John Courtney, Elections, (The Canadian Democratic Audit Series), Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004.

• Author: Pilon, Dennis
• Position: Parliamentary Book Shelf - Book Review

In John Courtney's audit of Canadian elections there is much praise for the status quo and only caution about embracing any reforms. Aside from some criticisms of the new voter registration system, Courtney--rightly--draws attention to the many strength of the Canadian electoral system, particularly our system of independent boundary commissions and non-partisan democratic administration. Indeed, he even declares near the end of the book that "unlike countless millions around the world, Canadians today can take pride in their electoral regime." For those unhappy with the workings of some of our electoral machinery, especially our traditional voting system, Courtney argues that while some problems may exist, they can not be helped--the greater good is served by the existing arrangements and their tendency to encourage 'centrist, big tent' parties and majority governments. But Courtney's arguments are based on some contentious interpretations of the Canadian party system and the nature of democracy. Depending on how one understands these debates, Courtney's conclusions will appear either more or less compelling.

To grasp the state of Canadian elections, Courtney explores what he calls the principal components or 'building blocks' of the electoral system. These include concerns over defining the franchise, revising electoral boundaries, administering the elections, registering voters, and the method of translating votes into seats. Utilizing the benchmarks established by the Canadian Democratic Audit team, Courtney then evaluates each component of the electoral system in terms of how well it fosters participation, inclusiveness and responsiveness. On the whole, he finds most do so quite well, with Canadian democratic administration, boundary revision, and the scope of the franchise getting top marks, while only our current voter registration system comes in for sustained criticism.

Given the Democratic Audit criteria, one might have expected our current plurality voting system to come in for some criticism. After all, a host of critics have underlined how it fails to include all voices or register voter preferences accurately, thus limiting accountability and possibly depressing participation. But in discussing the voting system Courtney drops the Democratic Audit benchmarks altogether and introduces a different set of criteria concerned with maintaining the stability of government and the party system. Basically, Courtney argues that our...