The Need For Change
This is the first of what will be three posts concerning the the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform’s recommendation that Ontario vote yes to adopt a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system in the October 10, 2007 referendum. The next two will cover what is MMP, and refute arguments from the “no” side.
Most of you probably already know this, but I thought that before we got into what MMP is and why we should adopt it, it would be useful to review what’s wrong with the system we’ve got now. (I’m taking much of the below information from Fair Vote Canada.)
Admittedly, there are flaws and trade-offs with every voting system. The system we (Canada and all the provinces) use now, however, is particularly ill-suited for the time and place that we find ourselves in. It’s known as First Past the Post (FPP) or Single Member Plurality (SMP), which basically means that whoever gets the most votes in a given riding wins that riding, even if they haven’t received the majority of votes. (In other words, they win even if most people voted for someone else.)
As this is applied on a provincial or national level, the result is that a party can win only 40% of the vote, but get 60% of the seats, and 100% of the power. What’s worse, is that if you happen to live in a riding where your preferred candidate doesn’t have a chance (for example, if you’re a Conservative in Toronto), your vote doesn’t count towards electing anyone. And in a democracy, every vote should count.
Here are some federal examples of the strange distortions that our voting system has created:
- In 1984, the Progressive Conservatives win 50% of the votes but gain nearly 75% of the seats
- In 2004, more than 500,000 Green voters fail to elect a single MP anywhere, while fewer than 500,000 Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada alone elect 22 Liberal MPs
- The 2004 election produces a House with only 21% women MPs, with Canada now ranking 36th among nations in percentage of women MPs, well behind most Western European countries
- In 1993, the newly formed Bloc Quebecois comes in fourth in the popular vote, but forms the Official Opposition by gaining more seats than the second place Reform Party and third place Tories
- In 2000, 2.3 million Liberal voters in Ontario elect 100 Liberal MPs while the other 2.2 million Ontario voters elect only 3 MPs from other parties
- In 1993, more than two million votes for Kim Campbell’s Progressive Conservatives translate into two seats – or one seat for every 1,000,000 votes. Meanwhile, the voting system gives the Liberal Party one seat for every 32,000 votes
The biggest winners under our current system are regional parties like the Bloc, while the biggest losers are women and minorities (our current system is extremely good at electing white men, and less effective at electing everyone else). Ultimately, people feel like their votes don’t count, and/or that they can’t vote for the candidates or parties they truly believe in for fear of accidentally electing someone they’re truly afraid of.
The good news is, we can do better…
Chris Tindal » What Is MMP? said,
April 29, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
[...] This is the second of three posts concerning the the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform’s recommendation that Ontario vote yes to adopt a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system in the October 10, 2007 referendum. The first outlined the need for change; the next will refute some common arguments from the “no†side. [...]
Chris Tindal » To Those Who Would Vote No… said,
May 3, 2007 @ 8:00 am
[...] This is the third of three posts concerning the the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform’s recommendation that Ontario vote yes to adopt a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system in the October 10, 2007 referendum. The first two outlined the need for change and described what is MMP. [...]
Referendum Info - Proportional Representation Explained | Colin Carmichael - The Quality of Life Candidate for Cambridge said,
May 11, 2007 @ 11:57 am
[...] The Need for Change [...]
Chris Tindal » Midland Says Yes! said,
May 26, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
[...] Barker, the intention was to make it primarily an information session that could explore both the merits and disadvantages of voting yes on October 10th to adopt a Mixed Member Proportional voting system. [...]
Chris Tindal » This Is The Question said,
June 21, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
[...] to elect members to the provincial legislature?” Voters will then indicate a choice between the First Past the Post system and the Mixed Member Proportional [...]
Chris Tindal » There Is Hope said,
September 2, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
[...] he has at least been kept in check to a certain degree by a Parliamentary system that, while not perfect, could be much worse, and by a media that has refused to stop asking questions even when Harper [...]
Chris Tindal » Green Party Leads In Saskatchewan Riding… said,
November 7, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
[...] that’s a very different thing than actually winning seats or finishing a close second under First Past the Post, but it’s also the sort of thing that used to be considered an impossibility. Now it’s [...]
Chris Tindal » Bad news said,
February 11, 2009 @ 9:23 pm
[...] one of the last parliamentary democracies on Earth to use an antiquated voting system that delivers results we did not ask for. This, despite the fact that when citizens have studied the issue, they have chosen change. Of [...]
Chris Tindal » Where does the Green party go from here? said,
March 2, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
[...] Second is the widely held belief that Elizabeth advocated that Canadians vote for other parties in the last election. (I say “belief,” because Elizabeth denies that she did this. Either way, the perception is what’s important.) This needs to be repudiated in the strongest terms. There is a time and a role for partisanship, and it is the primary role of all party leaders and candidates to advocate for their party’s platform and for their own election, especially during election campaign periods. To send mixed signals to the contrary distorts election results even more than they already are distorted by our antiquated voting system. [...]
Chris Tindal » STV: Power up your vote said,
May 5, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
[...] on May 12th, British Columbians will vote on whether or not to change their voting system from the antiquated and inadequate first past the post to the improved Single Transferable Vote. The new voting system was designed by citizens and [...]