Today, Justin Trudeau made very interesting remark on the Canadian election system. He would like to reform the current fast-past-the-post system into preferential voting system or single transferrable voting system.
Let's imagine a constituency of 100 voters. There are four candidates, A, B, C and D. Instead of choosing one of them in the ballot, a voter rank them from the most preferred to the least preferred. When the ballot box opens, it turns out A won 35; B: 30: C: 25; and D:10. D is eliminated. Then the D voters' second preferences are counted. A won 4; B: 5; C: 1. Those numbers are added to A, B, and C's the first preference votes'. Now A scores 39; B: 35; C: 26. C is eliminated. Then the C voters' next preferences will be counted. I.e., C voters' second preferences, and the third preferences if a vote's second preference is D, are counted Among 26 votes, A wins 10 and B wins 16. Eventually B wins the election in 51 to 49.
A strength of this system is that every vote really counts. Even if a voters's first preferred candidate is eliminated, her second and third preference will still matter. Then it restrains the parties from becoming radical because they will have to conform with the demand of, at least the voters in the middle.
Another strength of this system is that it does not prevent a politician from running independently. Russia has a full party list proportional representation system with 7% of threshold. It indeed favours Putin and his supporters' parties. Even if the system is more open like Germany's mixed part list proportional representation system with 5% of threshold, it might be considered a barrier to independent politicians and small parties.
Of course, there could be some problems. If voters are not well aware of the system, they may just mark the ballots nily-wily.
I was glad that Mr. Trudeau clearly had an agenda for election system reform.
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