[EL] New Brunswick is Canada's Florida?

Tue Sep 23 08:16:17 PDT 2014

Rob,

Thanks for chiming in with an interesting comment. The problem has been
solved in the eyes of Elections New Brunswick but not outside observers.
Even if the glitch was solved, it (1) seeded major doubt in the veracity of
the result across the province, and (2) ruined election night in that
neither major party leader was able to concede/declare victory--an
important political moment as noted by the CBC. Two parties called for a
hand recount. So whether the problem will just go away seems unclear at
this point.

Regarding the disproportionality. I tend to regard electoral systems not
just through the prism of votes to seats proportionality but through their
effect on government. The result of the election (save for the electronic
voting problems) is regarded as legitimate. It will produce a stable
government for NB that can be held clearly accountable at the next
election. Both parties feel the need to try and reach across the
French-English divide. This 1/3 Francophone province just chose a
Francophone Premier.

In other countries with the same system (Northern Ireland was the classic
case), this would not be so with the single-member plurality system.
Certainly, many have made the case that single-member plurality is not
working well in the U.S.

I would not contend that the NB results are terribly proportional. (The
Greens won a seat despite far fewer votes than the NDP through showing
intelligent concentration of resources.) However, the NZ example is
probably not the greatest one to cite to make the point of a minority vote
winner gaining a parliamentary majority, albeit with a smaller discrepancy.
In this case, the quirk of the electoral rules is the 5% threshold that
excluded one party. Other parties with fewer votes also got into parliament
because they managed to win a constituency seat--not so different from the
Greens and NDP.

In short, it's not so much that I think Rob is "wrong" (despite my counter
argument, his larger point about proportionality is correct) as that how
you view this results depends on what points you emphasize and the
situation. Electoral systems are not one size fits all. And it's useful to
have organizations like FairVote that force us to question whether our
current coat fits well (and let us know that there are other ones out
there).

Best regards,
David Lublin
American University

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 8:08 AM, Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org> wrote:

> It looks like this problem has been resolved, and New Brunswick has a new
> Liberal Party premier who is just 32 (!) years old.
>
> The real glitch here is that the winner-take-all system once again has
> given absolute control to a party that fell well short of a majority - the
> Liberals won 42% of votes, but 55% of seats.
>
> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-votes-2014/new-brunswick-election-2014-results-brian-gallant-s-liberals-set-for-transition-after-win-1.2774901
>
> This presents an interesting contrast with New Zealand, where its
> conservative coalition government was returned for a third term in
> elections on Saturday. The National Party won 48% of votes, an historic
> high for one party since it moved from winner-take-all to the mixed member
> proportional system in a 1993 referendum, and has won a slim majority of
> seats of 61 out of 120 due primarily to the Conservative Party just missing
> out on parliament by falling short of 5%. But rather than try to rule on
> its own, National will keep working with other parties and have its
> governance be grounded in real majority support. Wikipedia covers it
> decently at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_general_election,_2014
>
> Rob
>
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Rob Richie
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> On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 11:32 PM, David Lublin <dlublin at american.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Colleagues:
>>
>> In tonight's provincial election, New Brunswick had problems with
>> electronic voting machines. The incomplete tally at just before midnight
>> (their time) shows the Liberals with a one seat majority and the
>> Progressive-Conservatives have already called for a hand recount:
>>
>>
>> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-votes-2014/new-brunswick-election-vote-count-stalls-with-liberals-and-pcs-in-dead-heat-1.2774357
>>
>> And now, as I am writing this, the results have changed to the Liberals
>> with a clearer 27 seat majority.
>>
>> After listening to the Chief Electoral Officer do an interview on CBC,
>> there appears to have been a glitch of some sort but they are unsure right
>> now as to the cause. (He was not the height of clarity.) Additionally, some
>> memory cards are still out in the province and have not yet been received
>> by Elections NB.
>>
>> I am not 100% clear if voters cast ballots on electronic systems with
>> printed back up or a paper ballot that is then fed into an electronic
>> tabulator. It appears to be the second, as the Elections NB site indicates
>> that they vote on paper ballots (which the news seems to indicate are then
>> fed into some sort of electronic reader):
>>
>> http://www1.gnb.ca/elections/en/faq/faq-e.asp?CATEGORYID=18&TYPE=2
>>
>> Here is the little info on the Elections NB website about "technology" in
>> voting:
>>
>> http://www1.gnb.ca/elections/en/faq/faq-e.asp?CATEGORYID=5&TYPE=2
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> David Lublin
>>
>> --
>> David Lublin
>> Professor of Government
>> School of Public Affairs
>> American University
>> 4400 Massachusetts Ave.
>> Washington, D.C. 20016
>> http://davidlublin.com/
>>
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>
>

-- 
David Lublin
Professor of Government
School of Public Affairs
American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington, D.C. 20016
http://davidlublin.com/
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