A Plea For Proportional Representation Essay Research — страница 2

turnout, you realize that the liberals only had 25% of the countries support. Proportional representation is the only solution; it would give electoral due without giving any party an unfair amount of seats. The most commonly accepted rule of democracy is that government should make decisions according to majority rule. However, under the plurality system, the Progressive Conservative Party was able to pass the Goods and Services tax (GST) while it’s MP’s were only representing 43% of Canadian voters. Another bias of the first past the post system is that some parties have promoted separatism and plurality gives them more power than the electoral support wants. The Bloc Quebecois won 72% of the seats in the 1993 Quebec provincial election, with only 49.2% of the votes. Once

again we see evidence of one of the plurality system’s major flaws, inequity. It makes one person’s vote count for less than another’s. In the 1997 federal election, 886,000 voters in Ontario supported the Reform party, however, they did not earn one seat. Conversely, in Alberta 577,000 voters for Reform earned 24 seats which meant that a vote in Alberta is worth more than a vote in Ontario. Third party minorities are as important to a democratic society as are those who form the government because they represent the voices of the few being heard by the many. However, under plurality the small number of votes that a minority party may get is not sufficient to earn seats in the House. Therefore their potential supporters do not want to waste their vote on a sure loser, since

they would be taking away votes from their “less of two evils”. Proportional representation would prevent people from having to vote for a party that they do not support in order to prevent a party that they feel strongly against from winning. People would be sure that their vote for a minority party would make a difference in how many seats they get in the House and hence they would vote for the party whose principles they truly believe in. People would vote with their heart not fears. Proportional representation allows the public to be free to decide which values or principles they want represented in the House by giving the voters the power to decide. For example, “if 7 percent of Canadians support the Green parties approach to environmental issues, PR will give it 7

percent of the seats, no more and no less.” Offering voters more choices would also encourage higher levels of voting. People would have more reason to vote because they could more easily find a candidate or party they could support enthusiastically. This would force political parties to define how they are distinct from others to attract votes. In order to compete effectively parties would need to develop clearer principles and to define their policy platforms. A multi-party system would also ensure that parliament represented the variety of political perspectives that exist in the electorate. Our society is becoming more politically heterogeneous, and yet our government has been redundantly Liberal for the last hundred years with the odd Conservative win emerging every so

often. We may be relieved of our ubiquitous political despair if we had a governing body that reflected the diverse perspectives of the electorate. More representative legislatures would breed more exciting, creative and wide-ranging political debate and thrust new ideas and attitudes into the limelight. Proportional representation also carries other significant political advantages. Under PR, women would have a much fairer chance of being elected. The under representation of women in municipal, provincial and federal legislatures is an ongoing problem in our political system. Despite recent gains for women, they occupied a mere 17 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons in the ‘93 election and a mere 11 per cent of the seats in the U.S. Congress. “PR countries

typically have much higher rates of female elected officials in their national legislature – 41 per cent in Sweden, and 39 per cent in Finland” , for example. This dramatic difference is primarily due to women being nominated in much higher numbers as part of the party lists of candidates used in PR systems. Parties cannot leave women off their lists of candidates for fear of being accused of sexism, therefore, more women are nominated and more are elected. Some European parties also establish gender quotas that require that at least 40% of nominations go to women. However, electing more women to legislatures is not only a matter of fairness. The increasing presence of women in legislatures makes a substantial difference in the types of legislation that are proposed and