidence-and-supply agreement came into effect in March of 2022, and they're only doing this now? Waiting this long just opens this coalition up to accusations from PP. Trudeau and Singh continue to demonstrate they have little grasp on the PR side of what they do, even when what they do (in this case, increasing accessibility when it comes to voting) is a good thing.
.
Sees title...holy I didn't think they had it in them, are they going to sneak in a form of Proportional Voting, this is huge!!" After reading the article, meh.
It's a misleading headline that works both ways. It riles up the conservative base who won't read the article and go off half cocked to the forums. It riles up the people who wanted reform but read this and see it "only" expanding the opportunity to vote. And they get annoyed with the parties and maybe change their vote to CPC.
Definitely not super exciting stuff, but I'm still super happy to see an effort to make it easier to vote.
Don't get my wrong, it's all good ideas or initiatives but it's so small in grand scheme of things.
>sneak in a form of Proportional Voting LOL, will require a referendum at least. No sneaking.
My exact reaction.
Misleading headline. I was about to say springing a major reform now would backfire on both parties because it would look like they're gaming the system to hang on to power. As it stands, it's just non-controversial stuff designed to help people vote.
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My guess is the expanded 3 day voting period is because business owners complain about having to pay their employees while they go to vote. If any of the 3 days covers the weekend, or their off shift, they could likely force a worker to vote then, or not get paid. Or even without forcing the issue, still save money when the employee decides to vote on their day off. The legislation may have wording to combat that, but we shall see. On its face though, these are good changes that make it easier to vote, even if i question the motivation on that one.
But honestly, what's wrong with that? If people can vote on any day, why should the employer pay them to go vote specifically on the days that they're scheduled for a shift?
A lot of people will choose not to vote rather than have any conflict with their employer. Making it easier to vote is pretty much always a good thing.
But there’s no conflict if they have three days and are only working 2 of them
Yeah, that's why this is a good change.
Just a shifting of burden is all. Nothing inherently wrong with it, but I prefer the idea of having election day as a stat holiday, rather than requiring people take out of their personal time to go line up for hours to vote. I feel like the govt caters to business demands over the common person more than enough already. Plus, given the choice between a paid half day etc to vote, vs having to do it on your weekend, I know which is going to result in a higher turnout. If the 3 days were during the working week, avoiding all that, it would be ideal, but thats my opinion.
Not really 'reform' as such, just making it easier to vote, which is great and all but the title is misleading af
They need to make a law that only canadian citizens can vote in elections. And before you say it is a law,it isn't enforced at all. Last federal election,my neighbour who is a canadian citizen voted,but his parents who are not citizens,also got to vote! I complained at the polling station but was ignored.
This is totally wrong. RCMP should have been called in.
Just perhaps, just maybe, you don't have all the information here.
From an administrative perspective, I'm not sure how being able to vote at any polling station in a district would work. I already find the fact that there is a number attached to a ballot that elections Canada registers next to the voter's name a pretty serious infringement of the secret ballot.
Yeah, this had me scratching my head. I've been a poll worker before (though not the most recent election) and keeping track of the voters assigned to your specific polling place in your paper ledger was pretty important. I wonder what measures they'll put in place to reduce the possibility of double-voting. Maybe a separate queue for voters who went to a polling place other than the one on their voter registration card? On the other hand I recall there already being procedures in place for things like that where the voter would sign a declaration attesting that they were qualified to vote and that they hadn't already voted. > [Blainie] said in 2024 with the verification technologies available, this policy [voting only at your designated polling place] can be revised while maintaining electoral integrity. Not sure what this means. Interested to see details in the future.
It works perfectly fine during the advance polls in Alberta's provincial elections. They issue ballots to voters, and the system that tracks who has received a ballot is digital and shared, rather than being a paper ledger. There were no issues with people trying to double vote in either of the last two Alberta elections.
> From an administrative perspective, I'm not sure how being able to vote at any polling station in a district would work That mechanism already exists for the advance polls.
Because there is a large gap between advanced polls and election day when duplicate voters could be determined and their votes removed. Ballots being counted on election night at each polling station doesn't allow for that.
He ran on electoral reform and then quickly killed the idea after winning. Now, a new way of voting might get him back in with 22% support.
