The Pros And Cons Of Non-Tactical Voting

The Additional Member System gives voters more choice and better representation than does First Past the Post. Discuss.

The three democratic rights I have chosen are the right to initiative, referendum, and recall of elected officials. The use of ballot initiatives, referendums, and recall elections is growing rapidly. Initiatives permit voters to bypass their state legislatures so as to govern bodies enough marks on petitions to place proposed statuses and, in some states, constitutional amendments specifically on the ballot. Referendums require that certain categories of legislation, for instance, those expected to raise cash by issuing bonds, be put on the ballot for public approval; voters can also utilize referendums to cancel laws that are already passed by the state legislature. A recall election allows citizens vote on whether to remove officeholders

It has become widely accepted that Canada uses a first past the post electoral system. However, this system may not be in the best interest of Canada any more. There are many reasons why Canada should change its electoral system to a mixed member proportional one, a variant of proportional representation. With a first past the post system, the elected officials will always be of the majority and this excludes minorities from fair representation. Adopting MMP can create stronger voter turnouts, more personal campaigning, better individual representation, and better party selection. John Hiemstra and Harold Janson, are both in favour of a MMP electoral system. They understand that with the switch, the citizens will get more representation in

Since the turn of the twenty first century, in Canada voter turnout has made a significant and consecutive decline. In the last five federal elections on average only sixty-one per cent of eligible voters voted. If each eligible citizen voted in an election the government would be on par with the primary interests of the people. The easiest way to achieve this objective is by implementing a compulsory voting system. Mandatory voting systems are appealing because all citizens are affected by decisions made by the government, so it makes sense to have all those affected apart of the election process. As a result, the voting results would be more representative of the country and that would lead to an increase of stability and legitimacy.

Federally, there is a commission put together each decade to reassess electoral boundaries; sometimes boundaries are redrawn, sometimes in the event of a population boom in an area – a move from rural to urban. Normally, “the number of voters per constituency should not… vary more than + or – 25% from the average,” (SFU.ca). The number of electoral district equals the number of seats in the Legislative Assembly of that province; in New Brunswick, there are currently 55 seats in the Legislative Assembly. This means that, unlike some electoral systems, there is only one candidate running in each riding. For a potential Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) to win their seat, they must get a higher percentage of the vote – just one percent higher. Because one only needs one percent more than their contestants, rather than majority of the vote, SMP is sometimes referred to as “first past the post.” Finally, the party and leader can form the government if they have more seats than the other parties; this does not really take into account the popular vote. If the leading party won more than half of the seats it is referred to as a majority government; however, if less than half the seats were won it is called a minority government and, if the opposition and other parties so choose, they can vote to dissolve government, thus calling an election.

Proponents say the voting method ensures that whoever is elected has the support of a majority of voters. They say this helps increase civility because candidates need to appeal to a spectrum broader than just their base in order to win over their opponents’ supporters on subsequent ballots. And theoretically it eliminates the possibility of a “spoiler” candidate winning.

This article is part of my series on Considerations and Ideas for Improving Government and Civil Society, and constitutes its second article.

A number of issues plague the current state of Canadian democracy, such as poor voter turnout, the increasing polarization of politics, and even numerous scandals regarding the Senate. Yet, arguably the most important issue in relation to the Canadian electoral process is the debate over whether or not the state should implement electoral reform for federal elections, more specifically replacing the Single Member Plurality system (SMP) with the Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP). Some analysts, like Christopher Kam, defend the SMP system and claim that a number of the issues that are used as the basis for the support of MMP are actually the result of larger forces than simply the electoral format. And, that holding politicians

In the past, referendums have been used to make some of the biggest constitutional changes in modern times. By definition, a referendum ‘is a general vote by the electorate on a single political question which has been referred to them for a direct decision’. The very name and use of 'referendums' is thought to have originated in the Swiss canton of Graubünden as early as the 16th century where, to this day, still use a form direct democracy to settle many issues. Traditionally, Referendums were rarely used in the UK but, in recent times, they have been gaining popularity by the public and have also been used more often to decide constitutional changes such as the 2016 EU Referendum and the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum. Since the end

