For all of the congratulations that the government received when it bowed to the baying of the opposition parties in surrendering its majority on the electoral reform committee, and rearranging the membership of said committee to appear more proportional, what we've seen of the committee so far is proving to be of such little value that one has to wonder why we're even bothering.
The witness selection to date has been nothing short of appalling and I'm not saying that because there has been one female aside from the minister. Rather, aside from officials from various elections agencies both domestic and abroad, it has largely come down to academics that are proponents of one system or another, and the effect has been to create an echo chamber of predetermined positions. There is little to recommend any of their testimony because it took no time at all to Google each of them as the list was posted and know immediately what all of their testimony was going to be. The only surprise was André Blais, who came armed with research to demonstrate that the gumdrops-and- unicorns visions painted by all other proponents of other systems were likely to be for naught as each system comes with their own particular baggage. And all the Conservatives have bothered to ask is whether each of these witnesses thinks a referendum would be necessary, and lo and behold, proponents of particular systems don't think so because it would mean likely defeat and their favoured system not being implemented. How very edifying it is.
To date, there has been no fruitful exploration of how the current system operates, which you would think would be the very first thing that a committee that was serious about electoral reform would do. After all, you need to assess the particular strengths and mechanics of the system to know what you are risking by changing it, and to get some kind of baseline to weigh potential unintended consequences against. But no, that hasn't happened, nor is it likely to. The government's own position in striking the committee and their commitment to ending First-Past-the-Post is that it's antiquated and doesn't reflect the proportion of seats to votes, which is neither helpful and shows that it buys wholesale the logical fallacy that the popular vote is a real thing. (Hint: It's not, because elections are not one single event, but 338 separate-but-simultaneous events, and trying to mash them into a single figure renders it meaningless).
What the committee does by ignoring the system as it exists is adopt myths and distortions as fact, and doesn't actually provide a coherent argument for why the system needs to change. Just because it's old is not a reason parliament itself is a mediaeval institution, but we're fine with it operating with its centuries of traditions. The rule of law? Centuries old, but that one's a-okay, apparently. Democracy itself goes back to antiquity, and yet we cling to it and its ideals. So why is the age of a particular voting system that has worked well and produced stable governments for hundreds of years suddenly a problem? It's really not it's a lazy epithet that is applied to a system that people have forgotten how to actually use, and they instead assume that it's broken or no longer suits their needs. Add to that, the fact that the government won't even look at the merits of the system puts a lie to their promise to make "evidence-based policy," given that they are outright ignoring the evidence of the system as it exists.
There have been other moments throughout the committee process that boggle the mind. While the government insists on exploring the options of online voting, the discussion consistently gets stuck on the notion that we have suitable enough encryption technology to do our banking, so why not voting. MPs seem particularly unable to comprehend the magnitude of why online voting poses a fundamental challenge to the principle of the secret ballot, which has nothing to do with the state of encryption technology. Rather, it is about ensuring that people don't watch who we mark our ballots for, either for the purposes of intimidation or reward. Anyone who thinks that's not important should be reminded of the era of "rum bottle politics," where people were quite literally given bottles of rum for casting ballots the "right" way, or beaten by a mob for voting the "wrong" way. This is why Elections Canada sets up polling stations the way they do so that you can cast your ballot without persuasion, and yes, this remains as fundamental a principle now as it did at the turn of the last century.
If there has been any glimmer of hope in this whole process, it has been that MPs seem to bristle at the notion of an electoral system that would divorce them from their constituencies. That said, one has to wonder how proponents of Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) systems, like the NDP, can bridge the cognitive dissonance between constituencies being good for some MPs, but not others. My faith in the ability of MPs of any party to make this connection, however, is fleeting.
Despite this wee spark, I have no confidence that this committee process will produce anything of value. While the default assumption is that the Liberals will favour preferential ballots, it hardly matters because unless they come onside with the NDP and Greens on MMP, we are likely to see a deadlocked committee report, and even if there is an agreement on MMP, it begins a round of back-and-forth arguments about the kind of constitutional amending formula that would be required to implement such a change, even without the howling about the necessity for a referendum to ensure that such a change would be legitimate. The government made a foolish promise to change the system, and their parliamentary majority will carry the day regardless of this committee, making it little more than a sideshow.
