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Reform of the Electoral System

The single member plurality system used in all Canadian federal and provincial elections has many
strengths but also reveals serious weaknesses in producing legislatures that reflect the choice of parties
made by the voters. Also, recent Canadian elections have witnessed a significant fall in voter turnout,
which some say indicates that structural changes are needed in order to encourage greater participation.
Electoral reform is a current issue in Canada, with the Liberal Party winning a majority in the 2015 national
elections on a platform which promised that the 2015 election would be the last one held under the current
voting system. The Liberals made an election pledge to introduce legislation within 18 months of coming to
power. Both the NDP and the Green Party had also made promises in their election platforms to pursue
electoral reform. The House of Commons has set up a special committee to hold hearings and recommend
a replacement system by December 1, 2016. In addition, all 338 MPs are "invited" to hold town hall
meetings in their communities to engage the gauge the general public's views on electoral reform.
Virtually every election provides fresh fodder for calls for electoral reform, to ensure that representation in
Parliament reflects the wishes of voters. The most recent election in 2015 provided the Liberals with every
single seat across the four Atlantic provinces, despite about 40% of the region's voters supporting other
parties. In the 2004 election, as well, the Conservatives won about 93% of the seats (13 out of 14) in
Saskatchewan, even though they only got 42% of the vote.
Since 2000, there has been significant movement towards electoral reform at both the federal and provincial
levels. In early 2004, the Law Commission of Canada issued a report recommending that the federal
electoral system be changed to a mixed member system that allows for more proportional representation of
parties in the House of Commons. However, since neither the Liberals nor Conservatives were in favour of
electoral reform at the time, the Commission's proposals languished.
Until the 2015 election, electoral reform was most seriously pursued at the provincial level. British Columbia
broke new ground on this issue with the creation of the Citizens' Assembly in 2004. 160 citizens were
chosen at random - 2 from each riding and 2 from the aboriginal community - to meet and debate the merits
of changing the provincial electoral system. The Assembly met for several months in early 2004 and then
set out a series of public consultation meetings. In the fall of 2004, the Assembly decided to recommend
that BC should adopt the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. The Assembly's report, Making Every
Vote Count (pdf - 1.9MB) was released in December 2004. The recommendation to adopt a new electoral
system was put to the voters in a referendum question at the May 2005 provincial election. In order for the
measure to be acted upon, the government raised the existing referendum legislation to require a
successful vote to achieve 60% support across the province, including 50% support in 60% of the ridings.
The referendum results fell just short of the main criterion, with 58% support province-wide, although all but
2 of the ridings saw at least 50% support for adopting STV. With the widespread dissatisfaction that a
strong majority was still not accepted by the government of the day, the premier agreed to a second vote to
be held four years later along with the next general election. By that time interest in electoral reform had
fallen off the the vote was almost 61% in favour of the current system.
PEI voters recently rejected changes, after several years of study had culminated in a 2005 plebiscite. The
PEI Electoral Reform Commissioner recommended in 2003 that some element of proportionality be added,
but he did not make specific recommendations. After the Commission on PEI's Electoral Future reviewed
the matter, issued a final report, that recommended the province adopt an MMP system with two ballots. It
suggested that the selection of the 27-member house be divided between 17 to be elected by SMP and 10
to be filled from party lists in theory the list seats are top provide 'full compensation' to ensure that a party
has a total number of seats in the house that is proportional to its share of the votes. The proposal was put
to the PEI voters in a plebiscite on November 28, 2005 the PEI government adopted the BC thresholds,
requiring 60% support province-wide plus 50% support in at least 60% of the ridings. When the votes were
counted, however, 64% of the PEI electorate voted against the proposal only 2 of the 27 ridings saw a
majority in favour of electoral change. But electoral reform returned to the political agenda some years later.
Following the second report of a special committee of the legislature, PEI will hold another plebiscite in the
fall of 2016 in which voters will be asked to rank order their preferences of five different options for voting
systems.
The Commission on Legislative Democracy in New Brunswick recommended that the province adopt a
Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) system as well as moved to elections being held on a fixed 4-year
schedule. Their final report was issued in January 2005 and recommended that there be 36 single-member
ridings and 4 multi-member ridings with a total of 20 seats filled through a PR party list system. Although
then Premier Bernard Lord had announced that a referendum would be held at the same time as municipal
elections in the spring of 2008, his party lost the provincial election in 2006 and the reform proposal never
got put to a vote. Ironically, the 2006 elections resulted in a Liberal government coming to power with a
majority of seats despite having won fewer votes province-wide than the Conservatives.
Quebec has created the Ministry for the Reform of Democratic Institutions. Under this initiative, a public
consultation process, called the Estates General a report of the findings was published in 2003, as was a
survey of opinion on democratic reform of those attending the session. Serious debate was launched with a
draft bill (English text) proposed in December 2004 that would see radical restructuring of the electoral
boundaries and methods of election. There would be 75 single member ridings roughly based on the current
federal boundaries, plus another 2 rural single member ridings. In addition there would be 24-27 "districts"
that would each cover 3 of the regular ridings, and every district would have a further 2 district seats. Voters
would only cast one vote and the district seats would be compensatory the filling of district seats would be

