Murray Rankin, the member of Parliament for Victoria, British Columbia, has this op-ed in the Times Colonist, the daily newspaper for Victoria. Rankin argues in favor of proportional representation for Canada. The comments underneath the article are interesting. Many commenters don’t realize that there are systems of proportional representation that do allow voters to choose the particular individual who represents them.
Rankin is a member of the New Democratic Party, which officially supports proportional representation.
The 9th USA Parliament has been using pure proportional representation (PR) for nineteen consecutive years and it works fine.
http://www.usparliament.org
Isn’t the New Democratic Party of Canada a 3rd party which has tried for decades to replace one of the major parties in Canada? I guess they’ve given up on majority rule and now hope they can slide into power on Proportional Representation.
Proportional representation is majority rule because all the votes count to elect representatives. All (or almost all) the votes is a bigger majority than a plurality.
Currently the biggest minority can win any plurality election.
For example, a name with 10% ((New Democratic Party) can win any plurality when the majority’s votes are split among ten Independents with 9% each.
So 90% lost and that’s a majority.
What exists in Canada today isn’t majority rule. That’s called plurality rule.
In debates on PR there is pretty much always a woeful display of ignorance (though I accept its possibly deliberate ignorance) on the part of the anti-democrats.
In the US voters seem pretty content to vote for one of two parties (if they vote at all) so PR isn’t much of an issue for you. However, when that system fragments First Past The Post becomes increasingly arbitrary and that ‘majority rule’ looks pretty sickly when the ‘majority’ is less than 30% of those voting!
For Alabama Independent here’s the result of the last Canadian election – Con 167 NDP 102 Lib 34 Oths 5
The NDP are also in government in Manitoba and the second party in BC, Saskatchewan and the Yukon. So, its not exactly unknown for FPTP to work FOR the NDP who are now advocating its abolition on the basis that it is an unfit system for a supposedly democratic nation.
I repeat…plurality elections are won by the biggest MINORITY not by a majority.
Top Two guarantees that doesn’t happen again.
That’s funny! Thank you.
You wrote; ” its not exactly unknown for FPTP [first-past-the-post] to work FOR the NDP who are now advocating its abolition”.
Ha, ha!
Didn’t quite get “who” Andrew was referring to in his post. Is the NDP advocating abolishing “FPTP” or is “FPTP” advocating for the abolishing of the NDP?
And by the way, I thought the Conservative Party had almost dissolved in Canada several years ago (or am I confusing countries?). There must be no such thing a party membership in Canada – just loyalty at the ballot box?
After checking out Canadian political parties on Wikipedia, I learned that the Conservative Party is the heir of what was once called the Liberal-Conservative Party and more recently the Progressive-Conservative Party.
I have a question.
Is not “Liberal-Conservative an “oxymoron?”
Is not “Progressive-Conservative an “oxymoron?”
But then again, at one time we had a “Democratic-Republican” party in the United States. I guess whatever name it takes to appeal to as many voters as possible is okay as long as the party members can get alone with one another and win elections. Seems like those divisions was what caused the “Democratic-Republican” party in this country to split.