Essay Voting Systems

Now that you are up to date with currents events I will briefly touch on some strong point of the Canadian democratic system. Citizens in Canada indirectly hold power in a free electoral system and are given better representation and more freedoms for their citizens than other systems of government. The freedom of speech, freedom of political expression, and the freedom of the media allow citizens to vote in favour of their own interest. Democracy in Canada is rooted on the grounds of equal rights; this gives people equality before the law, human rights, free and fair elections and so on. In comparison to the Third World, power is in the hands of the “Big Men”, the police and army are the ones who hold control not the people and where corruption is a norm, Canada may look like a utopia. Another strong point in the Canadian political system is everyone no matter race or sex has the right to vote as long as you are a Canadian citizen over the age of eighteen. Until the 60s/70s parties would make up electoral boundaries this was done to increase the number of votes in that location this is called gerrymander, this was unfair because certain parties had an advantage over others. However, now under the Electoral Boundaries Commissions this problem does not occur and no party has the upper hand over another. Interestingly the

One can come to a conclusion that plurality systems have a major flaw and that is inequality. Adopting a MMP would be a huge step forward in Canadian democracy. With a MMP system in place, more women would be elected to the legislature because it creates fairness. With more women in the legislature, it can make a substantial difference in the types of laws that may be proposed and passed. Another advantage MMP brings to Canada is instead of electing one member of the legislature in each small district, Canada would use larger districts to elect several members. To add to this advantage, the candidates that win the seats in these multi-member districts are determined by the proportion of votes each party receives. With Canada’s current electoral system, one citizen’s vote counts for less than another citizen’s vote. By changing to a MMP system, Canada can give more equality and fairness back to the citizens.

The Canadian electoral system is criticized for using the single member plurality (SMP) system more commonly known as first past the post, we adopted system from the British because at the time there were only two political parties in Canada. The current problem now is that many people feel that the system is unfair given that a party is able to gain a majority government even if they received less than fifty percent of the vote. As long as they have the majority of the popular vote, that party wins. However, the first past the post system has been able to establish a clear line of accountability between the elected representative and the voters. Yet, the public still feels that a proportional representation system would be

The electoral system in Canada is also known as a “first past the post” system. “First past the post” means the candidate with the highest number of votes wins the congressional seat, whereas the other candidates with a lower number of votes don’t get any representation. There are many cons to this system that will be highlighted throughout this essay. I will argue that the electoral system requires reform due to the discrepancies between the percentage of popular votes and the number of seats won. Canada’s electoral system has many problems and is not seen as fully democratic since it has provided poor representation for both candidates that win and lose. Candidates can win seats with less than 50% of votes, meaning that even if the majority of the nation, or province did not vote for the candidate they still win the election as they consume the highest number of votes among the parties. FPTP allows two people in different ridings to get the same number of votes with the outcome of one winner since the distribution of votes and seats are unequal. The system can also encourage strategic voting such as not voting for whom you think is the best fit but voting for the candidate that seems most likely to win in order to beat candidate you dislike. FPTP leads to an imbalance of power and has the potential for corruption.

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.

Canada’s friendly neighbor to the South, the US, has an electoral system that is composed of 3 separate elections, one of them deciding the head of state. The president elected by the people and he or she is the determining person of the country’s political system. In the US runs like a majority system” In Canada, however, elections are held slightly differently. Citizens vote for a Member of Parliament in a 308-seat house and candidates win not by a majority, unlike in the US, but by a plurality. This means that a candidate can actually win by simply having more votes than the other candidates. This method of representative democracy, in general, does not cause too much controversy in a global scope but has

Basically, voters select one candidate from their riding, just like in an SMP system, but they also place a vote for which party they would like to form the government. This second vote determines the amount of seats that each party gains proportional to the amount of votes they collected in the countries. The representatives from each party are then made up of the elected representatives from each riding (if that party was able to elect any) and other members selected by the leader1. An STV system, which is what the Citizen’s Assembly recommended to the people of BC, can be found in Ireland, Malta, and in some levels of government in Australia. Voters rank candidates according to their priorities, choosing as many as they wish. For example, a certain voter could select a Conservative as his or her first choice, a Liberal as the second, a New Democrat as third, and then cast no votes for the Green Party. When each a candidate reaches a certain quota of first place votes, they are elected, and the extra first place votes that they did not need are distributed to the other parties according to their overall ranking. If a second candidate is then elected, his or her extra votes are then distributed to the remaining parties, and so on . This system is rather complicated, especially when compared to our current system, but computerized voting systems have generally alleviated any problems.

