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Ranked vote system that guarantees a majority government

  • Tom Monto
  • Aug 23
  • 2 min read

To prevent deadlocked government caused by no party taking a majority of seats and it being found to be difficult to compose a coalition government,


Voters cast votes for local members (hopefully in multi-member districts in which single voting is used),

and further the voter's local vote is taken as indicating which party he or she would prefer as majority government, and the voter uses ranked votes to indicate if that party does not win majority government, which parties are back-up preferences,


then if no party takes a majority of seats (hopefully such an outcome would come only if a party takes a majority of votes),

and if no party takes majority of votes (doubtless if a party takes a majority of votes it will take a majority of seats),

then the separate Preferred-Party vote is considered.

the second preference marked by voters of the least-popular parties are given to the party marked,

then successively parties are dropped and their voters back-up preferences are transferred,

until one party has a majority of votes.

That party is given more seats so that it holds 50 percent of the seats in the chambers plus 2.


Not sure if such voting is legal under Canada's constitution,

but also unfortunately see that such an add-on of seats is not permissible when each province is allocated so many seats based on the Constitutional framework.


Perhaps under other constitutions, it could be done.

Malta has something like that but only if there are only two parties in the Parliament and if one party takes a majority of votes.


I know of no electoral system where preferential votes are used to pick winners among parties.


But it is an idea...

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History | Tom Monto Montopedia is a blog about the history, present, and future of Edmonton, Alberta. Run by Tom Monto, Edmonton historian. Fruits of my research, not complete enough to be included in a book, and other works.

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