Section 3 – Policy Initiatives & 2025 Deliverables
11. Democratic and Electoral Reform
The Parties will work together to create a special legislative all-party committee to evaluate and recommend policy and legislation measures to be pursued beginning in 2026 to increase democratic engagement & voter participation, address increasing political polarization, and improve the representativeness of government. The committee will review and consider preferred methods of proportional representation as part of its deliberations. The Government will work with the BCGC to establish the detailed terms of reference for this review, which are subject to the approval of both parties. The terms of reference will include the ability to receive expert and public input, provide for completion of the Special Committee’s work in Summer 2025, and public release of the Committee’s report within 45 days of completion. The committee will also review the administration of the 43rd provincial general election, including consideration of the Chief Electoral Officer’s report on the 43rd provincial general election, and make recommendations for future elections.
Oh boy…
You want me to say that I am using more factors to judge an electoral system than measures of democracy alone? Yes, that’s true, but I’ve literally never pretended it was anything otherwise. Because I live in reality, where I know a direct democracy is impractical. But everyone knows that, and it adds no value to the conversation, because the true contention is of FPTP vs PR.
And then you’re going to ask me how I know a direct democracy is impractical… And then I’ll say, how does this demonstrate which of FPTP or PR is better…
Because it’s not the only criteria. You thought you had me trapped in a corner, didn’t you?
The feasibility of the electoral system was always a presupposition.
You know what’s even better than a direct democracy? If we could clone everyone’s “spirit”, and have the spirit legislate on behalf of the person, while the person just lives their life (similar to Severance!). But that’s entirely impossible, so it’s not for consideration in the first place.
So overall, you’re quite the skilled
debaterconversationalist. But you play dirty to get it to appear like you can win arguments.I’m going to re-insert a link to my prior comment, that is still unanswered.
At the end of this whole conversation, you still haven’t gotten to demonstrating why FPTP is better than PR. Instead, you’ve wasted mine and everyone else’s time by going on wild tangents and playing games.
It’s conversations like this that demonstrate to me just how out of touch the no-PR side is. Thanks to you, I now have almost sort of a renewed vigour to push for full PR.
That’s simply untrue! I’m not sure if you’re forgetful or honestly don’t remember what you write but here are a handful of examples in our brief exchange:
Here’s me pointing out some of the toxic consequences and you just handwaving it because hey, people got what they voted for.
Or, here you are deciding you don’t actually want to talk about the successes of failures of PR and all that matters is how good it is at measuring democracy:
Heck, here you are explicitly saying all that matters in this conversation is how democratic PR is:
Heck, this nonsense:
Is **entirely **defining superior as measuring democracy.
What’s happened here is I think that as a way to deflect any actual criticism of PR you reflexively go into a “all that matters is how democratic the outcome is, I don’t care about any other consequences.” But, I think you’re starting to see that’s not a particularly cogent dodge because there are systems that would produce a more democratic outcome, so now you’re trying to backpedal.
But, now that you concede that yes, okay, the consequences of the system matter, let’s go back to the initial points about why FPTP is better.
Your original response: How is that a “bad outcome” when it’s literally what people voted for. Electoral systems are not supposed to decide the ideological makeup of government.
So, here, you’re totally okay with a system that puts hate groups in positions of power?
Basically, and I wish I still remembered some of the course books, but some of the interesting first year poli sci courses (I think Stanford or Harvard have some online for free. If you’re interested I’ll look for a one for you) are exactly about the tension between democracies and human rights. That tension is why most democracies (including ours) have Charters of Rights and Freedoms that outline things that are so important that we say no matter what people vote for, they have these protections. The point here is that yes, democracy is a good thing but it is not the only good. If you have a system that tends to produce poor outcomes (large coalition governments unable to pass significant legislation, hate groups getting chokeholds on government etc) then those outcomes can outweigh the goodness of democracy.
Anything other than demonstrating which of FPTP or PR is better than the other is irrelevant to the discussion.
The “toxic consequence” you point out isn’t unique to PR, it’s an inherent characteristic of democracy. So, yes, you are making an argument against democracy.
I don’t know why you consider it nonsense when it’s actually true.
I’ve already said that I’m not pretending the only factor to consider is democratic measures.
You mean how in practically every single FPTP election, unpopular polices are enacted without the consent of the majority? This is what I mean when I am saying that PR mathematically produces more democratic outcomes, in addition to other mathematical criteria.
You are taking the extremes of democracy, which do happen I don’t deny occurring, and exploding them into: they will surely happen, so we must keep a system that denies the vast swaths of the population their representation in government.
Again, the policies enacted under PR systems will always be supported by the population. And it’s not our call to decide what is hateful and not, nor can any electoral system do that (not even FPTP).
You need to disentangle morality from electoral systems, when there is none. The unfortunate truth of democracy is that people will have all sorts of opinions, including ones considered hateful, but that doesn’t mean they should be robbed of their right to representation in government.
You mentioned the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. What good is the right to vote, if your votes don’t contribute to the outcome of an election? Suppose there is a “perfectly” ethical voter, but by being “perfect”, that puts you technically on the extreme end. So therefore your vote should not count? And FPTP doesn’t even set out to exclude any particular ideology for that matter.
