It’s time to get rid of first-past-the-post voting

What does democracy mean? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, democracy is the belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves.

Ideally, in a flourishing democratic society, we would not need to ask what democracy means. However, in a province where a party has won 100 per cent of the power, despite garnering less than 50 per cent of total votes in two consecutive elections, it might time to opine on this.

The argument for a first-pastthe-post (FPTP) system is its simplicity. Voters vote for the candidate in their riding they want to see win, and if that candidate garners the highest number of votes, they win and head to the legislature to represent that riding. Sounds democratic, right? Perhaps.

On the flip side, a FPTP system mainly favours dominant parties, incentivizes people to vote not for who they want to support, but for who they think has the best chance to stop the candidate they dislike they most. And more importantly, a FPTP voting system magnifies our political differences based on geography and gives credence to the false notion that voting patterns of urban and rural voters can be explained simply through their area code.

The problem with that is, it’s a gross simplification because at the end of the day, people vote, not ridings. And voting patterns of individuals are far more complicated.

Millions of left-leaning rural voters throughout Canada have their representation nullified due to the fact Conservatives tend do better in those areas, just as millions of right-leaning urban Canadians have their voices nullified due to the fact centre-to-left parties generally do better in more densely populated ridings.

It’s time we have a proportional voting system. The talk of electoral reform is nothing new, as three out of four of Ontario’s main parties have some variation of their own idea as to what it would look like, but it generally consists of a proportional voting system (PVS) or a mixed member-proportional voting system (MMPVS). The idea is simple.

Fair Vote Canada describes PVS as: proportional representation is any voting system designed to produce a representative body where voters elect MPs in proportion to our votes. Think of it like this, if a party gets 40 per cent of the vote, they get 40 per cent of the seats. The benefits of having such a system are endless.

For starters, regardless of your political leaning, your vote will count and not go to waste because of your area code. Additionally, our legislature will reflect a true representation of the kind of government Canadians want, unlike our current winner-takes-all voting system which only benefits the twoparty duopoly. And lastly, it would modernize our democracy as Canada remains one of few major democracies that still utilizes first-past-the-post system.

Democracy and voting systems are messy business. And by no means is there a perfect system, which would lead to a perfect democracy. But if we truly do live in a democracy as we seem to believe we do, it’s incumbent to find an alternative voting system where a party securing 40 per cent of the votes doesn’t get all the power. It’s time every individual vote counts because it’s people who vote, not regions.