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.
