A Plea For Proportional Representation Term paper
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A Vote is a Vote: A Plea for Proportional Representation
Step back and observe the configurations, compositions and driving cogs of today's democratic societies, and one will find that there is one repeating theme; the sharing of power. Corporations, religious sects, universities, unions, and hospitals make decisions through committees, conferences and compromises. Why is it then that when it comes to running our country we still entrust power to a single select group and expect them to make the most auspicious decisions for Canadians every time? The Canadian government is a concentrated power structure out of step with other aspects of society. For our democracy to keep pace with the developing world, Canadian citizens must face these facts, as citizens in other countries have, and restore our political structures to mirror the broad range of political dispositions in today's diverse communities. This goal can only be achieved by abolishing the current electoral system of plurality and implementing proportional representation.
The current political electoral system in place in Canada today is called the plurality system or first past the post. Under this system adopted from the British, the country is divided up into 301 single member districts. In each riding the party who wins the most votes, regardless if it's a majority or not, elects an MP to the House of Commons. A party may win by one vote, yet those who finish second and third receive no reward whatsoever. As a result their votes are wasted. Under this system there have been endless examples of unfair party representation. For example, in Prince Edward Island in 1993, Catherine Callbeck's Liberal party won 97% of seats (31 of 32) with a mere 55% of the vote. This left 40 % of the voters who voted for Tory with one MLA and 5% of the voters who voted NDP with none. In the 1979 federal election the Conservatives formed the government with 36% of the votes and earned 136 seats while the liberals won 40 % of votes but only 114 seats. This is an obvious injustice and a blunt indication that our current electoral system is ineffective at producing a government that is a reflection of the desires of the populace.
One of the weaknesses of the plurality system is that it hurts small national parties with support dispersed across the country and it favors those whose supporters are concentrated in one area. The NDP, for example, won more votes than the Bloc Quebecois in the 1997 federal election, but earned less than half as many seats in the House. An even more ridiculous delineation of the plurality system's ineffectiveness occurred in 1968, when the Social Credit party in Quebec won a mere 4.6% of the votes but took 20% of the seats. To put the numbers in more lucid terms; it took on average "31,233 votes to elect a Bloc Quebecois MP; 31,817 votes to elect a Liberal MP; 41,501 votes to elect a Reform MP; 67,733 votes to elect a New Democrat MP; and a preposterous 121,287 votes to elect a Conservative MP." How can we call ourselves a true democracy if votes are not treated equally? Parties that appeal nationally to voters are punished and regional parties are rewarded. In the most recent federal election the Progressive Conservative Party had almost as many votes (2,425,748) as the Reform Party (2,490,078) yet had 40 fewer seats because their votes were not concentrated in one region of the country. The Bloc Quebecois continues to be over represented in Parliament as they have the third largest number of seats even though they had the lowest amount of votes of the five main parties. We are living in a "benign dictatorship" where the voices of the majority are not being heard. The liberal party once again has control of the governing of the entire nation even though only 38% of Canadians that voted for them. If you factor in the low voter turnout, you realize that the liberals only had 25% of the countries support. Proportional representation is the only solution; it would give electoral due without giving any party an unfair amount of seats.
The most commonly accepted rule of democracy is that government should make decisions according to majority rule. However, under the plurality system, the Progressive Conservative Party was able to pass the Goods and Services tax (GST) while it's MP's were only representing 43% of Canadian voters. Another bias of the first past the post system is that some parties have promoted separatism and plurality gives them more power than the electoral support wants. The Bloc Quebecois won 72% of the seats in the 1993 Quebec provincial election, with only 49.2% of the votes. Once again we see evidence of one of the plurality system's major flaws, inequity. It makes one person's vote count for less than another's. In the 1997 federal election, 886,000 voters in Ontario supported the Reform party, however, they did not earn one seat. Conversely, in Alberta 577,000 voters for Reform earned 24 seats which meant that a vote in Alberta is worth more than a vote in Ontario.
Third party minorities are as important to a democratic society as are those who form the government because they represent the voices of the few being heard by the many. However, under plurality the small number of votes that a minority party may get is not sufficient to earn seats in the House. Therefore their potential supporters do not want to waste their vote on a sure loser, since they would be taking away votes from their "less of two evils". Proportional representation would prevent people from having to vote for a party that they do not support in order to prevent a party that they feel strongly against from winning. People would be sure that their vote for a minority party would make a difference in how many seats they get in the House and hence they would vote for the party whose principles they truly believe in. People would vote with their heart not fears. Proportional representation allows the public to be free to decide which values or principles they want represented in the House by giving the voters the power to decide. For example, "if 7 percent of Canadians support the Green parties approach to environmental issues, PR will give it 7 percent of the seats, no more and no less."
Offering voters more choices would also encourage higher levels of voting. People would have more reason to vote because they could more easily find a candidate or party they could support enthusiastically. This would force political parties to define how they are distinct from others to attract votes. In order to compete effectively parties would need to develop clearer principles and to define their policy platforms. A multi-party system would also ensure that parliament represented the variety of political perspectives that exist in the electorate. Our society is becoming more politically heterogeneous, and yet our government has been redundantly Liberal for the last hundred years with the odd Conservative win emerging every so often. We may be relieved of our ubiquitous political despair if we had a governing body that reflected the diverse perspectives of the electorate. More representative legislatures would breed more exciting, creative and wide-ranging political debate and thrust new ideas and attitudes into the limelight.
Proportional representation also carries other significant political advantages. Under PR, women would have a much fairer chance of being elected. The under representation of women in municipal, provincial and federal legislatures is an ongoing problem in our political system. Despite recent gains for women, they occupied a mere 17 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons in the '93 election and a mere 11 per cent of the seats in the U.S. Congress. "PR countries typically have much higher rates of female elected officials in their national legislature - 41 per cent in Sweden, and 39 per cent in Finland" , for example. This dramatic difference is primarily due to women being nominated in much higher numbers as part of the party lists of candidates used in PR systems. Parties cannot leave women off their lists of candidates for fear of being accused of sexism, therefore, more women are nominated and more are elected. Some European parties also establish gender quotas that require that at least 40% of nominations go to women.
However, electing more women to legislatures is not only a matter of fairness. The increasing presence of women in legislatures makes a substantial difference in the types of legislation that are proposed and passed into law....
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