Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 30th, 2016

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

It would be a much bigger change than moving to alternative voting or majority rule.

Alternative voting, in this example, doesn't work very well, because it eliminates the majority winner, but by and large it's a much better system for capturing the majority will than first past the post. I think either alternative voting or majority rule, or some other similar variant in which voters have the opportunity to express themselves by ranking rather than just voting for a single candidate, would be a considerable improvement over the current first-past-the-post system.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thanks.

The other question I wanted to ask you, Professor Maskin, is about legitimacy of process.

I don't know how familiar you are with the process we've designed. It involves various consultations, a national road tour, and online consultations that are open for an extended period of time. We've heard the thoughts on a referendum, and that's one way of lending legitimacy.

From what you've seen of our process, as somebody looking at it from outside, do you have thoughts on things that we're doing that will contribute to the legitimacy of this process and things that you would like to see us add or refine to get there?

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

I don't feel, as an outsider, that I'm sufficiently expert on that question. I was asked about whether a referendum would be necessary to make this legitimate. I don't have a well-informed view on that point. I would have to know more about the details of politics in Canada.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I just wanted to give you the opportunity if you had something beyond referendum, but that's fine.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you. Good.

Mr. Richards is next.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Professor Maskin, I'll start with a couple of questions for you.

Essentially I see this majority rule that you have up here as really just a.... If I'm not mistaken, it's a different way of counting a ranked ballot, essentially. That is what I see there. I've never seen it before and I've never heard it discussed before, so I'm curious about it.

One of the things that come to mind for me, and maybe I'm mistaken, is a scenario in which you wouldn't be able to determine a winner. There wouldn't be one candidate who would beat all the other candidates in the various head-to-head counting mechanisms, especially if you have seven or eight candidates.

What happens? What is the method to determine a winner in that scenario, when you don't have one who's beaten each of the other candidates in a head-to-head competition?

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

You're right. There is a possibility that no candidate will emerge as the true majority winner in the sense that the candidate beats each of the other candidates by a majority. This was a possibility recognized by the creator of majority rule, the Marquis de Condorcet, who was an 18th-century philosopher and political theorist who proposed majority rule but noted that it wouldn't always produce a majority winner.

If that should happen, then there would have to be a tiebreaking mechanism. One way to break the tie, perhaps the simplest way, is then to apply first past the post. You wouldn't have to have voters re-vote. You already have their ballots, so you would just take the first-past-the-post winner. There are other tiebreaking methods that could be used as well.

The point I'd like to make, though, is that from what I understand of the Canadian situation, the possibility of not having a majority winner is quite remote. Practically speaking, I believe you would almost always have a true majority winner emerge for each seat.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

You mentioned a number of municipal examples in one of your previous opportunities. Are you aware of this being used for national elections anywhere?

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

Where a majority rule is used, or alternate....?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Yes, majority rule.

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

No, majority rule has not yet been used in national elections. Of course, alternative voting has.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Sure, yes.

No, that was majority rule specifically. I was pretty certain I was right, but I knew you'd know.

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

As I was suggesting before, I think an important reason that until fairly recently majority rule, rather than alternative voting, was not on the table is simply that counting ballots under majority rule was somewhat more complicated. You have to look at all pairwise comparisons. With modern computers, that's not a problem, but before modern computers were around, it certainly was.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

That was certainly one of my questions. I can certainly see that it would take a longer period of time to count ballots.

The other aspect I wanted to address was strategic voting. You mentioned strategic voting and how you see it as a potential solution. We've heard from a number of people who have come before the committee, and I would agree with them, that there isn't any system that really eliminates the idea of strategic voting.

I just wanted to put my thoughts out on strategic voting and strategic acting, and whether the candidates, as you've mentioned, would act strategically based on the choices ahead of them. I don't there's any system that eliminates that, and I wanted to explain how I'd see a voter applying strategic voting to your system and get your comments or your thoughts on it.

For example, if you've decided that you really want to elect candidate A but you definitely don't want to elect candidate B, and you think that's probably the candidate who's the most likely competitor for your candidate.... Actually, pardon me; I should take out that you definitely don't want to elect candidate B. Candidate B actually might be your second choice, but you know they're the competitor for the candidate who's your first choice, which is A. Then you might actually place candidate B as your third choice, even though B may have been your second choice, just to make sure you've created a greater gap between the two.

Would that not be a strategic voting scenario for your type of system?

