Same here, Dave, always good to communicate with you on political systems.
I applaud people to have found other ways to influence the political outcome. With a two-party system, voters can basically vote with just their feet to express themselves politically. Meaning, the system is hardly refined. Voters can stomp with their feet in agreement, be silent, or walk away altogether.
Strategic voting is therefore an indication that voters are smarter than the crude system to the point they want to communicate to the usual winners that they are not listening well enough to the voters. The benefit of strategic voters is that it makes the usual parties nervous and that makes them work harder to understand what the voters want (and therefore deliver better).
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I have communicated with Fair Vote (the original Canadian organization) and suggested implementing proportional voting at city levels. That way, (some) folks can experience the distinctly different setup and talk about it with others. What I heard from you is that city government is already much weaker in Canada than in the US. Here in California, the cities are quite empowered, but also mostly populated with members of a single party. One could suggest that empowering Canadian cities more is a good first step toward reform.
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I am completely not surprised that voters turn down a change of system.
We know from game theorists that voters do not always pick the outcome that is in their best interest. The television quiz with one big item locked behind one of three doors is probably the most famous example where people tend to pick the door that has the lower chance of containing the prize (pigeons do much better with this quiz than people). Many folks don’t (or didn’t) understand this setup. It is much like being presented with ork, ork, ork… you eat soup with a….? Many do pick fork next to answer the question. It is a hard-wiring aspect that works within humans to stick with what we know or to follow what is most logical at first sight when put on the spot. Ordinarily, this turns out to be a benefit.
Compare this therefore with the following setup: When playing basketball all your life or watching the game all your life, and asked the question if you want to start playing soccer, what do you think the chances are you’d agree?
Or, imagine playing competitive sports all your life and asked the question if you want to switch to a system in which sports is still included but now has to share the spotlight with physics and biology, literature and film making, language and history? How likely will it be that such a voter will accept the change, even when that voter knows intellectually that being versatile in all subject matters would be so much more beneficial for him or her?
Stubbornness can be seen as a beneficial trait. But it is indeed surprising that folks hang on to the known voting system when it produces so many unhealthy results as in the United States. You are lucky in Canada that the system works better (it also does not have presidential elections that forge a tight fight for that almighty single seat).
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One more note about the two-party system: One can hear the reply of “We’ll see” or “We don’t know that yet” or “I am not convinced yet”. This is a position that belongs particularly to winner-takes-all, to divide-and-conquer. It functions like timeouts in basketball. Timeouts can diffuse the opponent, get them out of their momentum. The position can be used as a tool. I forgot to include that in the original article (but it was long enough already).
Let me say it one more time:
Systems are forged in fire. They are not established through consensus since consensus is automatically part of an already established system and should therefore not be used.
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Yes, always fun to discuss these matters with you.
