Another case against FPTP

Ontario blogger Greg Staples (aka political staples) makes another case in favour of MMP by using an old example 'we NBers' know all too well. Here's the post in its entirety:

So I've been reading much of the pro-MMP and anti-MMP blogposting and op-eds and I don't think anyone has mentioned the ultimate abuse case of FPTP, the 1987 New Brunswick provincial election. Here are the results of that years popular vote.

Liberals: 60.4% Progressive Conservative: 28.6% New Democrats: 10.6% Other: 0.4%

Clearly a huge victory for the Frank McKenna led Liberals, a clear majority and a clear mandate. So how many seats did they win? All 58 of them! If you were part of the 40% that did not vote for the Liberals you got zero representation - it is the ultimate example of wasted votes.

Think about this a little further keeping our Westminster Parliament system in mind. There was no leader of the opposition sitting in Parliament or any opposition members to challenge the government in the legislature. If I remember correctly they had to make special compensation to allow the opposition leader into the House to ask questions just so Parliamant wasn't a complete farce.

Think it can't happen again, just watch the Newfoundland and Labrador election going on right now.

Great point. Just to add to that, I'm sure many older political watchers on Prince Edward Island would remember, or heard their parents talking about, the election of 1935, not to mention, the elections of '93 and 2000 where many islanders were grossly misrepresented (see here, here and here). It should also be noted that in the '35 election where the Liberals swept all 30 seats in the legislature, the government had to assume the de facto role of unofficial opposition wherein they criticized their own cohorts (I'm sure they tossed some serious softballs) so that the public didn't perceive them to be completely unaccountable.

But what was even more interesting about that particular election was not what occured after the vote, but the end results themselves, especially given that on other occasions the split in the popular vote, 58% to 42%, would have produced much different results. Take for example the 1970 PEI election where "the government won by a greater margin, yet the opposition won 5 seats". Talk about another great example of how flawed the FPTP system can be.

Also of great interest was the '93 election because it was the last year that any province used the multi-member ridings (not proportional) as their model (it should be noted that the change was motivated by the lack of representation in the results):

The PC party took only a single seat, one of three times in the province's history that the Official Opposition consisted of a single member. The PC Party had gained nearly 5% in popular vote since the last election, but its caucus was cut in half. This was one of among many reasons for the ending of the dual-member ridings on Prince Edward Island. As of 2006, this was the last federal or provincial election in Canada to use multi-member constituencies, a common feature of Canadian elections held in earlier decades (wikipedia).

Funny, the change away from dual-member ridings didn't seem to curb the problem of misrepresentation as three out of their next four elections (2000, 2003 and 2007) encountered the same problem as did the '93 election. Furthermore, in their very last election this past spring, there were 5,519 people who voted for the PEI Tories in Charlottetown (the largest urban centre) resulting in no representation whatsoever in the provincial legislature. So not only is there a generic weakness with FPTP, it causes regional misrepresentation as well.

Moreover, I'm certain that many NBers remember the 2006 election where the Progressive Conservatives under Bernard Lord got more votes than the Liberals did (47.5% to 47.1%), however, they still lost the election (PC 26 seats to Liberals’ 29 seats). Let's face it, there has to be a better way.