Every Vote Should Count: Why Voting Liberal or Conservative in the 2025 Election Perpetuates a Broken Democracy
As Canada heads to the polls in April 2025, we face a critical choice about the future of our democracy. Both Liberals under Mark Carney and Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre continue to block (or is ambiguous on) proportional representation (PR), ensuring millions of perfectly valid ballots will have no effect on election outcomes.
The Liberal Record on Electoral Reform
- Liberals have campaigned on proportional representation since 1919 (starting with Mackenzie King)
- In 2015, Justin Trudeau promised 1,800+ times that it would be "the last election under first-past-the-post"
- After forming government, Trudeau abandoned reform when he couldn't get his preferred non-proportional system
- In 2024, Trudeau admitted that Liberals were "deliberately vague" about electoral reform to appeal to PR advocates
- Mark Carney has been noncommittal on PR despite his economic expertise, claiming to be "open" while avoiding firm commitments
The Conservative Position
- Conservatives consistently favour maintaining FPTP
- Pierre Poilievre shows no interest in changing the system that benefits his party
- The current electoral system enables single-party rule with a minority of votes
- Both parties benefit from false majorities delivered by our broken system
Why This Matters in 2025
Canada's democracy faces mounting threats, from foreign interference concerns to polarization. A truly representative system would provide the strongest defence:
- In Hastings-Lennox and Addington during the 2025 Ontario election, 51.6% of voters had no representation in Queen's Park
- Meanwhile, Germany's 2025 election under PR saw voter turnout hit 83%
- Research examining 36 democracies from 2000-2019 shows countries using PR have lower polarization than those with winner-take-all systems
- Only 6% of the world's population lives in full democracies, and most use PR systems
When you vote Liberal or Conservative in April, you endorse a system where millions of votes make no difference to election outcomes. You endorse a system where parties that receive minority vote shares regularly wield 100% of the power.
Only the Greens, NDP, and smaller parties like the Revolution Party of Canada consistently support PR. If democracy matters to you, shouldn't your vote reflect that?
Yes. It insanity. That's why splitting the vote is a bad idea. The US would likely still be a democracy, if not for the split vote.
Of course there are examples to support your argument, that doesn't erase all the counter examples that are much more catastrophic.
Your good intentions can, and in my opinion do, more harm than good to the very cause you explicitly support, simply because you insist on ignoring the behavior or real people on the present.
Not to mention the implicit assumption you're making that this is the one-topic for voters.
I'd eager this is quite low in the priority list of the average voter, below housing, cost of living and identity politics.