Quebec anglos would benefit from two-ballot voting system, say reform supporters

The ADQ, the Quebec Green Party and Quebec Solidaire, are working as a coalition to obtain changes to a voting system they claim has long favoured Quebec's few mainstream parties, to the detriment of the smaller ones.

The Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights has launched a lawsuit in Quebec Superior Court through which they hope to invalidate the current system. The case, which is being argued by well-known Montreal lawyer Julius Grey, is scheduled to be heard in December next year.

In a summary analyzing the current electoral system's faults, the APDR recommends the provincial government adopt legislation along the same lines as a proposal for electoral reform that is being voted on in a referendum taking place in conjunction with the upcoming provincial election in Ontario.

The APDR is proposing a mixed-member proportional model entailing two ballots. One ballot would be for single-member districts, a second would be used to calculate each political party's support. One of the ballots could also be cast for candidates running in a single, province-wide, multi-member district. "The second ballot will bring about effective representation for citizens who at present do not have a voice in the National Assembly," says the APDR. Although a "strategic" voting dilemma would continue to exist in the single member districts, the group maintains all voters would be able to express their authentic choice on the second ballot, "a practice that respects each citizen's right to participate meaningfully in the electoral process."

Some critics of Quebec's present electoral system believe it is skewed in favour of francophones who live outside the Montreal region. They say that general elections are decided in the 80 regional ridings where the electorate is 90 per cent or more francophone, compared to an 80 per cent proportion across the province.

Henry Milner, a Kent Avenue resident in Côte des Neiges and a professor of political science at Vanier College, is the author of the 1999 academic work, Making Every Vote Count: Reappraising Canada's Electoral System.

Milner, who is currently lecturing in Sweden but was recently involved with the APDR, noted in an e-mail to the Chronicle that while Quebec's anglophones don't split their votes among the parties as much as other Quebecers, Liberal candidates in anglophone ridings typically win by very large margins, in effect wasting lots of anglophone votes. "The proposed electoral reform, by making the system more proportional, will reduce the second aspect of underrepresentation," he says.

Allen Nutik, the founder of Affiliation Quebec, a new pro-federalist provincial party he hopes will be certified for the next election, says the APDR's proposal corresponds to an element in the AQ agenda, involving fairer representation of voters. "For us as an alternate party, where there are pockets of federalists, then there's absolutely the possibility of winning seats," says Nutik. "So we're absolutely for electoral reform."