The federal committee charged with researching and coming up with ideas to reform Canada’s electoral system says we should decide by referendum whether to keep the first-past-the-post system or switch to some form of proportional representation.
Which means we should probably get used to first past the post for another 150 years.
Referenda don’t have a great track record for passing. Facing a precipice, voters tend to stick with the devil they know. See: the last two votes on altering B.C.’s electoral system. (A Prince Edward Island vote for a new system being a notable exception.)
Referendum voters also have a bad habit of misreading the question on their ballot, as if they’re really being asked some other between-the-lines question.
Case in point, voters who were undecided about the HST voting “no” to keeping it to punish the Liberals. Another example, Lower Mainland residents voting down new funding for TransLink in 2015’s plebiscite because they wanted to force the government to reform the notoriously unaccountable transit authority.
The only message governments are obligated to hear in a referendum is the one with the X marked next to it.
Without parsing the pros and cons of these various flawed systems (they’re all flawed), we suggest the referendum is a dumb idea.
Ultimately, the Liberals campaigned on the specific promise that 2015’s would be the last election conducted under the first-past-the-post system. They won, no doubt in part, thanks to people who agreed. Now they have a mandate to live up to their promise.
– Guest editorial from the North Shore News
