Plebiscite offers value to those wasting votes
Have you ever lived in a riding in which you felt your vote was a waste because you preferred a local candidate who had absolutely no chance of winning a seat?
I cannot count how often that’s been my fate in federal and provincial elections as a result of residing in the “safe” riding of one political party or another. I still bother to go to the voting booth, but can understand why countless people end up feeling, “What’s the point?”
I know many people in safe B.C. ridings. They want to vote Green, Liberal, NDP or Conservative, but feel frustrated their ballot will be worthless, except as a vague popular-vote signal to the party leader who will eventually assume king- or queen-sized power, likely based on their party receiving only 40 to 45 per cent support.
I’ve asked a range of people in similar straits about their hopes for B.C.’s late October referendum, which will be decided through mail-in ballots asking voters to first say yes or no to proportional representation before inviting them to show their preference for one of three forms of it.
(Unlike Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, B.C.’s NDP and Green politicians followed through on their campaign promise to engage in electoral reform.)
Since the B.C. referendum is becoming increasingly politically polarized, one of the few people willing to speak to me for attribution has been New Westminster’s Reena Meijer Drees, a retired physicist in a riding in which the NDP candidate usually clobbers opponents by a whopping 15 to 25 percentage points.
Even though Drees finds no party perfectly reflects her values, she believes the Greens come closest to the choices she would make “from the smorgasbord of party policies on offer.” She’s not keen to vote “strategically” for a candidate who is not her first pick.
She’s frustrated with the “winner-take-all” mentality under the current first-past-the-post system, which she said renders her ballot toothless. She wants to find a way to give smaller parties more influence in Canada, as occurs in coalition governments in Europe.
I join her in wishing B.C.’s referendum will result in a victory for some form of mixed proportional representation because that should mean that, even if I cast a future ballot for a losing local candidate, my vote will still count toward electing other candidates from a (preferably public) list of the same party.
Under a mixed form of proportional representation, every voter’s choice will have real statistical influence. What a concept. And it’s already in place in most of the 36 predominantly European advanced democracies of the Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation (where voter turnout also happens to generally be higher than in B.C. and Canada).
One of the key distortions of our current B.C. system is party leaders become fixated on the province’s roughly 20 to 30 “swing ” ridings out of the total of 87. These are the constituencies that can go either way and where every vote is crucial.
It’s no wonder politicians put so much campaign energy into such competitive ridings as Delta North, Vancouver-Fraserview and Fraser-Nicola. They can take voters for granted more in numerous safe ridings like West Vancouver-Capilano (Liberal) and Vancouver Kingsway (NDP).
No voting system will be flawless. And some question whether votes are wasted under B.C.’s current system. For instance, Trinity Western University political scientist emeritus John Redekop said in The Vancouver Sun that proportional representation advocates shouldn’t go too far with their slogan, “Make every vote count.”
When Redekop was elected to office, he said he took seriously those who voted against him, as do most politicians seeking re-election. He adds that MLAs under majoritarian systems are called upon to represent everyone in their ridings, even those who vote against them.
UBC political scientist Max Cameron, however, said that while it was technically true that MLAs were meant to represent everyone at a constituency level, it’s not the case in regards to legislation.
The leader with a majority of seats nearly always demands every member of his or her party outvote the other parties, rending them impotent.
Redekop also maintained proportional representation wouldn’t lead to every elected official shaping policy since many will end up in opposition and not in a governing party or coalition. While true, his argument overlooks the primary advantage of a reformed model: every voters’ choice will indeed count more and more accurately.
Mixed proportional representation ensures each cast ballot will add, albeit slightly, to the total vote count of each party, contributing in a fairer way to the number of seats it ultimately holds. That seems like a meaningful way to respect a ballot.