based on the shares of the party vote in the combined single-member ridings for that district, and filled from
party lists. See the working document and the summary for an overview. In 2005, a special committee of
the National Assembly discussed the proposal and reiterated the desire for change, with agreeing on the
details. In late 2006, the Minister announced a further round of consultations with the Director General or
Elections and with members of the National Assembly. However, a provincial election ensued in March
2007 and no formal move had been undertaken to change the voting system by late 2007.
In Ontario, the government set up the Democratic Renewal Secretariat and proposed that elections be held
on a 4-year cycle starting with the first in October, 2007. As well, the government created a Citizens'
Assembly, similar to BC's, to examine electoral reform. 52 women and 51 men were selected and held a
number of sessions and public hearings between October 2006 and May 2007, when they released their
report recommending Ontario adopt a Mix-Member Proportional system. This recommendation was
rejected by over 63% of Ontarians who voted on a referendum question held in October 2007, at the same
time as the province's general elections only in 5 of the 107 ridings did a majority favour the new system.
In addition, a Citizens' Jury will examine election finance issues.

Strengths of Single Member Plurality (SMP)

There are several direct advantages of using the single member plurality system. First, it is far more
likely to produce majority governments in a competitive multi-party system where no one party is able to
dominate.. In the 16 federal elections held between 1965 and 2015, 10 have resulted in majority
governments, even though the winning party won a majority of votes only once, in 1984. Majority
governments are said to provide stable government and allow direct accountability to the electorate, with
one party for the electorate to reward or punish. In contrast, partners in a minority or coalition government
can either point fingers at each other or each claim credit at the next election.
SMP also facilitates clear community representation. With the 2015 elections, Canada is divided into 338
constituencies each with their own representative to speak on behalf of local interests.
The system is also easy to understand and administer. A winning candidate only needs one more vote that
any other candidate in the district.

