British Columbians will vote by mail in a referendum on what voting system the province should use for its elections. The referendum is being held by mail from Oct. 22 to Nov. 30. All B.C. residents over the age of 18 can vote in the referendum. This is the third time provincial voters will have their say on electoral reform, having said no to proportional representation (PR) in 2005 and 2009.
Critics of the current first-past-the-post system fundamentally misunderstand the Westminster parliamentary system. Their support for PR stems from this misunderstanding. Critics claim election results are undemocratic because the number of seats a party wins is not usually reflective of the number of votes it received. But the error in this critique is that it looks at the election as one result rather than the sum of many numerous riding-level elections. The fact is we do not vote for a political party or political leader, but rather for our MP or member of provincial legislature. The makeup of federal Parliament or the provincial legislature is reflective of not the total number of votes a party gets in a general election, but the number of seats it wins.
It is an irony that the solution to this supposed democratic deficit involves actual anti-democratic remedies. Under most PR systems, party leaders and elite list candidates that do not face voters directly but rather are selected for reasons favoured by the party’s establishment; PR-elected members of the legislature are then taken from the list.
Pro-life and pro-family groups like Campaign Life Coalition and REAL Women are opposed to the PR system and for good reason. CLC’s statement on proportional representation states: “We oppose proportional representation because we think it will make politics less democratic, placing too much power in the hands of party elites and creating a second tier of elected politicians who do not represent constituents, but who will be beholden only to party leadership for their jobs. This scenario will decrease our – and your – ability to lobby politicians on behalf of life and family issues.” REAL Women is concerned that under PR, special interest groups, including feminists, will have disproportionate leverage and influence with party elites.
It is no accident that many academics, special interest groups, and others within the establishment favour ditching first-past-the-post and adopting some form of proportional representation; PR favours the elite, and some people will choose to run for office having curried favour with a party leader and his or her advisers and not have to win the grubby support of citizen-voters.
There are any number of other critiques of PR, including the creation of unstable governments reliant on small parties won over with backroom deals. But the most fundamental reason to oppose switching from our current system to PR is to uphold democratic principles and protect the rights of grassroots Canadians from the continued assaults of the political elites.
