Proportional representation isn’t just an effort to make the Green Party relevant, as some people claim. PR is an effort to make every vote count.
The problems with first-past-the-post were perfectly illustrated in the riding of Nanaimo-Ladysmith in the last federal election. The winning candidate got less than a third of the votes cast. More than two-thirds of voters had zero impact on the makeup of Parliament. In a democracy, that’s just wrong. Getting a distribution of seats that reasonably reflects each party’s true voter support is what we should be striving for.
With FPTP, the main parties get more than their fair share of members, so naturally they support the status quo. Having a voting system that makes two-thirds of votes meaningless is the surest way of discouraging voter turnout.
S.I. Petersen
Nanaimo
