At least two-thirds of our miseries spring
from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of
malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of
religious or political ideas.
There’s a lot of talk these days about electoral reform in
Canada. All kinds of reasons are given
for the apparent malaise in voter involvement and turn-out in elections. The most oft cited statistic to support this
is that the current and many earlier majority governments were elected with
significantly less than 50% of the popular vote. Some have even taken this one step farther
and said that, because of voter turn-out of only about 60%, the government was
elected with less than 25% of voters’ approval.
This, of course, is a ridiculous conclusion since it assumes that all of
those that did not vote would have voted for opposition parties.
We are certainly not the first or only country to have
problems, imagined or otherwise, with our electoral system. The USA has had questions in recent
presidential elections about the Electoral College system and whether it is
really necessary in the present age. If
the president had been elected by popular support in 2000, we would have had
President Al Gore instead of President George W. Bush. It is fair to say that most democratic
countries have had some sort of crisis that forced it to look at its electoral
system.
The talk in Canada today seems to give us only two choices:
the status quo, or proportional representation.
Of course, there was Ontario’s ill-fated attempt during a recent
election to impose a proportional plus appointment system that proposed that a
significant number of seats in the legislature would be appointed by each party
based on their popular vote. This would
have ensured that you would never get to vote for any of the party leaders or
proposed cabinet members. They would all
have been on the appointed list.
So if we want to change things, our leaders and pundits tell
us it has to proportional representation.
So let’s look at how this would look.
It would pretty well guarantee that we would have nothing but coalition
governments. As more parties entered
federal politics, which they would, the complexity of coalitions would only
increase. How many cabinet posts would
the Natural Law or Rhinoceros Party want to help stabilize a government? Remember, the government consist of the Prime
Minister and his cabinet members. The
rest are only there to support or oppose that government.
To see how such a system would succeed, one only has to look
at some of the countries that have used this system. Perhaps the best, or worst, example is France
during the Third Republic. That is the
government system that France endured from 1875 to 1940 until France collapsed
under the pressure of the invasion by Nazi Germany (France is now in what is
called the Fifth Republic). In its 65
year history, the Third Republic had well over 100 governments – over
100. And more than half of them
happened during the 22 years from 1918 until 1940. The longest to survive lasted three
years. One government lasted two
days. This is despite the fact that the
people only got to vote every four years.
Governments would be formed and be dissolved within months and then
another round of coalition building would begin. It was often the same men in each government
with only the Premier or a few cabinet ministers changing position. Men would be brought into the government to
face a short term crisis and then be discarded when the next crisis arose. Of course there was no long term view by any
of these governments. It was crisis management
from one election to the next. And of
course it was only men – women were not given the vote in France until 1946,
largely because there was not time or inclination to take such action when
there were other crises to face.
But of course, Canadians would never condone such chaos and
fragmentation, would we? Or would we have
a choice? I don’t have such
confidence. Look at the power of fringe
parties in Israel today, many of the religious parties. From the five recognized parties In Canada
today (Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green and Bloc Quebecoise), I can foresee at
least eight parties emerging: centre and right leaning Conservatives; left and
right leaning Liberals; centre and socialist leaning NDP; and the existing Bloc
and Green). But I can also see the
emergence of a Christian party, and maybe even a Muslim party, as well as
parties representing different regions.
Everyone will want their point of view represented. So let’s imagine a Canadian election where
the centre leaning Conservatives win the largest number of seats at 20%. Where do they go for the remaining 30% of
support they will need to have majority control in the House? They will need the support of more than one
other party, and probably more than three. And if one of their coalition
partners doesn’t support them on a key vote, we go through the struggle to put
together another coalition, or call a vote. It doesn’t seem very appetizing, does it? With
the current system of trying to limit federal voting to every four years, the
prospect of emulating the Third Republic becomes all too real.
So what other alternatives are available? Well, one alternative which could promise a better
representation of the people’s will, but not be fraught with the challenges of proportional
representation, would be to institute a requirement for run-off elections in
ridings where one candidate does not get fifty percent of the vote. This would limit the damage of vote splitting
between two parties of the same inclination without having to go through the
negotiations needed to decide on a compromise candidate in each riding. If for example, the Conservative candidate
got about 40% and the Liberal about 30%, they would run off to see who could
capture enough voters from the other parties.
The party that won the majority of seats in the House under this system
could feel more confident that they had at least the tacit support of the
majority of the people, or at least a larger number of voters than the 35% now
common. It may also have the advantage
of toning down the attacks between parties during elections because you never
know when you might want the support of the voters of that candidate that you
are now denigrating.
At this time when election reform is on many people’s lips,
it is best not to limit our choices to only two alternatives, both of which are
prone to problems. So let’s at least
consider a third option of run-off elections.
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