Unless, what human rights shouldn’t count as a factor in what a good electoral system is? That’s wild and insane

You’re right, it is wild and insane. But not for the reasons you’re thinking, but rather for the reasons that electoral systems don’t have morality. In the same way 2+2=4 doesn’t mean anything other than that. Blame the culture, not the electoral system.

Giving small extremist groups power is a consequence of PR that is largely mitigated in FPTP

Yes, why give small extremist groups power, when you can give large minority extremist groups power. FPTP doesn’t even set out to mitigate small extremist groups, and it can easily be gamed. And again you don’t have a response to the following: at least in PR every single policy enacted has majority support, unlike in FPTP where the majority is trampled over.

Again, I repeat: taking a page from your playbook: so you’re totally okay with a system that denies constitutional rights to the vast majority of the population? And you know you can’t answer that, because a system that denies representation is anti-democratic.

Bottom line is this, if we live in a democracy, we are entitled to and deserving of representation in government. Yes, there exist bad people, but that doesn’t mean they should lose their constitutional rights, otherwise what’s the point of rights in the first place? And who is the decider of who is good and bad, in no way shape or form does FPTP address that.

You are trying to take a nuke to the bad guys. And are minimizing all the actual harm being caused. In the process, you hurt everyone else as collateral, throw democracy and people’s constitutional rights to the fire. This is not acceptable by any reasonable person (yes, you aren’t reasonable).

All PR does, is restore the system that should actually already be there. A proportional representation is a fundamental aspect of democracy itself, and to say otherwise is inherently anti-democratic.

I, perhaps, naively, think Canada is different.

We are a progressive country, and are unusual in that we have FPTP, but rank as being one of the healthiest democracies.

Anything other than demonstrating which of FPTP or PR is better than the other is irrelevant to the discussion.

Take Germany for example. Just like here, a small minority of people would vote for really hateful parties that are toxic and should be avoided

The “toxic consequence” you point out isn’t unique to PR, it’s an inherent characteristic of democracy. So, yes, you are making an argument against democracy.

PR can be demonstrated to be mathematically superior to winner-take-all such as FPTP. So this is the baseline.

I don’t know why you consider it nonsense when it’s actually true.

I think you’re starting to see that’s not a particularly cogent dodge because there are systems that would produce a more democratic outcome, so now you’re trying to backpedal.

I’ve already said that I’m not pretending the only factor to consider is democratic measures.

So, here, you’re totally okay with a system that puts hate groups in positions of power?

1. This is what I mean by playing dirty. You are begging the question. You are assuming this to be the case, when it hasn’t been demonstrated to be generally true for all PR systems. What does my opinion on whether a system puts hate groups into power (not that PR has been demonstrated to do so), have anything to do with FPTP being better than PR? PR simply gives people power, as they are entitled to in a democracy.
2. The onus isn’t on me to demonstrate why either of PR or FPTP is better. The baseline is what is mathematically demonstrated to be true: that PR produces governments that maximize representation for its people. It doesn’t make any claims about anything else you want to bring in like human rights.
3. You haven’t established this to be unique to PR, this is a characteristic inherent to democracy. So yes, this is an argument against democracy itself. If you can’t understand that, I can’t help you.
4. You haven’t demonstrated that FPTP in any way shape or form prevents this or does anything to impact this. Though the case can easily be made that an unpopular (read: hateful, unethical, etc) candidate can be elected under FPTP.
5. I’ve said this before, but electoral systems aren’t supposed to decide the ideological makeup of legislature. They are supposed to ensure effective representation in government. And by effective, it doesn’t mean one way or another effective government as you have distorted my message in the past (“I think you are missing the effective part”).

those outcomes can outweigh the goodness of democracy

You mean how in practically every single FPTP election, unpopular polices are enacted without the consent of the majority? This is what I mean when I am saying that PR mathematically produces more democratic outcomes, in addition to other mathematical criteria.

You are taking the extremes of democracy, which do happen I don’t deny occurring, and exploding them into: they will surely happen, so we must keep a system that denies the vast swaths of the population their representation in government.

Again, the policies enacted under PR systems will always be supported by the population. And it’s not our call to decide what is hateful and not, nor can any electoral system do that (not even FPTP).

You need to disentangle morality from electoral systems, when there is none. The unfortunate truth of democracy is that people will have all sorts of opinions, including ones considered hateful, but that doesn’t mean they should be robbed of their right to representation in government.

