Let's Change the Carrots and the Sticks for Political Parties
With Winner-take-all Voting, the Incentives for Politicians are all Messed Up
We’ve heard a lot about what’s wrong with politics: MPs who behave like sheep, the deplorable state of “Question Period” (a ritual no civics teacher would want to subject her students to), the blindly partisan and adversarial nature of both election campaigns and decision making.
Books going back twenty or thirty years lament this same sad state of affairs and prescribe numerous fixes. Good ideas such as changing the seating arrangements in the House, so that partisan rivals must sit beside each other (and note the lack of horns), rather than in partisan seating blocks where they can yell and heckle the team across the aisle.
Most of these ideas are very good - and have almost zero chance of being implemented.
With phasic exceptions, most people would agree that over time the problems in politics have become worse, not better.
If everybody can see the problems, and logic dictates numerous solutions (we hardly need another report), why is the progress nil?
To answer this, imagine two teams playing a game of chess. There are different steps each side can take while trying to anticipate or respond to what the other will do.
But the main point of the game, essentially, is to obliterate your opponent.
It doesn’t matter how much you have in common with your enemy - to do anything else would be counter-productive to the end goal.
At the end of the day only one of you will be left standing. As Christopher Majka points out, winner-take-all voting is a zero-sum game.
Elections are more like watching a three or four participant boxing match than they are a way of assisting voters to elect MPs in a representative democracy.
Until we change the rules of the game, we won’t change the behaviour.
Election Time Brings out the Worst
The worst examples of winner-take-all voting, and it’s destructive incentives, are on prominent display at election time.
Elizabeth May once observed that only with winner-take-all voting does the party whose values are closest to yours become your worst enemy.
In a single member riding, where only one party can “win”, two parties whose values and platform appeal to the same voters must work as hard to demonize the other party as they do in promoting their own platform.
They must also work hard to convince voters at the door that recent polling (or that being non-existent, a change in air temperature, or whatever they can invent) says that this time their party is the one with a “real chance” in the riding.
If the voter won’t go along with this logic, the implication is he/she risks helping to “split the vote”.
Watching BC from afar on my social media, I was both discouraged and disgusted with the comments flying back and forth between some partisan supporters of two like-minded parties in BC. In ridings where both were strong, supporters of one party seemed to regard it as a personal and moral affront that the other party was daring to run a strong candidate - if they really wanted to “cooperate” they should just disappear or go “somewhere else”.
On the other side of the fence, I watched some members of the other party demonize a local environmental champion running for their opponents.
I have no doubt both sides had some verifiable grievances, but if anyone has ever actually read the detailed policy book of both parties you might notice something curious:
They pretty much agree with each other.
Of course, there are different emphases - they each have topics they are particularly passionate about. But their values and goals largely line up.
But with winner-take-all voting, they are forced to spend considerable time opposing each other, when what most of their supporters would really prefer to be doing is talking the ideas that got them excited about the party or candidate in the first place.
A different kind of warped
According to the Vancouver Sun last week, “Christy Clark loves the Green Party.” The article states:
"One of the strangest moments of the last B.C. election campaign happened when a full-page newspaper ad appeared in Victoria promoting the provincial Green Party. What’s so strange about that? The ad was purchased by the Liberals, not the Greens. It was one of the most blatant examples of Christy Clark’s Liberals trying to prop up the Green Party as a way to split the left-wing vote."
So just to make this clear: By running paid advertisements for an opponent, encouraging some people to vote for something they really want but were unlikely to get (Green representation), she figures that trick will help elect a government they don’t want (Liberal). Brilliant?
When voters must wade through games like this, only to cast an ineffective vote and end up governed by a false majority, it’s no wonder the public trusts politicians less than almost any institution or profession they are asked about.
Pandering and Quick-fix Politics
One of the more serious effects of winner-take-all systems on political behaviour and policy choices is pandering.
In his recent work titled “Electoral Systems and Governance: How Diversity Can Improve Policy Making”, Salomon Orellana defines pandering as:
“the pursuit of votes by promoting policies that appeal to voters’ default preferences for “quick fixes,” rather than pursuing policies that offer more fundamental, long-term solutions.”
Pandering plays to natural instincts of voters that may work against the common good - namely fear or greed.
Instead of each party being free to present its sincere and unique policy ideas - offering the public real choice and a real discussion - winner-take-all voting forces parties to pander for the the support of the centrist voter.