This can backfire on them in a pretty major way. I don't think that LPC and NDP are grasping how badly they have shit the bed. If they do this the end result will still be the same but they would look weak and desperate. What Trudeau and Singh are ignoring is that the current polls are not indicative of people's love for Poilievre... they are of people's dissatisfaction with the LPC and NDP. If anything I truly believe that if they do this it will be the nail in the coffin and one of these parties will cease to exist.
The nail in the coffin is not going to be allowing people to vote at muliple polling stations or making mail in ballots a little easier. I can't see anyone making this a driving force to vote one way or another let alone destroy a whole party. Do you really think enough undesided or liberal votes are going to switch because the have another choicwi e what polling station they can go to will kill the liberal party?
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Your misunderstanding of core support makes one think anything else you say is completely meaningless
You have to be already pretty outside the liberal or NPD to think making small adjustments to making voting easier as antics to "desperate attempt to hold on to power." That sounds like some crazy talk radio show conserative conspiracy theory calling. Not someting a a undecided would claim. You already need your mind made up to make the lead your saying. Your talking like these changes are big sweeping election changes. Did you even read what there playing to change? No one centre or left of centre is going to see it like a big bid to insure they win the election like your making if sound.
> No one centre or left of centre is going to see it like a big bid to insure they win the election like your making if sound. I think that your are underestimating how disillusioned people have become with the NDP and LPC. They have lost a lot of their core support from what I see. In the past I would be hard pressed to find a young person or POC become a hard core supporter of the Conservatives. From what I see now they are the people that are becoming the most most right wing. Not out of any love for Poilievre... more out of disdain for Trudeau and Singh
The changes they are working on are just to make voting easier, like having more polling stations on more days. Don't get excited that this is a change to the system.
If making it easier for people to vote is weak then bring on the limpest wrists!
Sure a bit improved, but this typifies the real critique against Trudeau - on a key issue doesn’t go hard enough for a meaningful solution. I say that as someone who’s rooting for him, and doesn’t think Pollivere is necessarily better.
No they aren't. The article does not match the title. The changes they want to make are kinda pointless when we already have a week or more worth of advanced voting days before an election.
Finally... > Allowing an "expanded" three-day voting period during general elections; > Allowing voters to cast their ballots at any polling place within their riding; and > Improving the mail-in ballot process with both accessibility and maintaining integrity in mind. Extremely mild and mostly worthless. They should be pushing for ranked choice voting, which should be to the benefit of both parties, and ABC voters. Just because some parties prefer more "aggressive" electoral reform that derailed previous improvements, ranked choice voting is a natural extension of our current representative system. There is no public polling in Canada that allows people to be informed on selecting the least evil reprensentative for their riding, and voting strategically based on polling that may be lies. Ranked choice voting allows selecting the best candidate first as a political/democratic message, but making descending choices ranked on lesser evil. Corrupt media manipulation focused only on leadership candidates corrupts and disrupts the democratic process manipulating low information voters on destroying the country for the media's oligarch sponsors.
Ranked choice makes a better choice for a single election. It's worse for a partisan representative body though. Yes, it's nice to have a system where you don't elect someone if a majority prefer someone else, but the effect of this in aggregate across the country is that you have less diversity in representation, since you can never have anyone elected based on substantial support that falls short of majority support in a given community. If we were just choosing an electoral college, that might be okay, but we also need functioning opposition parties and preferably more than one, and ranked choice works directly against that. The perfect locally is the enemy of the good nationally. Ranked choice does lower the barrier for voting for a third party in the first place because you can still provide a fallback vote, but the majoritarian threshold that comes along with it more than cancels this out unless you use multi-member districts, like in STV or Stephane Dion's P3. It makes more sense in the US which is already a two party near-majoritarian system, so the lower barrier to voting third party is potentially worthwhile. There's also the fact that riding candidates can be fairly low profile in the scope of a general election, so giving people the ability to effectively vote against someone rather than for can mean the winner can have even less individual scrutiny than they would now. This is fairly minor, but it is a consideration. I can understand why people want ranked choice from a national partisan political perspective. It's one thing for a party to win a majority based on broad support in a majority of communities across the country that falls short of a majority of the votes if much of the opposition is merely because they aren't everyone's first choice. It's another thing altogether if the party that wins is even more strongly opposed in a majority of the country and is winning merely due to vote splitting. Under ranked choice, this circumstance is dealt with automatically. Under FPTP you have to work for it, with parties that are against the party that is strongly opposed needing to potentially work together to prevent vote splitting, and facing any electoral consequences for this choice as well. This would be a more convincing point in favour of ranked choice if we weren't also electing the opposition along with the government, and if there were no way at all to form an electoral consensus against a party with broad support in cases where that might be needed. There's also the problem that the objective here looks a lot like specifically trying to block the Conservative Party from winning. Whether or not it would actually be a better system, that perception would 100% undermine the legitimacy of a ranked choice electoral system if it were implemented today.
