PREMATURE EXCLAMATION (and other forms of Electoral Dysfunction)

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Every man has been there, particularly in our youth.  In the heat of a vigorous election campaign, we get too caught up in the moment and let loose with something that it would have been better to hold onto just a little while longer.  Happily, most of our politicians in general and party leaders in particular are of an age at which it is far more often the case that the greatest electoral challenge they face lies in steeling themselves for the rigours of the campaign.  Not so with Justin Trudeau.  One of the few shortfalls (among the many benefits far too numerous to mention) of having a Prime Minister who is younger in spirit and outlook if not in chronology is a slightly higher susceptibility to the risk of Premature Exclamation.

We all remember the statement if not the moment.  Painfully empathizing with the plight of right-thinking Left-leaning Canadians fearful of splitting their votes in the last election among the two parties of the Left, our Justin boldly announced that the election of 2015 would be the last conducted under the undemocratic “first-past-the-post” rules.  Never again, we were told, would the country be subject to the ideological whims of a party that received a majority of seats and only 39.6% of the popular vote.

Of course that was before Justin’s Liberals sailed to a majority in the 2015 federal election on the strength of …39.5% of the popular vote.  But to their credit, the Liberals did not back down on their pledge.  Following the election, Federal Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef quickly announced that she would appoint a Parliamentary Committee to bring forward proposals for the reform of the electoral system.  The problem was that that Committee was to be populated by members representing the federal parties that mirrored the seat count in the House rather than the popular vote in the most recent election.  Howls against this hypocrisy were immediate, as was the step down.  The Committee that delivered their report two weeks ago was indeed populated by members more closely reflecting the relative popular vote among the major parties.  Predictably, the government was less than pleased with their suggestions.

The reality is that there are broadly speaking, only two alternative electoral models.  The most complex and far reaching, with many variants in application, are proportional representation systems.  These systems would enshrine the representation in Parliament of every party receiving a minimum vote count, but would do so at the expense of some element of local representation.   A proportional representation system would, more importantly, also almost ensure that no one-party majority government would ever again arise in Canada.

The more modest alternative system is a ranked ballot system by which voters would rank all of the candidates on their ballot instead of casting a vote for just one.  The lowest polling candidate would be eliminated and his or her votes allocated to the next ranked candidate on each ballot until one candidate achieves a majority of the votes.  This system is used in French presidential elections.  It would eliminate the scourge of vote splitting and would leave our system of local representation entirely intact.  However, given that virtually all Conservative and NDP voters would list the Liberal candidate as the next ranked major party and that Liberal voters would likely be close to an equal split in ranking Conservative and NDP candidates second, it would also virtually ensure that the Liberals would enjoy majority governments in perpetuity.

It is easy to imagine which of these alternatives to “first-past-the post” was dancing in Justin’s head at that moment of his Premature Exclamation.  Sadly, some fantasies are destined to remain the source of private pleasures only.