Electoral System In Canada

The outcome of an election is sometimes surprising to many people in Canada, as the votes seem to sway in one direction. Many times this is due to the electoral system in place that does not always portray the majority to its best abilities. Electoral systems are essentially, “the means by which votes are translated into seats in the process of electing politicians into office” (Farrell 2001). Canada has been subscribed to the Single-Member Plurality, otherwise known as First-Past-The-Post. Many have been in an uproar over this, as it does not effectively reflect the majority of voters. Recently, Justin Trudeau used the reform of electoral system as a major platform idea that inspired many who voted for him. (Liberal 2016) While SMP seems to …show more content…
Ultimately, it is a system where parties gain seats in proportion to the number of votes they gained. Mixed system or semi-proportional system is a middle ground between the other two systems, which seems to be a fairer method but it least likely to be used by any country. They provide two votes, one for the party list and the other for a candidate in a single member district. (Fisher 1973) An ideal voting system for the Canadian citizens, as well as the government, would be a system where every opinion of every citizen is considered. Also, the voters should be allowed to add details as to why they voted for a specific candidate in order to take into account the opinion of citizens that aids in the improvement of the future electoral system and governmental decision making. An electoral system should assign seats in the legislature in proportion to the party votes. Therefore, the electoral system closest to this idealistic description is Proportional Representation since the number of seats is assigned proportionally to the percentage of votes each party receives. (Farrell 2011) A proportional representation system of voting is commonly seen in Western European countries and is seen as a rather effective system of voting with twenty-one of the twenty-eight western countries using it. …show more content…
Canada is known for being democratic but using the first past the post system is not taking into account all votes. For example, in the federal election in 2011 the conservative party received 39.6% of the votes but because of the system, they took 56% of seats and formed majority government. (Marland, Welsey 2016) This is completely out of balance with the support the party actually received. Under the Proportional Representation system, the conservative party would have only gotten 122 seats rather than the 166 they received. This is a better system as it adequately represents the country’s votes. Women are also negatively affected by this system, as there are only 24.7% women in the lower house. Compared to Sweden close to half is tremendously low. SMP does not represent all of Canada. (Drogus, Orvis