You mentioned, what good is it, if all the parties in a PR legislature are fractured and policy takes ages to get through. To which I say, but at the very least, the policy is supported by the majority, and everyone had their say via their representative. Nobody’s democratic rights were infringed upon (yes, the right to vote necessarily implies that the vote must count), but this is how democracy works. It’s slow, it’s fragmented, but there will never exist a policy enacted that isn’t supported by the majority. You want “effective” government, but at the necessary cost of it’s citizens not consenting to it.
Now I’m not going into a discussion about the tyranny of the majority, as I predict you’ll bring up. This is because I think the tyranny of the minority is worse, and we have a constitution (read: the Charter), that limits what a legislature can do.
After this entire conversation, I really think you are just against democracy itself. Because PR is more democratic than FPTP, you haven’t disputed this whatsoever, and this can be demonstrated mathematically. Everything else you’ve brought up such as “a small minority of people would vote for really hateful parties”, that’s a problem that you’ll find in any proper democracy. FPTP does nothing whatsoever to prevent or encourage this, just like any other electoral system.
For most of the conversation, you’ve made the point that PR gives hateful groups power (which is inaccurate, as it gives all groups power). So therefore we should limit extremists, but FPTP does nothing to change that. FPTP limits effective representation in government, and that is true of every single election. You know who loves the idea of pushing through unpopular policies: authoritarians. Why deal with the population and winning over people with ideas, when you can just deny them their right to representation in government?
So that you’ll be willing to throw democracy to the fire, just to prevent other people, and many many other citizens, from receiving their rights to representation. If that’s not anti democratic, I don’t know what is.
Fundamentally, your critiques of PR are not unique to PR, but rather democracy itself. You have not established a compelling case that we should deny people their democratic rights, in order to “limit extremism”. I think it is an extreme idea itself to deny someone their rights, perhaps I should develop a system that denies rights to anti-democratic individuals like yourself?
Taking a page from your playbook: so you’re totally okay with a system that denies constitutional rights to the vast majority of the population? At least my question is grounded in reality, and is true of every FPTP electoral system.
Buddy, keep your positions straight!
This:
Is fundamentally incompatible with this:
Unless, what human rights shouldn’t count as a factor in what a good electoral system is? That’s wild and insane. If your side requires you to say “hey, we’re not judging about the merits of human rights here” then it’s not a particularly good side.
And saying stuff like this:
Just lets us know you haven’t thought this through. Giving small extremist groups power is a consequence of PR that is largely mitigated in FPTP. It’s why the AFD doesn’t have a politcally viable analog here. It’s literally how the systems work. Just a quick recap: in PR basically any group that gets over a certain threshold gets that many seats, which makes extremist minority parties much more viable. But in a FPTP system, barring incredible regional variation, that’s almost impossible. This is one of the page 1 textbook arguments against PR. Not understanding it or pretending not to doesn’t endear anyone to your cause.
You’re right, it is wild and insane. But not for the reasons you’re thinking, but rather for the reasons that electoral systems don’t have morality. In the same way 2+2=4 doesn’t mean anything other than that. Blame the culture, not the electoral system.
Yes, why give small extremist groups power, when you can give large minority extremist groups power. FPTP doesn’t even set out to mitigate small extremist groups, and it can easily be gamed. And again you don’t have a response to the following: at least in PR every single policy enacted has majority support, unlike in FPTP where the majority is trampled over.
Again, I repeat: taking a page from your playbook: so you’re totally okay with a system that denies constitutional rights to the vast majority of the population? And you know you can’t answer that, because a system that denies representation is anti-democratic.
Bottom line is this, if we live in a democracy, we are entitled to and deserving of representation in government. Yes, there exist bad people, but that doesn’t mean they should lose their constitutional rights, otherwise what’s the point of rights in the first place? And who is the decider of who is good and bad, in no way shape or form does FPTP address that.
You are trying to take a nuke to the bad guys. And are minimizing all the actual harm being caused. In the process, you hurt everyone else as collateral, throw democracy and people’s constitutional rights to the fire. This is not acceptable by any reasonable person (yes, you aren’t reasonable).
All PR does, is restore the system that should actually already be there. A proportional representation is a fundamental aspect of democracy itself, and to say otherwise is inherently anti-democratic.
In every single FPTP election, you infringe on people’s right to representation in government. These hate groups already exist, and electoral systems do nothing to change that, as you so ardently attest to otherwise.
If you want to fight hate groups, don’t deny people their constitutional rights to representation to do so. That’s an insane loss, that you have no damn right to be taking away in the first place.
FPTP literally does nothing to prevent extremists. The most problematic extremist is a person who doesn’t recognize reality – that in a democracy, yes you’ll get all kinds of people, but that’s how it works. Your points brought up for efficiency don’t always apply to every FPTP governed country, look at how much waste fraud and abuse there is down south, and to think that our governments are efficient?
You still haven’t answered several fundamental points:
I also really want an update on this one:
We already have a small minority holding the majority hostage. And this isn’t the exception, virtually all elections under FPTP, a minority strangles the majority.