There are lots of hot button issues in Canadian politics, but there is one in federal politics that may prove to be hotter than anyone expects: electoral reform.

During the recent federal election, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals promised to make this the last ​f​ederal election under "first past the post" system, where Members of Parliament and majority governments can be elected with less than 50 per cent of the vote. We can expect the debate to be heated, because it cuts straight to the issue of how people and parties get and maintain power.

Any reform involves many competing interests that need to be balanced: diversity and freedom versus stability and unity, the will of the majority versus minority rights, the need for public consultation and debate versus getting things done on time and making sure the system works for everyone — and not just the people running the show.

In our current system, whoever wins the most votes in a riding becomes the MP. If there are more than two candidates, the winning candidate may have less than 50 per cent, and a majority government may win with less than 50 per cent of the popular vote. Two systems are the major candidates for reform and each takes a different approach.

Bottom up or top down?

Ranked or preferential ballots take a "bottom up" approach of a lack of majorities at the local level. Instead of voting for just one person, you would mark your preference for candidates No. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. The last place candidate drops out, and their ballots are recounted and distributed to whoever is marked second. This happens until one candidate gets over 50 per cent of the votes. In this system, every MP would always reflect a majority consensus of the community they represent.

Proportional representation (PR) takes a "top down" approach. It operates on the principle that the percentage of seats in parliament should reflect the percentage of the vote earned by each political party on a national level.

The principle of PR is intuitively appealing, but it takes some engineering to figure out how ​to make up the extra seats.

PR proponents have recently made a habit of showing what the "real" election result would be if the seat count matched the popular vote under PR. This may be a mistake, for the important reason that the impact of electoral reform doesn't simply mean that votes will be counted differently. The election day outcome would be ​different because electoral reform has the potential to change every step of the democratic process, including:

How candidates are nominated

The role and power of political parties and their leaders

The number of political parties

Campaign strategy and tactics

Opinion polling and predictions

How election results translate into seats

How political parties come together to form government

Accountability to voters, both for MPs and governments

Many of these may be "inside baseball" to the average voter, but how a candidate ends up on your ballot is just as much a part of democracy as are elections and forming government. It is supremely important to the issue of accountability and who a politician ultimately owes their position to, whether it is donors, organizers, party leadership or the people.

The issues opened up by PR include:

Nominations:

How the "extra" candidates from party lists are selected, and therefore to whom they are accountable. What part would citizens play in selecting candidates?

Campaigning:

Under first past the post, "big tent" parties need to campaign on broad appeal, which is also true with ranked ballots where campaigns need to actively reach out to supporters from other parties.

Under PR, small parties can win seats appealing only to a narrow base — including divisive campaign tactics. PR systems routinely deal with this by imposing a minimum vote threshold of support 2.5 per cent, 3.5 per cent or even higher, undermining the argument that "every vote will count." This splintering into many small parties has implications in Canada, a huge country with a dispersed and diverse population.

Governments chosen through negotiation:

To supporters of PR, there is a premise that coalition governments are good because they force political parties to co-operate. Aside from the instability that can come with coalitions, the coalitions themselves are governments negotiated through horse-trading between parties.

One of the major changes with PR is that it entrenches political parties even further into our elections. Political parties could be banned tomorrow and our current system would still work. PR would not.

Politics, as they say, is too important to be left to politicians. The debate on reform will need a little light let in and should reflect what's best for Canadians, not partisans.

Dougald Lamont is a writer and policy analyst who has worked on many election campaigns. He is lecturing in Government and Business Relations in Canada at the University of Winnipeg