On how the List MPP’s should be picked by the parties in an MMP system.

Great post Scott!

One small quibble though. There's no reason parties would have to limit the length of their lists to 39 candidates. In fact, doing so could very well mean that parties run out of list candidates should their high-ranked candidates do well in local races (which is not unreasonable, after all they would likely be the most popular candidates inside their respective parties).

For example, New Zealand only has 52 list seats, but both Labour and National make a candidate list much longer than 52 names.

Good stuff.

There's no incentive for a party to adopt a system that gives more power to local members.  If you are going to say "but voters can punish them", then ask yourself whether they punish parties which, oh I dunno, currently appoint candidates over the wishes of the local party members.  Of course they don't.  And trying to set up a system which mimics the local nomination process isn't the answer anyway, since that system is largely a farce, where ethnic communities or church groups or other special interests with instant memberships often stack out meetings much to the chagrin of loyal, activist party members.  True, you could argue that at least this is a change to the currently-broken system.  But my point is that if it just replicates the same problem that makes the existing system broken, I don't count that as much of an improvement.

(Oh, and I naturally object to the "women and minorities" comment as I object to all forms of arbitrary idenitity politics.  Nothing burns me more than the notion that only people of a certain gender or race can represent the views of their "class".)

Cam, I disagree that legislation is necessary to ensure that lists have regional balance.  By leaving it up to parties to decide how to nominate their province-wide candidates, a healthy competition is created forcing all parties to develop the best possible lists.  Competition is a great incentive to do something.  Thus if one party nominates a list with good gender, regional and ethnic balance, it will have an advantage over other parties that don't.   No parties during elections want to alienate any voters if they can easily avoid doing so.  Why would a party nominate a list of province-wide candidates that ignored or gave little representation to Northern Ontario, or Southwestern Ontario, etc.?  They'd be alienating voters they are trying to attract.   I simply don't buy the argument that parties will alienate voters when they can easily avoid doing so.  Parties are vote-winning machines, not vote-losing machines.  I think the punishments for ignoring certain regions on the list would be very real, whereas there are virtually no punishments for parties that ignore certain regions now under First-Past-The-Post.   If they win without that region, they can keep on winning without them.

Matt… "Why would a party nominate a list of province-wide candidates that ignored or gave little representation to Northern Ontario, or Southwestern Ontario, etc.?  They'd be alienating voters they are trying to attract. " This has been the past practice in this province and country, and that was with knowing that they were writing off X number of seats in the process.  How is that going to get any better when the parties don't stand to loose any seats as a result of it??? Basically all this would do it take away the risk from ignoring certain groups and regions.  Parties realize that they cannot and will not win 100% of the vote, so they make calculated choices as to whose votes they are going for, and whose they are not. That extends to regions. So if you have a region like Northern Ontario, with 5% of the vote provincially, why would come out with policies to cater to that 5% when it risks that other 95% of the vote??? The Tories are a great example of this. In the late 1990's, the ended the Spring Bear hunt in Northern Ontario, against the wishes of Northerners, but at the urging of many environmentalists and animal rights group. Harris chose to give up that 5% (knowing that he had very little support there to begin with) to go after a larger section of urban voters in Southern Ontario.  Under FPTP, there is punishment for ignoring regions, and that is not getting seats in those ridings. Under MMP, you will have an easier time winning without certain regions because there would be those 39 seats that come from province wide vote. If you're a party and really want to play to a certain region (say the GTA) and you're really popular for it, under MMP, those voters get two votes to reward you. That's more incentive to do this, not less.

