Our electoral distortions | The Press

Which of the two statements is true about the last provincial election in Ontario?

1) Doug Ford’s Conservatives were easily re-elected with 83 of 124 seats.

2) Doug Ford’s Conservatives won the support of only 18% of Ontarians on the voters list.

Hard to believe, but both of these statements are true.

The last election in Ontario is a double warning about the state of our democracy.

First, it is by far the worst turnout (43%) for a provincial election in Ontario, which is concerning.

Second, the distortions created by our electoral system have never seemed so obvious.

Our first-past-the-post system, where whoever gets the most votes wins the riding (regardless of their percentage of votes), has the advantage of providing stable governments. It is at its best when there are two major parties. But when there are three major parties like in Ontario, it causes significant democratic distortions and governments that are less representative of the general will of the voters.

With this system, a party can form a majority government without having the support of the majority of voters. This is what happens most often. To the point where we find it normal for a minority of the people who voted to elect a majority government!

Take Ontario. Most Ontarians are centre-left (Liberal) or left-wing (NDP). But as the opposition is split between the NDP (23.7% of the vote) and the Liberals (23.8% of the vote), the Conservatives won 67% of the seats with 40.8% of the vote.

In Quebec, the distortion could increase in the fall with five-party elections that can hope to elect members. With 43% of the voting intentions, the CAQ would win 80% of the seats, according to the predictions of the Qc125 site. It would be an abysmal gap of 37 points. We have not seen such a distortion in Quebec for 50 years. In 1973, the Liberals had won 93% of the seats (102 seats out of 110) with 55% of the votes, a difference of 38 points.

The idea is not to criticize the CAQ, but to review our voting system to ensure that it does not leave voters hungry.

“My vote doesn’t count,” is a common comment from disillusioned voters.

We must fight democratic pessimism with all our might. But we must also look reality in the face: in a system like ours and with five parties, too many votes simply do not count.

In 2018, the four opposition parties in Quebec agreed to add a proportional aspect to our electoral system to make it mixed. It would have been more representative, but the CAQ changed its mind once in power.

A pure proportional system is highly representative, but it also has its flaws, including the proliferation of small parties, which often have outsized power in coalition governments.

In our opinion, the best solution is the preferential ballot, where the candidates are ranked in order of preference. In this system, the least popular candidates are eliminated and their votes are redistributed (according to the subsequent choices) until a candidate obtains more than 50% of the votes. If your first choice is eliminated, your second choice is counted, and so on. Result: elected officials are much more representative of the will of the majority of voters. And above all, political parties tend to refocus in order to speak to a larger pool of voters.

We wrote it in 2016 (when Justin Trudeau abandoned the reform of the electoral system) and we still think it: the best electoral reform is a preferential ballot with our current system of districts.

Too complicated, you say? Australia has used this formula for over a century, and it works very well. In Canada, most political parties choose their leader using the preferential vote. Including the Federal Conservatives for their current leadership race.

If it’s good for electing party leaders, it’s good for electing MPs.