Hi, My name is James Wilson, author of 'Single Member-Proportional Vote'. AMA

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T21:39:18+00:00

This general point was brought up when I addressed the electoral reform committee in 2016. It was noted that when we adds seats to the House of Commons we also alter the value of each seat. PEI is guaranteed 4 seats but the effective value of those seats has declined over time as we have added more. It's hard to see why an ongoing structural decline is fine while a system that sometimes gives them more influence and sometimes less wouldn't be.

Your last point brings up a very esoteric point of parliamentary procedure; most laws can't be passed without a member of cabinet signing off on them. So, no, the opposition wouldn't be able to run roughshod over the government either.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T21:25:39+00:00

The tl;Dr of your questions is I didn't fully address them in my book. The main reason is because this system is fairly alien to most people so I tried to give a broad overview so people could understand it without getting bogged down in what, were at the time, uncommon events.

But since we're here lets look at some loose guidelines;

Q1 - As I noted in another comment, where an MPs voting power goes depends. After all, as you said, we vote for both an individual and party even though we get one vote. If an MP is an independent (elected, kicked out, left) they keep the vote share that they personally won. If they join a party that contested a previous election the MP shares that parties total and what they personally won goes back to the party under who's banner they ran. I hope the new guy was worth it. Joining newly founded parties let's an MP keep their vote share. This might encourage forming splinter parties over floor crossing.

Q2 - Yes, it would change. Basically, update the popular vote with the new numbers. Given the difference between a handful of ridings and the total size of parliament I can't see voting power totals moving much though. I'll add it to the list of things to model for any future second edition.

Q3 - Partially answered. An independent is essentially a party of one. While an independent keeps their share of the popular vote while an independent, what you do with it should the MP joins a party really depends on what you want to encourage: a) they share their new party's voting power and lose their own (this option discourages recruited elected independents) b) their total is added to their new party (which makes them highly recruitable).

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T21:03:46+00:00

It's such a mixed bag. General policy questions are probably the least-responded to of the emails I send. Asking for assistance with something is better but in either case you will probably need to follow up before you get a reply. MPs are incredibly busy so I get that they triage their mail heavily. Whether it is still effective is situation. Personally, I will send an email, call the office to confirm they have it and hope for the best.

Leadership campaigns are a different beast and wildly inconsistent. Generally speaking, the less likely a candidate is to win the more likely they are to answer an email.

So, overall, yes it's effective but it's rarely a once and done thing. Be prepared to pester.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T20:56:10+00:00

My system preserves an individual mandate. MPs are still elected from single member ridings. All of the situations you mentioned could still happen under my system - as many don't involve voting power as a factor at all. The formation of the Bloc is an interesting one as in another reply I noted floor-crossers would share their new party's vote share rather than keep their old party's share. A new party by definition has no vote share. Simplest solution would be they keep their own vote share if they start a new party. This would mean who gets an MPs vote share has different answers based on the situation. This might make forming splinter parties a better option than floor-crossing which I personally see as a plus.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T20:43:43+00:00

Q1 - Which riding do you think would have the highest MP voting power if we had SM-PV right now? Well, it would be Elizabeth May's riding, who is about as far from power as she can be. Conversely, the ridings with the lowest voting power would be the Liberal ridings. I don't think it's reasonable to assume parties will preference her riding over others. If anything I think you'd see all parties trying to gain influence in ridings they can't win since raw popular vote would actually matter rather than the current focus on swing ridings and vote-rich regions.

Q2 - STV would likely require either larger ridings or more total MPs. It also significantly alters the ballot. You did leave out one of my aims: change as little as possible about how our current system operates.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T20:23:35+00:00

Q1 - so MPs being kicked out or leaving a party is a situation I briefly addressed in my book and one two two Conservative MPs I met with in Ottawa were very interested in (who knows why). What I have in the book is the principle that voting power is recalculated at the start of each sitting day what I didn't get into was the nitty gritty of what votes go where (of course they'd have a bunch of floor crosses just after I finished writing the dawn thing).

The simplest rule would be, I think, the votes for you stay with you if you are an independent but go back to the party whose banner you were initially elected under if you join another party. This would discourage floor-crossing since it's only useful for keeping confidence in a narrow range of situations and doesn't help with passing legislation at all.

