On voting..

When I ran federally in 2008, I made quite a splash in my riding and despite being a relatively unknown 27 year old, I captured 14% of the vote in a by-election and came in ahead of the NDP candidate in the general election held later that year.

While I definitely had fun in the campaign, it also reinforced my view of how twisted our electoral system is.

Many people point to the unfair results in which 10% of voters choose parties that get no seats and the winning parties often get over rewarded, however, my personal view is that the greatest evil in our electoral system is the notion of strategic voting in which people are often forced to choose between voting their conscious and voting against a party that they really don't want to get elected.

When I was on the street in the general election, I had voters come up to me on election day nearly in tears and utterly depressed, because they felt that following their heart would have resulted in splitting the vote and as such they had to hold their nose and vote for a candidate who they didn't really feel shared their views.

In nearly every election, many voters have become trained to vote against parties, and as such negative campaigns flourish and local candidates credentials and passion are often ignored in favor of party politics. As a result, independent thinkers rarely get a fair consideration by voters, negative campaigns flourish, and many voters are increasingly turned off by the voting system because of lack of real competition.

Unfair results may distort governance, but when a voter is forced to vote against their best interests, it turns democracy into a game of convenience. Essentially, we are not voting for the future we want but are voting out of fear and negativity. This mindset turns our right to choose our representation from a priveledge to be valued and cherished into an action of base emotions that neither promote societal coherence nor guarantees good governance.

In my heart I support proportional representation systems, transferable votes and open list systems being my favourite, but I also realize that the case for proportional voting is often obscured by self interest. Those who are underdogs support it more, while those who support parties that hold power (or anticipate it) are often less likely to favour it.

One of the big challenge is that people have become trained to vote against one of the major parties and our elections tend to be about getting another party out of power or keeping another party out rather than about bringing forward the best ideas and the candidates who would best serve their constituents or the general good of the electorate.

Since people are so used to voting against someone, elections have turned into a distasteful activity in which few people anticipate and more and more people opt not to participate in. While proportional representation would ensure that votes were accurately transferred into seats and end the need for strategic voting, a string of recent referendums promoting alternative systems in BC, Ontario, and PEI have failed to pass, and there is no guarantee that proportional representation, despite its benefits, will be able to win over enough support from the general populace or overcome obstacles set by politicians and those who wield power under our existing systems.

One of the challenges in making dramatic changes to our election system is that change adverse voters often get caught up on what they will lose rather than what they will gain. Proportional representation may bring about cooperation and introduce better candidates, but it lowers the threshold for candidates and opens the way to smaller parties that some voters may prefer to keep out even if it means they may miss out on having their own beliefs better represented. Any proportional representation system will also mean less local representation, even if it means better overall representation or more responsive politicians, and this creates a degree of uncertainty.

Such being the case, I believe that those of use who are unhappy with our current levels of representation or particularly the electoral process, should be open to incremental changes even while we hope for comprehensive ones. It would be silly for anyone to refuse to drink water in the hopes that one day we can get wine, and as such, after setbacks, I think it is important to look at changes that will receive less resistance.

While choice voting will likely not change the composition of government instantly, it will at least change the nature of elections and hopefully introduce enough competition that it will keep representatives on their toes. I believe that voters will be able to use elections to better express their opinions, so at least an elections can serve as a true opinion poll on local issues, rather than a simple referendum on the state of the government. I think it will, by removing some of the negative aspects, reinvigorate participation and encourage more candidates to stand for office, at least giving some range of stances and giving the average voter more choice. More importantly, it will pretty much eliminate false choices given to voters who often feel they have to set aside their beliefs out of fear. As such, election day can be filled with hope and positive experiences in which voters can cheer for their ideal candidate knowing that their vote will not adversely affect the results. There will still be disappointments, and many voters may not see their choices get elected or their preferred party get any seats, but at least voters can be honest with themselves. We don’t always get what we want or even deserve, and life is not always fair, but at the very least we should have the freedom to make choices at the ballot box in good faith without negative consequences.

A move to choice voting is hardly a limiting factor or the end of electoral reform but is more of a litmus test to see how people react to increased choice and competition and less negative politics.

From a choice voting system, mixed member or parallel systems like they use in Australia could easily be adopted, or once voters get used to the idea of choice and are ready to take a step forward, single member choice districts could expand slowly into multiple member ones to act like a single transferable vote. Once voters get used to voting for smaller parties or independents, they may realize how much they really are missing and future changes may be easier. In the future, smaller parties may see that their support was in fact much higher than it appeared at the voting station in the past, and voters may realize that rather than rather than being marginalized, these parties are in fact mainstream and want to move more to cooperative politics. Or, conversely, perhaps the competition will not be from political parties but from independents, and voters may find that partisanship obscured good governance and opt to move to politics based on consensus models bypassing traditional ideologies.

With political science, we cannot predict accurately how institutions (such as government or parties or even the electorate as a whole) will respond under unique cultural and socio-economic principles, but at the very least, we can recognize that our current system has flaws which distort voting intentions, and that a change from a plurality to a majoritarian system (the technical term for choice voting since winning candidates will typically get over 50% percent support once they get transfers from lower placed candidates) will at least let voters be honest at the ballot box.

For the student who approached me in tears on voting day, with choice voting she could at least wipe her cheeks and watch the results knowing that her vote may or may not make a difference without guilt or fear of splitting the vote, and for those who prefer local representation or who are unwilling to share power with those outside of the mainstream, they will at least have the option, whether they use it or not, of expressing an honest opinion on voting day.