Burdick 1 Brittany Burdick Math Applications Professor Von Renesse September 25, 2007
Canada’s Voting System The country I decided to research their voting system on is Canada. Canada uses the electoral system called plurality. Plurality is the system used to vote for Canada’s national government, such as their governor and House of Commons. Basically, this country uses plurality as their national electoral system to vote in politicians into office. This system is very popular and is used in 43 of 191 countries in the United Nations. In fact, Canada uses the same electoral system as the United States of America. This system is also known as winner-take-all, relative majority, or most commonly referred to in Canada as, the first past the post (FPTP). The term, first past the post, is an analogy for horse racing because it helps explain how the plurality electoral system works. This is because in horse racing, when a horse passes a specific point, all other runners completely lose and the winner takes all. In the case of the plurality system, once a candidate reaches a number of particular votes that candidate wins and the all others automatically and completely lose. Another interesting feature about this country’s electoral system is that each province has its own voting system, as well as a national electoral system for the federal Parliament. Each electoral system within the country is similar, but there are also slight differences. Now that I have briefly explained Canada’s
Burdick 2 electoral system, I will explain the following in my essay: Canada’s voting history, advantages, disadvantages, and Canada’s election timeline. Canada’s voting system is a result of numerous changes since it’s formation in 1867. There are three major stages of the Canadian electoral system: the confederation, after the confederation, and the modern franchise. In the times of the confederation, the right to vote was severely limited. To be able to vote you would have to own property or pay a certain amount of annual taxes. These qualifications left out women and a variety of ethnic and religious groups. This basically left only prosperous white men with the right to vote. A couple other differences during the confederation were that elections were held at various times in numerous places in the country and that secret ballots did not exist. Then in the year of 1867, the Fathers of the Confederation founded a constitution. After the constitution of 1867 was established the category of people with the right to vote became broader. One of the reasons why the right to vote class was broadened was due to the fact that the few people that were allowed to vote did not necessarily vote for their true preferences because of different forms of influence. These influences consisted of the media and fellow peers. The country had to extend their right to vote to keep the public support. Eventually all men and women were allowed the right to vote. This was not a sudden change though; the process was long and strenuous. Women didn’t have the right to vote until the year 1918. The Canadian electoral system also had two other basic changes in this era. One was the creation of an independent electoral system governed by extremely precise procedures The other important change was they started regulating parties’ campaigning within the system. The modern era of Canada occurred in 1920, when they adopted the Dominion
Burdick 3 Elections Act. This act extended the right to vote to every Canadian citizen and created a more organized and professional electoral system. This era also recognizes the franchise, which is the right to vote for one’s representative. The franchise is considered the most important element in their country’s system of political rights. As you can see Canada electoral system has gone through various changes and stages. Even today their voting system is persistently upgrading, but one thing that has remained constant is the use of the first past the post system. Even though the plurality system is one of most internationally used electoral system, there are as many disadvantages as there are advantages for this particular method. The advantages of this system include; simplicity, fewer parties, it creates a more stable government and each representative is a winner. The first past the post system is one of the easiest methods to run, explain, and understand. This factor has a major influence on voters because they can feel more connected and involved. Many people do not understand their electoral system or what kind of an influence their vote makes, so when a voter does understand it gives them more initiative to get involve and vote. Having fewer parties can be an advantage because it is more likely that one party will hold the bulk of legislative seats. This will make the voting process quicker, easier and involve less negotiating. Having fewer parties can also be a disadvantage, which I will explain in the following paragraph. Another advantage to the plurality system is that it results in a government that is more secure, this is because one party normally wins the majority of the legislative seats, even if that party doesn’t win popular vote. Therefore, resulting in a majority and stable government. One of the most major advantages to this system is that each representative must win. That is because each electoral district has
Burdick 4 their own representative that needs to be voted for, therefore making their elected candidate responsible for their votes. Voters have the power to discard and replace the candidate in their own electoral district can easily replace her since they have full power over who they want to represent them. This factor prevents incompetence and dishonest behavior by the elected candidates. These are major and important advantages for Canada using plurality as their voting system. But as I stated before there are also disadvantages that flaw this particular system. The main disadvantage is that a party's distribution of votes may be less than the distribution of seats it ends up with. It not only unfair that party may obtain a greater or lesser amount of seats than votes it gathered, but it also results in many people’s opinions being unconsidered for the outcome of the election. The cause for this disproportional problem is that a particular party may receive a high percentage of the votes, but they are spread out across the territory. When support is strong for one particular party in one constituency, that party will win that plurality, rather than if the support was extended out.