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Our outdated electoral system routinely fails to represent many voters. It gives extra seats to big parties, rural parties and regional blocs, exaggerates the impact of swings and punishes small parties and those whose appeal is geographically diffuse.

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In 1993, the year voters drove Brian Mulroney’s Tories out of power, Jean Chretien got 60 per cent of the seats with 41 per cent of the vote. Reform got 17 per cent of the seats with 19 per cent of the votes, but the Bloc Quebecois, with its concentrated voted, got 18 per cent of the seats with 14 per cent of the vote, giving us a separatist Official Opposition. The Tories, who garnered more than two million votes across Canada, won only two seats.

That is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous, too, that in 2008 the Greens got almost a million votes yet not a single seat, while the Bloc, with 1.4 million votes, claimed 49.

On Thursday in Britain, where they use the same outmoded first past the post system, 2.7 million UKIP voters elected just one MP, while 2.4 millions separatist Scots got 56 MPs.

Germany, arguably the world’s most successful democracy, has been using a mixed-member proportional representation system since 1949, with dull coalition following dull coalition. Everybody votes twice, once for a local representative, the other for a party list.

If Albertans elected their legislatures that way, Notley would have 36 MLAs, the PCs would have 25, Wildrose would have 23 and the Liberals three.