In the Canadian democracy pageant, Miss-Information reigns. Think about the term 'popular vote', most people don't think through what it means, or to what it is referring. The popular vote refers to the votes cast across independent elections as measured by the shared attribute of political affiliation of different candidates. It is about as useful […]
In the Canadian democracy pageant, Miss-Information reigns.
Think about the term 'popular vote', most people don't think through what it means, or to what it is referring.
The popular vote refers to the votes cast across independent elections as measured by the shared attribute of political affiliation of different candidates. It is about as useful as the shared attribute of hair colour.
The popular vote is not a vote at all. A conservative in Sarnia is not the same as one in New Brunswick, so votes for different candidates in different ridings, cannot rationally be summed to an actionable total.
No Canadian has ever voted for a political party. While many of us rely on a candidates political affiliation to inform our vote, our ballot is cast for the person, not the party.
The popular vote captures those voters who cast their ballot for a person in spite of political affiliation. Our system does not measure anything other than votes for an individual in our own community election. Calculating the popular vote based on unreliable information makes the result false. Summing values across independent community elections that have different sets of candidates is absurd.
Now consider the term First Past the Post (FPTP). It is uncommon for people to know that there is no such system, in Canada, or anywhere in the world. FPTP is a nickname, a derogatory one, used to describe our electoral and representation system. FairVote BC explained in a lawsuit against the Government that it is not our system, and that it is a wildly inappropriate nickname – there is no post.
Our system, electorally, is single member by plurality in each community. Put another way, the candidate who receives the most votes from the most people is elected to represent the community.
Our system, democratically, is by majority vote of all community representatives (MPs). That means, every Government of Canada exists by a majority, even when there is a minority Parliament.
Our system is based on the concept of 'confidence'. Each community empowers a person with their confidence to represent them, and vote on their behalf. The elected members then vote to bestow or withdraw their confidence in the Government.
There are many things we could improve in our democracy, but to do it right we need to understand how our system works in the first place. Sadly, Miss-Information reigns so we often hear so-called solutions that are not based on facts or reason. Their data may be valid but that doesn't make it true or useful.
In the simplest terms, our democratic system is based on the idea that a bunch of neighbours should choose the best person to speak for all of them. If we want to improve our democracy, lets improve that relationship, and maybe that means taking political party control down a peg or ten.
