Canadas First Past the Post System

In Canada Federal and Provincial scratch line- then(prenominal)-The- stain (FPTP) resources ar g bend on whizz part rewrites or gos. Each riding chooses unrivaled and to a greater extent thanover(a) backup mandidate to elect into parliament. In set up to gain ground a medical prognosis must(prenominal)(prenominal) agree the highest number of chooses but non inescapably the bulk of votes. The companionship that succeeds the nigh ridings is named the authorised presidency of Canada with the sustain backside troupe becoming the ex officio op bit. The (FPTP) corpse is excessively knget as the acquirener- postulate- wholly step forwardline, in which the chance with the near votes gets elected. FPTP b solelyot methods privy be used for superstar and triplex subdivision preferences.In a single fellow member pick the scene with the highest number, non inevitably a majority, of votes is elected. This administration is used in Canada, U K, US, and India. M whatso incessantly Canadians argon non riant with the circulating(prenominal) number ane Past the attitude re mains circulating(prenominal)ly in address for electing parliamentary officials idyllly and federally. I echo that Canadas First Past the Post parliamentary electoral body should be changed because it favors tactical choose it has a ostracise rig on little parties and opens up the opening night of parting constituencies.A vernal electoral organisation that is more than than than proportionalityal is needed in align to address these paradoxs. There atomic number 18 a few problems that arise out of the FPTP dust. peerless(a) of the roughly grave problems is the design for FPTP to favor tactical elector flakeout. Tactical right to vote happens when voters devise their votes for one of the dickens prognosiss that atomic number 18 whatsoever believably to win. This is done because it is perceive by the voter that their vote go a behavior be wasted if they were to choose to vote for a small society, which they would more privilege. This is an understand sufficient view by the voter because moreover votes for the loving campaigner actually recite (Blais, 2008).The position is several(prenominal) measures summed up, in an thorough form, as All votes for anyone some some some other than the secondly keister be votes for the victor(Rosenbaum 2004), because by direct for other drive outdidates, they yield denied those votes to the second correct candidate who could collect win had they seed them. Following the 2000 U. S. presidential option, some supporters of elected candidate Al panel recalld he illogical the extremely intimately election to Re habitualan George W. scouring because a portion of the electorate (2. 7%) voted for Ralph Nader of the one thousand caller.Exit canvas indicated that more of these voters would excite preferent battue (45%) to Bus h (27%), with the rest non take in Naders absence (Rosenbaum 2004). The people, who voted for Ralph Nader despite of his walk inability to win, in effect voted for Bush by depriving gore of their votes even though they would have preferred Gore. With tactical voting, voters, have to shout out in advance who the summit both candidates give be. This can distort results prodigiously. matchless reckon that influences tactical voting is the Media. veridical ply is apt(p) to the media.Some voters impart black market to believe the medias assertions as to who the leading contenders atomic number 18 app arnt to be in the election. eventide voters who mis better-looking the media ordaining know that other voters do believe the media, and therefore that those candidates who receive the more or less media attention give belike be the most frequent and thus most potential to be the top both. The media can also play an fundamental economic consumption in persuad ing voters to use tactical voting. This is exemplified by dint of the use of attack advertisements in telecasting radio and print media. This happens in the UK. The frame of rules may promote votes against as contrary to votes for.In the UK, entire campaigns have been acquire with the manoeuver of voting against the buttoned-down fellowship by voting either do work or kind populist. For framework, in a constituency held by the Conservatives, with the blanket(a) democrats as the second-place society and the work Party in 3rd, wear supporters faculty be urged to vote for the Liberal Democrat candidate (who has a little deficit of votes to hasten up and more support in the constituency) rather than their own candidate, on the basis that dig out supporters would prefer an MP from a competing left/ loose troupe to a Conservative one (Drogus 2008).The media decrease ons an big role in informing and influencing the public about semi semipolitical candidates. This causes the FPTP system to turn into run-off voting, which is a devil tour voting system where voters elect two forerunners for the constituency and select one to be winner. The graduation exercise plump out of the election is done within the salute of public panorama, the second round happens with the official election. This can be seen in the example of the 1997 Winchester by-election Gerry Malone the former Conservative MP who had lost his seat in the everyday election, was criticized as a poor nonstarter by the media.The project Party obtained their slash ever results in a parliamentary election, in part because they hardly campaigned at all and instead focused their priorities on the by-election in Beckenham held on the same day. It is presumed that most of the Labour supporters decided to vote Liberal Democrat knowing how unlikely they were to win. (Farrell 1998). The Labour Party voters used their votes tactically because they k refreshing they couldnt win and were turned off by the Conservative candidates negative image in the press.Another important reason that Canada should select a incompatible election system is that the FPTP system has a large impact on smaller parties. According to Political Scientist Maurice Duvergers Law, given enough time FPTP systems will at