Kay, I know that posts about politics are really boring, but lately the CBC has had some awesome coverage of the election on their airwaves and it has me thinking. One of the issues they are giving a lot of attention to is democratic reform, and I’m ashamed to say I’ve never questioned our democratic process at all, or given it any thought. Smarter people than me, however, have pointed out that our current system is not quite fair, because we live in a multi-party country. In any given riding, the votes might be split such that the winning candidate did not receive 50% or more of the votes; with enough candidates running, the winner might get as little as 30% of the votes. That makes it seem like the winning MP doesn’t actually represent the majority of his constituents.

Another major point is that parties that are relatively new on the scene are not likely to win any ridings, even though they may win a significant percentage of the popular vote; this makes people a) not want to vote for that party because it’s pointless, and b) find that their views, if they agree with that party, are completely not represented in the house. For example, The Green Party is trying very hard to become a legitimate party this election by running a candidate in every riding, but since they are unlikely to actually win any seats, anyone who likes them and votes for them will find their views completely unrepresented when it comes to law-making.

The CBC has been talking a lot about how European countries work. Apparently quite a few of them have mixed systems, where the winner in each riding goes to parliament, but some extra candidates go too, based on how much of the popular vote their party received. So, say the Green Party gets 5% of the overall vote, they’d be guaranteed some sort representation in the house — maybe 1 or 2 votes — in order to give the people who voted for them proper representation.

It makes sense to me, and I can’t believe I never thought of it before!