A sudden influx of hundreds of readers can make any blogger’s heart go pit-a-pat. Since last week, Babel-on-the-Bay’s readership has reached new heights. It was not because of our sage advice on Canadian elections but something written eight years ago at the time of the Ontario referendum on voting reform. Our latest surge of new readers is from Great Britain. Now that they have had their hard fought general election, it seems that some Brits want to change the rules on how they vote.
Admittedly, a Canadian’s knowledge of the British parliamentary system is somewhat coloured by the satire of Gilbert and Sullivan and the comedic commentaries of films by the Boulting Brothers. We have never been too sure of how the British parliament managed to survive after the days of David Lloyd George.
Not that we think the Canadian parliament owes anything to the mother of parliaments beyond a nosegay on Mothers’ Day. The parliament in Ottawa has gone its own way now for almost 150 years and many of the worst aspects of the British parliamentary system are only now besetting its poor occupants.
But it is in the choosing of the denizens of the Commons Chamber that is causing the current controversy. Yes, the Brits invented the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system in the days when the villagers met in the town square and shouted out their preferences. The first thing you notice about those demanding change is that they are not proposing any specific system. They are starting by tearing down FPTP.
And, in many ways, they are right. Yes, FPTP is an anachronism. While it is old and creaky, it has served us well. There is not always a relationship between share of votes and share of seats in parliament. Minority governments can happen. A shift of voting patterns by a strategic block of maybe ten per cent of voters can turn parliament on its collective head.
But before counting FPTP out for the count, one really needs to understand what is being posed as a replacement. Does any educated citizen who respects democracy want to vote for a party list? Or would we condone systems of transferable votes or mixed member systems that cannot be understood by all the voters?
Where we are failing in this entire exercise is our miserable performance in developing better voting systems. We are reaching a point today where we can trust the Internet for secure voting and for cost-free instant run-off elections. Why are we not moving in that direction? Why are we not thinking about it?
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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