Plurality Voting System
Why the electoral system of Canada should change
The Liberal party’s recent promise to change the electoral system is one that is quite overdue. Yet after years of the plurality voting system (also known as the “first-past-the-post” or “FPP”) taken from the United Kingdom’s parliament, some think that the system should stay. Supporters say the system is easy to understand, ballots are easily counted, and parties have to appeal to the centrists to win elections, so it discourages political extremism. However, with voter turnout numbers shrinking with the two main parties and with minority governments becoming the norm year after year, change is needed in order to restore Canada’s democracy. Therefore, it is imperative that the FPP system changes because of the associated problems of minority rule, an eventual two-party system, and spoiler effect.
The first, if not main, problem of FPP is minority rule. With elections based upon the FPP system, multiple parties can run and this is fine as this how democracies should be. However, FPP allows citizens only one vote for a candidate and should the votes end up spread out across the various parties, even a party with 49%, 30%, 20%, and so forth of the total vote can win the election and become the governing party. …show more content…
In the FPP system, there is the ability to tactically vote which allows a voter to cast a ballot not for the candidate they want to vote for, but for the best candidate to defeat the candidate the voter most dislikes (even if they would prefer neither candidate to win). Canada has historically only had new parties, the Liberal Party and Conservative Party, in power. Even though various different parties have been created and attempted to run for the top spot in parliament, they only helped the two-party problem further as well as creating the third and final problem of the FPP system, spoiler
The Liberal party’s recent promise to change the electoral system is one that is quite overdue. Yet after years of the plurality voting system (also known as the “first-past-the-post” or “FPP”) taken from the United Kingdom’s parliament, some think that the system should stay. Supporters say the system is easy to understand, ballots are easily counted, and parties have to appeal to the centrists to win elections, so it discourages political extremism. However, with voter turnout numbers shrinking with the two main parties and with minority governments becoming the norm year after year, change is needed in order to restore Canada’s democracy. Therefore, it is imperative that the FPP system changes because of the associated problems of minority rule, an eventual two-party system, and spoiler effect.
The first, if not main, problem of FPP is minority rule. With elections based upon the FPP system, multiple parties can run and this is fine as this how democracies should be. However, FPP allows citizens only one vote for a candidate and should the votes end up spread out across the various parties, even a party with 49%, 30%, 20%, and so forth of the total vote can win the election and become the governing party. …show more content…
In the FPP system, there is the ability to tactically vote which allows a voter to cast a ballot not for the candidate they want to vote for, but for the best candidate to defeat the candidate the voter most dislikes (even if they would prefer neither candidate to win). Canada has historically only had new parties, the Liberal Party and Conservative Party, in power. Even though various different parties have been created and attempted to run for the top spot in parliament, they only helped the two-party problem further as well as creating the third and final problem of the FPP system, spoiler