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Any day now, a postcard will arrive in your mailbox to invite you to participate in the single most important democratic reform in a generation: moving to ensure that in Canada “every vote counts.”

Some will reply with sophistry – “every vote is counted now” – but anyone who looks at our majoritarian, winner-take-all voting system knows that every vote does not count. Those “orphan” votes are those cast for the NDP in safe Conservative ridings, those for Conservatives in safe Liberal ridings and those for Green candidates almost everywhere.

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It was an enormous honour for me to participate as a member of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reform. Over the last five months, in nearly 60 meetings, we have put in long hours, travelled to every part of Canada, and heard from literally thousands of Canadians.

The evidence was overwhelming that Canadian democracy will be reinvigorated and the quality of it vastly improved as we reject the archaic First-Past-the-Post voting system. The recommendation to move to proportionality to ensure that, in the words of the Speech from the Throne, “every vote counts” is driven by abundant evidence.