What I was getting at is that it doesn't matter how the lists are formed when it comes to regional representation because the seats are not handed out regionally. I would rather see the MMP seats get divided up by regions, and then each party would have their lists in those regions, therefore there would be no province wide party lists because those MMP seats would be attatched to a region. Therefore, Toronto votes would count towards electing Toronto based MMP candidates, Northern votes only count towards electing Northern MMP seats, etc… I think that is the best way to balance this all out. Also, I think that this would bode better for many smaller parties because those MMP votes would be attatched to specific regions and would not be watered down by a lack of support in other regions (ie. The Greens numbers are stronger in the GTA than in Northern Ontario, so by having those MMP seats attached regionally, the percentage of Green votes in that Toronto region would be higher (when compared to the province wide vote), giving them a better chance to winning an MMP seat. That would give a much better representation of the wishes of the voters, and it would take care of this whole issue of these MMP MPP's not being directly elected, because they could point to that specific geographic region that elected them).

"Greg believed there are many good options out there to choose from, The best way, in his opinion, is to hold REGIONAL NOMINATION MEETINGS."
 
I will jump in and express my skepticism to Greg's model.  This is a party decision and it depends whether the Liberals will follow through with it.  With regards to Mark's remarks, smaller parties may seek to concentrate on using a province wide list and duck out of certain local races due to pre-election coalition agreements (see May-Dion).  Note that we are dealing with 39 MPPs and the prospects of defeated constituency candidates being appointed from the list will be a point of contention of major brokerage parties given the 2/3, 1/3 split.   At the same time, there have been calls among electoral reform proponents particularly in Wales to use national or province wide lists.
One should note also that star candidates will probably be asked to run in local constituencies as a means to enhance their legitimacy among voters.       

Wilf… "A party that, for example, elects no local Northern MPPs will have more Northern List candidates left on the list and elected as List MPPs."  This might be possible Wilf, but where will they be on these lists??? How many candidates from other parts of the province will be ahead of them???

The fact is that there are no guarantees for regional representation with the MMP MPP's, and it leaves it up to the parties to decide how they will use their MMP seats. The fact is that there is nothing in this proposal that guarantees that these list seats will automatically compensate any disproportionality in geography, gender, etc. The only top up that will happen will more than likely go towards where the power already exists, giving them more.

"The only top up that will happen will more than likely go towards where the power already exists, giving them more."

Why would a party want to do that? How will that attract more voters?

The CA Report says: "with the boundary lines for the 2007 Ontario election, about 10% of the districts are in the North (11 out of 107). Therefore, under the Assembly’s MMP system, the North would retain about 10% of the local districts (9 out of 90)."

Now, why would a party likely make the top 20 on its list be two from each region that has 10% of the seats, and so on? Two very practical reasons:

1.  Every vote counts. To quote Grant Robertson of the National Farmers Union "one of the biggest contributors to the causes of the growing political irrelevance of rural and small town Ontario was Mike Harris' Fewer Politicians Act.

It was an easy thing to suggest; who wouldn't be in favour of a few less? The problem was that it was in primarily rural areas that ridings were joined together. It used to be you had to have a coherent platform on rural/small town issues to win enough of those seats to become government. Now you can safely ignore those areas and focus on urban Ontario.

The Ontario Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform, average citizens all, has learned more about how we vote and create government than most of us will ever want to know.

They have recommended a new system called mixed member proportional that we will vote on in a referendum during the October provincial election. It provides a solution to the reduced interest by political parties in rural/small town Ontario.

Under this system we will get to vote in our own ridings for our local member, but also vote for a party as well (they need not be the same). Parties will provide a list of prospective candidates and any discrepancy between the number of seats won in local ridings and the total number of votes will be made up by individuals from these lists.

Parties that are serious about wanting to win government will provide a list that is far more representative of the province than our current MPPs are.

Parties will have to make sure that candidates with a strong understanding of rural/small town issues are high up on the list. Whereas now parties can ignore those voters, in the proposed system they will lose seats to parties that can capture votes in these areas. It is the best way to ensure that the issues of farmers and their neighbours finally make it back onto the political agenda."
 
