BC FORUM News - from The Advocate, Winter 2015

New electoral plan may be worse than first-past-the-post

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has repeatedly vowed that the Oct. 19 federal election will be the last using the first-past-the-post voting system – but he has not said what will replace it.

“The Liberals did a very good job at making people think they’re either open or in some on-the-ground campaigns committed to proportional representation,” says former NDP MP Craig Scott.

“(In fact) they never, even committed to proportional representation.”

The Liberal platform promises to strike an all-party parliamentary committee to study electoral reform.

“We will convene an all-party Parliamentary committee to review a wide variety of reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting, and online voting,” says the platform.

“This committee will deliver its recommendations to Parliament. Within 18 months of forming government, we will introduce legislation to enact electoral reform.”

It is noteworthy that the first option listed is ranked ballots. At a Liberal party policy conference in January 2012, party members voted 73 percent in favour of implementing preferential ballots for all future federal elections.

Preferential or ranked ballots are an appropriate tool when there is only one position to be elected – a leader or a president for example.

But ranked ballots will not result in a Parliament that reflects the wishes of voters. Indeed, as ranked ballots are tabulated to create a false majority for a candidate in each riding, your second or third choice vote may help defeat and silence the party which is your first choice.

This is not a system that makes every vote count. It will not ensure that MPs from each party are elected in numbers that are proportional to the votes they received. It’s worse than what we have now.