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Does Canada need Proportional Representation Voting
Believe it or not, a Proportional Voting system can give us a better democracy.
A proportional voting system will give us citizens MORE power, and take a bit of power away from those at the top who now have ALL the power.
At least, a Proportional Voting System will give us the Governments we actually VOTE FOR. The goal of a Proportional Voting system is to give political parties SEATS in Parliament based on the VOTES they actually get. So a political party that gets 15% or 25% of the votes ... will also get 15% or 25% of the seats.
Our current voting system, called First Past The Post, does NOT give parties seats based on the number of votes they get. First Past the Post gives the bigger parties EXTRA seats. A LOT of extra seats. And that seems unfair because it gives some voters a lot more "power" than other voters. And why should I as a voter be penalized just because I support a smaller party.
Here's an example from the last Ontario election.
Voting systems ARE important. If we had a Proportional Voting system in Ontario, we would not have a Doug Ford Conservative Government in Ontario because The Conservatives only got 40.8% of the votes.
POLITICAL PARTY % OF VOTE SEATS VOTES NEEDED TO WIN A SEAT
Conservatives 40.8% 83 23,000
NDP 23.7% 31 36,000
Liberals 23.8% 8 140,000
Green 5.9% 1 279,000
Independent 1
WITH A PROPORTIONAL VOTING SYSTEM .... we would probably have an NDP, Liberal Green Coalition Government. That coalition would have about 54% of the votes, instead of the 41% the Conservatives got. Now perhaps, there could be a Conservative Liberal Coaliton .... representing about 64% of voters.
COALITION GOVERNMENTS: In Proportional Voting systems, Coalition Governments are used. If one party actually gets more than 50% of the votes, which is unusual ... they can form a government by themselves. But usually, two or more parties will form a coalition that has more than 50% of the votes and seats.
IN ONTARIO, we would probably have, as I said, an NDP, Liberal, Green coalition. Or maybe a Conservative / Liberal coalition.
This is good in a couple of ways.
FIRST, it means that at least our governments represent more than half of us ... in the current Ontario government, only 41% of voters are 'represented'.
And second, it brings more voices into government. In Ontario, Doug Ford personally has a huge amount of power, and is able to whatever he wants ... or whatever he is being told to do. In a Coalition Government, there are other voices in Government and it means more discussion and hopefully more thought. And, more ideas are represented. I think these are good things.
Is it too much to ask to get the governments that we vote for ... well in Canada yes - it is too much to ask. They - our .01% ruling class - will not let us have a more democratic voting system like PR because that would give us more power and those at the top now have virtually ALL the power and that is the way they like it and they do not intend to give up ANY of their power to a bunch of saps like 'The People Of Canada'.
1.... This is a topic seldom discussed, because those at the top don't want us talking about how to have a better democracy. A better democracy would give us people a bit more power. And they won't allow that.
2... In Canada now, we use a voting system called First Past The Post. We all know how it works. We vote in a provincial or federal election. The person who gets the most votes in "our area" wins, and goes off to be a part of the Parliament or Government.
3... But what is not discussed in Canada is that our First Past The Post voting system does NOT give us the governments that we vote for. This means that WE vote for one government ... but our voting system translates that into something quite different .. and gives us a government that we didn't vote for.
NOW THIS IS KIND OF IMPORTANT DON'T YOU THINK .... THE FACT THAT OUR VOTING SYSTEM DOES NOT GIVE US THE GOVERNMENTS THAT WE VOTED FOR. You would think that a story of that importance ... would get mentioned somewhere. But it never is. We have election after election over many decades and the fact that our voting system doesn't give us what we voted for is never discussed. Now, maybe I'm wrong and our current voting system is very good - but shouldn't we citizens KNOW something about this. But we d
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