Now in any FPTP election you can see:
-- 35 to 66 percent of the vote in each district ignored;
-- parties with 4 percent of the vote or more totally without representation;
-- any but the leading party being under-represented;
-- usually a leading party taking a low majority of the votes will take a very large proportion of the seats, even as many as all of them, as happened, for example, in New Brunswick in 1987.
-- false feelings of regionalism created by the leading party in a region taking far more seats in the region than is due, while a different party leading elsewhere does the same to it in that place in return. In 2019 Edmonton saw 53 percent of the city votes take 95 percent of the seats while Edmonton Conservative with 35 percent of the vote took 5 percent of the Edmonton seats. At same time in Calgary Conservatives with 53 percent of the city vote took 88 percent of the city seats while NDP with 34 percent of the votes took 12 percent of the Calgary seats.
These two cities are not only about the same size - they are also closer in voting sentiment than is generally assumed. Voters therein are closer together in feeling than their legislative representation leads one to think.
In each city, the Conservative and the NDP each got more than a third of the vote. The difference was which party got a little more than that third and which one got only about that third.
If votes passed only between these two parties, a shift of only 10 percent of the votes in each city makes the difference between mind-exalting overwhelming domination or mind-numbing oppressive annihilation.
And the idea that NDP MLAs in Edmonton represent Calgarian NDP-ers or that Conservative MLAs in Calgary represent Conservatives in Edmonton does not fly. It goes against the idea of district representation so important in British-style government. Where is the much vaunted local representation said to be produced by FPTP then?
Our elections are about electing individual candidates, not just names on party lists. And FPTP denies the right of local representation to so many while creating feelings of regionalism unwarranted by actual voting behaviour.
The waste of votes under FPTP is exemplified in the Alberta provincial election in 1982.
Conservatives took 17 of Edmonton's 18 seats with only 54 percent of the city vote and the NDP with 32 percent of the city vote took just one seat.
Attention must turn to voters' right to have EFFECTIVE VOTING, where a high proportion of voters see one of their choices elected.
EFFECTIVE VOTING is proportional representation.
Under PR a high proportion of votes are not wasted as they are under First past the post. Instead they are used to help elect someone, whether someone of their kind such as a woman being elected by women voters, or to help elect someone else whom they choose to elect, such as along party lines -- Conservative, Liberal, labourite, socialist, environmentalist, etc. of whatever gender.
Achieving proportional representation is the next task -- municipally, provincially and federally.
Thanks for reading,
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