Disadvantages of SMP Systems

There are five key disadvantages to the SMP system, which underlie the calls for electoral reform in
Canada:
1. Candidates only need one vote more than any other candidate in order to win, not a majority of votes in
their district. In the 2015 federal election, 206 candidates won with less than 50% of the vote. With several
competitive parties vying for votes in Quebec, four candidates were declared elected there with less than
30% of the vote. Most individual MPs in Canada are elected despite a majority of votes being cast against
them. As a result, it can be very difficult to hold individual MPs to account when they face re-election in
their ridings.
2. There is often a significant distortion between the share of seats parties win and their share of votes.
When the results of all the local contests are added up across a province or region, some parties can
dominate while other parties have very few if any seats despite winning significant numbers of votes. In the
2015 federal election, for example, the Liberals won every seat across the four Atlantic provinces the
Conservatives and NDP were blanked out despite the backing of 37% of the region's voters between them.
Other examples of vote/seat distortion abound in Canadian elections. The clearest example is found in the
1987 New Brunswick provincial election, in which the Liberal Party won all the seats in the legislature on
the strength of about 60% of the vote. The other 40% of the electorate were left with no direct
representation of their policy interests in the legislature. The BC Liberal Party swept all but two of the seats
in the 2001 election, with about 58% of the vote. In the 1997 federal elections, two other serious problems
were seen. In Ontario, the Liberals won 99 out of the province's 101 seats, even though a bare majority of
voters had voted for other candidates. In PEI, the Liberals won all four seats on the basis of about 45% of
the vote
Another famous quirk of this distortion between seats and votes arose from the 1993 federal election. The
Bloc Quebecois formed the Official Opposition, with the second largest number of elected MPs, despite
placing fourth overall in the national vote count.
The distortion in vote and seat share can be seen in the following charts of selected elections:
1997. 1993, & 1988 Federal Elections
1997 & 1993 Alberta Elections
1986, 1991, 1996, and 2001 BC Elections
See also the provincial discrepancies in the vote/seat shares of parties in the 1997 federal election on the
past elections page of this site.
3. Most majority governments are based on false majorities. Ten national governments were formed in the
last fifty years by a party with a majority of MPs, but on only one occasion has that party actually won a
majority of votes across the country Brian Mulroney led the Progressive Conservatives to power in 1984
with just over 50% support. The two most recent majority governments, formed by Stephen Harper in 2011
and by Justin Trudeau in 2015, both involved parties who had won less than 40% of the vote.
These false majorities undermine the basic premise of democracy that the will of the majority should
prevail. False majorities allow a minority to rule over the majority.
The most concerning types of false majorities are those formed by parties who were not even the most
popular choice among voters. In the 2006 New Brunswick, 1998 Quebec, 1996 BC, and 1986
Saskatchewan provincial elections, parties won a majority of seats even though they had placed second in
the overall province-wide total of the votes.

4. Many votes are wasted votes in SMP elections, which can discourage voters and lead to declining
turnout & general alienation. Since a candidate only needs one more vote than her or his opponents, the
winner's votes beyond that number are "wasted." Similarly, the votes for all the other candidates are wasted
in the sense that they do not help in electing other members of their parties.
5. Winning by a plurality undermines fairness because there are inconsistent targets to get elected. Many
second-place candidates win a greater share of votes in their ridings than do winning candidates in other
districts. In the 2015 federal election, for example, 31 second-placed candidates won over 40% of the vote
in their constituencies, while 72 MPs were elected with less than 40% of the vote - 23 of them with less
than a third of the votes.

