- PR gets us closer to what democracy is supposed to be - every one having representation at the table. Under winner-take-all systems (such as what Canada has), the majority is regularly being governed by a minority. How is that a democracy?
- We already have obstructionism under FPTP. What's more important is that functions of government won't be held up by a minority, but rather a majority. And if a majority of representatives does freeze government, under PR, this would generally mean that a majority of the electorate desires said outcome.
- The most powerful benefit of PR: we can effectively remove those in power who we don't agree with.
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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The unofficial non-partisan Lemmy movement to bring proportional representation to all levels of government in Canada.
🗳️Voters deserve more choice and accountability from all politicians.
Le mouvement non officiel et non partisan de Lemmy visant à introduire la représentation proportionnelle à tous les niveaux de gouvernement au Canada.
🗳️Les électeurs méritent davantage de choix et de responsabilité de la part de tous les politiciens.
- What is First-Past-The-Post (FPP)?
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It depends on the method of PR you're using, but if people value "one constituency, one representative" (or "equally distributed Parliamentary power among constituencies") the idea of having a pool of representatives that aren't accountable to any specific constituency could be a downside.
Eg. if you use a "closed list party-list proportional representation" where the parties get to pick who gets the 'proportional seats' from their own ranks, then some MPs are accountable only to their own parties; they don't have constituents that can threaten their jobs.
But that's easily addressed by just using a different kind of PR. RCV-PR uses ranked ballots where voters support individual candidates in a multimember district, and dual member proportional has its own apportionment method that gives every constituency two representatives accountable to the voters of that constituency.
So as far as weaknesses go, that one is an easily mitigated one.
In case the majority is the extremist party, PR allows a sort of damage control.
I'm not sure I follow. If an extremist has an absolute majority, ie. 51% of seats, then they have control?
One disadvantage would be that the ballots take a little bit longer to count after elections.
PR could effectively freeze government by not allowing anything to pass. This could be a negative, but in many cases it isn't. In case the majority is the extremist party, PR allows a sort of damage control.
That is actually a myth as governments under pr are actually slightly more stable as elections are less likely to occur. The confidence and supply deals function differently as parties have to separate themselves from the government in order to win more seats as attacking your competition is how you win elections under first-past-the-post.