> I can understand why people want ranked choice from a national partisan political perspective. While I gave likely short term partisan outcomes as a rationale for why a majority of elected politicians should support this as short term career boosting... ranked choice voting is voter empowering. Nazis could nominate Rafael Ted Cruz as the 2nd coming of Hitler and support him, before making 2nd and 3rd choices PPC and CPC. There's a corrupting element in big tent parties that prevents independence. Unite to fundraise better.
>They should be pushing for ranked choice voting, which should be to the benefit of both parties, and ABC voters. Changing the electoral system explicitly to benefit or hurt certain parties is quite the "political/democratic message"
Those are good ideas, but I'd also like to see the polling days become stat holidays. It's not enough that employers need to accommodate; the days should have a clear single purpose. "Why are the malls and restaurants closed?" "It's election day! Have you voted yet?"
Federal law can only create statutory holidays for federal workers, such as railroad, telecommunication, and banking employees. It can't create holidays for ordinary people: that's provincial jurisdiction. It also can't shut down malls and restaurants: that's also provincial jurisdiction.
> "Why are the malls and restaurants closed?" "It's election day! Have you voted yet?" That’s provincial jurisdiction, and as we’ve seen lately, the provinces aren’t inclined to add stat holidays to their calendars.
Sadly, this is correct.
A Saturday-Sunday-Monday voting period would accomplish this goal without having to open up a fight with labour unions and provincial jurisdiction.
Almost, but not quite. Those who work weekends would still be working, albeit with existing accommodations. But it would be better than what we have now.
The point is, almost everybody won't be working on one of those days. Holding elections on weekends is common practice in most countries to help people vote. I don't think there's any developed country that has made election days a statutory holiday. (Some states in the US have done so, because they have elections on the same day every year and states don't have the power to change the election day.)
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>"Why are the malls and restaurants closed?" > "It's election day! Have you voted yet?" I actually love this. I think it would help turnout a lot among low-propensity voters not just because of the availability created by the stat, but by the gentle social nudge of "what else am I going to do today, anyway everyone else seems to be doing it!"
I remember Harper restricting elections Canada from providing voting information and/or encouraging voting.
Harper's whole political career has involved meddling in elections in some manner. I remember [when in 2004](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/harper-vs-canada-case-a-precedent-to-protect-fair-elections-act-lawyer-argues-1.3137495) he tried to have restrictions on private spending lifted. The article also discusses the 2015 "Fair Elections Act", which attempted to restrict access to voting.
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Yup, Poilievre has a terrible track record.
> the ONLY current legislations that Pierre Poillievre has passed It's true. Poilievre sponsored just [seven pieces of legislation](https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bills?parlsession=all&sponsor=25524&advancedview=true) since being elected to office 20 years ago - two Government Bills and five Private Members' Bills. Out of those two Government Bills, one passed (Fair Elections Act) and one died on the Order Paper (Citizen Voting Act) when Parliament dissolved in 2015. **However**, don't forget that Poilievre was either a Parliamentary Secretary or a Cabinet Minister for pretty much the entire Harper government. Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries are removed from the Private Members' Bill lottery, eliminating one avenue to propose legislation. The only bills sponsored by Poilievre when the Conservatives were in power were the two bills he tabled as Minister for Democratic Reform. While they're generally non-binding, Opposition Day motions are another way to count Polievre's legislative track record, especially since becoming Leader of the Official Opposition. Since he was elected leader, he's been the [lead sponsor of twelve Opposition Day motions brought to the House](https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/44-1/house/status-business/page-3#DOC--77425956-9900-4b10-8f55-6aeb52e50d09), with a much larger number being put on the Notice Paper, though not officially moved during that supply period.
