Town Halls and Consultations: Let's Stay Realistic

As one of part of the electoral reform consultation process, all MPs have been invited to host electoral reform town halls before October 14 and submit the feedback to ERRE. Many MPs have done so and many more are coming. The Conservatives - with 3 exceptions so far - have opted out. Instead, they are ignoring the process or sending out misleading mailouts to constituents urging them to check a box and demand a referendum. A pleasant exception is Bruce Stanton. So far this summer it's mostly Liberal MPs holding town halls (NDP ones coming up in September). How does the town hall format work?

The MP or an academic goes through government approved slide show with the systems sheet (FPTP, AV, List PR, STV and MMP) and five principles of the ERRE committee. That information is fine. It's basic and accurate. If the MPs sticks to the sheet, great. If the MP adds additional information it tends to be inaccurate because most of the MPs know almost nothing about voting systems. If there is a local academic there to do the presentation instead it's somewhat better (occasionally they have an academic who is also a real expert, and then it is very good). Except that some of them - even if they are in political science - don't know that much about the systems or how they would be applied in Canada, so the information is not entirely correct. Some of them have their own favourite system they promote or are dismissive of options they don't like. The MP then invites audience to respond to government approved general questions to get their opinions and values on voting systems, mandatory voting and online vote. "What do you like about our current system? What don't you like?" type thing. People either get up to the mic to respond or are put in small groups to discuss and report back. What's the attendance and pattern of feedback from constituents? It's mixed. A couple of town halls 5 people showed up - fortunately it looks like these MPs are doing more. A couple of them 200 people showed up. One townhall people were turned away because the MP didn't book a big enough room. The rest are somewhere in between. Generally, about 1/2-2/3 in the room are for PR - this holds true whether there are 5 people there or 100 . This is amazing and shows how far the movement for PR has come in the past 15 years. Fair Vote Canada is working hard to encourage people to attend but we're a grassroots group with only small numbers in many ridings - we're not filling most of those chairs. Public opinion, while largely uninformed of mechanics, is more supportive of making every vote count than ever before. We saw that before the election - three parties campaigned on making 2015 the last election with FPTP and "making every vote count" and there was no real outcry of concern except from the Conservatives, whom I don't think at that point were taking the Liberals seriously. If there's a preferred system mentioned by folks at the mic it's usually MMP. I suspect that's because outside of BC that's the only one people have heard of. Particularly in Atlantic Canada citizens have an idea that anything else proportional must be too complicated or involve no local representation because nothing else in their province has ever hit the media. There are other proportional options such as Single Transferable Vote or Rural-Urban Proportional which also fulfill the values that are important to people and most PR supporters I believe would be fine with another made-in-Canada solution. About 20-30% of the attendees I would categorize as open to PR but their comments are more vague or they speak on other issues. About 10% are "Keep Voting Simple" campaign supporters who show up with prepared talking points to deliver at the microphone. "We've used FPTP for 150 years" and "We demand a referendum!" type thing (with loud cheering or banging on table from a few people). There tends to be an overlap with the local Conservative EDA. There have been a few exceptions to this pattern: highlights and lowlights. Highlights: Packed town halls where almost everyone is for PR. Or small town halls where because there's not a ton of people it evolves into a higher quality discussion, people learn from each other and the MP learns, too. Lowlights: MP gets up and expounds on how he doesn't support PR because he says MPs in multi-member ridings are unaccountable, it means adding MPs to the House, it means fringe parties, we'll become like Israel etc (all baloney). Another MP claimed in the media that it was unanimous that every single person at his town hall supported one particular system (which coincidentally happened to be the system he supports :). It's always a good idea if you are a constituent to ask your MP of a report of what is going back to the ERRE committee so you can be sure it's a reasonable reflection of what people said. What people think of the town halls depends on what they expected going in Occasionally one person will tell me a town hall went great and another person who attended that same town hall will tell me it was awful. One town hall I got three reports and really had to verify they were at the same event. Part of the problem is that some PR supporters have very high expectations of what the MP should be doing. If the MP fails to explain the benefits of PR in detail or convey the values which are most important to us - which they're not going to do because they're supposed to be acting as unbiased collectors of feedback and sticking within the committee principles - then the attendee is not happy. They feel (and understandably so) that a lot was missing. Some participants feel that the MP should be taking time to explain all the different voting system options in detail so people can fully appreciate all the options. When most of the people in the room are somewhat fuzzy on mechanics and nothing is done to correct this the participant feels let down or concludes the town halls are some kind of scam. I think when you care a lot about an issue these kind of expectations of average MPs are understandable but unrealistic. The MPs are not voting systems experts - they are hugely busy with 100 other issues. Many are new MPs. I get the impression they usually support the work of ERRE and genuinely want to hear from constituents on this (some admittedly probably really don't care and are going through the motions). But in terms of systems usually don't have a grasp of more than the basic ideas. Perhaps they know something about one particular system and have mixed up ideas about the rest. Frankly, in that case, I'd prefer most of them keep their mouths shut and just collect feedback! It took the two Citizens Assemblies a YEAR of intensive work on this issue to become experts. Even political science profs, unless voting systems is their specialty area, don't tend to know the important details (how many top up seats are needed if it's MMP, how are the candidates chosen, how big is a region with MMP or district with STV, how many names might be on a ballot). The MPs on the all-party committee on electoral reform - like so many commissions/committees before them - now are involved in a similar intensive learning process and they really haven't even got to mechanics in depth themselves - they're at the values and research stage. We can't expect our MPs to be giving five hour educational seminars to town hall participants on PR system options that may or may not ever come to fruition. None of the systems are difficult for voters in practice. I want the MPs who aren't experts doing exactly what the best ones are doing: Asking participants what VALUES are most important to them and writing that down. The Town Halls Aren't the Whole Process It is very important that those of us who care do show up at these town halls and bring a friend. I can't overstate that. It shows people are engaged, it adds voices for PR, and it adds quality to the discussion. If there are 200 town halls, I hope 200 reports convey to the ERRE committee that their first principle - "reducing distortion" - is of PRIMARY importance to Canadians. We need people to make this happen. We're at the point where many of us can almost see the top of the hill. Show up and we're another step forward. Don't show up and momentum can slip two steps back. But when your town hall has it's failings, let's remember that the town halls are one part of the process but they're not the only part. The process includes: 1) ERRE committee, which is meeting all summer listening to Canadian and international experts and groups representing many Canadians. The quality of testimony from the PR experts overall has been excellent.

