Nicole Thompson, Canadian Press Published Sunday, May 22, 2022, 2:28 PM EDT Last Updated on Sunday, May 22, 2022, 3:43 PM EDT
Three of Ontario’s four major parties have vowed to change the province’s electoral system, a lofty goal that some political scientists say may not be achieved.
The NDP and the Greens prefer proportional representation, while Liberal leader Stephen Del Duca has vowed to step down if his party forms a government, but has not introduced a preferential voting system in a year.
Only Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford has remained silent on the issue, although he has said he is reluctant to review the electoral system.
“We need politicians and leaders to figure out how to cooperate more, to work along party lines, instead of getting bogged down in the old way of doing things,” Del Duca said at a campaign stop in Thunder Bay, Ont. on Sunday. “Doug Ford may want us to stay stuck there and try to pull people back, but we want to make sure that our political system – our democracy, how we choose our parties and leaders – is up to date. “
But Christine de Clercy, an associate professor of political science at Western University, said that while election reform is a popular topic in the election campaign, it is easier to talk about change than to put it into practice.
“If we look at the history of electoral reform over the last 20 years in Canada at the provincial level, the evidence is not positive for the likelihood of achieving electoral reform even in the next 20 years,” she said.
British Columbia has held several referendums on the issue, but de Clairsey noted that proposals for change have not borne fruit.
The federal liberal government also promised electoral reform and failed to do so.
Justin Trudeau is running for the promise in 2015, saying that this year’s federal election will be the last to use the “first after publication” method, a promise he will eventually reject.
According to the system, voters choose one candidate in their ride and the person with the most votes wins. The successful candidate does not need to win a majority of the votes to take part.
Ford’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on electoral reform, but de Clairce said there were good reasons to stick to the “first post” system.
“Ontario has a competitive multi-party system,” she said. “If we introduce electoral reform that seemed much more like purely proportional representation, it would be very unlikely to have majority governments ahead. So we will always be in a state of minority government, which is inherently unstable, because at any moment coalitions can fall apart and we return to the elections. “
She also said it made sense for Ford to hesitate about electoral reform, given the nature of his party.
“The Conservative Party has an ideological tendency to be a party of tradition in Canadian politics,” she said.
The other three parties said the current system simply did not pass the test.
Andrea Horvat’s NDP supports a mixed proportional voting system for members, which seeks to provide part of the stability of the “first past post” system to a fully proportional government.
Under the NDP’s proposed system, some lawmakers will be elected in local districts, while others will be elected for the entire province from party lists.
The system was designed by the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly for electoral reform, which a previous liberal government set up in 2006.
“Indeed, the people of Ontario, in the constituency assembly, recommended the mixed proportional system for members, so we accepted it,” Horvath said Saturday.
But when the proposal was put to a referendum in the 2007 elections, the province voted against it.
The Green Party, meanwhile, prefers a fully proportional system, but proposes in its platform that it create a “diverse, randomly elected civic assembly,” this time with a mandate to make binding recommendations.
Tim Abrey, a lecturer and PhD student in political studies at Queen’s University, said the proportional system is usually popular because it allows people to feel that their voice really matters.
“Proportional systems, no doubt. “They are doing a much better job of presenting the breadth and variety of voting elections across the jurisdiction,” he said.
He also hesitates to accept the idea that proportional systems lead to unstable governments, saying instead that they lead to more compromises.
“The system is forcing elected representatives to talk to each other to mediate decisions, instead of using the pulpit of the majority of governments to push through every agenda that the ruling party decides to introduce,” Abrey said.
However, he is not sure that the Ontario system will really change. Studies show that progressive conservatives are in the lead, and if the NDP wins, they are unlikely to get the majority they need to adopt a proportional system.
As for the Liberals, Abray said, he does not see their proposal for a ballot paper as a real reform because it does not change the way people are represented in government.
With this system, voters mark their first, second and subsequent choices. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated from the ballot and the second election of his supporters is counted. This continued until one candidate appeared by a majority.
“He is almost identical to the one in the first place, as he will continue to choose people who do not have the support of the majority of people in their jurisdiction,” Abrey said.
All three left-wing parties said they would return the opportunity for municipalities to use ranked ballots – the same system that liberals prefer throughout the province.
This was an option for the municipalities for the first time in 2018, but no longer.
Ford’s progressive conservatives ruled out the possibility in 2020 in a move that Horvat described as “hopeful.”
This Canadian Press report was first published on May 22, 2022.
With files from Jessica Smith in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Maan Alhmidi in Toronto.
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