There is a growing sentiment, at least among certain political elites and their counterparts in the media, that our electoral system is broken. Yet, nearly three Canadians are satisfied for every Canadian who is dissatisfied with the way federal elections work, according to the Institute for Research on Public Policy. 

Over the weekend, participants from all the major political parties, representatives from the political left and right, and assorted other populists gathered in Ottawa to launch Fair Vote Canada, a group whose goal is to dump our current electoral system in favour of, well, something else. Unfortunately, the cure is worse than the disease. 

The core disease this group is trying to rid us of is an electoral system where the person who wins the most votes in a constituency gets the entire prize — what is called the first-past-the-post electoral system. This system, it is alleged, leaves many Canadians disenfranchised because in any given riding a member of Parliament can win with less than 50 per cent of the vote. This is magnified 301 times across the country, with the result that the federal Liberals have won three straight elections with about 40 per cent of votes cast. 

But we should be careful in discarding the longest-lasting system of electing representatives in the world because, to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, first-past-the-post is the worst type of electoral system except all those other systems that have been tried from time to time. 

Broadly speaking, there are two alternatives to first past the post. The first is a preferential ballot — voters mark their first, second and sometimes third choices. If the first choices do not lead to a 50 per cent winner, the second choices are added. 

But under a preferential ballot, new challenges arise. What if two candidates have more than 50 per cent after round two? What if the third-place candidate on the first ballot has the most votes after the second ballot? Should second choices count as less than first choices? Is 50 per cent the magical number, or do we now believe that the most votes overall won? 

The second alternative is to move toward a proportional system, where the number of seats won is brought into line with the popular vote. 

A proportional system is the most problematic in our constitutional democracy. Since 1921 (when we first saw three parties in the House of Commons) there have been only two elections where a single party won a majority of the votes — 1940 for the Liberals and 1958 for the Conservatives. Proportional representation is thus a recipe for instability; minority governments in Canada have rarely lasted more than one year. 

Further, minority governments shift power from parties that win the most votes to parties that win few votes. For example, under New Zealand’s recently adopted proportional-style electoral system, the New Zealand Alliance party received 20 per cent of the cabinet positions on the strength of only seven per cent of the popular vote as a result of a coalition agreement with the leading Labour Party. 

The first-past-the-post system requires that political parties build coalitions, ensuring that any winning platform has a broad base of support across a number of regions in the country. A more proportional system gives incentives to parties to put forward more radical platforms, in the hope of getting their key planks implemented as part of a coalition government. Proportional systems breed a plethora of parties with narrow agendas. 

A proportional system also breaks the link between MPs and their constituencies. The only way to ensure a match between popular vote and constituency results is to have additional members drawn from party lists. But this means we will have at least some elected officials who have no immediate ties to a constituency. Do we really want two tiers of MPs? 

Proportional systems also tend to be hideously complicated. In New Zealand, citizens mark a ballot for a local party representative, as well as for their favourite party (they need not match). The constituency results produce the local MP, and the party results determine the balance of the parties in the legislature. The final result is determined by an algorithm that only a PhD in mathematics could appreciate. 

Democracy is a messy business and first past the post may be a bad way to run a democracy, but there is no reason to make it worse by adopting an alternative, especially when most Canadians seem pleased with the current arrangements. 

Ken Boessenkool is a private sector economist in Calgary and one of six authors of the Alberta Agenda, a letter urging the government of Alberta to make greater use of its constitutional jurisdiction.