The most important issue in relation to the Canadian electoral process is the debate over whether or not the state should implement electoral reform for federal elections. It is my stance that replacing the Single Member Plurality system (SMP) with the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) is undeniably in the best interest of Canadians, and I will attempt to prove this by contrasting The Limits: Electoral Systems and Electoral Reform - Or How I Came to Love SMP by Christopher Kam, who believes in the current SMP system, and Getting What You Vote For by John Hiemstra, who pushes for a change in favour of the MMP system. This paper will conclude with further critical analysis, as well as my justified stance the MMP system is clearly superior.

The SMP system requires the winning candidate to have the highest number of votes in each constituency, thus this system does not require an absolute majority and candidates can win their seats with less than 50% of the votes (Press,T.C., 2015). The SMP system has a significant amount of flaws that are inherent within its’ structure. More specifically, this can be seen when analyzing a party’s share of votes in comparison with the share of seats they win, and how the best candidate may not be represented in each riding (Heard, n.d). There are a few appealing alternatives to the current Canadian electoral system. Those are a presidential system and a proportional representation system. A presidential system differs from a parliamentary system in that the President is directly chosen, as apposed to voting for a party to win(Moe & Cadwell, 1994). Proportional representation provides parties with a share of the seats that is proportional to their share of votes (Lijphart, 1999). This allows for the public to more effectively vote for a person who will represent their beliefs even if they may not win the constituency.

Voters feel as though they are not able to vote for who they like, as their vote will go to waste. So, many Canadians who would associate themselves with smaller parties do not cast their ballot sincerely, rather, voting strategically for whichever party they see as less deplorable and has a chance of winning (Derriennic 2016). Furthermore, strategic voting can easily be manipulated through rumours or polls that can sway the opinion of voters. This hurts the democratic purpose of elections. Voters need to know that they can vote for who they want rather than having to vote for who they hate the least. Ideally, a preferential system should be instituted to guarantee voters are voting for who they want, not who they think will win. This use of strategic voting was prevalent in the 2015 election, as many tried to rally the country around the Liberal party to unseat the incumbent Conservative party. Websites such as strategicvoting.ca and votetogether.ca, as well as several social media campaigns on Facebook and Twitter implored Green Party and NDP voters to strategically vote for the Liberals to avoid another term of Stephen Harper and the Conservative party (Jackson 2016). Voters need a fair way to elect members of parliament without the need for strategic voting. This entire ordeal could easily be avoided if a preferential system was in place that allowed voters to rank their preferences and

The Single Transferable Vote system is a system that was invented by a mathematician whose processes are lengthy and confusing to the people who actually use it to implement change: voters. The currently used Single Member Plurality system is widely understood and the best system for Manitoban voters. While some may argue that the Single Transferrable Vote system is a superior method of electing members of government in Manitoba, due to the unfamiliarity with candidates, lack of voter involvement, and confusing nature of the system, the current Single Member Plurality system is more effective and reflective of the actual views of the electors.

Australia uses Alternative Voting (AV), AV is where voters are asked to rank their preference for the candidates from 1, 2, 3 etc. If a candidate receives a majority than the candidate wins, but if the candidate did not get the majority than the candidate with the lowest average preference is dropped than those votes are redistributed to the next candidate with the next highest preference. This keeps on going until there is a majority. Republic of Ireland uses AV voting in their presidential voting, similarly British tried to switch to AV in 2011 instead of First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) by holding a referendum but AV lost. In U.S. history AV could have been helpful in the 1912 presidential elections when the Bull

One of the main benefits that countries which have opted for proportional representation have noticed is an undeniable increase in voter turnout. In a political democracy citizen engagement is incredibly important. In situations where a plurality voting-system has been abandoned in favour of a system utilizing proportional representation the rise in voter turnout averages 7 to 8% (Pilon 155)7. There is no reason to believe that Party-list PR would have any different effect on Canadian parliamentary democracy.