[thesh4d0w]

> Trudeau, who is now answering questions from reporters, said his one regret of his premiership has been his failure to introduce electoral reform.

Oh please, you had lots of time to address this and instead you've just handed us to the conservatives.

[tgv]

Electoral reforms are only proposed by those who think they'll benefit from them.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Electoral reforms are only proposed by those who think they'll benefit from them

There is a long history of this not being true, particularly by outgoing leaders. See, for example, how Nixon almost abolished the electoral college.

[votepaunchy]

Almost? The proposed amendment that passed the House but failed in the Senate? If 3/4 of the states were going to pass an amendment then why wouldn't 2/3 call for a convention of the states?

[JumpCrisscross]

> proposed amendment that passed the House but failed in the Senate

Yes. Read the history of its support. If Nixon’s SCOTUS pick hadn’t been tanked the amendment would have likely passed.

> If 3/4 of the states were going to pass an amendment then why wouldn't 2/3 call for a convention of the states?

One of these is more drastic than the other.

[usrusr]

True. And I believe every system will eventually be gamed to some amount. You do occasionally need change. But if you were to artificially enforce some "full rewrite" reform e.g. every n decades, that reform would just end up a tug of war between sides already deep into the existing gaming, trying to increase the effect of whatever tactic their side excels in.

One candidate for a possible workaround that I've occasionally been speculating about would be an organized process where n groups are tasked with doing n "rewrites" in parallel, and then a process that somehow mixes approval and random selection to pick one. The rationale would be the hope that the low chance of a particular rewrite actually making it would add some distance, would reduce the gaming-the-system incentives. Everybody has some amount of motivation to actually design a fair system, but that's competing with incentive to make it gameable by whatever side the co-author in question is on. But that fairness incentive would not really be diminished much by writing a what-if instead of a definitive future, whereas the incentive to deliberately flaw the would-be system to make it easier to game gets lower with a shrinking likelihood of the proposal actually getting implemented.

[hmmm-i-wonder]

Was it failure to introduce ranked voting, or failure to introduce electoral reform?

There was multiple systems being suggested. NDP preferred MMP. Personally I wanted STV, but the Liberal party wanted alternate vote, the system that would benefit them the most.

Once they realized public and other party support was for systems other than Alternative Vote they backed out.

[renewiltord]

BC perplexingly chose otherwise. People always seem to hate this. Even here in California, we’re lucky to be able to rank everyone in SF but few other cities can. And every election, there’s a lot of “IRV is ruining this city” when candidates with fewer first choice votes win.

[nindalf]

Alaska got Ranked Choice Voting and after every election cycle where a Democrat wins they're up in arms about how it's bad. This time the repeal effort got within a whisker of succeeding, while the Democrat (Mary Peltola) lost her congressional seat.

RCV encourages moderation, meaning candidates like Peltola and Senator Murkowski (R) win statewide office. This distresses people who feel like such moderates are very far from their own views.

[dralley]

Ranked choice isn't the only alternative voting system that encourages moderation. Approval voting is vastly simpler to understand and implement and also accomplishes many of the same benefits.

Simplicity is an underrated value when it comes to elections. People are more likely to trust that which they can easily understand. And ranked choice, fairly or not tends to cause a lot of confusion.

[ClayShentrup]

approval voting is also just more accurate and resistant to tactical behavior.

https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig

[gs17]

Unfortunately, I rarely see people who hate IRV/RCV because they want it replaced with approval voting. Usually it's that their candidate/party of choice would fare worse under it.

[JumpCrisscross]

> This distresses people who feel like such moderates are very far from their own views

It pisses off people who don’t understand compromise.

[nindalf]

They don't want to compromise, agreed.

But they know they live in a state where any presidential candidate with (R) next to their name can win by 10-20 points. So they wonder how such a state can elect a Democrat without something underhanded going on. A working theory is that the RCV system is "too confusing" for some folks and it leads to the D candidate winning an "undeserved" victory.

[linksnapzz]

The Duchess of Alaska is a "moderate" only insofar as her first and overriding loyalty is to the what the permanent Federal Civil Service in DC wants. She'll agree with anyone of any ideological stripe so long as she knows the will of the bureaucracy is being carried out.

