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PR for PR - When elections fail to deliver fair results

© Glenn Brigaldino

On 2 October, elections where held in the province of Ontario, Canada. The conservative Government, which had divided the province into evermore have-nots and a comfortable group of property-owners, was finally ousted. So far so good. A new administration under the Liberal party is now posed to form the Government. But not all is well with a democracy when political change amounts to perpetual minority rule. The "first-post-the post" electoral system, while formally democratic, for all practical purposes fails to deliver democratic representation of voters. Even those who benefit from the system and get into Parliament, will hardly deny this. So let us have a quick look at the Ontario election results as a case in point. Province-wide election results by party

ONTARIO LIBERAL PARTY: 72 seats Percentage vote: 46.45%

PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE PARTY OF ONTARIO: 24 seats Percentage vote: 34.64%

NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF ONTARIO: 7 seats Percentage vote: 14.70%

OTHER: 0 seats Percentage vote: 4.21%

Parliament (which sits in Toronto) has 103 seats. Under the existing electoral system, the Liberals gain nearly 70% of the seats, although they gained less than half of the votes cast. The conservatives, who held power before also without a popular majority, now hold on to 23% of seats although they have popular support that is 11 points higher. Most unfair, the New Democrats have now fewer seats than required to retain official party status. Although they increased their popular support by over 2%, they will hold only 7 seats in Parliament, 2 fewer than before! While the Liberal party gained 7%, this gain translates into more than a doubling of seats, from 35 to 72 seats! Need one say more to demonstrate that the system is seriously flawed, simply undemocratic?

Democracy is in jeopardy when formal systems and procedures take precedent over peoples' political choices and their vote. Similar political distortions as in Canada are common in the USA and Britain. That these two latter countries are on an irreversible downhill slide, comes as no surprise. The need to change to a proportional system is evident; in Canada it is still not too late to avoid repeating the political demise so evident just south of the border. There is plenty written and easily available to read about proportional representation (PR): below is a selection of information and web sites. First of all, "What Is Proportional Representation? "

Proportional representation (PR) voting systems are used by most of the world's major democracies. Under PR, representatives are elected from multi-seat districts in proportion to the number of votes received. PR assures that political parties or candidates will have the percent of legislative seats that reflects their public support. A party, or candidate, need not come in first to win seats. In contrast, in the United States we use "winner-take-all" single seat districts, where votes going to a losing candidate are wasted, even if that candidate garners 49.9% of the vote. This leaves significant blocs of voters un-represented. Voters sense this, and so often we do not vote for a candidate we like, but rather the one who realistically stands the best chance of winning-the "lesser of two evils." Or, all too often, we don't bother to vote at all.

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