Some clowns are less funny than others. The Longest Ballot collective, to reform the voting system, is becoming a sad farce.
After the Toronto–St. Paul’s by-election, his followers have just hijacked another election. Their goal: to break the record for the most candidates to draw attention to the need, according to them, to reform the way we elect MPs.
Their achievement: to harm democracy and also to harm all serious people who are thinking about this reform.
The ballot in LaSalle–Émard–Verdun had nearly 100 names. It took a meter-long sheet to write all the names, in alphabetical order, without photos or color. Citizens were confused. People may have voted for the wrong person. And the counting was painful—at the time of writing, it was not yet finished.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY ELECTIONS CANADA
Elections Canada had to change the layout of the ballot to accommodate all the candidates.
Harm democracy to help it. Look for the logic…
Please don’t call this a small civil disobedience movement. These people pay no price. This is just righteous bravado. Lazy activism by people so convinced they are right that they don’t listen to others.
There is a serious debate about the pros and cons of our single-round, first-past-the-post system. The disruptors of the by-election are not helping to elevate it.
In British Columbia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island, the population voted for the status quo in referendums on the voting system. In Quebec and at the federal level, the population has never voted on this issue.
One thing is certain: these results encourage a cautious, nuanced analysis of the merits of each system.
But for these jokers, there is no debate to be had. According to their Manichean crusade, the single-round, first-past-the-post voting system is antidemocratic.
This view is based on a simple rule of three. They compare the number of seats to the percentage of votes for a party’s candidates, and then cry foul.
However, no one seriously proposes pure proportional representation. The reason: governments would be very unstable.
Serious advocates of proportional representation propose a system similar to that of Germany. Some of the deputies would be elected according to the current voting system, and others would be chosen by proportional representation, from a list.
For the proportional component, the number of seats would be equal to the percentage of votes obtained by each candidate, and those who obtained less than a certain threshold, such as 5%, would be excluded.
This formula implicitly recognizes that a balance must be found. Our current system has two great merits: the stability of governments and the defense of regions – elected representatives represent a constituency. But proportional representation also has advantages. The composition of Parliament more faithfully represents the popular vote and gives a voice to third parties.
It is true that Canadians did not vote for a Liberal government supported by the New Democrats. Nor did they vote for Justin Trudeau to come to an agreement with the Bloc to cling to power.
The reason is simple: that is not how our voting system works. We elect MPs. The party with the most of them governs. And if it is in the minority, it seeks the support of enough MPs to obtain the majority of votes.
A key difference exists between the composition of the legislature and the exercise of power. In its fairy tale about proportional representation, the Longest Ballot Committee speaks only of the legislature.
As if by magic, these activists imagine that democracy reigns when the gap between the vote and the deputation disappears. They forget that proportional representation makes the election of a minority government more likely.
Let’s imagine a scenario: no party wins a majority. Party X wins 160 seats. Party Y wins 154 seats. The Green Party and Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party each elect 7 seats.
This means that the Greens or the “populars” will be able to negotiate the survival of the government. They will obtain a power disproportionate to their number of votes. The voters of party Y will be both well represented mathematically, while seeing their ideas ignored in Parliament. And for an identical result, the country could take up ideas from the Greens or the hard right. What would be more democratic?
This improbable scenario is not in itself a reason to reject mixed proportional representation. There are excellent arguments in its favour. But it shows that no election is perfect and that the debate is more complex than it seems. It is up to the population to judge.
Alas, that is not what is happening.
In the fight they believe they are the heroes of, the trolls of the Longest Ballot Initiative mock honest voters and stupefy the debate.
It’s time for the election rules to change to stop them from playing useless idiots.
In fact, to harmful idiots.