Voting In Canada

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Every year Canada’s voter turnout decreases. Some citizens blame it on the younger generations disinterest for politics and pure laziness, others blame it on the cynicism within our electoral system and rightfully choose not to vote, and finally some blame it on the fact that our westminster system is out-dated and does not represent the views of every single individual. Recently, in the past 10 years there has been a push to change our electoral system within a couple province to the single-member transferable voting system of Australia, or the mixed-member proportional representation system of the United Kingdom. Currently, there has been no changes to the westminster system, but would a change in electoral system drastically improve voter …show more content…
Signaling what political scientist refer to as a "democratic deficit" which caused politicians from British Columbia to deliberate if the single transferable voting system is right for British Columbia. The Province had a “Citizens Assembly to deliberate over such highly important matters such as electoral reform which would be a remarkably innovative moment in western political history” (Ratner 33). The vote would decide if British Columbia was to replace the traditional single-member plurality electoral model. British Columbians spoke clearly when 58 percent voted against changing the Single-member plurality electoral system to single transferable vote in 2005. Four years later, in 2009, the issue was brought up again by the Citizens assembly, but not surprisingly they were defeated a final time when 62 percent were against the STV. The most credible source of voting turnout using the STV is certain states within Australia. Due to their compulsory voting laws it skews numbers in comparison to the mixed-member proportional system of the UK and the single-member plurality system in Canada. Romania has adopted this system currently has a 72 percent turnout. An elector has a single vote that is initially allocated to their most preferred candidate, and as the count proceeds and candidates are either elected or eliminated, other votes transferred to other candidates …show more content…
For the single-member plurality system that is used throughout Canada, it is most flexible for the elector as they can choose the representative of their choice that locally represent them and choose the political party leader that is best fit to represent their country. Whereas the single-member transferable voting system that was proposed in British Columbia, and is used in certain states in Australia and Romania, shows the diversity of the opinion of the voter and is an attractive choice as opposed to other voting procedures because the voter is able to rank candidates in the manner they seem fitting. Finally, the mixed-member proportional system is viewed as the most time saving voting system due to the fact that when voting for a representative it automatically means you are voting for that representatives political party. With that being said, Would a change in electoral system improve voter turnout in Canada? The simple answer is no. The mixed-member proportional system in the United Kingdom, the single-member transferable system in Romania, and the single-member plurality system in Canada all have voter turnouts between 60-75 percent. Truly, the only way you can drastically improve voter turnout is if mandatory voting is enforced. A great example of compulsory voting is Australia who currently has an average of 87 percent of voters showing up to polls throughout and has a high of 95 percent of voting turnout in
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