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Comment by JamisonM | Hacker News Reader

I think that political calculations regarding proportional representation were a factor in the Liberal decision to scrap reform but the stated reason for not wanting a MMP system is a pretty good one. In Europe MMP has supported a lot of fringe parties that have used the funding that comes with having full-time representatives on government payrolls to build strength to the detriment of the political environment.

Folks cite the fact that fringe parties only receive 1%ish of the vote in Canada as evidence that this is not a valid concern but it is easy to see how voter behaviour would change as campaign mechanics changed due to a PR system. (These arguments rather conveniently ignore the number of Green Party votes that Canadians in most ridings cast knowing they are throwing their vote away when arriving at the 1% number.)

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"has supported a lot of fringe parties that have used the funding that comes with having full-time representatives on government payrolls to build strength to the detriment of the political environment."

-- Like the "pirate party", which is really doing a good job on pushback against all kinds of corporate enrochement against copyright laws. (like the stupid Spain link tax).

Sometimes these 'fringe' parties bring ideas and raise concerns on issues that the major parties are not considering due to their self interests.

Sometimes they are down-righty looney, but I think the positives on having small parties represented outweighs the negatives.

Scotland, whose Parliament uses proportional representation via AMS/Additional Member System (one of the main drawbacks of which is that it takes an age to explain...), has had representatives from socialist/green parties win seats they wouldn't have had a chance in hell winning under FPTP ("First Past the Post"), which I think many people feel has lead to some pretty positive policies being debated and implemented which otherwise might not have happened.

AMS/PR has had the effect of forcing parties to work together much more in Scotland than has ever happened in the FPTP UK Parliament. I would dearly love for the UK Parliament to learn some positive lessons from the Scottish experience, but I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime.

I really like AMS - it retains the direct constituency link of a member for a region elected via FPTP, with the fairness of additional regional members selected proportionally resulting in a pretty proportionate outcome. The downside is that it creates two classes of member - those elected via FPTP, those elected via what AMS calls the 'list', and of course the complexity of giving people two votes instead of one that behave in different ways. The first vote is a classic FPTP, the second vote applies to the list. Your party's performance in the FPTP vote affects the "weight" of any list votes you receive, which is how the system remains proportional. As I said, it's a pain to explain, but one of the fairest systems I've experienced.

Like "Golden Dawn" & Jobbik - are we going to pretend that the good that the "Pirate Party" is doing is outweighed by literal fascists with seats in government? Sometimes these fringe parties represent things best not funded by parliamentary salaries.

That's why I think Holland has quite a progressive voting system with such a small theshold and 17 parties ending up in the Parliament.

Many countries (including Germany, where MMP was first used) have a minimum bar of votes for a party to make it to parliament, e.g. 5% in Germany. Where exactly you put the cutoff is a bit arbitrary, but this solves the problem efficiently. There are parties in parliament in Germany that I'd rather not have there, but none is fringe.

But "fringe" parties are also the parties to change the status quo, and it's not always (or often) a bad thing.

Plus, you don't already see the Republican party in the US as the type of extremist party you worry a "fringe party" could become?

My opinion regarding the Republican party is consistent with the above statement and gerrymandering was a key part of building a party system that incentivized the same sort of bad behaviour that an MPP system incentivizes just within the Republican Party instead of as a fringe party acting autonomously.

Canada has mostly solved the gerrymandering problem and where geography makes solving it impossible the strong party system makes MPs that want to act irresponsibly accountable to a party that has battles to win in other places that make their positions untenable.

I am open to some examples of fringe parties that have made significant positive contributions to the status quo, I would like to see some examples that are of more significance than the negative effects pseudo-fascist parties rising Europe have had.

Yeah, the stated reason is pretty much BS.

There's nothing stopping the government from saying "A party must have 5% of the vote to be awarded any PR/list seats" in order to keep the fringe parties from grabbing individual seats here and there. BC just released their suggestions for an October referendum on reforming provincial elections, and that was part of all three suggested systems.

I don't think it would be much of a challenge to get a party committed to explicit racism to 8 or 10 percent in Canada with a charismatic leader and decent organizing.

If lightning strikes once and you get an MP into parliament after that as a private member that MP is going to get a lot of media attention, it will immediately change politics because with large parties member discipline is important whereas in an MMP system a party that has no hope of ever winning it all has the reverse incentive - they are 100% committed to whipping up their "base" for their pet issue.

For reference, that's basically the case in Germany, introduced after remembering horrible bikeshedding in the 1920s.

Do the voters of the fringe parties think that it is to the detriment of the political environment? It sounds almost like saying those groups don't deserve representation because of a ideological difference, which is not a justification to deny a certain voting system.

I am perfectly comfortable saying that there are groups that don't deserve a specific type of representation in parliament because of ideological differences between them and the mainstream of the Canadian public.

They are welcome to participate in democracy and do the hard work to get their ideas into the mainstream of Canadian public opinion but they are not "entitled" to a system that gives them representation in a specific way. One should be honest with oneself about how representative democracy works and not pretend that the purpose is to have every hair-brained idea at the table.

Democracy doesn't start and stop with elections.

I don't think the stated reason of "voters want something, but I don't think they should have any representation" is a good reason.

In other words, the best system of government is a sham democracy where the public are mollified by frequent elections, but prevented from changing the status quo.

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