Election reflection

So a Canadian election just happened. In this blog post, I’m going to talk about what I think is one of the major problems with the Canadian election. Firstly why was the election called? This election was called because Justin Trudeau wanted to try and get his party a majority government. He thought that because of the way he responded to the pandemic It could get him more votes. However, this wasn’t the case. What happened is that the liberals pulled another government where they have the most seats but are still a minority. When it comes to a popular vote the conservatives won with about 200 thousand votes more than the liberals. This kinda shows how the first past the post is not ideal for the system. Let’s take a look at most of the options that could work in Canada and what one I think is the best. First, let’s look at the current way we vote. The system that we have in place right now is the first past the post system. This is when the person with the most votes in a riding wins the seat. The candidate doesn’t need a majority It just needs more votes than everyone else. What are the benefits of this system? Well, there are not many, the biggest being that it has been used for many years. Now for the downsides. First past the post might make it so that a candidate can win even when the majority votes for other parties. The next option is the ranked system, in this system voters rank the candidates first to last. If one candidate wins the majority then that would be the winner of the riding but if no one wins the majority the lowest-ranked candidate comes off the ballot and their votes are redistributed according to the second choices cast. This keeps on going until someone has won a majority. What are the benefits of this? It would help eliminate vote-splitting and strategic voting and reduce negative campaigns. What are the downsides to this? It would be useless in a system like ours where only one member is elected per rinding. Now the last of the three options is proportional representation. Proportional representation is the number of seats a party hold correspond to the number of votes they got.  This is a very simple idea with many variations. The basic idea is to distribute the votes not by riding but by the number of people that vote for them. This system also has some of the biggest drawbacks. The biggest being that the government could be very unstable, it would be unstable because the number of parties that you would have would be so large a majority government will seldom happen. This means that the government would be made up of lots of small parties making coalitions. When it comes to what is good the biggest thing is that this system would represent more people one with the vote meaning more and two more parties will run meaning that more people will have a party that will better represent them. What do I think is the best option and why? I think that proportional representation would be the best for our country. This system or versions of this system are used by many countries and only a few countries still use the first past the post (the UK, US, India, Canada, and France are prime examples). While I think that this is would be the best replacement I don’t think that it will change or it would be smart to do it right now. First, let’s talk about why is it unlikely for it to change. The main reason that it would not change is that the two parties that win (liberals and the conservatives) wouldn’t want to change a system that they can win in. If you look at the numbers for this election The liberals and the conservatives would be tied and all of the smaller parties would be able to say otherwise and not let something happen. However, if it was changed I would assume that the voter turnout would be much higher. This means that on top of the number of people to amount of seats even more parties will have a larger impact. This is a double-edged blade. While it can be great for voter turnout and great for smaller parties and great for the people’s voices to be heard. And when it comes to the downsides it would lead to a possibility of a very unstable government. There are a lot more upsides than downsides but if you think about it would it be the best choice? Would it be worth people being better represented but have an unstable government? I think that in this day and age no. But I do think that it could work.