Alternative Electoral Systems

There are different ways in which people can be given choices to vote ( for individual candidates, for parties,
or both) and how those votes are then translated into seats in the legislature. The choice of voting system
can make an enormous difference in the shares of seats parties win, based on their level of support and its
geographical distribution. The Library of Parliament has published a research paper that provides useful
background on the Canadian electoral system and alternatives.
Some countries, such as Australia and France, use majority systems that aim to ensure that the winning
candidate has received some sort of support from a majority of voters. These are usually single member
ridings and can either be by preferential ballot or multiple rounds of voting. In the Alternative Vote
system, a voter ranks the candidates on the ballot paper according to their preference: their first choice
gets "1", the second choice "2", and so on. When all the first choice votes are added up, a candidate is
declared a winner only if they have a majority of the first choices. In the event that no one has a majority of
first choice votes, then the candidate with the least number is dropped off the list, and their ballot papers
are examined to redistribution according to the second choice marked on the ballot. These votes are then
added to the remaining candidates and added up to see if anyone has a majority. The process of
eliminating a candidate and redistributing their votes is continued until one candidate emerges with a
majority of votes. The French use a double ballot system, where one round of voting is held in single
member ridings if a candidate receives a majority then they are elected. If not, then a second round of
voting is held a few weeks later, with lower ranked candidates eliminated.
The most popular systems are proportional representation systems. There are several varieties, but all
attempt to translate a parties share of votes into a roughly proportional share of the legislature's seats. The
most common is a party list system, where political parties prepare a ranked list of candidates with up to
as many candidates as there are seats in the legislature. On election day, the voters vote for the party of
their choice and the total votes for each party are added up. The parties are then declared to have won a
number of seats in the legislature that is roughly proportionate to their share of the votes most countries
have some threshold number of votes (i.e. 3 or 5%) that a party must win in order to qualify for seats.
There are two variations on basic PR systems:
- the closed list works strictly with the list of candidates as ranked by the parties, and the seats are filled
from candidates drawn from the top of the list and working down. States that use this system include
Israel, Italy, and South Africa
- the open list system allows the voters to vote for a candidate and the candidate's final position on the
party's list of candidates is determined by the overall number of votes he or she has received. This system
is used in a number of countries, including Belgium and Austria
The success with which a PR system provides parties with a share of the seats that is proportional to their
vote share is dependent on several factors including the number of parties that fall short of the threshold
and whether the votes and seats are counted up either nationally, provincially, or regionally. In counties
such as Israel or the Netherlands, where the votes are added up and distributed nationally, the large pool of
seats allows a closer relationship between seats and votes. Many countries, however, divide the pool of
seats into smaller regions with a smaller set of seats (for example from 5 to 20). The smaller the number of
seats to be shared, the more likely distortions are likely to occur in competitive, multi-party elections. In
addition, there are several mathematical formulas that can be used to allocate seats among the parties and
each imparts a certain distortion into the process.
The single transferable vote (STV) system has not been widely adopted around the world, but its profile
has been raised in Canada since the BC Citizens' Assembly recommended in 2004 that the province
should adopt STV instead of SMP. The STV system raises the probability that the main parties share of
seats in the legislature will be somewhat proportional to their share of votes. In this system, a country or
province is divided into smaller regions, and several members will be elected from each region. From the
voters' perspective the system is similar to the alternative vote system, since voters rank the parties or
candidates in order of their preference (e.g. 1, 2, 3). Initially all the candidates first preferences are counted
up in order to see if any have achieved the "quota" of votes needed to get elected. This quota is determined
by a mathematical equation that is based on the number of valid votes cast and the number of seats to
elected in the region.
Number of valid votes
+ 1 = Quota
(Number to be elected) + 1
For example, if 100,000 valid votes were cast and there are 3 seats to be filled, then the quota is calculated
in the following way to be 25,001 votes:
100,000 + 1 = 25,001
3+1
Anyone who is receives enough 1st preference ballots to meet the quota is elected. Otherwise, the
candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and the 2nd choices that voters marked on those
ballots are then distributed among the remaining candidates. The process continues until all the eligible
seats are filled. There are, however, very different ideas about how to distribute the "surplus" of votes cast
for a candidate once they meet the quota - see David Farrell's article (pdf) on Australia's 1983 electoral
reforms for an explanation.
It should be noted that the STV system does not guarantee proportional results, and sometimes allows the
leading one or two parties to completely dominate the seats won in a region. Minor parties with 10-15% of
the vote, for example, may be left without enough votes to reach the quota needed to win seats. The main