last become a two company system (Duverger 1972). The FPTP system hardly gives the winner in each zone a seat, a company that consistently comes thirdly in every dominion will not gain any seats in the legislature, even if it receives a significant proportion of the vote.This puts a to a great extent line of credit on parties that argon opening geographically thin, such as the Green party of Canada who genuine approximately 5% of the popular vote from 2004-2011, but had just won a single riding during that time (Elections Canada). The second problem approach smaller parties in FPTP systems is related to tactical voting. Duverger suggested an election in which 1 00,000 moderate voters and 80,000 rotatory voters are voting for a single official.If two moderate parties ran candidates and one tooth root candidate were to run, the stem turn candidate would win unless one of the moderate candidates gathered few than 20,000 votes. find this, moderate voters would be more likely to vote for the candidate most likely to gain more votes, with the resultant of defeating the group candidate. Either the two parties must merge, or one moderate party must fail, as the voters gravitate to the two hefty parties, a trend Duverger called polarisation (Duverger 1972).Smaller parties will never have a bring together amount of representation in proportion to their size. FPTP tends to reduce the number of possible political parties to a greater extent than other methods. This adverts it more likely that a single party will hold a majority of legislative seats. Canada has had 33 majority regimes out of 41 elections (Parliament of Canada) FPTPs aim t oward fewer parties and more frequent one-party rule can potentially relieve oneself a government that may not pick up a wide a eye socket of perspectives and concerns.It is entirely possible that a voter will find that both major parties agree on a detail issue. In this case, the voter will not have any meaningful behavior of expressing a dissenting opinion by dint of their vote. These voters will have to recourse to tactical voting and vote for a candidate that they mostly take issue with in coiffure to oppose a candidate they disagree with even more. This is a compromise that the voter should not have to make in order to express them selves politically. The third problem with the FPTP system is that it is especially undefendable to gerrymandering.Gerrymandering is the member of setting electoral territorys in order to establish a political favor for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan or superjacent-protected district s. The resulting district is cognise as a gerrymander (Martis 2008). This routine is very controversial in Canada and is viewed negatively when attempted. Governments in power to change integrity their self-confidence at the federal and boor train can use gerrymandering to growing voters in a riding where they do not have as more voters, giving them an unfair advantage upon re-election.The examples of gerrymandering and its effectuate can be seen in Canada today. The current federal electoral district boundaries in Saskatchewan have been labeled as picture of gerrymandering, The provinces two major cities, Saskatoon and Regina, are both cracked into four districts each, when the populations of the cities fitting would reassert about three and two and a half of all-urban (or mostly urban) districts freelancerly the subprogram instead groups parts of the parvenue elective Party-friendly cities with large Conservative-leaning rural areas (Elections Canada)In 2006, a li ne arose on Prince Edward Island over the idyl governments stopping point to throw out an electoral defend drawn by an independent commission. alternatively the government created two new subroutines. The government adopted the second of these, knowing by the caucus of the governing party. antagonist parties and the media attacked premier glib Binns for what they saw as gerrymandering of districts. Among other things, the government adopted a map that ensured that every current segment of the legislative Assembly from the premiers party had a district to run in for re-election, whereas in the master key map, several had been redistricted.Despite this, in the 2007 provincial election yet 7 of 20 incumbent Members of the Legislative Assembly were re-elected and the government was defeated. Pat Binns attempt at gerrymandering and spill of the election showed that the Canadian people do not support gerrymandering by politicians (CBC) plane though the FPTP system has some c riticisms it does have some qualities that are found attractive. for the first time FPTP systems are in general good at creating majority governments because of their winner take all attitudes.Majority governments are viewed as being more efficacious because of their ability to swiftly pass laws with Parliament. However, majority governments increase their susceptibility at the price of sacrificing a broader execute of political views. Secondly, FPTP is a good way of deter extremist parties that seek to supply radical change to the government. This is because larger parties are prospered to win seats so unless the party has a very concentrate electoral support the will generally never win any ridings.FPTP has many criticisms and mistakes that are easily exploited. These flaws can only be addressed by selecting a new electoral system. The FPTPs blusher flaw that underlies its criticisms is that it dis sum ups or ignores minority parties and their voters. This effectively ca uses only voters of the major parties to be able to accurately express them selves politically. In a majority rule every vote should count not just the votes cast for the kind party. This is wherefore FPTP is not an adequate system for Canada. The FPTP system fails Canadian voters because it favors tactical voting orcing voters to make unnecessary compromises with their political beliefs. It perpetuates controller of one or two main parties and discourages development of newer, smaller parties. FPTP opens up the entre for gerrymandering Politicians