Seeing support for the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) plummet, François Legault must begin to regret having broken the promise to reform the voting system.
Remember that in May 2018, Mr. Legault signed, with a radiant smile, a document promising a reform of the voting system if the CAQ was elected. This reform, according to François Legault at the time, aimed to “partially correct the distortion between the percentage of votes and the percentage of seats collected by each of the political parties during the elections”. This document was co-signed by representatives of Québec solidaire and the Parti québécois.
In October 2018, the CAQ captured 60% of the seats in the National Assembly (75 out of 125) by collecting 37.42% of the votes. She thus formed a “majority” government, taking advantage of the distortion caused by first-past-the-post voting. Well ! The voting method which seemed unfair to Mr. Legault before he took advantage of it has found favor in his eyes. By abandoning reform, claiming that the population was indifferent to it, he acted in an undemocratic manner, serving the interests of his party.
We are five and a half years later. The sky is getting darker for the CAQ. If the elections were held now, the Parti Québécois would obtain the majority of seats with less than 40% of the votes, and the CAQ would bite the dust with around 25% of the votes for some 10 seats, according to projections from Qc125, a poll aggregator.
Opponents of proportional voting argue that it is complicated, that a majority government is almost impossible, which makes negotiations with third parties necessary, and take the dysfunctional Israeli government as an example. However, proportional voting models have existed for more than 100 years, discussion between the parties is beneficial and we are not obliged to follow the worst example! The New Democracy Movement has also developed a very reasonable project.
It is time for Quebec to join the majority of democratic countries and establish an electoral system that would take greater account of the plurality of citizens’ points of view. All parties would benefit in turn.