TheDrew

For what it's worth (almost nothing) I agree with this statement. As regards the benefit of the party in power, why is that even a concern? Electoral reform should be about responding to the needs of the electorate, not the party system. Also, in response to the claim that PR will not work in our strong party system, I would suggest that you're putting the cart before the horse. Our SMP system STRENGTHENS the party system and EXAGGERATES regional differences. A PR system would likely reduce this, and it would create a basis for regional dialogue. As a young voter who now has 3 federal elections and 2 provincial elections under my belt, without ever once having contributed to the selection of a representative, I think it's time that the Canadian people start seriously considering how to change the system for our own benefit. But, again, all this is pretty meaningless, since somehow PR isn't even on the national radar come election time.

I agree that no single vote is decisive in a plurality system, but that's part of my problem: those votes should count for something. What I'm saying is that while currently an individual vote means little, there exist ways of making them mean more. Under a PR variant, say multi-member proportional, while the appearance of one voter more or less at the polling station might not change who gets elected in a given riding seat, the cumulative effect of numerous votes cast for non-winning parties will result in the election of national list MPs, and furthermore, the effect of additional votes cast for winning candidates beyond the minimum required to win their seat will help bolster their party by providing them with national list seats also. And, as I've pointed out, we're not talking about the one vote of any given person; we're talking about making the millions of votes cast by supporters of non-winning parties and supporters of winning parties in excess of the necessary minimum. Your argument seems to be terribly reductionist: since no one vote counts, then nobody should vote. That's ludicrous. All that means is that in elections, group action on a constituency level is vitally important, and that would be dulled somewhat by the introduction of PR. And the issue of whether or not one should be informed about voting is completely irrelevant to the discussion of electoral reform; in fact, I would argue that the increased parity between popular support and parliamentary representation would result in people being more interested in becoming informed, since it would reduce emphasis on strategic voting (voting "against" rather than for), thus allowing people to vote according to the issues, rather than just trying to "block" specific parties. As far as any party benefiting from the current system is concerned, why does that matter? Certainly it will make it more difficult to get electoral reform through our current parliamentary structure, but since electoral reform doesn't require constitutional amendment, just an amendment to the Elections Act, you would only need 155 MPs to vote in favour of it. It doesn't matter which 155. If there is any legacy of Reform populism left in the CPC, I can see no reason that they would not support some form of PR, and the NDP has been fairly clear that they are supportive. Though the BQ would like oppose it due to their perceived benefit from the current system, their benefit is minor, and ultimately it would come down to the will of the constituents: if the Bloc opposed electoral reform, but the Quebecois saw that PR can actually improve regional power by allowing limited-interest parties to take list seats even if they fail to win riding seats, then the Quebecois would have to choose whether they feel the BQ or PR would better serve their interests. Mostly true. Ireland and Norway are both PR systems, and their voter turnout still manages to be fairly low. Germany and Belgium on the other hand have relatively high voter turnout. Voter turnout still has a lot to do with the issues facing an electorate. I am unconvinced however that switching to some form of PR could possibly hurt Canadian voter turnout levels. Plurality systems work great when there are only two parties.

