Why should I vote when there is no possibility of my party’s candidate being elected in my constituency?
This question and others like it point to some of the many problems with Ontario’s current first-past-the-post electoral system. In March 2006, the provincial government established the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform to study and even propose historic changes to the system by which we elect our MPPs-a system that has serious defects.
The major problem with the first-past-the-post system is that most voters usually have no impact on electoral results, since in this system the candidate with the most votes (but not necessarily a majority of votes) wins. Many voters end up wasting their vote, either by voting for a losing candidate or by voting for the candidate who has already attained the minimum number of votes required to win the election.
For example, in the 2003 Ontario election, 64 per cent of voters in the constituency of London-Fanshawe wasted their vote by voting for unsuccessful candidates, while 57 per cent of voters in Thunder Bay-Superior North unknowingly wasted their vote by supporting a candidate who had (statistically) already won. In the final count, a staggering 85 per cent of voters in Thunder Bay-Superior North had no impact on electoral results.
A second negative effect of first-past-the-post is that some voters are valued more than others in determining the composition of the legislature. In that same provincial election, which the Liberals won under Dalton McGuinty, Liberal voters were overvalued since several Liberal candidates won ridings without garnering a majority of votes, while all other voters were undervalued.
A third adverse effect of first-past-the-post is that it causes regionalism. Regionalism refers to a party’s caucus underrepresenting or overrepresenting certain regions of Ontario. Notably, after the 2003 election the Liberal Party was overrepresented in every region of Ontario, while all other parties were underrepresented in nearly every region. The NDP appears to have support in Northern and Central Ontario only, when it should have received representation from Eastern Ontario based on its proportion of the vote in that region. The Progressive Conservative Party appears to be only a rural party when it should have received representation in the metropolitan centres of Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton, again based on its proportion of the vote in these cities.
Other problems that first-past-the-post causes or exacerbates include the lack of governmental accountability during legislative sessions and the paucity of diverse ideas in the legislature.
These serious problems with our democracy can be alleviated through electoral system reform. A proportional electoral system in Ontario in which the candidates’ standing more accurately reflects the percentage of votes cast for each contender would go a long way towards making election results more fair and realistic. Under a proportional system, the number of seats allotted to each party is in direct proportion to the overall number of votes cast for each party. Therefore, with proportional representation, all voters can have an impact on electoral results, since each vote is valued equally.
This coming October, with an unprecedented referendum on Ontario’s electoral system reform in the making, voters must be prepared to strengthen our democracy.