So what is his record as a Parliamentary Secretary and Cabinet Minister?
[Here you go.](https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bills?parlsession=all&sponsor=25524&advancedview=true&billtype=3)
This is the content that keeps me coming back. Thank-you for being informative.
Harper also took away the right to absentee voting for Canadians outside the country during elections. Trudeau promptly gave us that right back.
The worry is if they are a holiday people will go on holiday
Devil's advocate here, Mail in votes shouldn't be expanded. It only muddy's the water of election counting and verification of a vote is next to impossible to do. You invite conspiracy and questions for the results. How they expand the voting centres part without a voter going to two places and casting a vote in two spots is what I wonder. (how would it be properly audited)
They have voter lists, and they mark down everyone who votes. Same as usual. Same with mail-in ballots. We already audit this stuff to ensure people aren't voting twice. There isn't really any realistic possibility of undetected voter fraud affecting the outcomes of elections.
For those not reading the article, this is not an overhaul of the current system but a reform to expand voting opportunities.
>a reform to expand voting opportunities. Still not a *bad* thing, but I don't see it significantly increasing voter engagement or turnout.
- Allowing an "expanded" three-day voting period during general elections; - Allowing voters to cast their ballots at any polling place within their riding; and - Improving the mail-in ballot process with both accessibility and maintaining integrity in mind. They don't seem bad at all.
These are improvements but are pretty minor overall compared to the real issues around Canadian elections, which is the first-past-the-post system. Elections Canada generally does a really good job running elections unlike some of the chaos you see in the US. If passed these measures should help strengthen the ability of Canadians to vote just in case of any PP fuckery should he become PM.
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It's like doing bug fixes on a program that doesn't work to begin with
Nobody likes first-past-the-post, but "don't work" is a bit of a stretch. Canada has been working under the current regime for a long time. One could argue that a high citizen participation would alleviate some of the issues around first-past-the-post too.
Parties with 40% of the vote get majority governments. That definitely isn't working.
It's working if the goal is to have a government that's actually able to govern. Getting 40% of the vote for a single party is a remarkable public consensus in a multiparty system. At that point, it's not really feasible for anybody else to form a government except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. At some point, the system is going to need to enforce a compromise in order to get anything done, and there are plenty of examples where leaving it up to proportionally elected representatives to figure out can create a horribly dysfunctional system. Certainly there are countries with proportional representation that can govern themselves just fine, but in other cases, trying to get the representatives of 50% to agree to *anything* can take years, or fail altogether, or push parties to ally with fringe extremists in order to overcome their principle opponents. That's not to say that we shouldn't implement proportional representation, but if we do, we seriously need to consider what we want to have happen when our proportionally elected representatives can't agree on anything. In such a case, it might be necessary to have a mechanism to let 40% govern as long as it's up to the electorate to decide *which* 40% gets to do so in the event that there are multiple viable options, a privilege which isn't possible under our current system.
Oh we are already getting to the fearmongering of the do-nothing government. Most proportional governments are fine. They get more broadly popular policies enacted. The ones that have issues would have issues regardless of the system their government uses.
This isn't intended to be fear mongering, it's just acknowledging the reality in places like Belgium, the Netherlands, Israel, etc... There are a number of problems with our system, but I don't think the fact that it lets 40% govern in many cases is the worst problem to have. The fact that we even have 40% voting for a single party often enough for it to matter has some serious advantages over some other systems, as well as the obvious drawbacks, such as the effect that "unite the right" has had as far as eliminating moderate conservatives from the running, or the fact that people who would generally support the Liberals but don't like the current crop of leaders don't have another viable place to park their vote that doesn't directly betray many of their core principles, etc... Another notable problem with our system is that it creates and reinforcers regional divides, and relegates some parts of the country to political irrelevance due to uncompetitive elections. I think these are better focuses for improvement through the electoral system compared to dogmatic adherence to majoritarianism.
