Federal NDP push for proportional electoral system
NEWS/ POLITICS — Federal NDP candidate Bill Sundhu wants to fix what he calls an unfair electoral system that, in 2011, gave the Conservatives a majority government with 53 per cent of the seats and only 39 per cent of the votes.
Bill Sundhu.
“In the House of Commons tomorrow, NDP Democratic Reform critic Craig Scott (Toronto – Danforth) will turn the government’s attention to the need to implement a mixed proportional electoral system,” Sundhu said Tuesday.
“I hope there will be broad-based support in the House to put an end to the first-past-the-post system and make the 2015 election the last in the era of unfair elections.”
Last week, Murray Rankin (Victoria) and Randall Garrison (Esquimalt – Juan de Fuca) joined Scott as he presented the NDP’s plan to implement a mixed proportional electoral system by 2019.
“In recent years Canadians have shown a real interest in electoral reform and it is time the Conservatives and Liberals come on side and vote with New Democrats for democracy,” said Sundhu.
“We are proposing a mixed proportional system. However, the first step is to get support of the House and then strike an all-party task force to draft legislation.”
The motion states:
That, in the opinion of the House: (a) the next federal election should be the last conducted under the current first-past-the-post electoral system which has repeatedly delivered a majority of seats to parties supported by a minority of voters, or under any other winner-take-all electoral system; and (b) a form of mixed-member proportional representation would be the best electoral system for Canada.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
We have been there and done that here in B.C. and twice we have rejected the revised voting system that was proposed to us. Personally, I would like to support some variety of proportional representation, but the system offered to us here in B.C. allowed for a certain number of seats to be filled by people named by the political parties regardless of the number of votes those people had received in the general election. That is, old time party hacks could have received patronage appointments to the provincial legislature. We already have other institutions for that, such as the Senate and various diplomatic appointments federally, and other sinecures provincially. Maybe some day, someone in a position of power will make a proposal for electoral reform that is not based in their own self interest nor that of their party. Until then, I’ll vote for the status quo.
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