Reconsider proportional representation on P.E.I., says Fair Vote

P.E.I.'s election results are spurring renewed interest in proportional representation, says Fair Vote Canada.

The first past the post system of elections on P.E.I. allowed the Liberals to retain their majority. In 2011 the Liberals won 51 per cent of the popular vote and 22 of 27 seats. On Monday the party's share of the popular vote fell to 41 per cent, but it still held 18 seats.

"These kind of distorted results that happen with our system, when you have a number of parties, are just going to push this issue on to the radar more and more," said Brenda Oslawsky, vice-president of Fair Vote Canada.

"PR is very simple. Most countries around the world use it. Most OECD countries use it so, you know, if Bulgaria and Bolivia can do it, I'm sure we can."

The Progressive Conservatives, just four percentage points behind the Liberals in popular vote, won only eight seats.

The NDP and the Greens both won 11 per cent of the vote; the Greens won a seat and the NDP didn't. One of the reasons for the success of the Green Party is it worked the system, focusing its efforts on getting leader Peter Bevan-Baker elected in his district. Almost one in four of Green votes was cast in Bevan-Baker's district, while the NDP vote was more spread across the province.

While the Green Party did play the system to win its one seat, proportionally it gathered enough votes for three seats in the house.

If seats in the legislature were distributed according to the percentage of the vote won, the result would have been very different.

Oslawsky said her group will push for a meeting with Premier Wade MacLauchlan after hearing him say Monday it's a good time to "revitalize democracy."

Vote efficiency

The Liberals were able to retain their majority due to a concept known as vote efficiency.

Under a first-past-the-post system, typically the party that wins the most votes in an election also gets the best use out of them. For example, on Monday on P.E.I. 33,481 votes were cast for the Liberals and they won 18 seats. That's one seat for every 1,860 votes.

This chart shows how many votes each party needed to elect an MLA Monday.

You can't put the NDP on this chart. The bar would be infinite because they didn't win a seat.

Under a proportional representation system there is no vote efficiency. Every vote counts towards sending someone to the legislature.

For mobile device users:Is it time for P.E.I. to look at proportional representation again?