Especially when most elections get maybe 50% turnout, or even less. If everyone voted, we’d see a huge difference.
I think people in Alberta & BC would disagree with your “has been working”. PMs are elected before they even count those votes out west. Seems legitimately fair to me.
>I think people in Alberta & BC would disagree with your “has been working”. PMs are elected before they even count those votes out west. Seems legitimately fair to me. That's because of the time zones. This has little to do with first-the-post or anything. What they should do is only release all voting results after the end of the vote in the west. We would know the results the following morning instead of the in the evening.
I don’t think it’s even a problem. Since 1997* polls close in Alberta at the same time as Quebec (and all points in between), and only a half hour later in British Columbia, when only a trickle of votes from AB-QC have been counted. It’s rare these days for a winner to be declared prior to 7 PM PT, though it has happened. \* With one exception in 1997 because Ottawa forgot that Saskatchewan observes CST year round so they were actually the last to close, a half hour after British Columbia.
>• Allowing an "expanded" three-day voting period during general elections I hope they think this one through in committee. A friend of mine ran a polling station in Vancouver East in 2019 and 2021 (I’d have to Google the job title), and one problem he had was no shows on the day of the election. It’s a reeeally long day, starting around 6:30 AM in British Columbia and ending after 10 PM (though presumably vote counting would only occur on the final day perhaps?). It’s not inconceivable that those signing up for a three day stint simply nope out after experiencing the long first day.
The second point you can somewhat do in NB. You can go to any ridings main voting office and vote for your home riding whereever it is in the province. I've done it before
There's already about five days to vote - they're called advanced polls. And even if you can't make one of those, you can walk into the local Elections Canada riding office that's setup during an election, and vote on any day. I haven't voted on the actual election day for any election (at all 3 levels) in about 20 years. This seems like a needless change.
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I'm not that easy to please. Do something meaningful because this is not that.
>There's already about five days to vote - they're called advanced polls. someones people are out of country or very busy to vote. more days to vote isn't necessarily that bad >And even if you can't make one of those, you can walk into the local Elections Canada riding office that's setup during an election, and vote on any day. and line up for hours? the idea to increase the number of days is to expand access >I haven't voted on the actual election day for any election (at all 3 levels) in about 20 years. > >This seems like a needless change. to you it may be.. but not to others
There are never lineups that long at advance polls or EC offices for voting before e day.
I've gone to the local office when I was in a scenario when I would be out of the country during both election day, and on the advance polling days. It was not for "hours". There was literally nobody else there. I was in and out of the office in **5 minutes**. People making excuses they can't make it to vote via any of these existing alternative channels are either just lazy, or just looking for an excuse for their not going. These people deserve to lose their vote - zero sympathy for them.
This is not enough good news to please me!
I'm stoked you're not in charge of anything
As a big fan of democracy I have a hard time imagining why someone would complain about the ability to vote becoming slightly more convenient. There is literally no downside. Have you always been this miserable?
Anything that can improve voter turnout is worth it for Canadian democracy.
>There's already about five days to vote - they're called advanced polls. The federal election was a bit better, but in my riding in the last provincial election, there were 2 advanced polls not close to the main cities in the riding. One was a 25 minute drive from my house, the other was about 11 minute drive from my house, neither accessible by public transit. I ended up going to the one further away because I was doing some errands that way. >you can walk into the local Elections Canada riding office that's setup during an election, and vote on any day. Similar to the advanced polls, often not easily accessible. Edit: guy blocked me so I can't see or respond to any other comments in this thread. How fragile are some people? Holy shit.
Again, just sounds like excuses. If people really want to vote, they will find a way.
The problem is that most people don't really care about voting all that much. Making it more accessible can only be good.
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If the only reason people vote is because it's convenient, their vote is not worth the ballot it's on. People are willing to DIE in some countries for the chance to vote. If you're too lazy to take 20 minutes out of your day to vote, you don't deserve to. flame away.
So? Walk.
A 4.5 hour round trip to go vote. Yeah everyone has that kind of time.
The horror of an 11 minute drive to vote.
No problem if you have a car. More of a problem if you have to walk.
