It’s a wonder that the way we vote hasn’t been blamed for bad breath. It has been blamed for everything else. Fewer people vote, blame it on first-past-the-post (FPTP). A party wins the election with just 40 per cent of the vote, blame it on FPTP.
Mainstreet Research annoyed Ontario voters recently by having automated telephone calls ask how they would like to exercise their vote. The result was also annoying. According to reports, it appears about a third of us want to vote for proportional representation—that is where politicians are appointed to sit in parliament according to the per cent that we vote for. About a third also opted for preferential voting—where your second, third or fourth choice can help one of the candidates to get over 50 per cent support. Luckily another third of us supported first-past-the-post. You would think that all the ballyhoo about voting, some sort of consensus would start to form.
Back in 2007, Ontario voters chose by about two-thirds to stick with FPTP instead of opting for a form of proportional representation. In that version, only some of the politicians were appointed. I got the impression at that time that our voters were opposed to the idea of having anyone appointed to the legislature.
It has been said that a definition of insanity is the repeating of the same thing over and over and hoping for different results. That is an excellent description of the conservative party’s voting system for leadership. They always use preferential voting—and never seem to like the results. This is the form of voting used with a large number of candidates and you indicate your preference from one to ten to find which one can first reach 50 per cent plus one. The problem is that they drop the poorest performers first. They then add the second choice of this loser to the count. What they are doing is adding the losers’ second choice or then third choice or fourth choice and so on, until somebody adds up to more than 50 per cent. In effect, it is the losers who really pick the winners.
The more reasonable alternative to this is when one candidate does not get more than 50 per cent on the first ballot is hold a run-off vote for the top two. At least this precludes drilling down among the losers.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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