In Canada, democracy means rule by elected representatives, on
behalf of the majority. And any electoral process, which does not
guarantee the election of the choice of the majority, is
indisputably flawed. This is the case with the first-past-the-post
system, currently in use in Canada, which restricts the voters to a
single choice and which only works well when the voters must choose
between only two candidates. When there are more than two
candidates, a candidate may be elected by a minority of the voters
for whom he is deemed to be their first preference. There is no
guarantee that this candidate is the one who is preferred, to the
other candidates, by the majority of the voters. Nor is there any
guarantee that he even is the first preference of those who voted
for him since the system fosters strategic voting which consists in
voting for a lesser preference, who has a chance of being elected,
rather than for a first preference, who has no such hope.
Preferential voting is meant to correct this situation and it does
so by allowing the voters to express themselves about all the
candidates. Instead of indicating only a preference for a single
candidate, the voters are allowed to rank the candidates in order
of preference (see
Figure 1
). After the election, the preferential
ballots contain all the information necessary to determine the
candidate who is preferred to all others by the majority of the
voters. With preferential voting, strategic voting is logically
impossible and the voters may vote honestly and without fear of
"losing their vote."
[This submission can also be viewed on the web at:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/lsaumur/ ]
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