Many think our present system produces governments that reflect votes cast. But under First Past The Post single-winner electoral system, the majority of voters may be - usually are - ignored.
Recent newspaper or an online thing I read says after WWII majority of Germans refused to admit guilt of Nazi government saying they thought of themselves as victims and how wrong that was.
Without reference to German electoral history, actually their sentiment could just have been true and the factual result of disproportional results of the First Past the Post electoral system. - the same system we use today.
Under FPTP, many members are elected with the support of less than half the voters in the district.
In Canada, only twice since 1948 has a party taken power in House of Commons with support of majority of voters -
- 1984 Mulroney one party government Conservatives
- 2022 Liberals with support of NDP together having received majority of the votes.
The last case is of course contentious - the Liberal and NDP did not form coalition government.
Leaving aside the 2022- government, the fact is that only once since 1948, in a period of almost 75 years, only one time have we had majority government elected by majority of voters.
But how many people realize that this means for 70 of the last 75 years, that the majority of voters were ignored, that the majority of voters did not support the government that we all lived under?
And don't expect powers that be or newspapers to tell us this simple fact...
==================================
Comments