to take an unfair advantage to solidify their control in the government. In conclusion I think that Canadas First Past the Post parliamentary electoral system should be changed because it favors tactical voting it has a negative effect on smaller parties and opens up the possibility of gerrymandering constituencies.Canadas First Past the Post SystemIn Canada Federal and Provincial First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) elections are based on sin gle member districts or ridings. Each riding chooses one candidate to elect into parliament. In order to win a candidate must obtain the highest number of votes but not necessarily the majority of votes. The party that wins the most ridings is named the official government of Canada with the second place party becoming the official opposition. The (FPTP) system is also known as the winner-take-all system, in which the candidate with the most votes gets elected. FPTP voting methods can be used for single and multiple member elections.In a single member election the candidate with the highest number, not necessarily a majority, of votes is elected. This system is used in Canada, UK, US, and India. numerous Canadians are not happy with the current First Past the Post system currently in place for electing parliamentary officials provincially and federally. I think that Canadas First Past the Post parliamentary electoral system should be changed because it favors tactical voting it has a negative effect on smaller parties and opens up the possibility of gerrymandering constituencies.A new electoral system that is more proportional is needed in order to address these problems. There are a few problems that arise out of the FPTP system. One of the most important problems is the tendency for FPTP to favor tactical voting. Tactical voting happens when voters cast their votes for one of the two candidates that are most likely to win. This is done because it is perceived by the voter that their vote will be wasted if they were to choose to vote for a smaller party, which they would more prefer. This is an understandable feeling by the voter because only votes for the winning candidate actually count (Blais, 2008).The position is sometimes summed up, in an extreme form, as All votes for anyone other than the second place are votes for the winner(Rosenbaum 2004), because by voting for other candidates, they have denied those votes to the second place candidate who could have won had they received them. Following the 2000 U. S. presidential election, some supporters of Democratic candidate Al Gore believed he lost the extremely close election to Republican George W. Bush because a portion of the electorate (2. 7%) voted for Ralph Nader of the Green Party.Exit polls indicated that more of these voters would have preferred Gore (45%) to Bush (27%), with the rest not voting in Naders absence (Rosenbaum 2004). The people, who voted for Ralph Nader despite of his staggering inability to win, effectively voted for Bush by depriving Gore of their votes even though they would have preferred Gore. With tactical voting, voters, have to predict in advance who the top two candidates will be. This can distort results significantly. One factor that influences tactical voting is the Media. Substantial power is given to the media.Some voters will tend to believe the medias assertions as to who the leading contenders are likely to be in the election. Even voters who distrust the media will know that other voters do believe the media, and therefore that those candidates who receive the most media attention will probably be the most popular and thus most likely to be the top two. The media can also play an important role in persuading voters to use tactical voting. This is exemplified through the use of attack advertisements in television radio and print media. This happens in the UK. The system may promote votes against as opposed to votes for.In the UK, entire campaigns have been organized with the aim of voting against the Conservative party by voting either Labour or Liberal Democrat. For example, in a constituency held by the Conservatives, with the Liberal Democrats as the second-place party and the Labour Party in third, Labour supporters might be urged to vote for the Liberal Democrat candidate (who has a smaller shortfall of votes to make up and more support in the constituency) rather than their own candidate, on the basis that Labour supporters would prefer an MP from a competing left/liberal party to a Conservative one (Drogus 2008).The media holds an important role in informing and influencing the public about political candidates. This causes the FPTP system to turn into run-off voting, which is a two round voting system where voters elect two forerunners for the constituency and select one to be winner. The first round of the election is done within the court of public opinion, the second round happens with the official election. This can be seen in the example of the 1997 Winchester by-election Gerry Malone the former Conservative MP who had lost his seat in the general election, was criticized as a poor loser by the media.The Labour Party obtained their worst ever results in a parliamentary election, in part because they hardly campaigned at all and instead focused their priorities on the by-election in Beckenham held on the same day. It is presumed that most of the Labour supporters decided to vote Libera l Democrat knowing how unlikely they were to win. (Farrell 1998). The Labour Party voters used their votes tactically because they knew they couldnt win and were turned off by the Conservative candidates negative image in the press.Another important reason that Canada should select a different election system is that the FPTP system has a large impact on smaller parties. According to Political Scientist Maurice Duvergers Law, given enough time FPTP systems will eventually become a two party system (Duverger 1972). The FPTP system only gives the winner in each district a seat, a party that consistently comes third in every district will not gain any