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

It would not, because under majority voting the gap between two candidates is irrelevant. If you rank A over B, that's the only datum that matters, and the size of the gap is not taken into account.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

So under your system it wouldn't make a difference. I guess it would with other types of counting methods, such as for an alternative vote, but not for—

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

Yes, for alternative voting that kind of consideration is important, because it might determine which candidate gets eliminated first, but for majority rule....

Let me step back. You're right that theoretically there is no voting method that is always immune from strategic voting. In fact, there is a mathematical theorem to that effect. However, it can also be shown mathematically that majority rule is less immune to strategic voting than the others.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

Ms. Romanado is next .

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you.

I want to comment on something that was brought forward earlier in terms of women in politics. I want to highlight that this side of the table has gender parity on this committee.

Anyway, that said, I want to talk about the other guiding principles that we haven't really talked about today: engagement in the democratic process, accessibility and inclusiveness, integrity, and local representation. We've talked a lot about a voting system that would address some of the distortion, but I'd like to have your recommendations on how we can address some of those other things.

Professor Loewen, you mentioned that there are other tactics that we can be taking. I know you've talked a little about mandatory voting. Could you elaborate?

[Prof. Peter John Loewen]

I don't want to speak to the normative merits of mandatory voting. I'll only tell you that I think the empirics are relatively clear that it increases voter turnout and that it's not clear that there is a commensurate increase in voter knowledge or engagement in other parts of civil life as a result of being compelled to vote, though I think the empirics on that aren't super clear.

There is a remarkable story in Canada, which is that over the last 15 years Parliament has made real efforts to make voting more accessible by increasing advance days and by being shrewd about where advance polling places are put. I think that's had an important effect and I think it actually put a floor on how low turnout was going to go over the elections since 2000. I think all those things are laudable. I think there are any number of smaller things you could explore that would increase the quality of our democratic experience.

The final thing I'll say is that I think a lot of those criteria are well put and are things that are worth considering, but I don't think most of them are going to help you decide between electoral systems. We're going to have ballot integrity no matter what system we use and we're going to have accessibility to our polling stations no matter what system we use, so any arguments that try to leverage one of those points for one system over another are probably specious. Those are good principles, but I don't think they help you make the big decision that's before you.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

What about online voting?

[Prof. Peter John Loewen]

The evidence is unclear to me that it increases turnout very much. That's partly because of the way the evidence gets presented.

Maybe my own opinion is not worth something, but for what it's worth, I quite like strolling down to my polling place and standing in line with other Canadians, and I think there is something to be said for that. That said, it's a pretty small good, so if we can increase turnout by securely increasing online voting, then maybe we should pursue it.

The only qualification is that you can't easily get back people's sense that there is integrity in the electoral system. We've a pretty foolproof system right now for counting votes, for making sure that it's secure. You can imagine an election in which things go a bit pear-shaped with online voting, and in that case the invitation to have distrust in the system and the invitation for political actors to appeal to that may not be worth the risk. On balance, it's not clear to me that it's a solution that doesn't invite more potential problems.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Professor Dufresne, do you have any comments on that?

[Jean-Sébastien Dufresne]

I would certainly like to be a professor but unfortunately I am not.

As to the principles you mention, our organization does not have a firm position on mandatory voting or online voting and my personal position may not be very helpful to the committee.

I would, however, simply repeat that there are many studies of the systems in other countries. As to what we have heard thus far regarding proportional representation, there are some drawbacks, but they are minor. We do not really have any data pointing to major drawbacks. This can vary from study to study, but the variations are really quite minimal. There are also some positive effects that are minimal. That is the situation.

In our view, there is no great risk in implementing an alternative system and testing it. We have to draw on experience. With due respect to my colleagues, my organization and I believe that we must really build on experience. We have to see which models have been proven effective. This is not something where we can test things out and improvise. Let us take the best practices out there and build on them. As Canadians, we can aspire to a system based on the best practices. The experiences of other countries can help us.

People say that our current system has a lot of strengths, but we must remember that over 85% of industrialized OECD countries have proportional representation. We must also recognize that many countries that are world leaders with thriving economies have a form of proportional representation that we can draw on.

In closing, some people say it would be too great a leap. I would point out that other countries, including New Zealand, have made that leap. Otherwise the message would be sent that Canadians are not able to make that leap. I think Canadians are as good as New Zealanders and can also adapt to another model as long as it is based on best practices.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

You have the floor, Mr. Cullen.