The most notable attempts of the previous NDP caucus were in Motions 76 and Motions 86.

Motion 76, by Green MP Mike Morrice: https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/mike-morrice(110476)/motions/12180488 This one didn’t come to a vote.

Motion 86, by NDP MP Lisa Marie Barron: https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/111023/motions/12517157 This one did come to a vote, but was Negatived (101 Yea / 220 Nay) by the usual suspects.

• LPC: 39 Yea / 108 Nay
• CPC: 3 Yea / 112 Nay
• BQ: 30 Yea / 0 Nay
• NDP: 24 Yea / 0 Nay
• Independent: 3 Yea / 0 Nay
• Green: 2 Yea / 0 Nay

Unfortunately, both Mike Morrice and Lisa Marie Barron lost their seats in the last election to members of the conservative party due to vote splitting.

“Alternative Vote” is what you get when you slap a ranked ballot on a first-past-the-post system. The defining features of FPTP that lead to issues decried by PR advocates are single-member ridings which form larger chambers, which leads to highly disproportionate results (e.g. if you have an A/B/C split of 40%/30%/30% across 10 ridings, all 10 will elect “A”). leading to a gradual consolidation into two parties, increased polarization, reduced democratic choice, reduced democratic participation (because your voice actually doesn’t matter), etc.

The ranked ballot component of “Alternative Vote” does not meaningfully change any factors of that equation, and can actually exacerbate it – effectively funneling those few non-major party votes back toward major parties as “false choices”. In the all-party special committee on electoral reform in 2016, their report highlights Alternative Vote/Preferential Voting/Instant Run-Off Voting/“Ranked Ballot” (all the same thing) as the single option which would result in even more distorted outcomes than our own First-past-the-post [1]. Australia is the only country to use this at the federal level.

This doesn’t mean that ranking choices / a ranked ballot is fundamentally bad, but that it is a feature of a voting system is neither necessary nor sufficient to fix the problems attached to FPTP. A PR system which leverages ranked ballots to great effect is Single Transferrable Vote, which is basically the same but with multi-member districts rather than single-member, keeping top X winners of the district. That said, there are non-ranked ballot PR options which have been demonstrated to have high degrees of democratic success, so its a bit of a red herring.

[1]: Special Committee on Electoral Reform report 3 (2016): https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/42-1/ERRE/report-3/page-177#50 ERRE report 3 p177. See the diagram under subheading “Proportional Electoral Systems” about the Gallagher index

Our voting system is effectively a hand-me-down from the UK (where it is likewise bad and contributing to a number of issues). Your comment is moreso about different levels of government, but whether municipal, provincial, or federal, they all use the same voting system, and they all could use proportional systems (yes, including municipal – across the board the problem stems from single-member ridings causing distortions when they are used to populate larger chambers. STV maps very cleanly onto municipal politics by just eliminating wards and keeping the same top voted # of councillors).

I played it during one of the later playtests, as a player (homebrew adventure) and GM (Bay of Blackbottom oneshot). Note this was level 1, but level 1 in DS is higher powered than in other games in its cohort.

If you’re looking for a game for “crunchy combat-focused fantasy superhero adventure”, a la mid/high-level D&D5e, I thought it was an improvement in that combat is actually fun albeit long (whereas combat in 5e tends toward just being “long”, without an unreasonable amount of effort, system mastery, and planning from the GM). Out of combat abilities felt a bit weird to me, but I’ll chalk that up to my genre preference for lower-powered more grounded fantasy.

For me, as this was during a “what do I actually want out of a TTRPG” phase, it helped solidify that the answer is: none of that! I’ll take my XCOM and my improv roleplay separately, please. Unfortunately this means my fancy $200 backerkit books now sit unopened on my shelf :x

The other responder answered how many votes are considered extras, but I’m assuming you may be wondering about how those extra votes get allocated. If so, they would be divided up proportionally based on the 2nd choices of all the voters for that candidate or party. E.g. if Armchair won with extra votes, and all of Armchair’s voters 2nd choices were: 50% for Couch, 30% for Loveseat, and 20% for Stool, then the extra votes would be divided up to match those percentages.

This is a tangent, but when talking about STV I have seen at least one person comment that it does not solve for strategic voting, noting that if you liked a candidate but also knew that:

1. they were very popular and likely to win,

2. you had a rough idea of how the surplus votes would be split (possibly from prior polling),

you could make your vote count for more by voting for your 2nd choice (e.g. Stool) as your 1st choice, making your vote for Stool 5 times more potent than if you were just another extra voter for Armchair. I.e. it doesn’t eliminate strategic voting and so could cause distorted/degenerate outcomes. However, that relies on a lot of assumptions and is much less predictable than under First-Past-The-Post. There’s also at least one research article saying that strategic voting under STV is computationally difficult https://sci-hub.st/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41105995

An Alternative Vote system does not solve the major issues of First-Past-The-Post, and can still have wildly distorted outcomes relative to vote preferences. Unless combined with multi-member districts (aka Single Transferable Vote) it’s barely/not an improvement for Canada – it’s a convenient option for the largest parties because it rarely makes a difference to the outcome and the votes all trickle back to them anyway, so they can make a change without making a change.

Here’s an article worth reading. https://www.fairvote.ca/expert-dennis-pilon-sets-the-record-straight-about-the-alternative-vote/

The only desirable outcome of electoral reform is one which introduces at least a degree of proportionality – Single Transferable Vote if you’re really itching for a ranked ballot, or Mixed-Member Proportional Representation otherwise (my preference - but either would be a great improvement).