2) The ERRE committee will be travelling and holding public hearings - they also have an online survey you can complete. 3) Monsef and Holland will be travelling and holding hearings 4) Individuals are invited to make submissions - hundreds are in already and by the end there will be thousands. 5) Citizens are invited by the government to hold their own dialogues and submit those reports to the committee and many will do so

If this was a new issue, and the town halls were the ONLY thing the government was basing it's decision on, then yes, that would be problematic.

But as one political scientist said to me the other day, "This is probably the best studied issue in political science." Not only have we had 13 processes in Canada now, but no other country has had so many decades of research to refer to and examples from peers to examine before updating their voting system. You want a "representative sample" of opinion? We've had two high quality citizens assemblies and a citizens committee and they all said the same thing: We must make the system proportional. (And this is not including all the other processes the consulted citizens). Another one is only going to tell us the SAME THING. A couple of experts have even said to the committee, basically: "I don't know what else you're going to learn that is new. Look at the in-depth past work that has been done. You will wrestle with the same issues, values, "trade-offs" that every other process has wrestled with and you need to work together to come to a recommendation." ​So to those who want another citizens' assembly or something else equivalent to increase the "legitimacy" of the process, I really do sympathize. This process is good but it could be better. But the success of this venture will not rest on the perfect consultation process. It boil down to what it boils down to in every case: Political Will. A Promise to Canadians to Deliver Where Partisan Politicians Before Have Failed Three political parties representing 63% of us made a serious promise. A promise to do something that perhaps should have been done long ago - bring fairness and equality to Canadian voters in time for 2019. To "make every vote count." If you haven't heard Trudeau make that promise, listen here. Yes, it's VERY important that we participate, in numbers, passionately, persistently. The parties who made that promise need that push, they need that support. As we've seen since the first promise followed by an all-party committee on electoral reform was struck in 1920, it's just too easy to sabotage this or walk away. But in the end, whether they keep their campaign promise isn't going to depend on whether we had the perfect town halls, public hearings or committee process. It's going to depend on whether the Liberals, NDP and Greens (and hopefully the Conservatives, but I doubt it) can do what representatives in almost every other OECD country have done: Take what they learn, negotiate, and implement a system of proportional representation. Because, as Guy Giorno said, "It's the right thing to do." They need citizens like us - "ordinary people" - to push them all the way to the finish line - the kind of collective effort it takes to move a hundred thousand pound elephant. The elephant is moving. Get out to your local town hall and tell them to keep their promise.