Look at Australia to see folly of electoral reform

Voting Down Under combines proportional and constituency systems

I doubt that this will get published, as Electoral Reform is currently not a hot-button issue and therefore not that newsworthy, unless you caught the recent The Associated Press article on Australia’s recent election. Besides that, our MPs are away for the summer, it’s hot outside, people are on vacation, citizens and police officers in the U.S.A. are being shot and who pays attention to election promises anyway.

Dateline — The Associated Press July 10, 2016: “SYDNEY — Eight days after Australia’s general election ended in uncertainty, the prime minister finally claimed victory Sunday for his conservative coalition, bringing an end to the country’s political paralysis — at least for the moment.”

It’s October 2019 and that could easily be the news feed here in Canada, if we continue on the path of Electoral Reform. Right now our system is easy to understand, you mark an X beside the person or party you wish to run your country, full stop. Some Australians, like current day Canadians, at some point must have gotten the let’s-get-rid-ofthe F.P.T.P bug. What they ended up with is a complex electoral system which combines elements of proportional and constituency systems. Here’s how it kind of works. There are 150 seats in the House of Representatives, their lower house of parliament, each seat represents an electoral area, which usually but not in all cases covers around 140,000 people. When you vote for your MP, you must also cast a vote for others on the ballot by numbering all the candidates in order of preference. If you like Labour, write 1 in the box, if you like Green second best, put a 2 in the box and so on and so forth. If you have to hold your nose to put a number beside a candidate, you put them at the bottom of the list and hope a lot of people do the same thing. You must number every candidate, even if you would never vote for them in the F.P.T.P system. If you do not, follow these simple instructions, BEWARE, your vote becomes “informal” in other words spoiled, and does not count. When one candidate gets 50 per cent of the primary vote (the number of boxes marked one) plus one, he or she is elected. If not, easy-peezy, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the other preferences on his or her ballot papers are redistributed to the other candidates. This goes on and on until one candidate has 50 per cent plus one, and apparently in Australia the counting it will go on for weeks, at which some point, a he or she will be elected for that seat. Numbering your ballot is the easiest part of the system to understand.

The question of who won the July 2 election was almost answered, but how the winner will rule the fractured Parliament was not. Why, for one thing the official results are still days or even weeks away. WHAT? As well, it is still unclear if the prime minister’s coalition won enough votes to govern, or whether it would need the support of independent and minor party lawmakers to form a minority government. So a prime minster can kind of get elected but maybe can’t govern. Yes, Canada needs some of that.

Upon trashing, what some call our Medieval F.P.T.P system, Canadians will have to get used to news articles that contain phrases such as “politically weary public”, “a majority government by a slim margin”, “forge an alliance with independent and minor party lawmakers”, and my favourite, “five changes of prime minister in as many years.” If that’s what electoral reform is capable of delivering let’s move on to something else.