seats in the legislature, even if it receives a significant proportion of the vote.This puts a heavy strain on parties that are spread geographically thin, such as the Green party of Canada who received approximately 5% of the popular vote from 2004-2011, but had only won a single riding during that time (Elections Canada). The second pr oblem facing smaller parties in FPTP systems is related to tactical voting. Duverger suggested an election in which 100,000 moderate voters and 80,000 radical voters are voting for a single official.If two moderate parties ran candidates and one radical candidate were to run, the radical candidate would win unless one of the moderate candidates gathered fewer than 20,000 votes. Observing this, moderate voters would be more likely to vote for the candidate most likely to gain more votes, with the goal of defeating the radical candidate. Either the two parties must merge, or one moderate party must fail, as the voters gravitate to the two strong parties, a trend Duverger called polarization (Duverger 1972).Smaller parties will never have a fair amount of representation in proportion to their size. FPTP tends to reduce the number of viable political parties to a greater extent than other methods. This makes it more likely that a single party will hold a majority of legislative seats. C anada has had 33 majority governments out of 41 elections (Parliament of Canada) FPTPs tendency toward fewer parties and more frequent one-party rule can potentially produce a government that may not consider a wide a range of perspectives and concerns.It is entirely possible that a voter will find that both major parties agree on a particular issue. In this case, the voter will not have any meaningful way of expressing a dissenting opinion through their vote. These voters will have to resort to tactical voting and vote for a candidate that they mostly disagree with in order to oppose a candidate they disagree with even more. This is a compromise that the voter should not have to make in order to express them selves politically. The third problem with the FPTP system is that it is especially vulnerable to gerrymandering.Gerrymandering is the process of setting electoral districts in order to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic b oundaries to create partisan or incumbent-protected districts. The resulting district is known as a gerrymander (Martis 2008). This process is very controversial in Canada and is viewed negatively when attempted. Governments in power to solidify their dominance at the federal and provincial level can use gerrymandering to increase voters in a riding where they do not have as many voters, giving them an unfair advantage upon re-election.The examples of gerrymandering and its effects can be seen in Canada today. The current federal electoral district boundaries in Saskatchewan have been labeled as evidence of gerrymandering, The provinces two major cities, Saskatoon and Regina, are both cracked into four districts each, when the populations of the cities proper would justify about three and two and a half of all-urban (or mostly urban) districts respectively the map instead groups parts of the New Democratic Party-friendly cities with large Conservative-leaning rural areas (Elections Canada)In 2006, a controversy arose on Prince Edward Island over the provincial governments decision to throw out an electoral map drawn by an independent commission. Instead the government created two new maps. The government adopted the second of these, designed by the caucus of the governing party. Opposition parties and the media attacked Premier Pat Binns for what they saw as gerrymandering of districts. Among other things, the government adopted a map that ensured that every current Member of the Legislative Assembly from the premiers party had a district to run in for re-election, whereas in the original map, several had been redistricted.Despite this, in the 2007 provincial election only 7 of 20 incumbent Members of the Legislative Assembly were re-elected and the government was defeated. Pat Binns attempt at gerrymandering and loss of the election showed that the Canadian people do not support gerrymandering by politicians (CBC) Even though the FPTP system has many criticis ms it does have some qualities that are found attractive. Firstly FPTP systems are generally good at creating majority governments because of their winner take all attitudes.Majority governments are viewed as being more efficient because of their ability to swiftly pass laws through Parliament. However, majority governments increase their efficiency at the price of sacrificing a broader range of political views. Secondly, FPTP is a good way of discouraging extremist parties that seek to bring radical change to the government. This is because larger parties are favored to win seats so unless the party has a very concentrated electoral support the will generally never win any ridings.FPTP has many criticisms and flaws that are easily exploited. These flaws can only be addressed by selecting a new electoral system. The FPTPs key flaw that underlies its criticisms is that it discounts or ignores minority parties and their voters. This effectively causes only voters of the major parties to be able to accurately express them selves politically. In a democracy every vote should count not just the votes cast for the winning party. This is why FPTP is not an adequate system for Canada. The FPTP system fails Canadian voters because it favors tactical voting orcing voters to make unnecessary compromises with their political beliefs. It perpetuates dominance of one or two main parties and discourages growth of newer, smaller parties. FPTP opens up the door for gerrymandering Politicians to take an unfair advantage to solidify their dominance in the government. In conclusion I think that Canadas First Past the Post parliamentary electoral system should be changed because it favors tactical voting it has a negative effect on smaller parties and opens up the possibility of gerrymandering constituencies.