They call our Canadian voting system First-Past-the-Post. Some people use more scatological terms for it. Others just castigate the system when it does not work the way they want. It frustrates them. Their problem is that they cannot come up with a better system of voting.
Many of the people who get cranky about our vote method tell us that proportional voting is what makes sense to them. In proportional voting you only vote for a party. That way, every party that can gain more than three or four per cent of the vote, gets to appoint one or more members to the parliament, legislature or council. That way you end up with each party having seats closely proportional to their vote. What you really end up with most of the time is a government of minorities that you never voted for and that has to do a lot of back-room negotiating with other parties to put together a government.
In the beginning, First-Past-the-Post voting enabled citizens to select an individual who they felt best reflected their interests to represent them. What has gone wrong with this system is that the development of political parties gave us the choice of also voting for a party. If we wanted to vote for a particular party, we had no choice but to vote for that party’s candidate. This approach can appeal to lazy people who are too self-centred to be bothered to find out anything about what is happening in the world around them. It also tends to seriously lower the quality of people elected to public office. If some of the Members of Parliament we have been electing recently were paid what they were worth, they would be lucky to be paid minimum wage.
The other basic problem with First-Past-the-Post is that when you have three or more candidates, you can have the situation where an individual wins with less that a majority of the vote. Some people feel cheated when someone of whom they do not approve wins with less than 50 per cent of the vote. The simple answer to this is to have a run-off election. You drop off the bottom feeders and choose between the leaders in another election. It is not a perfect solution but it works for many.
But please do not suggest a preferential balloting system. Marking a ballot for your first, second and maybe third choice takes the balloting process out of the hands of the electorate and into a backroom where the voters cannot follow the process. Any system that loses the confidence of the voters and fails to meet standards of transparency and openness fails the voter and quickly loses support. If you do not want to pay for a run-off election, please settle for what you get the first time.
One of these days, we will update the Democracy Papers that discuss world-wide voting systems. It is interesting to see that for many years now there has been a steady stream of researchers accessing those files on this web site. We welcome any questions, arguments or suggestions on the subject.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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