Splitting headache

Elizabeth May demonstrated in the Leaders' Debates that Greens are not ignorant, utopian, or flaky. She earned her place at the grownup table. Most Canadians aren't paying attention, so it will take time for that to change voting patterns, but the ball is rolling now. At this point I'd say we'll win one seat in this election and 5-10 in the next one.

Political inertia is bad enough, but a more serious obstacle to Green success is strategic voting. (At this point, that's the Liberal Party's main campaign strategy.) Roughly half of Green supporters will vote Lib, NDP, or Bloc to defeat the Conservative candidate in their riding. No-one knows which progressive candidate is actually in the lead, so everyone assumes it will be the same as 2006, when Greens had 5% national support not 10-12%. In fact, there is a lot of animosity against loyal Greens for splitting the vote* and helping the Conservatives win. (Actually, many fiscal conservatives vote Green, so we take votes from the Cons as well.)

In my opinion, it's pointless to blame individual voters for this--vote splitting is a systemic flaw. "Dark Green" voters will keep voting Green, so the only way to avoid vote splitting is electoral reform. The central problem is this: our electoral system was created when there were only two parties and only rich white men could vote. Now we have 5 major parties and a broad diversity of voters, so it's no wonder the election gives strange outcomes. (Seriously... why should the Conservatives win a majority of seats when 2/3 of the public is against them?) Harper called an election when his popularity went up by 5% because he knew that would translate into 25% more seats. Widespread strategic voting only exacerbates the flaws of the system because it rewards only well-established parties and leads to narrower margins of victory. Most democracies in the world have some kind of proportional representation in order to avoid this endless lesser-of-two-evils voting. For those who want a detailed description and analysis of Canada's political system, I'd recommend the latest edition of Canadian Politics: Critical approaches by Rand Dyck.

With all this talk of strategic voting, people forget the whole purpose of democratic elections: The People, in their incomplete but complementary wisdom, choose those who reflect their values to govern them. If voters feel forced to vote for their 2nd or 3rd choice, it distorts the resulting government. In a way this is also an attack on free speech since for many voters, election day is the only time they feel comfortable to take a clear political stand.



*Our federal elections consist of 308 separate first-past-the-post elections. That means that the candidate with the most votes in a given area wins the seat. So if Bart Simpson got 60% and Homer got 40%, Bart would win. "Vote splitting" occurs when two or more candidates are similar to each other. If Lisa also ran, the vote might be 30% Bart, 30% Lisa, and 40% Homer--Homer would win even though 60% of voters were against him. Nationwide, only 50%+1 of seats are needed to control government, so with enough vote-splitting a minority party can dominate the country. With 4 major anti-Conservative parties and 60% voter turnout, this means that Harper could control government even with only 25% support. (The American system is even more distorted: Bush won in 2000 with only 21% popular support. Vote fraud and a stacked Supreme Court are another matter.)

To continue the analogy, strategic voting says all anti-Homer voters should vote for Bart because he came along first. The first problem is that Bart doesn't address issues that Lisa voters care about. As well, in the long term Bart becomes corrupt and ineffectual because he knows the 60% of anti-Homer voters will always vote for him.