Dear Editor,

Proportional Representation and Electoral Reform are two big ideas that get flung about quite a lot during election seasons. Reduced to the simplest terms, the thought behind them is to change our current electoral procedures to some other format that certain individuals may feel is a more equitable system.

There are two things about this topic that occur to me about this scenario. The first is that only people whose sides are not winning want to change the election rules. The second is that in my opinion proportional representation would not solve any problems but just sort of muddy things up.

Currently there are 338 seats, whichever party wins the most individual seats gets to form the next government. After the last election the Liberals had 157 seats, the Conservatives had 121, the Bloc had 32 and the NDP 24, with an assortment covering the last nine. What I like about our “first past the post” type of electoral system we use is that in each of these ridings the person/party who had the most votes in that seat earned the right or honour to represent that seat.

In a “Pro-Rep” system using the last electoral numbers the Liberals would have had 112 seats with 33.12 per cent of the total votes, the Conservatives had 117 with 34.34 per cent of the vote, the Bloc would have had 26 seats with 7.63 per cent of the vote and the NDP would have had 54 seats with 15.98 per cent of the vote. The remaining 8.93 per cent of the vote or 29 seats would have been allotted to other smaller parties or independent candidates. This system would best support parties like the NDP who may get a smaller vote in each riding but wind up with a decent total when all votes are tallied together. This would also lower the Bloc’s seat count the most because their local vote would not mean as much in a national collective count. Based on these types of numbers weak unstable minority governments would be a common occurrence.

In this type of system each party would pick their allotted slate of members who would represent the parties’ interest in parliament. Specific ridings such as our current one, Pontiac-Kitigan Zibi, would not have a representative that was chosen by us to look after our best interests. For myself that is the biggest failure of a “Pro-Rep” system. I love the idea that the individual areas pick their own “person” to represent them. I like that idea a lot.

If someone wants to improve our electoral system they can do it quite simply by voting. It’s actually that simple, we need to get out and vote. The tradition of low voter turnouts has become a huge problem over the last few decades. Changing the way we count the votes isn’t a solution if there is still an anorexic bucket of ballots to count.

So go vote and take someone with you. Take two or three with you, but go vote.

Tom McCann, Clarendon