I hope this goes through — in so many ways ranked ballot is the best system for Canada as a whole:
- No need to change tidings or riding structure.
- Still just one representative per riding
- No need to modify or change the seat count in Parliament (or the Legislatures)
- …all of which means only the most minimal of legal changes, as little else changes.
- In particular, this won’t require any messy Constitutional changes to implement.
- Ridings get the candidate most acceptable to the most people in a given riding — you need wide support to win, meaning all winners will wind up with a plurality of votes.
- No “party lists” filled wIth party ‘hacks’ who get seats without being directly selected by the electorate.
- Particularly if you’re a supporter of MMP or some other more proportional system — ranked choice ballets is a much better starting point for passing MMP and the like than FPTP, as it’s much less of a cognitive leap for voters. Baby steps, instead of a giant leap (which IMO is one big reason why all attempts to change the voting system have so far failed).
So I hope this goes through, and I hope they can show Canada a better way to run elections.
The “all winners will have a plurality of votes” part is a critical part. Ranked choice will fundamentally change how the representative is regarded after elected. Too many are elected with 30 or 40% currently.
Yup — which also means you can’t just pander to an extremist base and win by having the other parties “split the vote”. And you can vote the party you actually support most, and not worry about vote splitting by ranking other parties with policies close to your leanings higher, and parties you despise lower or not at all.
They should’ve chose the single transferable vote. This is likely to fail.
