Thread by @M_McCubbing

An example of why election reform matters.

I live in Simcoe North, a historically Conservative riding with @bruce_stanton holding office since 2006 and confirmed for another term yesterday.

The problem starts when you look at the actual numbers.

While Stanton is fairly well respected in the riding, he actually pulled in a minority of votes and even combining the 3 conservative parties running locally still nets a minority of the vote.

The majority of the riding voted for one of the progressive candidates but, because of how the votes split up, none of the progressives won. This happened because the progressive candidates polled closer together while Stanton polled far better than other conservative candidates

Let's take a look at the numbers. Here are the candidates, parties, & votes received:

@bruce_stanton, @CPC_HQ: 27,112
@hawes_gerry, @liberal_party: 19,140
Angelique Belcourt, @NDP: 8,749
Valerie Powell, @CanadianGreens: 5,820
Steven Makk, @peoplespca: 1,144
Chris Brown, CHP: 337

This shows that @bruce_stanton got the most votes by 7972 but only received 43.52% of the vote. However, in a "first-past-the-post" voting system you only need the most votes & not a majority to win. This means that 56.48% of voters got a candidate they didn't vote for.

How else could we do it? A ranked ballot is one method. You rank the candidates from the one you support the most to the one you support the least. What would have happened if we did that here instead?

Well, let's assume that conservative voters would prefer conservative candidates & progressive voters would prefer progressive candidates.

Progressive: 33,709 votes (Liberal, Green NDP)
Conservative: 28,593 votes (CPC, PPC, CHP)

This gives a progressive majority of 54.1%

This would have likely resulted in @hawes_gerry receiving the seat for Simcoe North although other factors could have resulted in one of the other progressive candidates winning. Regardless, a majority of voters would have received a candidate that they supported.

With issues like the climate crisis, where there is a fairly clear progressive/conservative split, this is really important because the riding is currently left with a candidate who will likely support less aggressive action on the climate & environment & has said that much of…

…the work will wait for "the next few decades, beyond my time as a parliamentarian".

We don't have time to wait decades & a fix of the electoral system would help push these issues that most Canadians care about forward.

#CanadaElection2019 #ElectionsCanada #elxn43 #federalelection2019