Del Duca’s reform pledge would help his own party
The Record (Kitchener) Fri., Oct. 22, 2021
RE: Del Duca pledges ranked ballots or he’ll quit — Oct. 16 In this article by Allison Jones, we learn Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca is pledging a ranked ballot in electoral reform, if he wins, or else he promises to quit.
Ranked ballots are useful in a proportional representation type of electoral system; but when used within our current disproportional system, ranked ballots actually create even more distorted results, favouring his party.
Here’s how: Ranked ballots added to our flawed system will help the Liberals in ridings where they are placing closely behind the Conservatives, to take the lead and win with reassigned Green and New Democratic Party votes pushing Liberals over the top.
Ranked ballots applied to our current system do not give proportional representation. They take our terribly distorted election results and make them worse, consolidating even more power to an already disproportionately advantaged party and keeping the smaller parties’ voices silenced. We need fair reform to a proportional representation system, whether it ranks choices or not.
If Del Duca cared about better democracy, he’d push to make every vote count equally, so that election results would be in proportion to how voters actually cast their first-choice ballots.
David Weber KitchenerFormer Green party candidate, Kitchener South-Hespeler
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