NDP-Liberal co-operation idea flawed

Re Will the Liberals and NDP co-operate to stop

Harper? Opinion April 6 When your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail. Locked into the mindset of winner-take-all elections, R. Michael Warren sees electoral co-operation as the only solution. Yet his own projections show that the Conservatives are unlikely to win a phony majority in the upcoming election, so why the need for pre-election co-operation?

In fact, history has shown that such co-operation usually backfires. The appearance of parties ganging up on the Conservatives brings Conservative voters out in larger numbers while supporters of parties that don’t have the local “co-operation candidate” tend to stay home. With voter turnout at under 60 per cent in recent elections, this ends up electing more Conservatives.

Moreover, such pre-election “co-operation” is fundamentally undemocratic because it denies voters choice.

With the Conservatives unlikely to win a majority of seats, a post-election coalition of the other parties can either form the government or keep Stephen Harper in check, depending on how open party leaders are to the sorts of coalitions that govern most of the world’s democracies.

As we’ve seen in Australia, the U.K. and the U.S., given a choice between left and right, voters will choose right as often as left. The only way to keep Canada on a moderate path is to ensure that voting is never reduced to a choice of the lesser evil. Voters need to have options and a voting system that respects their votes.

What Warren should be arguing for is an end to our unfair elections. We need to join the bulk of the world’s industrial democracies in adopting proportional representation. Not only would this have made the merger of the PC and Reform parties and calls to “stop Harper” unnecessary, it would ensure that future governments always represent the majority. Gary Dale, West Hill