Why I Dislike Ranked Ballot Voting & Why I Support It

After four years studying Political Science at Laurentian University and over thirty years working for the House of Commons I tended to approach electoral reform more as a political scientist than as a typical voter. My preference has always been for a Proportional Representation system that provides that the political party preferences of the voters is reflected proportionally in the House of Commons or provincial legislatures.

I still believe that but I can see how voters that are used to selecting a single representative for each constituency would find a system of either multi-member constituencies or added representatives from party lists to be foreign to them and that Ranked Ballot Voting would be easier for them to understand and accept.

I had believed that we might only get one chance at electoral reform and so we should use that chance to fight for the best solution, Proportional Representation.

However I now believe we must look at the context of the current times and at what is necessary and achievable.

The current times include much of America’s embrace of Trump MAGA alt-right extremism and it’s overflow into Canada resulting in an opposition leader with no policies, whose only appeal is FUCKTRUDEAU, leading the polls and extreme right wing provincial governments elected with majorities when 60% of the electorate oppose them.

This is a situation where many of us are deciding that preventing the election of representatives and governments that are the people’s least wanted is imperative even if it means putting hopes for truly representative legislatures on the back burner.

What I do not like about Ranked Ballot Voting is that it tends to favour the centre. Liberals love it because they believe they are every other party voter’s second choice. They believe it will confirm the Liberal Party as the natural governing party. It will likely lead to less representation from the left and right,

I have always preferred Ranked Ballot Voting for municipal elections where political parties do not exist, because with large numbers of candidates on the ballots often councillors are elected with ridiculously low pluralities, such as 15% of the votes and often those elected may be most voters last choice.

Governments, especially extreme right wing radical ones, elected with a minority of voters support are now a clear and present danger and can potentially do irreversible harm. Our priority now becomes stopping that and doing it before the next federal election.

If Prime Minister Trudeau were to bring back his Ranked Ballot Voting proposal I hope it would get enough support to be implemented before the next federal election and we could stop right wing extremism from doing irreparable damage, at least at the federal level, and perhaps provide an example to the majority of voters at the provincial level so that it can be done there as well.

A side effect and benefit for future more representative electoral reform is that without voters having to vote strategically as their only choice, the results of voters first choices will tell us how political party support really is distributed by party overall and if the results of Ranked Ballot Voting do not reflect that it will provide evidence of why we need to move further towards true Proportional Representation at both federal and provincial levels.

To summarize, the main disadvantage of Ranked Ballot Voting is that legislatures likely will not represent voters political party preferences proportional to the number of seats (which they do not now). The main advantage of Ranked Ballot Voting is that it prevents the majority of voters last choice as candidates or government from being elected.

At the moment the imperative is to prevent Armageddon.