SUCH AN IMPERFECT ELECTORAL SYSTEM

First of all I can live with a Liberal minority government. Maybe I could even live with a minority Conservative government. Probably have before. I have never been a fan of majority governments. Basically somewhere around 34% of the voters get to choose 100% of the government. That is nuts.

We were promised proportional representation by Justin Trudeau after he won the last election. It sure looks and smells like a lie in hindsight. That form of electoral system rewards parties by the percentage of votes that they receive.

With our current system both the NDP and the Greens are underrepresented in Parliament in regards to the percentage of Canadians votes that they received. The Conservative Party is only slightly over represented with the seats they received whereas the Liberals are the big beneficiaries of our first past the post system.

In fact the Liberals actually did not win the highest percentage of Canadians votes yet they will form the government probably with assistance from the NDP on certain issues and legislation. What I read this morning suggests that the Liberals across Canada garnered somewhere around 33% of the popular vote whereas the Conservatives garnered 34% of the vote. Wow isn't that weird. Turns out that the Liberals won seats in many ridings fairly narrowly whereas the Conservatives won many seats with a huge majority of the available votes.

The last numbers I've seen have the Liberals at 157 seats, the Conservatives at 121, the Bloq Quebecois at 30, NDP at 24 and Greens at 3. I'm not certain that these are the final numbers and in fact I doubt they are as all evening the political analysts kept advising that 170 seats were necessary for a party to form a majority government.