2.  The List MPPs will have to serve the ridings that elected no local MPP of that party. Their voters will demand it. Now, if the Greens elect 8 MPPs they'll each have to manage to look after about 11 ridings, as happens in Germany, but major party politicians will not be that ambitious. They'll expect a manageable case load. If a party elects 45 MPPs, that's one for every pair of ridings. If the list is unbalanced, and the party wins no local seats in the North, and two List MPPs end up having to look after the entire North, each serving four or five ridings, they're going to say "who screwed up the list?"  

Wilf:

I avoided discussing this because the essay was long enough as it was, but both Greg and I disagree with anything that says the list candidates be also mandated to run in the local election seats. In fact, we both outright object to it.

If the current system is broken in that it doesn't allow more diverse candidates more reflective of our society to run (ie more women, visible minorities, disabled, First Nations etc) then any attempt to make the local and list MPP's run simultaneously does NOTHING to address that. We are merely using the same broken system of FPTP nominations  without fixing one of the major complaints of the current system.

If any major party calls to put THAT as their way of nominating list candidates, it a) totally cuts the feet out of the argument many of us have been using to say it will give better representation to these communities, and b) You will find MMP advocates like myself and Greg dissenting from that rather horrid proposal.

Will any party decide to have no list-only candidates?

In New Zealand, the conservative National Party has primarily local candidates on the list, with a limit of five list-only candidates to correct for under-represented groups. In Scotland the Conservative Party doesn't care about under-represented groups and puts no one on their list but local candidates.  They could still choose to get more women elected by putting locally-nominated women in every third spot on the list until they run out, making sure that those elected (in the top positions) will be more representative — but they don't.  It's a big debate in Scotland. The Liberal Democrats' convention defeated an executive recommendation for 50/50 "zippered" lists. The perils of success — in Scotland's first parliament in 1999 they elected so many women that some people started to say "where's the problem?"

What will Ontario PCs do? I don't know.

I expect that Liberals and New Democrats will make sure their lists allow more diverse candidates more reflective of our society to get elected — not just run — (ie more women, visible minorities, disabled, First Nations etc. in good list positions), and likely the PCs too, one way or another. The more interesting question is whether parties will postpone some local nominations until after the regional convention. That might be the best thing for women in the Liberal Party, since they may elect only a handful of list MPPs. But this is all pretty speculative at this early date. 

"the smart party is going to focus on where the largest concentration of that vote exists." You're still thinking like a FPTP strategist. Concentration is no longer relevant. The popular vote province-wide is king. Today, you have to focus on winnable ridings where you are strong, and write off weak areas. Under MMP that is no longer the case. If you are already strong in one area, you need to make a bigger effort in the area where your party was weaker in the past and therefore has more potential voters. As Grant Robertson already explained above.

Greg,

Where will the cabinet ministers be derived from for the brokerage parties - can they be derived from list-only candidates?

"70% of the province's population live in an area that makes up less that 25% of the area of the province . . . So you are going to have competiting interests."

On the other hand, those who want raise regional fears in Toronto complain that 58% of the population of Ontario lives outside the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area  — 55% if you add the Oshawa CMA to Toronto, making the conventional GTA — so the "smart party" will appeal to the majority, and run on an anti-Toronto platform.
 
All these fears ignore two points:

1.  Parties aim at the marginal voters — the ones they can pick up or might lose. They are the ones that determine the outcome. Today they aim at them in swing ridings only. Under MMP they will aim at them everywhere: Toronto, other urban, rural, northern. If the majority of their support last time came from men, will they ignore women? Nonsense — if anything they will pitch their message to the women voters they need. Same with geographic communities, youth, seniors, you name it.

