Democracy: “Rule by the people.” This sounds great doesn’t it? We are very lucky to live in a country where we have a say in how our country is run. We vote for whom to represent us based upon their ideologies and we can choose the MP or party that best defines us. Each resident in Canada gets a vote as kong as they are over 18. I’ve been doing research and talking with close friends and family to see their ideas on the government structure, the legal voting age, and issues they hope to be changed as soon as possible.
At the moment the legal voting age is 18. What would happen if we changed this and brought it down to 16? Or even younger? After the student vote that was held at Seycove I was quite surprised to learn how many students are very interested in politics and would pursue it in the future. The younger generation is very informed and we do learn all about politics from elementary school to middle school. If the legal voting age was brought down I think the system would change for the better. It would well represent the population and bring more knowledge and ideas to the table.
I’m very interested in something called the butterfly effect. Where one small change (the flap of a butterfly wing) can cause an insane difference. What if we had a different voting system? What would Canada look like? I’ve been researching information on proportional voting and I’m very curious what our government would currently be like if we used it. Do you think it would be the same of different? www.fairvote.ca. is a great website with lots of information on the topic. With further research I discovered the great difference of who held seats I parliament vs what party actually received the most amount of votes from the 2019 election. At the end of the election the Liberal party had 33.1% of the votes while the Conservative party had 34.4%. Yet the Liberal party held 36 more seats. This does not represent us as Canadians where the government is ruled based off what ‘most’ people want. CBC made a dot diagram showing how the results would have changed for all the parties if we used proportional representation. I just believe that people need to be well represented in the government for what they believe in.
Proportional representation would ensure that everyone will get what they vote for or at least the leading party would represent the majority of the country. The percentage of seats that each party holds would be based solely on the number of votes they receive and the role of prime Minister would go to the leader of the party with the most votes. I think there would be more voters since they know their vote counts. Although all votes count as is they would count more towards the party’s platform they most believe in.
Down below I have created a mind map that lays out the information.