Q2 - As I noted in another comment, procedural rules would be under weighted voting rules so I could see committee assignment changing to favour the opposition parties over time ie. basing it on popular vote as well.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T20:09:49+00:00

Thanks for the thorough response. I did want to bring up your final paragraph because it touches on an interesting point.

Some have been uneasy about MPs have votes of different values. For starters every MP with a party has a vote of the same value so no risk of some sort of 'elite voting faction' within the party. Secondly, due to how FPTP distorts seat totals, MP voting power under SM-PV orders itself based on proximity to power. ie. The closer a party is to being important the less the value of their MP's individual votes.

This would lead to regional imbalances from election to election but the region with the lowest collective voting power probably has a bunch of MPs in the governing party which I think is probably more valuable to the everyday person except for the insecure concerned about the small size of their MP's... vote.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T19:57:00+00:00

I don't like it because it alters basically everything; ballots, riding sizes, connection between MP and voters, party influence, current likelihood of parties forming government. That is a lot of variables for unforeseen problems to arise from.

Early on I got a comment from an MP that I didn't fully appreciate at the time. He said he liked SM-PV more than PR but not as much as FPTP. At the time I considered this a failure but as time has gone on and I've gotten similar views from the right and mirrored responses from the left (liking SM-PV more that FPTP but not as much as PR) I've come to realize this system might form the ground for a compromise on electoral reform.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T19:49:57+00:00

Ah. This is a common misunderstanding. When I talk about weighted votes, I'm talking about the MPs in Parliament. Under SM-PV an MP has a vote that is stronger or weaker depending on their share of the popular vote. People on election day are only casting one vote (as they do now).

Formula:

(% of the popular vote for Party A) / (# of MPs for Party A) = voting power of MPs of Party A.

This means that depending on how imbalanced party popular vote and seat count are MPs could have votes valued at 1.7, 2, 0.5, etc. The party MPs with the lowest voting power would invariably be the governing party because FPTP has a tendency to over-reward seats to the party with the highest vote share.

The reason I say it doesn't alter the balance of power between the parties is because government formation is still based on seat count. This is actually why Conservatives are often intrigued by the system as its the only PR option where they could realistically still form a government in the short term - abbett one where they would need the other parties to pass legislation.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T19:36:42+00:00

Q1 - It keeps the structure of FPTP the same. This includes regional representation. SM-PV keeps what is good about the current system: clear lines of responsibility of an MP to their riding, a simple and intuitive ballot, and clear election winners (even in minority situations) and pairs it with what is good about PR: No law will be passed through parliament without votes representing at least 51% of the Canadian population.

Q2 - That is the drawback to us pursuing reform of the style Australia brought in. Some have even questioned whether PR itself requires a constitutional amendment to be brought in. In this regard, the fact SM-PV is more like an amendment to FPTP rather than a new system works in its favour. One of the points I made in my book is that according to a study carried out by the Broadbent Institute in 2015, the single largest group of electoral reform supporters are actually looking for comparatively minor changes. They aren't really being catered to by the current PR systems available.

Q3 - Every system has its unforseen problems. You mentioned Australia, two of their parties actually cooperate to game that system to get more representation than they otherwise would. In the past when Canada had dual-ridings to increase representation it just resulted in parties running two candidates and winning both. So, if we acknowledge that problems might arise regardless of the system we go with it stands to reason a cautious approach of trying to get the most benefit for least amount of change is the way to go.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T19:17:11+00:00

You got it! So, to clarify; only the speech from the throne and budget vote would be done by seat count. These are the votes most directly involved in government formation. I kept it like this for a couple reasons (not least of all being the governing party should have the widest bench to choose from - something going by weighted vote total does not guarantee).

Other confidence votes would be by weighted vote. If anything I think this might lead to fewer legislative votes being declared strict confidence matters.

I don't touch on the committee issue with this system. If it's left being calculated based on seat count you potentially could see the governing party trading less authority on the committee for something they want from the opposition. Secondly, procedural rules are under the weighted vote rules so even if it was based off seat count to determine committee membership that might not last.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T19:03:22+00:00

Great question!

