Ralph Anderson and Democracy (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)

Democracy on a Slate.

Electoral reform in Ontario.


Why Single Member Districts?

SMD is the only form of representation
for the people that has accountability built in.

Constituents in a Single Member District can tell exactly who represents them in parliament. There is only one elected representative for the district in which a constituent lives. The representative knows exactly who he or she is representing. That would be everybody living in the district. The idea is that every constituent gets the same number of representatives in parliament. It's one each. This single member idea is important. There is no confusion over who looks after who. Unlike variations of STV, MMP and PR by party, there is no duplication of representation. A constituent can't say "he's not listening to me I'll go talk to my other reps". Similarly, the representative can't say "I don't want to represent you, go talk to one of your other reps". The constituents and the representative are stuck with each other.

SMD in Ontario is Proportional Representation. It's "REP by POP". Elections Ontario ensures that each representative has roughly the same workload when representing his or her constituents. Geography in Ontario really does matter. Similarly, each constituent can feel certain that they have just about as much access to representation as everybody else in the district, and anywhere else in the province. SMD is fair going both ways.

You can't say the same for STV or MMP if you intend to keep your ballot a secret. In both systems, a representative can honestly suggest to any of his or her constituents that "I don't represent you, go talk to someone else". There is no real accountability in those multi-member versions of Proportional Representation (especially if it's by political party) when nobody can officially say who you voted for. Why would they represent you if you don't agree with them?

In Ontario's proposed 129 seat MMP system, a constituent would have legitimate access to 40 politicians, that's over 30% of parliament. Twenty six constituents (one in each of 26 districts ... "think Toronto") could directly influence a majority of the votes in parliament.

Compared to MMP, STV gives each constituent far fewer representatives to talk to, and a lot more power. Each constituent in a 129 seat STV parliament (17 seven-member districts and 2 five-member districts?) would have legitimate access to over 5% of parliament. Taken to its worst case, ten constituents could directly influence a majority of the votes in parliament.

My feeling is that we are better off with a worst case scenario where it takes at least 65 constituents to directly influence a majority of the votes in a 129 seat parliament. That's SMD doing democracy right and proud.

You can't stop politicians from having personal political relationships with hundreds of their constituents. Some may be former business associates. Others remain long time friends and neighbours. Some connect as members of the same political party. And many more meet the representative when he or she is representing the district. Most of these people will live in the district. In a small district maybe that's enough personal contact to get enough votes to win an election. But in Ontario the average district has almost 100,000 constituents. To get elected here, SMD politicians will need support at the polls from tens of thousands of complete strangers who live in and around all those people the representative seems to know. It's the same air, land, water, roads, stores, schools, hospitals and community. Even if my representative only does a few things in politics and they are intended to make the people he or she knows happier where they live, chances are I'll be happier too. SMD works for me.

A Single Member District system is the fairest possible interpretation of representative democracy in a place as big as Ontario. SMD, especially in combination with IRV, is accountable politics when most of the time our representation in our parliament is dealing with issues that surround us every day where we live, work and play.