strength of the STV is that voters can rank order the individual candidates - although the STV system used
for Australian Senate elections permits voters to simply mark their ballot in favour of a whole party rather
than have to mark individual candidates' names. As well, the size of the region from which members of the
legislatures are elected may be smaller than those used in party-list PR systems. STV is used in Ireland,
Malta, as well as for several state-level elections in Australia and for the Australian Senate elections
Germany and New Zealand are examples of countries that use some form of the mixed member
proportional (MMP) system. The idea is to use two different voting systems to elect members to the
legislature, with the goal of harnessing the virtues of both systems in the hopes of countering their
disadvantages. With MMP, some seats are contested in single-member districts while others are
apportioned to the parties on a basis of their share of the votes won. Voters are given two ballots - one for
the their choice of individual legislator, and another vote for their choice of party for the second set of seats.
In Germany and New Zealand, roughly half of the legislature is elected by single member plurality and the
other half is drawn from the party lists. The party list seats are allocated in a manner that provides a party
with a total share of all the seats in the legislature that is roughly proportional to their share of the party-list
vote. For example, if a party wins 30% of the party list votes but only 25% of the single-member seats, it
would be given enough party list seats to bring its total up to 30% of all the seats in the legislature. The
value of an MMP system is that it combines the local attachment of legislators to specific electoral
districts, with a legislature composed of parties roughly proportional to their share of the votes.
There are several variants of mixed member models, but the common factor is that two different systems
are used in parallel to elect members of the legislature. The relative portion of seats devoted to single
member elections and those chosen by PR can vary widely, as can the voting system used for the single
member seats. In addition, there may be different objectives for the supplementary seats assigned from the
party list. They may, as in the case of Germany & New Zealand, be distributed in a compensatory manner
to ensure the total share of seats a party wins (including the single-member & party list seats together) is
proportional to the party's share of votes. Or, the party list seats may be awarded simply according to their
proportion of those party votes the number of seats won by SMP would be irrelevant in this case. The party
list seats are viewed as purely supplementary in this model and not compensatory. This particular approach
is sometimes referred to as a mixed member majority (MMM) system, as it can (but need not) produce
majority governments when a party only wins a plurality of the vote. Whether or not a majority is produced
may depend on the portion of the legislature's seats set aside for supplementary allocation, party shares of
the vote, and the rules for their allocation.
There are many variations possible in mixed-member systems, including the proportion of the house which
is elected by each system (i.e. it could be a 75-25 split instead of 50-50). It should be noted that the singlemember ridings may also be elected by a majority system, such as the alternative vote, rather than SMP.
And, Taiwan uses STV for the first tier of seats, instead of a single-member system.
It is important to note that the models covered here do not exhaust the many possible ways of translating
votes into seats. For example, Italy's parliament has approved major changes to their electoral system,
which has been a pure party list system since 2005. Under the new system, voting would still be based on
an elector choosing one of the parties to vote for, and the initial distribution of seats is done on a
proportional basis from party lists. But there is a majoritarian bonus, given to a party that wins 40% or more
of the national vote: a total allocation of 340 seats out of the total 630. If no party wins 40%, a second
round of voting would be held. So, the Italians would have what one might describe as a PR, pluralitarianmajority, double-ballot system!
Resources on Electoral Systems
The now-disbanded Law Commission of Canada's archived electoral reform site provided a good range of
research papers on election issues, in addition to its final report.
Institute for Research on Public Policy has published some interesting material on electoral reform,
particularly in connection with its Governance Project. In addition, the July-August 2001 and September
1997 issues of Policy Options contains many articles debating the relative merits of reforming Canada's
electoral system. Broader discussions of elections are also found in Richard Johnson's Canadian Elections
at the Millennium (pdf) and in Paul Howe's and David Northrup's Strengthening Canadian Democracy: The
Views of Canadians.
The Australian Electoral Commission provides a good overview of all the different electoral systems which
includes a chart of which countries around the world use which system.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance provides a detailed Handbook of
Electoral Systems Design.
Further useful information can also be found at:
Electoral Reform Society (UK)
Fair Vote Canada
New Zealand Mixed Member Plurality electoral system
New Zealand 2001 Parliamentary Inquiry into the MMP System (pdf)
UK Report of the Independent Commission on the Voting System (Jenkins Report)

I welcome any feedback and suggestions for fresh material to add to this site - Send me an e-mail!
Andrew Heard
Political Science Department -- Simon Fraser university