MP Neil Ellis talks with people at a roundtable on electoral reform held in
Belleville Sunday, September 25, 2016. (Photo: John Spitters/Quinte News).
About 50 people showed up on a beautiful Sunday to spend a little time indoors discussing Canada’s electoral system and whether and how it might be changed.
Bay of Quinte riding MP Neil Ellis and the Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Democratic Institutions, Ajax MP Mark Holland, hosted a roundtable discussion on electoral reform at the Greek Hall in Belleville.
The federal Liberal government is consulting with Canadians coast to coast as part of a promise that the election in 2019 will be the last one using the current “first past the post” system.
The people in the crowd, most of them well above the age of 50, were asked to discuss and provide comment on 5 different voting systems commonly used in democratic countries, including first past the post, single transferable vote, proportional representation, and mixed member proportional.
Among the public, there was a general consensus that voter turnout was so low because people were turned off by “adversarial politics” coming from the current party system and because a lot of people believed that their vote just didn’t count for much.
Under the first past the post system, majority governments can be elected even though the majority of voters didn’t select their party’s candidates.
The party system and its adversarial politics were seen as leading citizens to disrespect politicians and political institutions.
The group was asked if voting should be made mandatory to boost turnout. It was generally felt that that would not be a good idea as it would be hard to enforce and quite likely would face a constitutional challenge.
The public believed that if there had to be mandatory voting, a spoiled ballot should be one of the options allowed to give people disgusted with the system a chance to be counted.
Everyone thought that online voting should be instituted ASAP to attract more votes during federal elections.
However, everyone stressed that security issues with online voting be investigated and dealt with before going live with the technology.
Another idea coming from the public was that more education about the importance and history of democracy be made available to young Canadians in an effort to get them more engaged in the affairs of the nation.
There was no clear winner among the various electoral systems on offer, but there will be much more pubic discussion in the months ahead on the issue.
After October 7, a government committee will craft a report from the first round of public comment and issue a report sometime in December.
The report will make recommendations. In the new year, there will be another round of public discussions on the recommendations.
Then in the spring, the government plans on tabling legislation, and that will trigger another round of discussion, but this time the talks will be at a committee level on Parliament Hill.