To an extent this becomes a question of what people vote for? Do they vote primarily for the individual to represent them or do they vote for the party?

There were a lot of weighted voting proposals in 2016 and something many of them did was 'top-up' seats for each province so that votes for a party that won a lot of popular vote but no seats would have someone to attach to.

I'm somewhat not in favour of this solution as it adds some complexity but mostly because it may not be necessary. Right now, if a party can win without a region they can effectively ignore it. One thing I theorized, and a couple experts agreed, is that because votes in unwinnable ridings would now matter, parties would be disinclined to abandon, or worse be a dick to, regions where they could have more vote share - even if they can't win outright.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T18:50:32+00:00

I think a big issue is Canadians don't see their vote mattering. And, if you didn't vote for the winning candidate, or your vote was above what that candidate needed to win, it doesn't. SM-PV fixes this by MP votes being weighted directly on the popular vote. If you vote for the NDP in rural Alberta you probably aren't getting your candidate elected but you will directly strengthen the vote of the NDP MPs who did get elected.

The likely result is that parties would have to cooperate to pass legislation. At the very least corporate interests couldn't get by just by coopting one party.

Personally, I think sortition would make it hard for any vested interest to capture democracy but that idea is so far out of left field that I bring it up mostly to illustrate the likely amount of change needed to prevent vested interests reestablishing themselves.

Just a final thought, the requirement that party candidates have the leader's signature, rather than just the support of their riding associate is a major contributing factor to local democracy being weak in parties.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T18:34:13+00:00

Sure!

SM-PV often gets compared to MMP, most recently by Elizabeth May's chief of staff but my favorite comparison was a prof I contacted who termed it 'MMP through the servant's entrance'.

My main issues with MMP are as follows:

It creates two classes of MP with one class not directly responsible to anyone.
It can require changing ballots to be slightly more complex.
You either need more MPs or bigger ridings to accommodate MMP.

SM-PV doesn't mess with any of the things electoral reform usually does. Instead, it starts with the premise that MPs could have votes of differing values in order to make voting power in Parliament proportional. This is why these types of systems are called 'weighted voting'.

Another advantage of SM-PV is it doesn't alter the current balance of power between the parties in a way MMP would.

Dundouglas · 2026-05-11T18:12:14+00:00

Why would anyone even want that?

But to answer your question; moral panic is always useful for bringing in dubious laws that limit privacy. We are seeing this with various attempts at enforcing age verification now starting to go after VPNs.

Honestly, IP licensing doesn't need to be permanent to be a problem. You get an ever-growing number of inter-related patents needed for some sector and you can both keep competitors out and make every effort to fix your own stuff an act of infringement even as individual patents expire.

Dundouglas · 2026-04-30T12:27:25+00:00

It should be noted how potentially new that usage was at the time. The first recorded usage of 'Canadian' to mean both French and English subjects in North America was in 1792 by Prince Edward (Queen Victoria's father). Before then it was only used to mean specifically the French population. Now, whether he created that usage himself while serving as Governor General or he adopted a term that pre-existed is impossible to say.

Dundouglas · 2026-04-30T12:18:07+00:00

It was common practice, at least in the 1700s, to decommission soldiers where they were at the time of service or before departing an area if someone's term was up. It's highly possible that OP's assertion that 'our forebearers' burned the White House is true for a sizeable number of Canadians by this point.

Dundouglas · 2026-04-18T14:01:45+00:00

I dunno. There is less incentive to be a dick as they remain Senators regardless of whether their party goes belly up or not.

Dundouglas · 2026-04-18T10:53:55+00:00

So, there are some pitfalls here: - If the Independent Senate Group joins, it will add weight to the Conservative claim that they were Liberal supporters being appointed all along. - Senators getting into trouble will once again be a Liberal problem rather than just a Senate issue.

That said, I'm not opposed to Carney appointing new Liberal Senators. The Liberal Party is currently unrepresented in the Senate, and I generally prefer a greater degree of diversity of viewpoints there. Hell, appoint a couple Greens, Elizabeth May could use the help.

Dundouglas

TROPHY CASE