Photo: Darren Handschuh - File photo

The Liberal government ran on a platform that promised, among other things, electoral reform, but the Fraser Institute argues the system should stay the way it is

A new essay released by the Fraser Institute argues that Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system is simple and transparent and allows voters to hold governments accountable.

“With the ongoing parliamentary committee investigating alternative voting methods, and in the discussions about electoral reform, the implication is that our present way of voting is deeply flawed,” said essay author John Pepall.

“However, first-past-the-post is simple. Voters and candidates understand how it works, and since governments can easily be defeated under our system, it helps ensure accountability.”

His essay, First-Past-the-Post: Empowered Voters, Accountable Government, looks at several voting systems, including first-past-the-post, preferential voting, and proportional representation systems like mixed-member proportional and single transferrable vote.

In the essay he argues that first-past-the-post is not only the best way of electing governments, but also the easiest way to defeat them by voting them out.

His argument goes on to say that in countries that elect governments using proportional representation, major parties have remained in power for decades despite wide fluctuations in the vote count.

For example, wrote the Fraser Institute, in the 50 years after 1945 in 103 elections in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, the major governing party was voted out of government only six times.

“First-past-the-post is still the most widely used voting system in democratic countries and the only system that gives the people a clear choice in deciding who forms their government,” said Lydia Miljan, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.

“The alternatives, as we can see in examples all over the world, may cause many more problems than they claim to solve."

In contrast, an Insights West poll in June found that Canadians were itching for a referendum on a change in the electoral system.

The essay is the third of several essays (comprising a book) on electoral reform in Canada to be released over the next several months.