Talk:Canadian House of Commons Special Committee on Electoral Reform

Recommendations in the report

This line was in the article: "On December 1, 2016, the committee released its report recommending that a form of proportional representation be adopted, and that a referendum be held on the issue.[1][2][3][4]"

This is untrue. The report Committee Report clearly states as it's recommendations:

"E. Recommendations

Recommendation 1

The Committee recommends that the Government should, as it develops a new electoral system, use the Gallagher index in order to minimize the level of distortion between the popular will of the electorate and the resultant seat allocations in Parliament. The Government should seek to design a system that achieves a Gallagher score of 5 or less.

Recommendation 2

The Committee recommends that, although systems of pure party lists can achieve a Gallagher score of 5 or less, they should not be considered by the Government as such systems sever the connection between voters and their MP."

It says that a system should reflect the will of the people better, but that a party list should not be considered. Proportional representation is never mentioned by name and the concept of eschewing party lists is antithetical to proportional representation altogether. I have no idea why someone mis-understood that as meaning "report recommended the very thing it discredited" but someone wrote that down so I am removing it on the basis it is untrue. Kirkoconnell (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I think you're both splitting hairs and misunderstanding a common usage of a term. When the committee says they're recommending an electoral system with a Gallagher score of 5 or less, they're recommending a proportional system. Hence the multiple news articles saying the same thing. I'm not sure why you think "the concept of eschewing party lists is antithetical to proportional representation altogether", just look at the very wikipedia article on proportional representation, there are multiple forms of it that do not have party lists. I have no idea how you got "report recommended the very thing it discredited". It discredited party-list PR, not PR altogether. I think you may have the idea that the definition of proportional representation implies party-list, when it does not. If you'd like to see examples of proportional representation that do away with party-lists and instead use local representation, see MMP, STV, or Urban-Rural. I think it would be best to simply include what you have quoted, as the report. Also, I'm not sure why the government's reactions are listed under "report", they'd be better listed under a heading like "Government Reaction". moeburn (talk) 05:33, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Moeburn on this. The reason why the report itself may not use PR by name is because "proportional representation" is an umbrella term representing a variety of electoral systems, a wide variety of which are not dependent on party lists. This was a WP:BOLD edit but I am going to restore the content for now, as it stands now with that paragraph missing the article is weaker. RA0808 ^talk_contribs 17:59, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I have misunderstood nothing. The Gallagher Index, by definition, "measures an electoral system’s relative disproportionality between votes received and seats allotted in a legislature". There is no assumption of "type" in PR due to Gallagher Index score, it is just a score of how proportional an election is. Several elections under FPTP were within the 5 Gallagher Index score. BY DEFINITION, PR requires a "list", whether it be by the party or otherwise. From the PR article on Wikipedia "it is not possible using single-member districts alone", which the second recommendation clearly states that "although systems of pure party lists can achieve a Gallagher score of 5 or less, they should not be considered by the Government as such systems sever the connection between voters and their MP", which indicates a preference for a single-member district. Stating that this is an endorsement of a PR system is a stretch of the truth; they are interested in a system that is PROPORTIONAL, just explicitly NOT PR, as it is generally defined.

The Report also does NOT state a referendum should be done, which was a section I ALSO removed that was put back. As there are fairly clear errors and you seem to have a clear bias toward PR, I am re-working the section to exclude the false information so that it accurately reflexes the actual recommendations from the committee. Kirkoconnell (talk) 13:20, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@Kirkoconnell: Proportional systems do not all rely on lists (for example single transferable vote), and as I said before is an umbrella term. Saying that the committee endorsed a proportional system but not proportional representation is absurd because proportional representation is the term for proportional systems. From the article on PR: "Proportional representation (PR) characterizes electoral systems by which divisions in an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body." You also seem to be misinterpreting the committee's second recommendation which refers to "systems of pure party lists". It does not exclude every variant of PR which uses lists... it's targeting the subset of PR systems which use only a party list, which again are only a subset of proportional systems. I will reiterate that PR is a group of systems encompassing everything from STV to Israeli-style pure party list PR, and add that there are such things as multi-member districts.

Additionally, the report explicitly calls for a referendum on a proportional system in Recommendation 12:

"Observation: The Committee acknowledges that, of those who wanted change, the overwhelming majority of testimony was in favour of proportional representation. The Committee recognizes the utility of the Gallagher Index, a tool that has been developed to measure an electoral system’s relative disproportionality between votes received and seats allotted in a legislature, as a means of assessing the proportionality of different electoral system options.

The Committee recommends that:

• The Government hold a referendum, in which the current system is on the ballot;
• That the referendum propose a proportional electoral system that achieves a Gallagher Index score of 5 or less; and
• That the Government complete the design of the alternate electoral system that is proposed on the referendum ballot prior to the start of the referendum campaign period.''"

(Emphasis mine). RA0808 ^talk_contribs 22:32, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

What I posted were the recommendations as listed in the section of the report dealing with voting system. These were tacked-on recommendations, that clearly go against previous recommendations. Why would they have contradictory ones? Because different sections of the report had recommendations included for various political purposes. This is why the commission failed; too many competing view-points trying to compromise. I am not intent on getting in an editing war over this but I do see you have clearly exposed that you are incredibly biased on this and should recuse yourself from further editing, as I am doing. Kirkoconnell (talk) 19:58, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

I've been willing to assume good faith for a while but this is ridiculous. You don't get to disregard sections of the report because you don't understand the topic or by claiming sections you don't like are "tacked-on recommendations". Recommendation 1 has just as much force behind it as Recommendation 12 (namely none since it's only a report... but I digress). The twelve recommendations were all approved by the entire committee before the report's submission to the House, and this report is distinct from dissenting and supplementary opinions submitted by the committee members. As for your accusations of bias, my only "bias" here is that the contents of the report are accurately reflected in the article. RA0808 ^talk_contribs 04:30, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

WOW. Okay. Resulting to personal attacks. I did not think we were at that point. You only prove your bias, though. I will encourage you to read the recommendations, all 12, of which I believe 4 or 5 directly contradict a previous recommendation. I am uncertain how to accept recommendations, is it like Islam where the later ones prevail? Tell you what, I will just stay out of it, why don't you as well. Given you seem prone to personal and intelligence attacks. Clearly, they were recommended by different people, at different points of the process. If you cherrypick, like you are doing, you can make it seem as though only PR was recommended. As for accuracy, I could expand upon my meaning, but as stated, the recommendations directly contradict themselves. Hard to be accurate when you are saying two completely different things. -Kirkoconnell (talk) 18:41, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Wow, this kinda blew up. The article looks good as it is now. Clearly states the report's recommendations on PR, clearly states the outcomes to this report in another section. I have no idea what you're talking about with "tacked on recommendations" or "personal attacks", but I'm glad it all got resolved. moeburn (talk) 14:16, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Disagree, it states that the report recommends PR. It also DOES NOT recommend it. My WHOLE POINT is that there are literally dozens of recommendations, some say one thing, others contradict. To state that the report CLEARLY recommends PR is just a lie. It does not. It is NOT clear. I ACTUALLY read the report. I stayed away from this conversation because the previous commentator was too emotionally involved and personally attacked me. I intend to, with clear references to the report, update this to better reflect the reports contents. -Kirkoconnell (talk) 14:51, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Source of ERRE abbreviation?

The abbreviation is correct but can't figure out what the individual letters of ERRE stand for. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HudecEmil (talk • contribs) 05:34, 13 June 2022 (UTC)