UK Election Should be a Wakeup Call

It isn’t over yet in the UK but I have been watching the attempts to form government there with rapt interest. Canadian political commentators have been critical of the process but to me, it is a good deal better having the interested parties struggling to make some kind of compromise than it is to meekly allow a government with very little voter support simply assume power the way we have in this country.


Why should we assume that it is any more legitimate for David Cameron’s right-leaning Conservatives to form government with the 36% support they won from voters rather than have a coalition of the more socially conscious Labour, the Liberal-Democrats and members of various other small parties including the Green member elected last week who collectively scored over 50%, run the country.

Something about that sticks in the craw of commentators like the Globe & Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson and others and frankly I cannot fathom why. Canada’s elites seem to have a mental block about proportional representation and they don’t like the concept of a hung parliament being able to be worked out in a compromise through discussion of common interests. I wish Simpson could explain to us, why a system which would give the party that got 45% of the popular vote , 45% of the seats in Parliament is flawed.

We need to make the process more democratic and why, as Canadian voters we cling to the out dated first past the post system is beyond my comprehension.

I do know why the Harpers and Ignatieff don’t want to change the system. It is all about the hope that their party will achieve that elusive 40% which just might get them a majority Government. The NDP are just as bad. It has been party policy for years but when is the last time you heard Jack Layton speak out in favour of proportional representation. Jack still thinks he has a chance of becoming Prime Minister. Some democracy we live in.

Here in Canada, over the last 80 years only four governments were elected by a majority of the people who cast ballots. That was in 1940, 1949, 1958 and 1984. Here in Canada it took 31,000 votes to elect each Bloc member of Parliament, 37,000 to elect one Liberal, 40,00 for each Conservative and 111,000 to elect each NDP member. The Greens received close to a million votes and elected no one.

So let’s take a hard look at what is happening in the UK and in our own country. It is time to stand up and tell the party leaders that electoral reform is more than giving a few extra seats to Alberta. We need significant change and we need it now. Be part of the solution. Get involved. Speak out.

Ludicrous election results in U.K. match those in Canada

But unlike Canada, Britain may move on electoral reform

Yesterday’s British parliamentary election provided yet another breath-taking example of how an antiquated winner-take-all voting system distorts election results.

With 626 of the 650 seats declared as of this posting anyway, things might shift a bit, the Conservatives won about 47% of the seats with just 36% of the votes. Labour received an equivalent windfall of undeserved seats: 40% of the seats with just 29% of the votes.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats won only 8% of the seats, despite winning about 23% of the votes. As Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said, it is “abundantly clear the electoral system is broken.”

“As ludicrous as Britain’s election results are, they are no worse than what we experience in Canada,” said Bronwen Bruch, President of Fair Vote Canada, a multi-partisan citizens’ campaign for voting system reform in Canada.

“The big difference is that Britain may well move forward on electoral reform, since both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, who together represent a majority of voters, are prepared to scrap the discredited first-past-the-post system. The Liberal Democrats are expected to demand action on proportional representation.”

Yesterday’s election in the U.K. follows the 2005 election in which Tony Blair’s Labour Party won a majority of seats with a mere 35% of the popular vote.

How bad are Canadian elections in comparison?

“In recent years we have had three provincial majority governments formed by parties that came in second place in the popular vote,” said Larry Gordon, Executive Director of Fair Vote Canada. “The current Liberal government in New Brunswick is an example – the New Brunswick Conservatives actually won more votes in the last election.”

Fair Vote Canada also pointed to these examples of electoral dysfunction in Canada:

•  In 1997, Jean Chretien’s Liberals won a majority of seats with just 39% of the votes.

•  In 1990, Bob Rae’s New Democrats won a majority in Ontario with less than 38% of the votes.

• In the 2008 federal election, 940,000 Greens elected no one, while 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone sent 27 MPs to Parliament.

“Pressure for electoral reform has been slowly building in Britain and then the MPs’ spending scandal blew the lid,” said Gordon. “Plus, Nick Clegg, the third party leader has said electoral reform is a condition for supporting a new government. A similar mix of conditions may be building in Canada – we can only hope since Canadian voter turnout is dropping as people walk away in disgust from our dysfunctional system.”

For more information contact Fair Vote Canada's Executive Director, Larry Gordon at  647-519-7585

Fair Vote Canada