Making every vote count doesn’t necessarily mean every voice is going to be heard.
Now that the provincial government has given the go ahead to a fall referendum, voters will be inundated with information and opinions on various electoral systems as both political parties and interest groups try to make us see the light.
Opponents to our current first past the post system say it’s unfair, pointing to the very real possibility of a party getting 100 per cent of the power even though it barely gets 40 per cent of the vote. A change from such an unjust system can’t come soon enough, say those who support a switch to some kind of proportional representation.
Under PR we’re told that every vote counts, so if a party gets 10 per cent of the vote, it will get 10 per cent of the seats in the legislature. That is most certainly true, but is this redistribution of seats going to make a meaningful difference in the way we’re governed and are all voices suddenly going to be heard? Not really and absolutely not.
Voters, and big chunks of them, would continue to be marginalized even with a switch to proportional representation, which really only moves the threshold for absolute power from the low 40 per cent range to 50 per cent where it belongs.
If it had been in place for last year’s election, the Liberals and New Democrats would have ended up with 35 seats each and the Greens would have got about 15, which means a coalition would have been required to form government. In other words, we’d be exactly where we are today.
Given only once in the last 60 years has a party received more than 50 per cent of the vote in a provincial election, what proportional representation would do is ensure we have minority governments that would necessitate these kinds of coalitions. Two, or more, parties working together would mean multiple viewpoints taken into account by government, which has to be considered a good thing, but once that coalition reaches the magical 50 per cent mark, all other parties, and perspectives, would be left on the outside looking in.
There’s no denying proportional representation would divvy up the seats in a fairer way, but there’s a distinct difference between a seat and a meaningful voice.
