Electoral Reform Committee on July 26th, 2016

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Here is a question to Mr. Peden regarding the lists.

One opposition to the idea of having party lists concerns the party's control, the idea that effectively, in some backroom somewhere, each of the parties is constructing this list. There is a certain feeling that people are being undemocratically placed, very much as our Senate is right now.

Has New Zealand looked at other ways for this list to be constructed? We've had the suggestion of regional nomination meetings that would be done through a democratic party process. Has New Zealand looked at any of those other approaches, or is it simply done party by party by their own preference?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Briefly, please.

[Robert Peden]

The question of an open or closed list is something that has been considered throughout, from the 1985 commission throughout. Currently party lists in New Zealand are closed. When we looked at it, our conclusion was that any benefit to be gained in voter choice through open or semi-open lists was outweighed by the resulting complexity. However, there is a provision in the New Zealand legislation that requires parties to have democratic processes in the selection of party lists.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Thériault, you have the floor.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I have a few quick questions.

Mr. Rogers, there are two voting methods for forming the Senate and the House. Does that affect the percentage of independent candidates, be they senators or MPs?

[Tom Rogers]

It's hard for me to answer that question other than to say that the number of candidates who are standing for the Senate vacancies continues to increase. The Senate ballot paper is becoming very complex. I think at the election we just had, the font size for the New South Wales Senate ballot paper was either six or seven, which is very difficult to see, to the extent that we had to provide plastic magnifying sheets in the polling place to cope with the size of the ballot paper.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

This may have already been mentioned, but if so I missed it. Can you tell me what the voter to member ratio is?

[Tom Rogers]

The size of the electoral roll is at this stage 15.6 million people. There are 150 members of the House of Representatives and 76 senators.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Okay.

I will tell you about a situation I am familiar with. In Quebec, an attempt was made to reform the voting system between 2003 and 2007. One of the criticisms of the first-past-the-post system was that the party line was rigid.

Mr. Peden, did you hear the same criticisms during the debates that yielded the voting system reform? If so, was the rigidity of the party line behind them?

Could the same difficulty arise with coalition governments?

[Robert Peden]

I think the question you asked, sir, would really be better directed at a political scientist or a political commentator rather than an electoral administrator.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I wanted to know whether the population expressed the same sentiment with regard to the rigidity of party lines during the deliberations that led to the voting system reform. I assume that is recorded in your documents.

That is the first part of my question.

[Robert Peden]

It was the case that the impetus for electoral reform, beginning in the 1970s and early 1980s, was around dissatisfaction with the way in which first past the post was operating in New Zealand. Neither of the two main parties, which continue to be in existence and now are operating very successfully under the mixed member proportional system, advocated moving to a proportional system. Notwithstanding that, we went through a process that saw the New Zealand public have a say, and they exercised a choice to move to MMP. That was the New Zealand experience.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you. We're more or less out of time.

We will now go to Ms. May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you.

Thanks to Mr. Thériault, I have a segue into the question I want to ask Mr. Peden.

In the deck that you've provided to us, page 5 starts with this issue of voter dissatisfaction with first past the post in New Zealand, saying it had intensified after the 1978 and 1981 general elections. I wonder if you could tell us how first past the post operated in 1978 and 1981 and the nature of perverse results that led to the voter dissatisfaction.

[Robert Peden]

Well, in the 1978 election at least, at a national level the nationwide vote was in support of the party that didn't form government. In other words, you had the wrong-winner scenario, which sometimes occurs under majoritarian systems.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

On another of your charts, the one at page 15, we see the diversity in Parliament over the years 1990 to 2014 and the spike in diversity of Asian, Pasifika, Maori, and women representation. What would you say the chances are that the increase was pure coincidence after adopting MMP?

[Robert Peden]

I think the chance would be very low, and I direct you to slide 16, which shows the same information but takes account of the impact of the list and where people are elected from. What you can see when you look at that slide is that women are predominately elected from the lists. Of all MPs elected to Parliament, 43% were elected from the party lists and only 24% were elected from electorates, and so—

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

That's terribly helpful—oh, sorry, continue; I didn't mean to cut you off.

[Robert Peden]

I was just going to conclude that I think that demonstrates the impact of party lists enabling parties to put women, Maori, Asian, and Pacific people in electable positions into Parliament.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you.

I don't think any of the questions this evening—and forgive me if I've missed one—dealt with the issue of voter turnout. Has New Zealand experienced any change in voter participation since adopting mixed member proportional?

[Robert Peden]

New Zealand has been experiencing a significant decline in voter participation since the early eighties. There was a spike in participation in 1996 and 1999, but since then the overall trend of declining participation continues, which is of concern to the commission, to the New Zealand Parliament, and to the government.

There has been research on the impact of the change in participation by Professor Jack Vowles; it indicates that the change to MMP has had a neutral effect on participation.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Was the initial spike viewed as associated with voter interest in MMP, or was it seen as not connected?

[Robert Peden]

I think it was interest in the MMP. We survey voters and non-voters after every election, and the reasons given for not voting are that people don't believe their vote is important or they aren't interested in politics. It amounts to people not valuing democracy and not valuing their vote.

The New Zealand Electoral Commission has done a significant amount of work around voter participation in New Zealand and what's driving it and what we might do about it. It's information that we can provide to the committee, if it's of interest.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Yes, I think that might be of interest, if it was possible to have further information come to us. We've heard a lot of witnesses say that regardless of the voting system, there's going to be a small increase in voting, if anything, under mixed member proportional or STV proportional systems, and that in western democracies generally, interest in politics per se is on the decline, which I think is very troubling.

Is that your experience? I ask that of both Australia and New Zealand, if there's any time left to say anything.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Very briefly.