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What about the voting within the two chambers? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I don't know very well how the legislative process works, but to the best of my understanding, the last step involves a vote where we decide whether to pass a bill. A simple majority means it passes, otherwise it's rejected. This leads to an interesting (and possibly dangerous) dynamic where the government can be very different depending on whether or not the winning party has a majority. It means that when we have a majority, it can lead to what we call "tyranny of the majority". It also means that there's very little difference in how much influence a smaller party can have between having a single MP until the point where they can team up with another party to form a majority. It means that even if we get proportional voting for selecting MPs, we might still need to vote strategically in order to either ensure or prevent a majority government, or to encourage a specific coalition government.

Do we have any potential solutions for this? Or did I maybe misunderstand how things work and this isn't actually a problem?

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[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

It would be exceedingly rare for one party to get enough votes to form a majority under PR.

But beyond that, we have the non-partisan senate, the governor general, and the Charter (via the judicial branch) to all act as obstacles to unjust legislation. Canada is no stranger to majority governments under our current system, and the checks 'n balances have worked pretty well so far, for the most part.

Barring a trump-style lunatic jacking up the executive branch (which can absolutely happen, that's something us citizens have to be careful not to vote for), PR should make it slightly harder for tyranny of the majority to happen. Take a look at New Zealand in 1996 for a relatively recent example of PR adoption and how their voting patterns have changed after the switch.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

It would be exceedingly rare for one party to get enough votes to form a majority under PR.

The current system would encourage the formation of coalition governments. Those coalitions would probably not look too different from the big parties we currently have since parties would only group together if they have sufficiently similar goals. This does make it very likely that the majority coalition maintains a fairly stable high level agenda over time.

Barring a trump-style lunatic jacking up the executive branch

It could happen, but that's not what I'm worried about. I don't believe that any single law we pass would be deemed unjust in isolation, but the totality of laws can be. If everything is set up to benefit the majority, then everyone else gets left behind. It's not a matter of malice. They're just not considered in the calculus.

An example that comes to mind is the treatment of native Americans. They keep getting the short end of the stick, and while some concessions are made, it's never because someone looked at the numbers and decided their situation was unfair. It happens because of some combination of public pressure and the benevolence of the people in charge. How many other such groups are there that are still getting completely ignored because the public don't know about them?

this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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The unofficial non-partisan Lemmy movement to bring proportional representation to all levels of government in Canada.

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