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by thesh4d0w 532 days ago
We have two left parties that votes are split across, and a single right party.

This means the conservative party often ends up getting more power since they're "first past the post" even though the majority of the population may not agree with them.

3 comments

> and a single right party

No longer true. Canada now also has the PPC - the People's Part of Canada (see: https://www.peoplespartyofcanada.ca/).

> even though the majority of the population may not agree with them

Well that certainly won't be true for the upcoming election.

So? "The rules need to be changed because the wrong people keep winning" sounds very suspicious to me.

If the situation is as you describe, what really needs to change is that the two left parties need to merge, or one of them needs to become such a marginal player that it doesn't matter. If the leaders of those parties can't or won't do that, well, then you get the situation that you have.

Some believe that it’s better if representative democracies represent their constituents. Newer voting technology that permits a greater alignment of representative distribution with voter distribution is preferable to those people.

Personally, I find it galling that the massive Californian population of Republicans and Texan population of Democrats frequently go unrepresented.

You seem to believe in the primacy of FPTP voting in itself. That’s the difference.

> You seem to believe in the primacy of FPTP voting in itself. That’s the difference.

You seem to be reading things into my words that I didn't say.

I get that more representative is good. I get that FPTP isn't that.

But what I said is, when their complaint is that the Conservatives keep winning, that makes their whole argument suspect.

That seems a misunderstanding of their argument. I suggest using an LLM, quoting the comment, and discussing with it till your comprehension matches that of the machine. They’re usually pretty good at it, and it appears better than you in this instance.
> So? "The rules need to be changed because the wrong people keep winning" sounds very suspicious to me.

That's not what they're saying. In Canada, we can easily end up with parliamentary majorities for parties that have less than 50% of the popular vote. Sometimes substantially less.

No, I got that part. That's true in any first-past-the-post system, and especially true in ones with more than two major parties. (The solution to that would be proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post.)

But the complaint seemed to be, not that it kept happening, but that it kept favoring the Conservatives. So, on the one hand, the fact that it keeps favoring one party is an issue. On the other hand, the way the complaint was made makes it sound like it's not coming from a position of objectivity.

I beg to differ, the polls say otherwise regarding who the population wants and more importantly, the unhealthy coalition of NDP / Liberals have been preventing the parliament from functioning, we would have had an election by now had NDP stopped propping the Liberal party by preventing the non confidence vote.