Letters.

• Author: Saumur, Lucien
• Position: Letter to the editor

Sir:

In the Winter 2009 issue Scott Thurlow writes to defend our FPTP electoral system against its replacement by a system of proportional representation.

In the Spring 2010 issue, Bronwen Bruch, president of Fair Vote Canada, writes in response to defend proportional representation.

The proponents of proportional representation, when criticizing the FPTP electoral system, are not opposed to the way that it compels the people to vote as much as the way that the votes are counted after the election. They consider that the way, that the people voted, reflected the way that they wanted to vote. They claim that it is the way that the votes are counted that does not reflect the way that the people voted. Of course, they also want to change the way that the people voted. But it is not to allow the people to better express themselves but it is to make the vote-counting easier to perform.

To support their view, the proponents of proportionality suppose that people always vote along strict ideological lines and for whatever candidates most closely represent their chosen ideologies. If this were the case, election results would be the same from election to election. Because results vary from election to election, we may assume that a number of voters will consider the qualifications of the candidates rather than their ideologies. They will not vote for a candidate representing a fringe ideology but they will not hesitate to support a competent candidate within an moderate ideological range.

FPTP is flawed in that the MPs it serve to elect represent the political parties before representing the voters. It may be said that the Canadian Parliament is not composed of 308 members but that it is composed of four political parties supported by four groups of MPs. And proportionality would not correct this defect. If anything, it would worsen it. With the FPTP electoral system, electoral contests appear to be between parties rather than individual candidates. This is because the...