[alephnerd]

Unlike most states, Alaska is heavily dependent on the federal government due to the massive defense footprint and ANCSAs.

[thefaux]

I hear you and this is such a lazy argument against IRV. Do they really lack the imagination to understand why this is a feature, not a bug in IRV?

IRV, though imperfect, is so clearly superior to one candidate voting if the goal is a responsive democracy. Unfortunately, there are many people who don't want that. IRV closes a loophole for extreme candidates (I have a strong suspicion that the 2016 djt campaign would have been thwarted by IRV had the gop primary used it). It also allows partially aligned challengers to pressure incumbents without dividing the electorate. This would likely be better for the challenger and the incumbent. Consider this past election where Jill Stein was demonized as a spoiler, which she potentially was, but would not have been in ranked choice. I bet there are a lot of voters who would have rather voted for Jill Stein but instead cast their vote for a candidate whom they thought could win (including candidates who received what should have been Jill Stein votes and thus lost important information about what matters to their voters). This is bad for everyone except those who don't believe in responsive democracy and largely rewards career politicians, political consultants and lobbyists.

[LanceJones]

Who is "us"?

[karmasimida]

Yeah that is a good question to OP

The predicted conservative win if the election happens right away, would be a landslide in every sense of that word

[tensor]

No, it would be a landslide only in one sense, the first past the post sense. Not in any other sense. The majority of individuals would still not want the cons in power, but with FPTP the left vote gets split.

[mardifoufs]

Would it be possible for it to not happen right away? They are in a minority government without a PM, I really wonder if there's a way the elections aren't triggered basically instantly.

[warmlander99]

With Trudeau leaving, I suspect that at least one of the other parties will give them enough time to elect a new leader before bringing down the government. The government may even last until the required election date of late October however, nothing of any importance will likely be passed in that time

[brailsafe]

He stays on until late march, they need to select a new party leader and then an elections held

[warmlander99]

Unfortunately, the liberal party rules say they require a minimum of four months to elect a new leader. They may be able to fast track it in three months, but it’s entirely up to the liberal party so I suspect Trudeau will still be leader when Parliament resumes.

[bryanlarsen]

They will ask the Governor General for a prorogation during the leader selection process so Parliament will not be resuming any time soon.

[beaned]

As someone with no knowledge of the topic, why was electrical reform needed? Wouldn't one assume that either party motivated to do it while in power would be doing it with the goal of positively affecting the outcome for their party in the future? It would seem weird for a candidate to reform how voting works knowing it could negatively affect their side, right?

[Jalad]

> why was electrical reform needed?

Canada uses a first past the post system for federal elections, which usually boils down to a two party state equilibrium

> It would seem weird for a candidate to reform how voting works knowing it could negatively affect their side, right?

Possibly, but I want to believe that politicians can put country over party (I haven't found a huge amount of evidence for this though unfortunately)

[busterarm]

> Canada uses a first past the post system for federal elections, which usually boils down to a two party state equilibrium

To be fair, that two-party equilibrium is the thing that keeps every minor political crisis from causing no-confidence votes and failed governments because all of the special interests involved break the coalition.

Other Parliamentary governments that don't have this kind of equilibrium end up with minor political parties holding massively outsized influence and concessions just to keep them in the coalition. See Denmark (this is pretty much the subject of every season of Borgen).

[jltsiren]

The only time a Finnish government coalition has failed due to a loss of confidence was in the early 80s. Prime ministers occasionally change mid-term and minor parties sometimes leave the coalition, but the coalition always continues until the next regular elections.

And the reason for this stability is trivial. If a party leaves a coalition and the coalition loses parliamentary majority, that party is effectively a major party. Potential prime ministers are rarely stupid enough or desperate enough to give small parties that kind of power. Instead, they prefer making the coalition a bit wider by adding another small party or two.

We also have the Swedish People's Party, which specializes as a reliable coalition partner. They are willing to collaborate with pretty much anyone. As long the coalition agrees to uphold the rights of the Swedish-speaking minority, they will give it another 4-5% support without too much drama.

[busterarm]

Finland is also just about the most ethnically, religiously, demographically and linguistically homogenous nation you could pick from.

