Justin Trudeau made one of his biggest mistakes during last year’s federal election when he promised to kill off Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system before the 2019 election.

It was a mistake because the idea of changing our electoral system is, simply, a bad one that could potentially do more harm than good for our democracy.

One of Trudeau’s best moves since the election, however, has been to start backing away from the flawed notion that our present system isn’t working and there’s a better way to elect members of Parliament.

Most of the people who back changing the system tout various forms of proportional representation where many seats in Parliament are allocated based on a party’s share of the popular vote. They say they are fed up with feeling their vote doesn’t count or their party never wins as many seats as they think it deserves.

At the same time, though, they promote supposed benefits about proportional representation ranging from increased voter turnout to preventing Trump-like populist waves from taking hold in Canada that just don’t stand up to scrutiny.

They also ignore the risks of other systems, including perpetual minority governments where tiny single-issue parties hold the balance of power, legislative gridlock and backroom deals with fringe parties that have radical agendas.

One of the biggest myths championed by reform advocates is that voter turnout will improve. In fact, that’s just not true. Virtually every country that uses proportional representation is facing the same problem as Canada is with falling rates of voter turnout.

New Zealand had a 77-per-cent voter turnout in its 2014 national election, the second lowest in the last 70 years. Germany recorded a 71-per-cent turnout in 2013, which was part of a fairly steady decline from 91 per cent in 1972. Greece had a turnout of 63.6 per cent in 2015, the second lowest since 1951. Similar trends are occurring in the other 19 western European countries with proportional representation.

Reform supporters also ignore the fact that any new system would lead to larger ridings with MPs more distant from their constituents than before.

Many reformists are NDP or Green Party supporters who believe this will help promote progressive government. Even former NDP leader Ed Broadbent is victim of this myth, claiming in a recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail that proportional representation would create “the firewall against a northern Trump riding a right-wing populist wave to victory.”

But an extremist right-wing party or a single-issue group, such as an anti-abortion or an anti-immigrant party, could just as easily be the power broker in a minority government as a left-leaning group.

In Israel, for example, small ultra-Orthodox religious parties often are given key cabinet posts, such as education, as an enticement to help form a coalition government. That is not a practice that leads to progressive government.

Also, under most reform schemes, many MPs won’t be elected directly by voters. Rather they will be part of a list nominated by their party bosses, which is the opposite of promoting greater democracy.

Fortunately, aside from the diehards, few Canadians are really interested in changing our voting system. A recent survey by the Angus Reid Institute suggests nearly 70 per cent of us put a low or very low priority on adopting a new system.

Still, Trudeau is being beaten up right now by haters chanting “broken promise” on his electoral-reform pledge.

In a meeting last week with the Toronto Star’s editorial board the Prime Minister said he is “working hard to keep my promises,” noting that all 15 million Canadian households are being asked in an online survey, mydemocracy.ca, how they feel about voting and democracy in general.

The survey was launched earlier this week after an all-party Commons committee looking into electoral reform failed to agree on any of some 30 alternatives to the current first-past-the-post system.

Strikingly, Liberal MPs on the committee said it would be “irresponsible” for Trudeau to change the voting system or even to hold a referendum on the issue before the 2019 election.

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They are right, as is Trudeau in moving slowly away from an ill-conceived promise that deserves to be broken.

As the Star said in a past editorial endorsement of our current system, first-past-the-post may not be perfect, but it is “democratic and robust, delivering strong, stable government that works. Why strain to ‘fix’ what isn’t broken?”

Bob Hepburn’s column appears Thursday. bhepburn@thestar.ca

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