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That change would be a move to a preferential or “ranked” ballot. Instead of a first-past-the-post electoral system, which gives the party with the most elected members the right to form government, a preferential ballot would ask voters to rank the choices on offer: first, second, third, and so on. That doesn’t mean they would have to rank every candidate, however; if they had no second choice, they could simply not mark one down. The votes to the candidate with the fewest “first choice” nods would then be reassigned to the other candidates based on their supporters’ second choice, then third choice, and so on until one candidate obtains at least 50 per cent of the votes.

Preferential or ranked ballots thus don’t create a more proportional system; if anything, they tend to increase the proportion of seats taken by the dominant party

In the recent federal election, this would have benefited the Liberals significantly, because Liberal and NDP voters were more likely to name each other as their preferred second choice. In contrast, most Conservative supporters had no second choice, which means their votes would have been counted once, and if they didn’t achieve the magic 50%-plus-one mark, dropped out of the equation altogether. The Council of Canadians published a simulation run by ThreeHundredEight.com, based on the 2015 results and found that under a ranked ballot, the Liberals would have elected 224 members instead of 184; the Conservatives, 61 vs. 99; the NDP, 50 vs. 44; the Bloc 2 vs. 10. Only the Greens would have obtained the same result: 1.

Preferential or ranked ballots thus don’t create a more proportional system; if anything, they tend to increase the proportion of seats taken by the dominant party. And in a country like Canada, where there are three parties, one on the left, one in the centre and one on the right, it is most likely that in any election, the second choice of either “extreme” would be the middle, not each other — thus entrenching successive Liberal governments.