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Electoral Reform committee Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for the time and energy you are investing in the health of our democracy. You are investigating important issues related to how Canadians express their will as we elect our leaders. I very much appreciate the work you are doing. I
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee Sure. In the graphs we looked at earlier, there's always a gap between the percentage of votes and the percentage of MPs. The Gallagher index takes all of those gaps and it expresses them as a single number. Rather than saying, well, the Liberals are overrepresented by 15% and t
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee I present both of them.
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee That's correct. The classic Gallagher index does not account for those regional disparities, but the composite one does.
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee Yes. The composite Gallagher is an excellent measure of the disproportionality of a system, and the lower that number, the better. I think it's also fair to say that once we get into the range of 2% to 4% , at that point I have a hard time making the claim that decreasing it even
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee Yes, and those heroic measures in my estimation, once we're already down to 2% or 3%, just aren't worth it. It's the law of diminishing returns. There's more important stuff to pay attention to at that point.
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee Sure. I do have a day job, so I want to talk more with you about exactly what you're asking for, but I would be willing to make myself available to this committee for more modelling work.
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee Not quite.
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee It's hard to tell on these monitors, but those lines come in coloured pairs. There are two red ones, two green ones, two blue ones—
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee —and the more they separate, the more misbehaving the system is.
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee That's correct.
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee Yes. I was trying to be generous.
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker
Electoral Reform committee Correct.
October 19th, 2016Committee meeting
Byron Weber Becker