How can the Canadian government be dominated by one ruler when it has democratic elections with many competing parties? Mellon believes that Canadian elections have low voter turnouts and even lower public interest. Canadian elections are essentially sporadic. Finally, Mellon also believes that prime ministers “…are supported by a growing circle of advisors, pollsters, and spin doctors that help protect their position,” (Hugh 175). The main focus of Mellon’s argument is this idea of a prime-ministerial government.

Canadian electoral system is largely based on the single member plurality (SMP) system which was inherited from its former British colonial masters. The system dates back to several years before the formation of the Canadian confederation. Some of the common features of the Canadian electoral system include election candidates to represent designated geographical areas popularly known as” ridings”, counting and tallying of the votes casted on the basis of the districts as opposed to the parties of the candidates (Dyck, 622). Finally, a candidate only needs a simple majority over the other candidates in order to be considered a winner, even if the winner has a small percentage of votes. This system has however been heavily criticized for its winner takes all way of judging victory. Critics argue that if the winner takes over the whole system, it may result into unfair representation of the various social groups, but it may also bring into power unstable minority participation in government. For example, a candidate can win even with barely 25% of all the votes casted, while the small parties may end up with no seats in the parliament.

The majoritarian model is currently being used in Canadas political economy, however, Canada’s would be better off with a shift to the consensus model as it included all minority groups and represented the true meaning of democracy. The consensus model represented the people in a society by including minority groups, using a federal or decentralized government and a multi-party system. The consensus model ensured the inclusion of groups in plural societies, where this was absent under a majoritarian ruling. A majoritarian model of government only made decisions in the hands of a select few, whereas, in a consensus model the power was divided in a federal or decentralized government. Finally, a consensus model allowed for multiple parties to run for election under the multiparty system and voting was done under proportional representation. However, in a majoritarian government, there are two parties running for office which operated under a disproportional election.

In Canada Federal and Provincial First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) elections are based on single member districts or ridings. Each riding chooses one candidate to elect into parliament. In order to win a candidate must obtain the highest number of votes but not necessarily the majority of votes. The party that wins the most ridings is named the official government of Canada with the second place party becoming the official opposition.

Today, Ontario and Quebec have maintained their 24 member senatorial status. The four Western provinces have 6 members each. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick both have 10 seats. Prince Edward Island was given 4 out of the original 24 Maritime senators. Together, Newfoundland and Labrador have a total of 6 members. Finally, Nunavut, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories stand in the equation with 1 senator apiece. Along with the Senate`s original intentions, the principle of equality between the provinces is evidently lost. The Senate primarily fails because it was formerly created to balance out the representation by population which lies in the House of Commons however currently only seems to reinforce it. In fact, Canada’s central provinces, Ontario and Quebec, account for 60 percent of the seats in the House of Commons and almost half of the seats in the Senate at 46 percent.5 The inadequacy of regional representation is emphasized as the Canada West Foundation clearly states: “Canada is the only democratic federal system in the world in which the regions with the largest populations dominate both houses of the national legislature.“6 With an unelected Senate that no longer fulfills its role of equal regional representation and a House of Commons grounded on the representation of provinces proportional to their population, the legitimacy of Parliament has become a

The system that the Law Commission ultimately recommended was the mixed-member proportional electoral system. In the MMP system a portion of representatives, usually between 50 and 60 percent, are elected from single-member districts, similar to FPTP, with the remainder of seats being elected from party lists, based on the party’s share of the popular vote (Law Commission 22). Each voter gets to cast two votes, one for the party that they support and another for the representative member that they prefer. Party lists can be either closed, where voters are not able to influence the order of candidates, or open, where voters have the ability to influence the ranking of candidates. A threshold for representation is usually set in order to prevent fringe and extremist parties from gaining seats in government. This system is used in Germany, New Zealand, Venezuela and Lesotho (Joseph 113).

The first past the post system runs on the idea that whichever party has the most votes wins. In Canada, the government has split geographical regions into constituencies which are called ridings.Each riding has a representative from each party that has chosen to have an individual represent them. When the election date comes, voters will go to the polling station and cast their vote for whichever individual they want to represent them. Whichever representative that

It is important to first of all determine whether or not the voting results are truly representative to the proportions and the desires of the people. In parliamentary systems, the executive is bound to make decisions that will appease the majority of parliament. This is relevant, due to the fact that Members of Parliament (MPs) are elected by democratic vote and are representative to the population. For instance, in Denmark, there are 179 MPs. The Faroe Islands and Greenland are assigned 2 seats each, as they are territories of Denmark. The state of Denmark is divided into 10 constituencies. Each of those constituencies are assigned a number of seats they are able to hold. A hundred and thirty-five of the parliamentary seats are proportionately distributed in accordance to the votes of each constituency. The amount of seats allocated is determined by measuring the “number of inhabitants, the number of