Many weeks have passed since I started writing this post, life, in this case work, got busy.
There was a call to vote strategically. I did not, I cannot, but I saw the lure. The lure is to have your vote actually matter. The lure is to feel that you are part of the system and not just a faceless cog. When the political system had been created there had only been two parties vying for control of the legislature. There were only two parties for as long as one could remember, but that had ceased being true about a hundred years ago. There have been several other parties over the years, from the left and the right, special interest groups and people who thought they knew something that the others did not know. Many of them lasted only for one election, a few lasted for a time, some gained national prominence only to fade and a few gained a foothold which they kept. To say that there is only two parties is no-longer the case. There have been election ballots that were longer than my arm with over ten candidates, but usually there are much less. This election I had five choices in my riding in Bonnieland.
It is called First Across the Line election results. It means who ever comes in first wins a riding, the small regional contest area. The party the wins the most of these smaller contests wins the election. This is how the system works and why huge majorities can be one with so little support. Theoretically, if there were five equally matched parties and one party recieved only one more vote than all the other parties in every contest, then that party would win all the ridings, but on a fifth of all the votes. Also theoretically, they could win a majority of the ridings with one vote and lose the minority of ridings by a landslide and win the election with far less of the popular votes of the other parties, theoretically, with this system. Luckily that has not happened yet.
Really, there are two issues that needs to be addressed, the voter turnout and the system that we have to elect the people who govern us.
If there was a political party called, Did Not Vote, they would have won every riding and been the only representatives in Parliament, because 49% of people Did Not Vote. People do not vote for many reasons: illness, can't make it to the polling stations, not in the country, not interested or not motivated and apathy. For a long time voter apathy was because the voter realized that their vote did not matter. They could cast their vote and their opinion would be lost among the many other opinions. One vote in a million votes means nothing and so why bother voting, and they are right. One vote very rarely means anything. Another reason was that people they never would vote for would get in, so their vote would never mean anything. I should have given up years ago, I have never cast a vote for the person who won the riding I was in, not once. So why do I bother? And with the nature of partisan politics, once a riding goes one way, it very rarely changes course from one election to another. Change does occur, but it is slow., so why bother. Apathy is certainly catching.
I believe that you can make people vote if you provide them an incentive. I prefer the velvet glove approach, provide a positive incentive to those that vote, like a $100 tax refund and a penalty if they fail to vote like a $100 fine. It would be quite simple to do, tax receipts are handed out at the ballot box and fines are delivered from e voters lists, initially I am sure one would pay for the other.
But the best way to get people to vote is to make their opinion matter, make it have an effect, give them a voice and that won't happen with this system we have. Previous blogs I have expounded my ideas on this before, so skip if you have read this before.
There is value in the first across the line races; the confrontation allows the voter to judge the person that they may vote for, because people run governments and it is important to know how they work, but it is not everything. People vote for one of three entities in an election, the candidate running, the leader of the party and the platform of the party, people also vote they way they have always voted, but somewhere in the past this was due to one of the former three. Sometimes the candidate running captures local support so well that they don't have to be part of any Political Party to win. In any kind of election, that local independent will go to parliament, if they get the most personal votes.
You should be able to vote for the party and he leader of a party too, non of the local candidates is known to you or you simply do not like any of them as people, but you still like the Leader or a particular Party over the others. Under my idea for political reform, you can do that, because representation in Parliament would be based on how people actually voted. With a couple new caveats above the present system.
Party Leaders do not have to participate in an individual contest, their party needs only exceed a minimum threshold of support, say 5% popular vote. This would allow the leader to focus on the entire party and not on one set of constituents. It would also mean that deciding who would get official funding would be easier too, do they have an elected leader, did they get 5% of popular vote last election?
So the election is over and the votes have been counted, one third of all votes were made for specific candidates and two thirds for Party or leaders. What happens now? First all votes for candidates and parties are pooled to discover which Parties received the most combined votes. We discover that seven parties have gained official party status, the NeoConservatives 12%, Progressive Conservatives 13%, Liberals 20%, NDP 15%, Green 15%, Maxis-Leninist Party 5%, Psychopomp Party 16% and 2% independent Candidates. There are 100 seats up for grabs, two independents with the most votes get in. Seven Leaders over 5% get one seat each and a number of seats up to there percentage of the vote garnered. The eighth party, Family Compact only got 2% of the vote and two of their candidates got enough of the popular vote to sit as independents. The people selected for these positions is based on the number of people who voted for them personally.
I can see problems with this system, some political regions maybe without local representation and some may be represented by more than one candidate. If the region voted for candidates or did not, but it would mean that their concerns could be picked up by more than one party, as each party would represent part of that region. Another problem would be fewer majority governments. Some people would find this scary, but it would mean that parties would have to learn to compromise and work together, rather than fight. It would also mean that coalitions of parties would collectively represent a majority of voters and if they did not, they would have to present legislation that did. Elections would have to be set in stone, say every five years, and if one coalition could not make governing work, another combination could. The point is, they would have to make it work, each major part of the coalition would get something and compromise to get it and thus serve the whole state and the people who voted for it.
I think that the two approaches, enforced voting and improved representation would increase the participants in each election and decrease the amount of voter disaffection and give people the government that they voted for.
There is another potential positive with a better political representation model: the end of partisan politics. Partisan politics is when people treat the opposing side as the enemy in all things. It means that they are less likely to want to work with each other and every issue that they contest becomes a life or death struggle, as if the legislature has become a hostile battlefield instead of a place to govern a nation. When this occurs the people lose, and a close election becomes a constant stalemate, filled with recrimination and childish bickering. Coalitions are easily formed and easily dissolved, their members each have different views but are willing to stick together to get some of their ideas enacted. Parties that persist in partisan policies would become outliers in the process and the governments that form are will be more cooperative in nature. Isn't that what you would want? And inclusive nice playing government passing laws that reflect the majority of people?
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