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It is not just gross disproportionality that many Canadians want fixed. They are acutely aware of how our electoral system encourages them, as voters, to treat their views on local candidates for election as MP as secondary to the national party they prefer. Do I vote for a person who I think deserves election on her own merits or do I vote for a person whose party I prefer? I have one tick on my ballot, and there is no way to resolve the conflict for many voters other than to make a tragic choice of party over person or person over party. Worse, this tragic choice is exacerbated for those voters who realize how our system can easily generate false majorities and who accordingly try to prevent a negative national result through so-called strategic voting.

It is for these reasons that, over the past three years, the NDP tried to raise the profile of mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation as the best replacement for our current flawed system. This system, versions of which are used in places like New Zealand, Scotland and Germany, marries two principles: that each voter should have a local MP to hold to account in their riding and that, at the same time, the House of Commons should reflect the percentage of votes each party received.

In short, the promised parliamentary committee could easily become a place where electoral reform is sent to die.

A Canadian MMP system would be both simple and satisfying. The voter receives a single ballot, but she is faced with two columns and has two ticks she can make on that ballot. Exactly as now, the first tick is to choose a local MP. But, unlike at present, the voter also gets to express her preference for which party she would most like to see with greatest representation in the House, by ticking her favoured candidate from a regional list of candidates nominated by the party she supports. A calculation mechanism is then used to determine how many of the regional candidates from each party go to the House in order to achieve proportionality of representation of the parties. The result: local representation and fair party representation.