I'm not certain we're even discussing the same issue here. In my riding, the second-place candidate received 15,305 votes out of 51,201, meaning that only 15,306 votes, or 29.9% of the popular vote was needed to win that riding. Which means that every vote for a non-winning party, AND all the votes for the winning party in excess of 15,306 were wasted. So it's not just my ONE vote, it's 70.1% of all the votes in my riding, or 35,985 votes that would be counted under some form of PR that are meaningless to the outcome of an election under our current system. And that's just my riding. My current riding, Toronto Centre, faces a similar problem: Total votes cast in 2004: 53,663 Votes for winning candidate: 30,336 Votes for second-place candidate: 12,747 Votes needed to win: 12,748 Votes for winning candidate wasted: 17,558 Votes for non-winning candidates (wasted by default): 23,327 Total wasted votes: 40,885 Percentage wasted votes: 76.2% So in two ridings alone, I've already seen 76,870 votes that made no difference to the outcome of the election. A third riding, Western Montreal's Jeanne-Le Ber (the closest non-territorial riding in the country in the last election, and thus the riding with the fewest wasted votes; the closest riding, Yukon-Western Arctic had only 13,478 votes cast, so it makes for a poor sample): Total votes cast in 2004: 45,676 Votes for winning candidate: 18,766 Votes for second-place candidate: 18,694 Votes needed to win: 18,695 Votes for winning candidate wasted: 71 Votes for non-winning candidates (wasted by default): 26,910 Total wasted votes: 26,981 Percentage wasted votes: 59.0% That's 103,851 votes wasted in three ridings. If we extrapolate the problem, assuming (very conservatively) that about 60% of votes are wasted per riding on average, with 13,489,559 votes cast in the last federal election, that means that over 8 million votes did nothing to influence the makeup of Parliament. I don't speak for just me. I speak for 8 million Canadians who cast their votes for no reason. It's simple math. The Single-member Plurality system disenfranchises us in a huge way. Plurality systems work great when there are only two parties. *Edit: When I say a vote is wasted, I mean beyond the additional party funding. But funding is not all that's needed to participate in elections, and it's certainly not the only thing that matters to activity in the House. Look at the Green Party: 582,247 votes cast for them, which means $1,018,932.25 in funding, but they still don't get to participate in the leaders' debate, and they still didn't get to sit even a single member in the House during the 38th Parliament.

Obviously, she suspects you're not going to vote CPC... So please go out on January 3rd and cancel her vote !!!!<{POST_SNAPBACK}> err, do you really believe that your single ballot will change in any way whatsoever the result of this election?Unless the candidate you vote for happens to lose by one vote (to my knowledge this has never happened in any Canadian federal election and the likelihood is extremely small), then your particular ballot is irrelevant. If it is or isn't in the ballot box makes no difference. This would be true under PR also. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> In a PR system my vote would count towads national percentages, and thus count towards list seats (in a multi-member proportional system, the form most commonly proposed for Canada). If getting 30% of the popular vote ensures around 30% of the list/PR seats, then that means a heck of a lot more than if my vote serves to elect NOBODY.

Once again I am totally heartbroken that none of the parties have even mentioned electoral reform in any meaningful way. What do I have to do to get people to notice that their votes don't count? Run down Bay Street wearing nothing but a banner that says "The people demand a revisitation of an archaic and outdated system of casting votes to choose representatives!"? Because I will! (The banner needs to be long, because it is very cold here in Toronto. I imagine I'd leave the "The people demand" showing, and then wait for the news crews to show up before I explain exactly what we demand). Am I the only person left in Canada who is sick and tired of being effectively disenfrachised by single-member plurality voting? I mean, sure the idea is to generate stability, but considering it seems to only create corrupt Liberal majorities, or slightly less corrupt Liberal minorities, with a fair chance now of likely-to-be-corrupt Conservative minorities, perhaps it's time for a change. Although minority governments will likely lead to more frequent elections, it will also force the parties to re-examine their stances, become more flexible, and try to create dialogue amongst themselves to ensure that government moves forward via compromise. In my riding in the last federal election (Calgary South-Centre, for those of you stalking me), the Conservatives won a handy 51% of the popular vote. That's a great foundation for a representative. But that also means that not only did 49% of all the voters throw their ballots into a paper shredder, but so did all the Conservative voters past the magic threshold (the next-highest vote percentage was the Liberals, with about 29%, if I recall correctly, which means that 29% +1 vote would have been enough to ensure a Conservative win). That's a lot of wasted ballots. When a party can earn 36.7% of the popular vote and win 43.8% of the seats in the Commons, or 15.7% of the vote for 6.1% of the seats, or 4.3% of the vote and 0 seats, I for one think we have a serious problem. My new signature: Plurality systems work great when there are only two parties.