2.  Looking at Ontario's large size, the 103 Citizens decided the German 50% list members was not appropriate, nor the 40%-plus found in New Zealand and Scotland. They didn't even settle in the range of 35% to 40% recommended by some political scientists. They cut the list members down to 30%, so that 70% of the legislature would still be directly accountable to geographic communities. If they had made it 40% or 50% with regional lists, would a northern list have been satisfactory? Not to the Northwest, who might still be left out. Would an Eastern Ontario list have been satisfactory? Perhaps not to Kingston and rural areas, and not to the francophone minority. We have minorities everywhere. So every geographic area still elects at least one local MPP.

The 103 Citizens were well aware of the option you suggest, which is basically Scotland. 

Scotland of course has 44% list MPPs, and even that isn't enough in four of their eight regions, because when you split up a province into regions you get regional sweeps: twice, in their first two elections, Labour got a "winner's bonus" in four of the eight regions. In Ontario, the Liberals would have gotten one in Toronto, the Southwest, and the North on the 2003 votes and on the 2004 federal votes also, a persistent pattern.
 
If you watched the Citizens make their decision, they started with the premise that they wanted as many local ridings as possible and as much proportionality as possible. That required province-wide proportionality. They could have done that with provincial lists in a Swedish-style model of jurisdiction-wide allocation followed by assignment to regions, just as the Quebec Citizens' Committee proposed. But that was not simple, and no working model exists anywhere to show that it's practical.

The simple and practical model was New Zealand: despite the South Island having only 25% of the population, MMP has never resulted in South Islanders complaining of being shortchanged in the lists, because it has never been in any party's interest to do that. ("The South Island has a culture of defeat" is not part of their political language.) New Zealand parties make it work with their regional conventions, and the Citizens' were confident Ontario parties would do that too.

By the way, why should a party with 2% of the vote get a seat if it's a regional party, but not if it isn't? Why do you want to reward regional parties? Isn't that one of the worst things about FPTP?

If the threshold was 5%, I could see your point. In Scotland's first election, the Greens got only 3.6%, but their vote in the Edinburgh region ("Lothians") was high enough for one seat, their "foot in the door." But Ontario's MMP model would have given them five of Scotland's 129 seats. Isn't that good enough? Do you really want a 2% threshold like Israel?

Incidentally, just because an MMP system uses regional lists like Scotland doesn't mean it won't have still a province-wide threshold. Scotland doesn't, but the London Assembly does, 5%, the same as the three German provinces that have regional lists.

"when you do get around to compiling your list, who is more important: the native guy from the Sault or the Chinese woman from Markham?"

That is a decision for members or delegates in each party, depending how the party members nominate list candidates.

In the system of the New Zealand Labour Party which I expect one or two parties in Ontario would use, the party's Northern Ontario convention would decide what list position to give to the native guy from the Sault, and the appropriate regional convention would decide what list position to give the Chinese woman from Markham. Then the lists would be folded together pro-rata so that about every 10th name is from the North, and so on.Since aboriginal communities in southern Ontaro are scattered, would the provincial party be able to insert a southern Ontario aboriginal candidate into the list if none won a nomination at the regional convention? A fair question, and perhaps some parties would provide for this under exceptional circumstances. I expect they will be at pains to show that their list candidates were democratically nominated, not appointed.

Would it make sense to nominate more than 39 list candidates? No doubt.

In German provinces with a similar model to ours, they would generally choose to nominate about 90. In the other hand, in New Zealand the two largest parties nominated only 65 each although they have 69 local seats and another 51 list seats. But Ontario parties could nominate 129 if they were silly enough to.

One advantage of nominating 90 is that, if the party chooses to defer some local nominations until after the regional conventions, candidates who had won a nomination at the regional conventions — where women and minorities will get a fair shake — would have an advantage in winning the local nomination.

Of course, I like Scott's (and Greg's) Option C for the 11 regions (except I might put Perth, Huron, Bruce, Grey with Waterloo.) With 11 regions, nominating a larger number would be more feasible. A convention normally has to nominate each list position one at a time, since the ranking is vital. It could take a long time to nominate too many.
The Ontario PC Party operates with nine regions, but I can't find their definition of them.