That affords you the social cohesion to avoid these things. Much moreso than Denmark and orders of magntitude moreso than Canada.

You just generally agree with each other more, in your own socially-distant, Finnish way. Kippis!

Also the comments about the Swedish-speaking minority interest are a bit weird in historical context -- Swedish used to be the dominant language in Finland until the Swedish-speaking nobility decided to promote the Finnish language and identity. It isn't exactly weird that their remnants today would be able to promote their own interests...

[jltsiren]

Your perception of Finland is stuck in the 20th century. Today's Finland is roughly 10% immigrants. If the current trend continues, the fraction should increase to ~15% by 2030. That would be comparable to the US.

As for the Swedish-speaking minority, it's mostly a result of colonization in the middle ages. Swedish became the dominant language in some coastal areas, while the rest of present-day Finland spoke a variety of Finnic languages. During both Swedish and Russian rule, Swedish was used as the administrative language, and the elites used it among themselves. But even among the elites, Swedish was often not their native language.

[Wytwwww]

> Finland is also just about the most ethnically, religiously, demographically and linguistically homogenous nation you could pick from.

Considering it has pretty much had effectively two primary languages for the past several hundreds years that seems like a stretch? Two of the most famous Finns of all time like Linus Torvalds or Mannerheim didn't even speak Finnish as their first language. Not exactly a sign of "linguistic homogeneity"..

[phist_mcgee]

Australia is a good counter example.

We use preferential voting and haven't had a minority government, that is a government formed by coalition as the result of an election since 2010. We still typically have 2 major parties and 3-4 minor parties that can (but by no means always) hold the balance of power, particularly in the senate. It means that the govt has to compromise more often to get bills passed, but the minority parties rarely hold legislation hostage (barring things like the Housing Future Fund, which was a dog's breakfast).

[mardifoufs]

It was one of his core promises back in 2015. He almost instantly broke it when he got elected, by saying it won't happen.

[thesh4d0w]

We have two left parties that votes are split across, and a single right party.

This means the conservative party often ends up getting more power since they're "first past the post" even though the majority of the population may not agree with them.

[jyscao]

> and a single right party

No longer true. Canada now also has the PPC - the People's Part of Canada (see: https://www.peoplespartyofcanada.ca/).

> even though the majority of the population may not agree with them

Well that certainly won't be true for the upcoming election.

[AnimalMuppet]

So? "The rules need to be changed because the wrong people keep winning" sounds very suspicious to me.

If the situation is as you describe, what really needs to change is that the two left parties need to merge, or one of them needs to become such a marginal player that it doesn't matter. If the leaders of those parties can't or won't do that, well, then you get the situation that you have.

[renewiltord]

Some believe that it’s better if representative democracies represent their constituents. Newer voting technology that permits a greater alignment of representative distribution with voter distribution is preferable to those people.

Personally, I find it galling that the massive Californian population of Republicans and Texan population of Democrats frequently go unrepresented.

You seem to believe in the primacy of FPTP voting in itself. That’s the difference.

[AnimalMuppet]

> You seem to believe in the primacy of FPTP voting in itself. That’s the difference.

You seem to be reading things into my words that I didn't say.

I get that more representative is good. I get that FPTP isn't that.

But what I said is, when their complaint is that the Conservatives keep winning, that makes their whole argument suspect.

[renewiltord]

That seems a misunderstanding of their argument. I suggest using an LLM, quoting the comment, and discussing with it till your comprehension matches that of the machine. They’re usually pretty good at it, and it appears better than you in this instance.

[dblohm7]

> So? "The rules need to be changed because the wrong people keep winning" sounds very suspicious to me.

That's not what they're saying. In Canada, we can easily end up with parliamentary majorities for parties that have less than 50% of the popular vote. Sometimes substantially less.

[AnimalMuppet]

No, I got that part. That's true in any first-past-the-post system, and especially true in ones with more than two major parties. (The solution to that would be proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post.)

But the complaint seemed to be, not that it kept happening, but that it kept favoring the Conservatives. So, on the one hand, the fact that it keeps favoring one party is an issue. On the other hand, the way the complaint was made makes it sound like it's not coming from a position of objectivity.

