Welcome

Welcome to “False Majority False Democracy,” a non-partisan blog intended to help Fair Vote Canada’s objectives, and make it easier to find things on this topic than it is in the fast-moving conversations of Facebook, etc.

Because of the voting system in Canada, a party that gets only 40% of the people's vote can get 60% of the seats in our Parliament, and 100% of the power.

In Canada we call that a “majority government.”  Is that label genuine or false?


Some might say, “Okay so we get false majorities, but does that mean we have a false democracy? It’s not perfect, but it’s better than some countries where no one gets a vote.”

Here’s a response: Why call it a majority when it’s not a majority? Why have a voting system that treats the people’s vote count as less important than the winner-take-all design of our voting system.—a design that is subject to human fallibility? The word “demo-cracy” means “people rule,” not "voting systems rule." If we aim for the ideal of “people rule” we find a better voting system than the winner-take-all voting systems: Approximately 90 countries around the world already have voting systems which produce proportional representation in their houses of power.

Again, I wonder, “Why call it a majority when it’s not a majority?”

Is it because we want to pretend that we have a strong and stable government? If so, we are fooling ourselves: Is it “stable government” when the policies of one winner-take-all government are often undone by the next, and then back again, as the pendulum swings in a winner-take-all voting system? Stability is found in cooperative coalition governments that follow a steady trajectory instead of constant pendulum swings in policy. Stability is not found in a Parliament which is in a constant internal battle with itself for the “winner-take-all” prize of having 100% of the power for four years.

A democracy that is misleading in the way it describes “majority governments” is, in a sense, a false democracy.

Is it important to you to live in a genuinely democratic country?

If so, your help is needed. Welcome to this discussion.

This blog contains resources that you can use: It will contain a growing body of ....

--...perspectives that you can use as we convince others that this situation is intolerable.

--... perspectives that you can use as we mutually educate and inform each other, and as we discuss with others.