Canadian Voting System: First Past The Post

The Canadian voting system is called “First past the Post”, which entails that the candidate with the most votes in a riding wins a seat in the House of Commons and represents that riding as its member of parliament. In today’s society, there has been great controversy over the first past the post system, and the flaws of our electoral process. As a Canadian citizen it is supposed to simple and easy for us to vote, however through this most recent 2015 election there was more cause for concern than cohesion.

In the past, the results of Canada’s federal election have exemplified the problem of our first past the post system of voting. In this system, the representative who receives the most votes in an area wins each riding. As a result, it

This proposed legislation had a specific intention to try and deter young people from voting as Harper and the conservatives knew that the younger audiences are not the ones voting for him. This bill planned to eliminate two methods of voting that have been proven to be effective in deterring younger audiences to vote. The first form of voting that has been eliminated is the practice of vouching. Before, if you didn’t have the proper identification, a voter in your polling area can vouch for you and enable you to still vote and cast a ballot. In most cases it’s often someone who can prove their identity but not their current address, specifically students or somebody who has recently moved. To add even more cause for concern to our electoral process, this bill also prohibits the Chief electoral officer from engaging in public education or democratic outreach to groups that have been known to not participate in voting. Following the last election where we had a record low voter turnout, this doesn’t make any

Without the help of my Dalhousie University holding election days, I would have been lost as to where to vote and who to vote for. I feel like in order for our electoral process to improve in Canada, we need to educate our youth much more on voting and politics in general. As well, I believe that we should make voting much more easy and accessible to our Canadian Citizens. If we were able to vote online, I believe we would see a huge boost in Voter participation, especially in our youth. Most people are very busy and don’t necessary have time to take out of their day to vote; if we were able to vote online there would be no excuses not to vote. Instead of political television ads attacking other party leaders and demoralizing their character, these ads should actually be put to good use and give our citizens an idea of their party and what they stand