1y ago

Ranked ballots: A false promise for democratic progress

rabble.ca

11 comments

ranked ballots will not lead to more representative governments
Perhaps not. The only thing we can be certain they'd give us would be a better voting system.
- PR would be even better. And to those who complain about local representation, I say: Local representation in Canada is already a joke and you likely almost never think of it. The vast majority of votes are whipped.
  
  The electoral reform story is Trudeau wanted Ranked ballot in 2015-2016 when he won his first election and everyone wanted something else. So they ended up doing nothing.
  The option right now is plausibly going with ranked ballot which is not the ideal solution but an improvement. The narrative in the article of proportional representation isn't a thing.
  I rather take a step forward then just stall forever waiting for a unanimous decision. In it's I believe having ranked ballots means there would be higher chance of having PR in the future.
  https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-electoral-reform-1.7101929
  Trudeau walked away from electoral reform, in part, because of his misgivings about proportional representation. He said he feared that such a system would empower fringe parties. He maintains a preference for a ranked ballot, in which voters rank local candidates according to preference.
  
  Local representation in Canada is already a joke
  Well, so is voting in a FPTP system. That's the whole point of reform, isn't it? To fix something that isn't working.
"winner take all"? It's like minority governments don't exist.
- Minority governments effectively don't exist in Canada, with an average lifespan below 2 years. It's in either party's interest to trigger an election as soon as they think they could win a majority. This results in pointless election reruns, wasted taxpayer funds and election fatigue.
- Not what the term "winner take all" means. It means at the level of individual elections (ie. ridings) that the votes not going toward the winning candidate are meaningless and wasted. It doesn't matter if an MP wins their riding with 99% of the vote or 51% of the vote. The winner takes the whole riding.

11 comments