Newspapers and TV news today are full of talk of how perhaps the Chinese government sought benefit from a recent election in Canada. But it has long been known that the election system that we use today provides opportunity to get unfair advantage. Votes are ignored; some parties get far more seats than they are due according to votes cast; and some votes are seen to be more important than other votes. And it is possible for a group to take an easy route to representation. Through time, there have been many instances where a small group has used the FPTP system to get unfair advantage. This goes against the goal of a democracy and is something that should be abolished. A fair election system would do that as well as provide other benefits. We don’t have fairness under our present system. I am speaking of single-winner First Past The Post, where the winner in each district is decided by just having more votes than any of the other candidates. This is the system used today in Edmonton city elections and in provincial and federal elections. There is no denying the present system produces competition, kind of. Parties can run candidates; voters can vote secretly; the most-popular candidate in each district does get the seat in each district. But the system has serious flaws. Let’s look at the pretend city of Bugaboo. It elects three members to the “Great Hall” using the same system that we use today in Edmonton. Let’s say that, barring some very unusual thing happening, Party A will win the seat in Bugaboo North. In such a situation, how could a group use FPTP system to get an unfair advantage? Quite simply. Say a group of voters, say the Association of Amalgamated Bakers, wants to elect someone to speak for it in the Great Hall. If the Bakers can get their man (or woman) nominated to be the candidate for Party A in Bugaboo North, then the election of that person is pretty much a certainty. Under our single-winner system, voters have narrow selection offered to them. In Bugaboo North a voter might like Party A but not Bakers, for some reason. But there is only one Party A candidate, so the choice is “lump it or leave it.” That kind of thing happens all the time in single-winner elections. The voter does not have any choice if he stays true to his party. And Bakers or some other group could get unfair leverage through that lack of choice. First Past The Post has other problems as well. In our pretend case, Party A is pretty much assured of winning in Bugaboo North. And say a different party, Party B, is pretty certain to win the seat in another part of the city, Bugaboo South. But we can say that a third district, Bugaboo Centre, is not locked in for either party. Party A will rest content in Bugaboo North and Party B will mostly give up on Bugaboo North; Party B will rest content in Bugaboo South and Party A will give up on Bugaboo South. And both parties will devote their attention in trying to ensure that it, and not the other party, wins Bugaboo Centre. They will give their attention to just the voters in Bugaboo Centre, pretty much ignoring the voters in the other two districts. Politics in Bugaboo city would be improved if all three districts were made into one district, with each voter casting just one vote. Party A and Party B would each put forward candidates, and each party would be sure of seeing one or two of their candidates elected. Neither party would take all the seats. One of the parties would elect only one member, but supporters of that party would at least have that representation. The voter would be represented by someone he agrees with, no matter which part of Bugaboo he or she lives. Each vote would be important. Under this system, each voter would have choice among the candidates of the party of their choice. And the most-popular candidates of each party would be most likely to get the seats. The most-popular party in Bugaboo would elect more members than the less-popular party. Fairness could be ensured by use of transferable votes. The election system used in Ireland and Malta uses Single Transferable Votes and multi-member districts. It has produced fair results in those places for the last hundred years. Under such a system if a voter liked Party A but not Bakers, he could vote for a Party A candidate who was not a Baker. And a voter who likes Bakers and Party A could vote for a Baker running under the Party A label. In a three-seat district, voters could organize themselves locally or along wider social lines. Perhaps Bakers make up a quarter of the Bugaboo voters, I mean across the whole Bugaboo City, which would no longer be divided into three separate districts. If so, Bakers could run their own candidate with certainty that he or she would be elected. Perhaps the residents of Bugaboo South feel they are neglected, that hospitals and schools are being built just in Bugaboo North or Centre. Voters of Bugaboo South could collect their votes behind the best spokesperson for Bugaboo South. And if the voters in Bugaboo South who vote this way make up more than a quarter of the votes counted across the city, Bugaboo South would elect its spokesperson. And there is nothing the voters elsewhere could do about it. Using a three-seat district with Irish-style transferable votes, 75 percent or so of votes cast across the city would be used to actually elect someone. Under our present FPTP system a candidate with just 35 percent of the vote - or less - can be elected in a district. This means that the majority of voters in many districts are unhappy with the result. A basic rule of democracy is that a group should get representation in line with its voting support. The party with a majority of members in the Great Hall will pass the laws they want to, but each group in society should have its due share of members there as well. That fairness allows each substantial group in society to have a voice to speak for itself in the Hall. It also ensures that the majority of elected members - the group that holds power in the Great Hall - reflects the views of most of the voters in society. Majority rule is a basic goal of good government. But First Past The Post does not give us that. It often does not give us that in the district. And it usually does not give us that in the “Great Hall” in whatever level of government we are talking about - city, province or national. ===================================
(orginally published in March 2023 in Millwoods Mosaic)
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