My take on MMP: Minorities and fringe parties
Well, continuing on with my summer series, I will now examine the next set of issues, minority governments and fringe parties:
Since we won't see as many majority governments, parties will be forced to work together.
My take: Well, I must say this will be partly true, but it could also be a problem. Let's just say that in Canada, we don't have a large tradition of working together overall, and I don't think that will necessarily change overnight. It is sometimes refreshing to see parties being forced to work together, but since the Liberals and Conservatives are so opposed to each other, for now, it would just be one of them being propped up by the NDP, which isn't always the greatest thing. I don't mind the NDP myself, but I don't want to always have to rely on them. As I mentioned before, I would like to have some chance at a party forming a majority, since although it may not always be great, I do think that we do sometimes need that sort of stability around.
Since a small change in votes will not cause a large change in seats, parties will have little incentive to force early elections.
My take: Well, I have to agree with this in principle, but in practice, I'm not sure how easy it will be for people to adapt to this. I am not a big fan of the 2% vote change leading to a 10% change in seats, but I'm not sure that this is enough incentive. It could be a good way for a party to say, "you've got to agree to this, or else we're gonna have to go to an election and you're not getting any better", but I can see the party in power holding this over the other parties as well, basically forcing them to go along with their plan, lest they be accused of forcing the election.
30% of people voted for party A, 30% voted for party B, nobody voted for a coalition of A and B!
My take: Another good and bad issue. While nobody may be fully satisfied with coalitions like this, the easy counter is in the current argument where a party with a majority but 36% of the vote is basically governing against 64% of the electorate. But really, as I said above, I don't see the history in Canada for making good coalitions, so I think you'd end up with one party trying to control everything, which may cause troubles.
Fringe parties will call all the shots.
My take: I don't like this argument too much. If a party gets 3% of the vote, they only get a handful of seats. While on a few votes it might make a difference, and I will cringe in the first Tory and Reform/Christian Heritage Party/Right-wing nutjob party coalition or even bill passing, the big parties will still be mostly in control. It may make the difference on a few votes, but really, in our current political system, the Green party will be the main "fringe" party, and to be honest, I wouldn't mind seeing some of them get elected, since then voters will actually have to pay attention to more than their environmental record, which I know will cost them votes.
The 3% threshold is low, and will give credibility to tons of small, fringe parties.
My take: This I find is the craziest argument. Anyone claiming this has obviously never seen election results. Ask people how much the Green party got in the 2003 Ontario election, and I bet hardly anyone would say that they got less than 3% of the vote. So really, the only "fringe" party that has a chance to get elected would be the Greens. The Family Coalition party would need to quadruple its votes to get seats.
So basically, I'm not sold on this incessant minority rule, but rest assured, I don't see there being any problem with crazy fringe parties calling the shots.
3 comments:
One point I would make is that I think it is unfair for people to compare the unwillingness of parties to work together under FPTP to a similar (hypothetical) unwillingness of parties to work together in an MMP scenario.
Under First Past the Post, there is little incentive for cooperation between parties, because a party at 30% support is often just 6-10 percentage points away from forming a (false) majority government. When somewhere around 40% of popular support can get a party majority control of the legislature, there aren't a lot of incentives to work with other parties.
The history of Canada is certainly not a history of strong coalition governments (though there have been some) but then again, the history of Canada is a history written in the language of first past the post. I would argue that the inability of parties to work together in our system is, at least in part, a symptom of the system. I don't see this as a case of "Canadian political parties can't work together, so we shouldn't try to force them into a system where they will need to" so much as a case of "Canadian political parties can't work together in our current system, so let's give them a new system and see if they can work together under that".
The alternative is to stick with a system which pretty consistently gives us "majority governments", which are, in reality, FALSE majorities in which the system hands a majority of the power to a party with only a plurality of support (if you're lucky!).
In fact, under FPTP, a party doesn't even need to get a PLURALITY to form a majority government. In both the 1998 Quebec election, and the 2006 New Brunswick election, the party that came in SECOND in the popular vote actually ended up forming a "MAJORITY" government (I've taken to writing the "majority" in "majority government" in quotation marks since rarely does a party forming a "majority" government under FPTP actually have the support of a majority of voters. The last time a single party majority government actually won the majority of the public's support in an Ontario election wasin the early 1930s). It's bad enough that first past the post often gives majority power to parties that have only recieved the support of a plurality of voters, but that FPTP can't even ensure that the party acheiving a plurality of the votes forms the government is a stinging indictment.
In 1998 in Quebec, the Liberals recieved over 27,000 MORE votes than the PQ, and as a percentage of votes cast, the two parties were pretty much tied (Liberals: 43.55%, PQ: 42.87%). However, despite receiving fewer votes than their main rivals the PQ were given a COMFORTABLE majority of 76 seats in the legislature to the Liberals 48. So the PQ's 43% of the vote translated into just over 60% of the seats, while the Liberals 43.5% of the vote got them just over 38% of the seats. 27,000 MORE votes, but 28 FEWER seats.
That's FPTP for you!
On the "fringe party" stuff I think I largely agree with what you've written.
Why it's such a radical idea that a party that gets 3% of the vote should have roughly 3% of the power I don't know, but looking at actual Ontario election numbers, I wonder where all these "fringe parties" are supposed to come from? As you point out, none of them met the 3% threshold in the last election! And, if suddenly these parties get massively more votes in some future election, well, can they really be called "fringe" then?
In the 2003 Ontario election, only the Tories, the Liberals and the NDP hit the 3% threshold. As you point out, not even the Green Party made the cut (The Greens - the party we always think of as being right on the cusp - were over 8000 votes shy of 3% of the total (in the 2003 election, 3% of votes cast was 134,918 votes. The Green party got 126,651 votes). Only ONE other party got over 10,000 votes, and as you mention, the "Family Coalition" would need to nearly QUADRUPLE their 34,623 votes to hit the 3% threshold. All other parties had 0.2% of the vote, or less, in 2003.
So yes, maybe the Greens wil squeak in to Queen's Park with a couple of seats. MAYBE. As for the others, I wouldn't hold my breath. However, if the Family Coalition manages to quadruple their share of the vote in the next election, or one of the other small parties can increase their support by more than a factor of 10, then shouldn't they be rewarded accordingly?
Frankly, if the "Freedom Party" can turn 8,376 votes into over 130,000 votes, then they deserve some seats!
I wish nothing but electoral failure on the Freedom Party.
For some unfathomable reason, they're against MMP?! WTF?!
Like are they waiting for the sudden rise of a libertarian goverment? Or are they planning to take power through force?
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