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Summary: The Canadian Electoral System

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Electoral systems are very influential in political systems, as it is directly related to the decision-making process and the democratic institution of any given country. This is true in the case of Canada as well, as the current electoral system in Canada have profound direct influence in the voting incentives and therefore voting behavior of its citizens. However, many important political scientists and academics pointed out that the influence is not a positive one, when commenting on Canada’s current First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) or Single Member Plurality systems. For example, Jeffrey Simpson (2001), a well-known academic and journalists, when addressing the electoral system in Canada, referred to Canada as a “friendly dictatorship” in his …show more content…

Jackson (1987) also observed the connection between the current Canadian electoral system, and the declining voter turnout in elections faced by Canada over the last 4 …show more content…

In the case of constituencies, many in the political sciences notices that in constituencies with small and loyal electorates to one particular party, they can be simply marked off as “safe” by the party (Leduc, 2009, p. 22), effectively disfranchising those who casts dissenting votes as the riding electorate population already favors that particular party, likely leading those dissenting voters to simply abstain. Conversely, when a riding is deemed “hopeless”, due to already favoring another party in its demographics, a party may abstain from effective campaigning and mobilization of its voters, and respectively its voters would also not see the value of voting (Gallego, Rico & Anduiza, 2011, p. 160). It can be suggested that both these occur during elections, because of Canada’s stubborn adherence to this electoral system. Minorities are not safe from these disproportionalities as well, as Gwendolyn Moncrieff-Gould (2015) observes that due to the heavy concentration of immigrant minority groups in urban centers (85%) where riding populations are high, and the existence of lowly-populated rural constituencies that are dominated by whites, by simple mathematics minorities suffer a lower value of their vote per capita compared to their white

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