You mentioned the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. What good is the right to vote, if your votes don’t contribute to the outcome of an election? Suppose there is a “perfectly” ethical voter, but by being “perfect”, that puts you technically on the extreme end. So therefore your vote should not count? And FPTP doesn’t even set out to exclude any particular ideology for that matter.

You mentioned, what good is it, if all the parties in a PR legislature are fractured and policy takes ages to get through. To which I say, but at the very least, the policy is supported by the majority, and everyone had their say via their representative. Nobody’s democratic rights were infringed upon (yes, the right to vote necessarily implies that the vote must count), but this is how democracy works. It’s slow, it’s fragmented, but there will never exist a policy enacted that isn’t supported by the majority. You want “effective” government, but at the necessary cost of it’s citizens not consenting to it.

Now I’m not going into a discussion about the tyranny of the majority, as I predict you’ll bring up. This is because I think the tyranny of the minority is worse, and we have a constitution (read: the Charter), that limits what a legislature can do.

After this entire conversation, I really think you are just against democracy itself. Because PR is more democratic than FPTP, you haven’t disputed this whatsoever, and this can be demonstrated mathematically. Everything else you’ve brought up such as “a small minority of people would vote for really hateful parties”, that’s a problem that you’ll find in any proper democracy. FPTP does nothing whatsoever to prevent or encourage this, just like any other electoral system.

For most of the conversation, you’ve made the point that PR gives hateful groups power (which is inaccurate, as it gives all groups power). So therefore we should limit extremists, but FPTP does nothing to change that. FPTP limits effective representation in government, and that is true of every single election. You know who loves the idea of pushing through unpopular policies: authoritarians. Why deal with the population and winning over people with ideas, when you can just deny them their right to representation in government?

So that you’ll be willing to throw democracy to the fire, just to prevent other people, and many many other citizens, from receiving their rights to representation. If that’s not anti democratic, I don’t know what is.

Fundamentally, your critiques of PR are not unique to PR, but rather democracy itself. You have not established a compelling case that we should deny people their democratic rights, in order to “limit extremism”. I think it is an extreme idea itself to deny someone their rights, perhaps I should develop a system that denies rights to anti-democratic individuals like yourself?

Taking a page from your playbook: so you’re totally okay with a system that denies constitutional rights to the vast majority of the population? At least my question is grounded in reality, and is true of every FPTP electoral system.

not saying it right or wrong, just that it’s happened before.

Thanks for this piece of information. It’s still a dangerous precedent that is being set.

Also see: Canadian owned and operated media

I understand you are saying this now, but violating constitutional conventions is dangerous:

1. We must respect all laws, even unwritten ones, to be unconstitutional is to be uncanadian.
2. This sets the precedent that, well any unelected person could be put into the PMO, which has more power (comparatively) than an American president.
3. There’s no rules for “brain”, so this further sets up the possibility of both no seat and no brain.

Also see: Canadian owned and operated media

Same with OpenBSD!

Oh boy…

what are the principles by which you are judging PR to be a good or bad choice? If it is purely, which is the most democratic system, then direct democracy blows PR out of the water…

You want me to say that I am using more factors to judge an electoral system than measures of democracy alone? Yes, that’s true, but I’ve literally never pretended it was anything otherwise. Because I live in reality, where I know a direct democracy is impractical. But everyone knows that, and it adds no value to the conversation, because the true contention is of FPTP vs PR.

And then you’re going to ask me how I know a direct democracy is impractical… And then I’ll say, how does this demonstrate which of FPTP or PR is better…

if that criteria is only “which is more democratic” then why aren’t you advocating direct democracy?

Because it’s not the only criteria. You thought you had me trapped in a corner, didn’t you?

The feasibility of the electoral system was always a presupposition.

You know what’s even better than a direct democracy? If we could clone everyone’s “spirit”, and have the spirit legislate on behalf of the person, while the person just lives their life (similar to Severance!). But that’s entirely impossible, so it’s not for consideration in the first place.

So overall, you’re quite the skilled debater conversationalist. But you play dirty to get it to appear like you can win arguments.

I’m going to re-insert a link to my prior comment, that is still unanswered.

At the end of this whole conversation, you still haven’t gotten to demonstrating why FPTP is better than PR. Instead, you’ve wasted mine and everyone else’s time by going on wild tangents and playing games.

