Political Rant - my 2 cents.

So there’s an election coming up in Canada – great. I don’t pretend to be privy to the political landscape of Canada. I’m not one to debate politics since I don’t pay much attention to the parties – I’m the first to admit my weakness and apathy toward this. But for me there’s something more important here. This is a LONG post, so sit down with a cup’o Joe and put your thinking caps on :o) I realize we need to elect a government – that I’m not concerned about (I figure the general public will elect whatever it feels is right). My concern is with the political system – does it make sense? Does the best party win? What are the ‘other’ choices for national parties? DOES EVERY VOTE ACTUALLY COUNT (definitely the most important question in my mind)?

I’ve been thinking a bit about Canadian politics recently and 2 things jumped out at me:
- what happens to a spoiled vote (ie. I don’t like any of the candidates, but I still want to vote and I want my vote to count)
- why aren’t there more political parties on the national scale (ie more choice)

Topic 1

On the first topic, I found back in March 2003 Hon. Charles Caccia proposed the following amendment to the Elections Act (I got this from the Government of Canada website – it looks like minutes of a hearing in Parliament):
Hon. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.) moved for leave to introduce Bill C-319, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act (declined vote ballots).
He said: Mr. Speaker, this bill aims at amending the Canada Elections Act. It would permit the introduction of a declined vote ballot. It would allow electors to cast a vote indicating dissatisfaction with the parties and the candidates listed on the ballot and yet register a valid vote rather than casting a spoiled vote. The affected elector would thus be able to indicate his or her wish to decline to vote for any candidate standing for election without having to spoil the ballot, as is the case now.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)
However a cursory search of the Canada Elections Act, its Provisions, and Amendments Not In Force yields no actual mention to Bill C-319 – so I don’t believe this is actually included in the Act. I will be watching closely as to how the results are posted this year – if there IS such a thing as a “declined vote”, will the media even bother reporting it?

My feeling is that there are a lot of people out there that don’t like the major parties and won’t vote for them (see the next section of this post) and feel their vote goes unnoticed – especially if they don’t like some of the tertiary parties involved. In theory, a person should be allowed to vote “declined”, and this should be recorded as such – they have taken the time to come out and vote, but they are sending a message they do not like the political landscape.

Confused? Here’s an example:

In Riding ‘X’ there are 100,000 eligible voters, of which 50,000 take the time to vote (50% turnout – not bad, eh?). The Liberals win 35% of the votes in a riding. Conservatives 30%. Bloc and NDP 10% each. Spoiled and smaller parties take the remaining 15% of the votes. In actuality only 17,500 people voted Liberal, and yet they control the riding of 100,000 voters. Does that seem right?

What if a section called ‘Declined Vote’ was introduced? The election results for riding ‘X’ could easily look like the following. Of 100,000 eligible voters there are 50,000 that take the time to vote (assuming we’re still at 50% voter turnout, which I propose would increase with the introduction of the ‘Declined Vote’). Liberals get 30%, Conservatives 25%, Bloc and NDP 8% each, other 10% - and ‘Declined’ gets 19% of the votes. That’s 8,000 voters out of 100,000 that took the time to come out and vote and ACTIVELY voted AGAINST all the parties because they don’t like what they see.

Any smart politician on the Conservatives would look at that and say to themselves

“We lost the election by 5% of the voters – and yet 19% of the voters took the time to come out and vote and yet still didn’t vote for us. What can we change with our policies to attract 5% more from the “Declined” ranks – these people are saying they are politically active but they don’t like what they see. It’s not like we have to convince people to come out and vote – they’re already at the polls. We just need to somehow convince them to vote for us…..what can we change in our policy to get their votes?”

Needless to say I think you’d see a very different political landscape as parties started vying for the 19% “Declined” voters – which could swing an election.

Topic 2

Delving further into the issue we know that the Canadian political system is based on FPP (First Past the Post, or since there’s no actual post we call it Furthest Past the Post). The party/representative that gets the most votes in a riding is elected to the House of Commons, and the leader of the party with the most seats is Prime Minister (even if he/she doesn’t win their own riding). The parties that finish second, third, fourth, etcetera in a riding don’t get a seat in the government for that riding – in fact they don’t get anything for their troubles.

According to Dulverger’s Law (he was a French sociologist), any FPP political system will invariable form a 2 party race. There are bound to be small disruptions when a 3rd party is introduced on the national scale, but it will invariably return to a balance with 2 main parties (regardless of what those 2 parties are). Here’s a quick explanation:

Back in riding ‘X’ the Liberal wins the riding, and thus gets the seat in the House. Next door in riding ‘Y’ the Conservative party wins the riding and gets the seat. In both ridings the NDP came 3rd with only 10% of the votes. If this continues across the country it means that 10% of Canadians voted for the NDP ACROSS THE COUNTRY, and yet they didn’t win any seats. (Obviously we know there is more variance in the ridings and NDP or Bloc will win some seats). But the point is that if the party isn’t strong enough nationally they will not have a national force, which brings out 2 things:
- FPP will slow the introduction of new 3rd parties. In my mind this is good – a cluttered political landscape, like the Dutch system, is so confusion it’s hard to imagine how people can decipher it. People will also have more confidence in the parties because ‘fad’ parties won’t be able to break onto the political scene – only new parties that strike a chord close to Canadians hearts will make it into the Big 2. Sticking to the point – if the timing and message of a 3rd party are true to Canadians, the population will gradually take them aboard and they will become stronger
- FPP speeds the digression of outgoing former Top 2 parties – once they loose their footing in the top 2 they find themselves out pretty quickly. No political fodder on this landscape.

So what does this all mean? Not much really – like I said, it’s my 2 cents. But take the time to think about not just which political party you want to vote for, but also how our voting system works. If you don’t like it, let your MP know.

The message – apathy should not be tolerated. Maybe we should introduce something like I’ve heard they have in Australia – you get fined $50 if you’re eligible and don’t vote! How cool is that!!!!