Although a number of important—and under-reported—elections
just took place in the U.S., the election that might ultimately matter most to
Americans happened last month in Canada.
There, the Liberal Party executed an ’08 Obama-like ousting of the
governing Conservative Party.
Three aspects of the Canadian election are
particularly notable and inspiring—if not downright revolutionary. One is the Liberal Party’s promise to change
Canada’s winner-take-all elections; two is the re-election to Parliament of Green
Party leader Elizabeth May; and three, is the inclusive Cabinet appointed by
the new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
Canada, like the U.S., is one of the few remaining
countries to still use winner-take-all elections. In both countries, a candidate need not earn
a majority of the vote in order to win election. The candidate with the most votes wins. That, on the surface, might sound fair enough
until you consider a three way race where a candidate can with 34% of the
vote. Winner-take-all, in a situation
like this, means that 66% of the voters—the vast majority—will vote for a
losing candidate. That’s hardly
democratic and it happens with an alarming frequency in both countries.
Elections in the U.S. and Canada take place in
hundreds of electoral districts (known as “ridings” in Canada). In each individual district, a candidate can
win with less than a majority producing a distorted result. When you aggregate the vote totals of all the
local districts, the combined results can create an even greater distortion at
the national level. That’s how Justin
Trudeau’s Liberal Party won a majority of seats in Canada’s Parliament with
only 39% of the vote. That’s also how
the Republican Party won a majority of seats in the U.S. House in both 1996 and
2012 despite losing the national popular vote to the Democrats.
One of Trudeau’s campaign promises was that the
recent election would be Canada’s last using winner-take-all.
Two alternatives that will be considered to replace
winner-take-all in Canada will be Ranked Choice Voting, also known as Instant
Runoff Voting, and Proportional Representation.
Although there are a variety of proportional election systems, the basic
idea behind all of them is that a political party’s share of seats in the
legislature should correspond to the share of the vote that party
received. In other words, if a party
receives 10% of the vote, it should be awarded 10% of the seats in the
legislature. Most of the world’s
democracies use some form of Proportional Representation.
Ranked Choice Voting is used to avoid
“vote-splitting” or the “spoiler” dynamic as well as to more accurately reflect
the will of the voters. With Ranked
Choice Voting, instead of voting for just one candidate, you rank the
candidates in order of preference—“1” for your first choice, “2” for your
second choice, “3” for your third choice and so on down the line. If a candidate wins a majority of first
choice votes, that candidate wins. If no
candidate receives an initial majority, the candidate with the fewest first
choice votes is eliminated and the votes for the eliminated candidate are
redistributed among the remaining candidates according to the voters’ second
preferences. The process repeats until
one candidate has a majority. Ranked
Choice Voting is used in a number of U.S. cities including Oakland and
Minneapolis; in Australia and Ireland; and by the Academy for Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences—in other words by the folks who award the coveted “Oscar.” Many places which use Ranked Choice Voting
experience greater voter turnout and more civil campaigns.
The prospects of our neighbor to the north radically
revamping its national electoral structure within the next four years is a
political earthquake that the U.S. cannot ignore. America’s archaic electoral institutions will
come under even greater scrutiny and pressure to reform.
The re-election of Canada’s Green Party Leader, Elizabeth
May, to the national Parliament is another reason for pro-democracy activists
in the U.S. to cheer. May is seemingly
universally recognized in Canada as a conscientious and diligent legislator who
works across party lines to get things done.
Many Canadians—whether Green or not—look to her as the voice of the
environment and some consider her “Canada’s conscience.” Her stature will only be boosted when she
attends the upcoming U.N. Conference on Climate Change later this month in
Paris. May’s accomplishments demonstrate
that a small political party can have a big voice. When Canada changes to a more inclusive
electoral system, the Green Leader’s hard work may translate into an even
greater role for the Green Party. These
developments will hopefully illuminate the potential for a genuine multi-party
democracy in the U.S.
The U.S. could also learn plenty from Prime Minister
Trudeau’s cabinet appointments: Trudeau just appointed the most diverse cabinet
in the history of Canada. Half of the
appointees are women and the cabinet also includes two aboriginal individuals
and three Sikhs. And, for the first
time, the environmental minister carries the new title of Minister of the
Environment and Climate Change.
With an amazingly inclusive cabinet, a focus on
Climate Change and the promise of transformative election reform, Canada is
demonstrating what democracy in the 21st century should look like.