Who can promise the biggest tax cut, or the most lucrative cheque delivered to your door?
(And no, not for the poor folks - not enough of them vote).
The media eats this stuff up, offering articles and interactive tools where voters can compare how much each party is going to give you.
But don’t worry, the parties seem to say, we can drain the tax base while still delivering better health care, no cuts in services or even better services, and an effective plan to transition to a green economy.
Unless, uh, we can’t.
One of the most obvious examples of this kind of pandering occurred during a recent provincial election when one of the environmentally conscious parties promised to cut gas taxes at the pump for everyone.
Because, you know, “hard working families” - including those with two cars and an SUV - need a break, too.
Fear-based pandering
Now let’s talk about pandering to fear.
We just finished a very long stretch of government which got elected with “tough on crime” promises that ended up being overturned by the courts. Most recently, they promised to “protect” us with measures such as Bill C-51 - a bill that was widely decried by most objective groups and academics as putting our civil liberties at serious risk.
In response to C-51, one of the major parties took weeks to become firm in its opposition.
The other major party opposed many of the most troubling aspects, but decided to vote for it anyway.
When asked why by baffled and angry students, the leader basically told the students that supporting the bad bill was a decision designed to help the party’s electoral fortunes by preventing the other party from using the issue as a wedge with voters in the upcoming elections.
When the incentives of winner-take-all voting work against the good of the people like this, something is seriously wrong.
Let’s Change the Incentives
The only way to begin to extricate our politicians from this kind of behaviour - behaviour which is perfectly logical with winner-take-all voting - is to change the rules of the game.
Proportional representation will do that.
A Basic Shift
With proportional representation, 30% of the vote will get 30% of the seats.
Now it doesn't matter where you live, who you vote for, or who used to "win" your riding in the days of first-past-the-post. Now you really count.
Every voter now counts equally, because almost every voter will help elect an MP who represents his or her values. When it comes to representation, it's "win-win" for voters.
Swing ridings - which provide highly tempting incentives for fraud and robocalls - basically disappear.
Friends and Enemies
With proportional representation, the same parties with the most in common who fight - sometimes viciously - in our current system will become likely coalition partners.
A partner or potential partner is not an enemy.
Of course the goal of each party will still be to win the maximum number of seats, so they have the best chance of leading government or exerting the most influence after the election - that’s politics.
But they’ll do this by promoting their own unique policy ideas - and criticizing the policies of their main ideological opponents - not trying to decimate their potential coalition partner.
Sincere Voter Choice
All PR systems significantly reduce strategic voting. Single Transferable Vote almost completely eliminates it.
STV also does not force voters - most of whom are not very partisan - into a prefabricated partisan box.
With an STV ballot, you are free to fully express your political preferences if you wish - ranking candidates across party lines.
Instead of just voting for the single candidate your preferred party puts forward (whether you like him or not), you can often rank candidates of the same party.
And with Single Transferable Vote system, your preferences really matter, translating into proportional results in the local district - a diverse team of MPs.
Reducing Pandering
Proportional representation also significantly reduces the tendency of parties to pander to fear, greed and quick fixes.
On the fear front, Orellana (2014) shows that countries with proportional systems adopt less punitive and more preventative approaches to crime, and engage in less surveillance of their citizens.
On matter of quick fixes, Orellana found that in proportional systems such sensitive topics as raising gasoline taxes were able to enter the political discussion, whereas in winner-take-all systems that would be a vote-killer.
Proportional countries do have higher gasoline taxes. During a period of almost two decades, when carbon emissions were increasing everywhere, countries with PR were 5x more effective at keeping carbon emissions reductions under control.
Public attitudes and political messaging and leadership are mutually reinforcing.
In countries with proportional systems, the public not only believes in environmental protection (a popular attitude everywhere) but they are more willing to pay to implement the long term solutions to achieve it.
This in turn reduces the need of politicians to campaign on quick fix policies, and increases the government’s ability to talk openly about and implement longer term solutions.
In Conclusion
The adversarial nature of politics - the passionate differences between competing parties and points of view - is not something we can cure with any voting system, nor would we want to.
Similarly, politicians will periodically behave badly in any country.
Proportional representation elections offers enough drama - with no shortage of conflict, competition and speculation for media and voters - while limiting the kinds of political behaviours that shortchange us all.
Making every vote count will make elections a more powerful tool for all voters to achieve the representation they want, and create governments better able to tackle the long term challenges of our time.
