“Whenever
you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.”
We almost had another federal
election. The last one was just about
six months ago. As usual, Andrew Coyne and many others have called for election
reform. Their argument is that a majority government can be elected with about
40% of the votes and thus does not represent the true will of the people.
Our present system of the winning candidate
being the one with the most votes come to us from the British parliamentary
system and is still used there and in the United States. The US system relies of the fact that there
are only two parties of any consequence in that country. A viable third party, as has sometimes been
the case in the past, raises the same concerns there as here. Is the system flawed? Probably.
Can it be fixed? Possibly.
Ontario tried to introduce a different
voting system in a referendum in 2007.
It was dubbed the MMP (mixed member proportional) system and would have
had a proportional representation system for most of the members plus a group
of 39 seats (“the gang of 39”) set aside for candidates to be nominated by the
parties in proportion to their elected seats.
As I said at the time in a letter to the editor, my “concern is a
conviction that the voters will never get to directly vote for party leaders or
prospective cabinet members.” It was a
system that could only have been devised by a committee. Fortunately, in my opinion, the electorate
turned down the proposal. But the
attempt points out one of the problems with the various ideas that have been
floated for electoral reform. Each of
the ones proposed so far have been a mish-mash of ideas like the MMP system
above. Each has seemed to try to address
a number of factions while satisfying none.
All have also appeared to be designed by committee.
Are there other options? There are two methods of candidate election
that are used extensively in other democratic nations and they are much more
straightforward than any of the ones being discussed in Canada.
The first is straight proportional
representation. It is widely used in
Europe. There are, however, some
downsides to this method. They
invariably result in minority governments which in turn bring about coalitions
– a word that is somehow anathema to Canadians. Canadians tend to prefer
majority governments. Proportional representation
also tends to open the door to new parties so that many represent very special
interests. This is not to say they are
unworkable – they just take more effort to work out the necessary coalition
dynamic that can rule effectively.
However, the major defect in my case is that the elected representatives
could be drawn from a party list with no apparent concern for local
representation. The first seat goes to
the party leader and so on down the party’s list.
The second alternative is the use of
run-off elections. In this case, when no
candidate gets 50% of the vote for his/her riding, there is a run-off between
the first two vote-getters. This ensures
that the winner gets over 50% of people’s first or second choice. Of course it takes a bit more time with the
run-off, usually held one or two weeks after the main election. And we are an impatient lot who demand
instant answers, so that wait might not be popular for some. However, it is in my opinion, the best of the
alternatives. It is straightforward,
fair and effective. It can produce
majority or minority governments, depending on the mood of the electorate. Other supposedly similar schemes such as
ranking preferences on the initial ballot with some sort of numerical scoring
to select the winner can become confusing for many voters and could be open to
question of the results. The run-off
format is clear and transparent.
So, in a country that is essentially a
three party system, which method of selection of your governments would you
like to live with?
“Too bad the only people who know how to run
the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.”
- George Burns