[swat535]

I beg to differ, the polls say otherwise regarding who the population wants and more importantly, the unhealthy coalition of NDP / Liberals have been preventing the parliament from functioning, we would have had an election by now had NDP stopped propping the Liberal party by preventing the non confidence vote.

[dylan604]

The GOP has used the party in power manipulation to keep themselves in power very effectively at the state level with gerrymandering.

[sdwr]

In a functional organization, personal interests are balanced against ideals, decorum, and the interests of the group.

[Tiktaalik]

Canada has a FPTP system but multiple parties. This means that it becomes possible to form a distorted, outsized government (even a majority government!) with a remarkably little amount of the popular vote. In 2019 the Liberals won the election and took 46% of the seats with a mere 33% of the vote. That is a remarkable distortion.

The argument as to why electoral reform is needed is because of this distortion and the view that the FPTP system itself is resulting in peculiar outcomes that do not reflect the actual wishes of the voting public.

[joshdavham]

I wonder if he could still do it last minute. Like could we switch to proportional representation in the last months? It’d be a better system and may even (cynically) help his own party in the next election so there’d be some incentive.

[cmrdporcupine]

They don't want proportional representation. If they did, they would have had it. Trudeau killed the electoral reform committee precisely because the NDP and Bloc insisted the would only accept PR and not Ranked Ballots (Trudeau's preference) and the Conservatives would prefer no change at all.

PR would force the Liberals to co-govern in coalition with the NDP basically forever. They don't want it. Their enthusiasm for Ranked Ballots is for the opposite reason: they realize they are the 2nd choice of "most" Canadians (or were until the last few months...). Given that, and the near-extinction event they suffered pre-2015 and the rise of Trudeau II, you can understand why they'd prefer that...

[cmrdporcupine]

People are failing to read between the lines here.

Trudeau wanted electoral reform. But only one kind of electoral reform. A ranked ballot system.

When he couldn't get that, because the NDP and Bloc said "No F'ing Way" (for reasons I'll get into below), he sabotaged the whole committee and forced it shut.

After that he only had minority governments. So there was no way he was going to re-open the issue because he still wouldn't get the result he wanted.

Why ranked ballots, and why are the NDP opposed to them?

Because in a ranked ballot system the Liberals would be the 2nd choice of the majority of Canadians. It would effectively end the NDP as a viable electoral party. At least that's now the NDP saw it. I think a look at other ranked ballot system countries would definitely provide evidence that it tends to produce two-party system outcomes (see Australia, effectively a two party system)

The NDP's preference is for a Mixed Member Proportional system like in Germany. As a partner in a coalition minority gov't with Trudeau there is no way they would have accepted anything else. And key people in the Liberal party will never ever accept such a system, since it would mean governing forever along with the NDP, their ideological opponent (no matter what other people might tell you.)

So, yeah, screw Trudeau, and thank god he's gone (he should have resigned after he failed a majority last time around), but I think people need to dig more on this issue and why he might be saying this:

He wants "electoral reform" and regrets not getting it, because if they had accomplished what they wanted (ranked ballots), they would probably have a good chance at another election win. Yikes.

[thijson]

I remember when he first ran that was one of his planks.

[jyscao]

> instead you've just handed us to the conservatives

I agree that the conservatives are not a good choice, but apparently for the opposite reason as you - the conservatives are unlikely to be able to fix much of the damage Trudeau has inflicted on the country, especially w.r.t. unfettered immigration.

The PPC is the only one with any sensible policies IMO, but unfortunately they won't be competitive in the upcoming national election.

[jmclnx]

I hope Canada does not go the "Trump" Route. But from people in Canada I know, they think that is distinct possibility.

[ARandomerDude]

The frustrations are certainly similar:

> Trudeau has faced mounting pressure to resign amid polling that showed his ruling Liberal Party was likely to be swept out of power in the next election by the opposition Conservative Party. The prime minister has also become deeply unpopular over a range of issues, including the soaring cost of living and immigration. His leadership as further thrown into question when his finance minister abruptly quit in December.

https://www.newsweek.com/justin-trudeau-resigning-support-co...