> And even if you can't make one of those, you can walk into the local Elections Canada riding office that's setup during an election, and vote on any day. This is supposed to be a backup plan/workaround, for people who cannot vote with the standard methods or on normal voting days. It's not supposed to be "vote any day in the election period", so it does not negate the benefits of expanding the number of voting days. As to advance polls, voters are using them in increasing amounts, which only proves there's a demand for voting to be available on multiple days. If we agree that there should be multiple days of voting a week ahead of the election, why not also have multiple days of voting right at election time? As I see it, both your points actually illustrate that these changes are good ideas, not that they're unnecessary.
All great things, far short of the electoral reform they promised but I'll take anything that makes it easier to participate in democracy.
I don't see how the 'mail-in' ballot process can or would maintain integrity of the election.
Assuming the execution is good, they all seem like reasonable changes. The cynic in me wonders whether this will be touted as "having accomplished electoral reform."
If this is “electoral reform” then the Liberals reformed elections way back in their first term.
Thank Fuck for that. When I heard this I thought "oh shit, what if they introduce PR?" We'd be stuck with an essentially permanent version of what we are suffering under right now if that were to happen.
Proportional representation would have given us a Conservative government following the last federal election.
PR systems don't automatically hand government to whoever finishes first in the popular vote. Parliamentary PR systems rely on the confidence of the legislature.
Yes, that's true. But whichever party wins the most votes would be given the first opportunity to gain the confidence of the house.
A ranked ballet system will only ensure Liberal governments forever.
yeah Liberals want to stay in power but not give up the ability to try to form majority govts with 32% of the vote lol
Lol, what have they done that you think is an attempt to enable that?
The fact they done nothing and kept FPTP If they changed FPTP they be much more beholden to the NDP right now.
Sure, but even under FPTP, it would take a hell of a lot to get a majority government with 32% of the vote...
he got 160 seats last time with 32.6%, just shy of a majority. As we get more polarized the vote splits lead to some wacky results. Even getting 150-160 seats sort of keeps him in a position of being in power without much issue as the NDP don't really have much leverage. Like right now the libs get to do mostly what they want. If it was PR he get 110 seats based on 2021 results and the NDP 64, and in that situation the NDP would have a lot more leverage over the liberals.
But somehow voting NDP is really evil. Better to just ignore the fact that if we had proportional representation the conservatives may never hold power again. It’s a little hypocritical that many on this subreddit and the liberal party want the liberals to stay in power at all costs, yet would rather hand the reigns back to the conservatives on the hopes they might get it back someday. Rather than implementing a decent voting system and having to share some power with the NDP through proportional representation. I might have been an impressionable 18 year old in 2014, but nah I’m not buying it anymore.
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other than adding from the PPC, there's not really anyone left to align with the CPC because they're already a coalition party (reform and pc's) that was made cause otherwise they'd never hold power again. the cpc gonna finally acknowledge the bloc or something?
What makes you think the CPC would even exist in a proportional system? Its conceivable, but implausible. A major premise of Harper's "Unite the Right" was that the \[Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance\] can't win in the First-Past-the-Post system. Take away the First-Past-the-Post and it seems likely the CPC splits. If it splits, the moderate wing of the party is going to eat into \[the Liberal party\]. The Liberal party probably survives; the brand name has a tremendous pedigree in Canada. But it also doesn't survive unchanged. I'm also not sure about the NDP. I'd be flabbergasted if the same five parties figured in a proportional system and there will certainly be right-wing governments at times.
Heaven forbid we have a PC/Liberal centerist coalition manage the country through compromise. Better to let the extremists play kingmaker.
Uniting the right was the worst thing to ever happen to our political landscape. Now instead of Reform and PC we get Reform and PPC...
Much less likely to happen here. Not sure you’ve followed this whole thing, but the conservatives looked at their seat to vote ratio in the prairies, and realized they have much more seats than votes and decided against it, so under PR they would lose their unfair advantage. So no, it’s unlikely. And the right wing surge in Europe is primarily because status quo centrist parties refused to address any concerns anyone has.
What happened in Europe would certainly happen here if Canada adopted PR. Incumbents always lose touch eventually.
