High Voter Turnout

 

"Picture It" #1 High Voter Turnout: Canada with Proportional Representation

Picture it—Canada 1921. The upcoming election will be the first with not two but three major parties vying for power. The Liberal Party approved electoral reform with proportional representation in 1919. Proportional representation is a system in which voters are represented in proportion to how they vote. The Liberal campaign promises that 1921 will be the last election using first-past-the-post where votes may fail to legitimately reflect voter choice.

After the election, the Liberals keep their campaign promise. They keep the promise even though it was clear to them that the old system, the undemocratic, unfair, winner-take-all system, could deliver 100% of the power with a minority of votes while wasting the majority of votes. After all, they reasoned, how could they ethically and legitimately represent people who had not voted for them?

The federal election in 1925 used a proportional representation system. If 20% of Canadians voted for a party, that party got 20% of the seats. Our representatives elected to govern, oppose, question, and engage, legitimately speak for their voters. For 100 years now, Canada, like other countries using proportional representation, has ranked high for voter turnout.

Canadian voters trust proportional representation to make their votes count because the number of seats a party gets is proportional to the number of votes they get.

If you wish this picture were true, help make it true. Support electoral reform with proportional representation.