Because of our ridiculous and highly undemocratic first-past-the-post system, the party that most Canadians do not want is forming a government. According to Fair Vote Canada, this stupid, stupid system wasted millions of votes, distorted results, severely punished large blocks of voters, exaggerated regional differences, created an unrepresentative Parliament and contributed to a record low voter turnout.
On the Fair Vote website, here are the facts:
The 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.
In the prairie provinces, Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times as many seats.
Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.
The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.
Had the votes on October 14 been cast under a fair and proportional voting system, Fair Vote Canada projects that the seat allocation would be approximately as follows:
Conservatives – 38% of the popular vote: 117 seats (not 143)
Liberals – 26% of the popular vote: 81 seats (not 76)
NDP – 18% of the popular vote: 57 seats (not 37)
Bloc – 10% of the popular vote: 28 seats (not 50)
Greens – 7% of the popular vote: 23 seats (not 0)
Folks, this is crap. No wonder nobody turned out to vote.
– Eleanor Claire
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