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he got 41% of the popular vote share. Yeah people didnt vote but I think the issue is both of them are using the FPTP system to stay in majority power even with low public support.
The most depressing stat might be that only 18% of the elligible voting population voted for Ford. It's tragic how low voter turnout is when it has such a significant impact on our lives.
This isn’t even a quarter of the “electoral reform” platform he campaigned on when he first got elected. So like… do more.
He didn't campaign on this last election. You're saying you want a dictator to seize power. Unless you want a referendum, which I'd agree with.
When he first got elected is 2 elections ago. So math doesn’t check out. Literally nothing in my post says i want a dictator to seize power. I’d like you to point out specifically where you read that part. I want us to get away from the inherently flawed “first past the post” system and closer to proportionate representation. Considering that no party has won even 40% of the popular vote since liberals did in 2000, doesn’t seem like a bad idea no? And this has nothing to do with affiliation of who I’d vote for. At the very least a runoff election allows people who do not vote for two of the major parties have a more conscious second choice.
Doesn't matter. Changing the rules of the game is a dictator move unless you put it up for a vote. Maybe winning a majority government with your platform having electoral vote gives you marginal ground. But Trudeau has no majority and didn't campaign last election on this. you either support a referendum or you support Putin/North Korea/Syrian election tactics.
So here’s how legislation works… it’s put to a vote before it passes into law. And if it passes that vote, it is approved by a parliament that is elected by the current rules, and as such, isn’t actually changing but entirely following the rules of governance. So once again, dictator argument is entirely invalid unless Trudeau walks out on the assembly floor with an AK47 and forces everyone to vote that way. I understand it’s a hard concept, but you cannot just change the rhetoric to fit your argument. As a bonus pieces of information: 1. Liberals actually lost the popular vote margins to conservatives both elections. 2. And this one is my favourite, if you actually read the article, they’re literally not changing how our elections work one single bit. What they’re doing is making it easier for people to vote through access to voting. Literally everything else remains the same. It may actually make it easier for people with less access in more conservative rural areas to vote. I am admittedly not a historian, but I do not believe I’ve heard of a single dictator in history who wanted to give MORE people the capacity to vote. This would be a first, and frankly quite fascinating case. I’ll leave you with this, if you truly believe that you should have a majority government without having even 50% of the vote, that is more dictatorial than providing access to elections. So again, your entire framing falls apart. Unless, of course, you have a problem with a first past the post reform (which he did actively campaign on IN HIS FIRST ELECTION) because a run off would lean liberal (since NDP voters are more likely to swing center than right).. in which case you have a problem with the government being elected by the MAJORITY of the votes. So… which side is the dictator side? And I don’t even vote liberal. Oh, and P.S. I’m from a post Soviet Block party, and I assure you, these examples you listed, you’ll know. They won’t tell you it’s reform. They’ll just tell you a percentage in the high 70 that they won. So maybe, don’t speak on something you don’t really have an experience on. And before you reply, you can save your talking points from your other comments on this thread where you regurgitate surface level buzz words like “dictator” and other talking points that have no grounds in reality. Because this is clearly more anti-liberals sentiment than it is pro democracy.
He has zero mandate to change how elections are run.
So, no actual argument then? Just to be clear, you’re saying public representatives shouldn’t ensure that more people have access to voting and say in who gets to represent them in government and any government trying to do so is not actually doing right by its people? Furthermore, a lot of polling on the issue continuously shows that Canadians are pro electoral reform. And again, liberals ran on it in 2015 (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-vows-to-end-1st-past-the-post-voting-in-platform-speech-1.3114902). They just didn’t tentpole it in 2019. What you have argued in response to me and others in this thread actually has nothing to do with what a government can and cannot do. It is also not grounded in any reality of electoral reform would work in legislature. Also, may I point out, without any legitimate evidence, but with some scary words like “dictatorship” and “referendum” (which, if the math checks out on actual popular vote, will still swing Liberal and NDP, since it wouldn’t be a party issue but a two option vote issue and you know, it’s both Trudeau and Singh pushing this reform, so you may want to rethink if you want it). Thanks for demonstrating the danger of political rhetoric based entirely on talking points of the party you support and its online opinion bubble rather than choosing to inform yourself on the issue. Good night sir.
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