It’s conversations like this that demonstrate to me just how out of touch the no-PR side is. Thanks to you, I now have almost sort of a renewed vigour to push for full PR.

So, are you running away from the two principles that you laid out above

I suppose so…? At the end of the day, PR can be demonstrated to be mathematically superior to FPTP, and you have not provided arguments that also couldn’t be made against any ordinary democracy.

I’m not scared to say that a direct democracy is more democratic than PR. But this is not new information, nor is it in contention. What is in contention is whether PR is democratically superior to FPTP.

To say “anything but full PR” necessarily implies that you believe PR is worse than FPTP. Again, you have yet to demonstrate this claim. I’m waiting for you to get back on topic.

1. PR can be demonstrated to be mathematically superior to winner-take-all such as FPTP. So this is the baseline.
2. You are making the claim that FPTP is superior to PR. The onus is on you to demonstrate your claim.
3. I am not saying one way or another whether there are more democratic systems than PR, because it’s not relevant to the discussion. I am not the one bringing up a controversial claim that is unsupported by the current evidence.
4. Stop trying to move the goal posts by changing the objective, that you must demonstrate.
5. You haven’t established the case that there are problems that are unique to PR, that you wouldn’t find in a (direct) democracy. This is a big problem with many of the points you are bringing up.

You are trying to make the case that FPTP is better than PR. That’s the discussion we are having, so stop moving the goal posts.

If you want to have a serious discussion, let’s have it, but don’t play these nonsense games of dodging inconvenient facts.

A direct democracy is impractical, but perhaps a liquid democracy might be. In any case, this is why we have a representative democracy, our elected representatives are supposed to represent us, which seldom happens in FPTP due to its winner-take-all nature.

But the discussion we are having isn’t about the degree of concentration of power, but rather PR versus non-PR.

The point I’m trying to make is this:

1. In a democracy, we are entitled to and deserving of representation in government.
2. I am not trying to argue whether democracy (and by proxy PR) itself is successful (or unsuccesful), because that is an entirely different discussion.

I’m not about to have a full discussion about PR causing success or not. I’m sure there are already articles written on it.

However, if we live in a democracy, we are deserving of and entitled to representation in government, and only proportional representation can get us there. A democracy necessarily requires everyone having a seat at the table, and in a representative democracy, vote percentage must equal seat percentage.

Seems rude to come in and argue the merits of PR in a community devoted to it, apologies, I’m happy to let it be.

I mean, we live in a democratic society, so free speech is encouraged.

Edit: also if there were a hypothetical system superior to proportional representation, I’d be in favour of it after rigorous consideration. I’m not bound to any particular electoral system.

If you read about what’s happening in those countries, you’ll realize it’s not about the culture, it’s that PR incentivizes really bad outcomes. Take Germany for example. Just like here, a small minority of people would vote for really hateful parties that are toxic and should be avoided

How is that a “bad outcome” when it’s literally what people voted for. Electoral systems are not supposed to decide the ideological makeup of government.

It’s not PR you are against, you are against a characteristic inherent of democracy itself.

has made the other parties form really broad and thus ineffective coalitions, which are unable to push forward significant legislation

Is this worse than the big tent parties we have now, that members can’t vote or think independent of their party leaders?

an absolute pure democracy where every bill, item etc was voted on by everyone. That would certainly be the ultimate in democracy, but it would be a terrible way to run a country and likely lead to some insane policy choices

What does this have anything to do with our conversation? We aren’t discussing representative democracy versus direct democracy. We are discussing proportional representation vs non-proportional representation.

My entire point is that PR, while really groovy on paper, tends to produce really bad outcomes and thus sacrifices a lot of the efficiency of government (and of voting frankly) for some (arguably temporary) democratic gain

1. Tends to produce bad outcomes how exactly? You would need to describe an outcome that you would not see under any democracy.
2. Sacrifices the efficiency of government how? And is “efficiency” more important than policy that the majority actually agree on?
3. Your argument against PR is that voting is “inefficient”, therefore we should allow non-proportional governments?
4. How is it “temporary” democratic gain, when there are more mathematical criteria satisfied under PR systems for producing democratic systems?

Anything less than full PR is less than an ideal representative democracy.

Besides, electoral systems are not supposed to determine the ideological makeup of government. The responsibility of the electoral system is to ensure effective representation in government, that’s it.

If you don’t like the ideological makeup of those countries you mentioned, blame the culture, not the electoral system.