Although it would come as news to a sizeable chunk of Canadians, they do not elect their head of government—at least not directly. Like some other nations that used to be British colonies, Canada is governed by the Westminster system, meaning the prime minister is appointed by the Queen’s local representative, the governor general. Normally, this official appoints the leader of the party that wins the most seats in the House of Commons, making the prime minister a democratically chosen leader in practice, if not on paper.
However, this democratic choice is arguably distorted by the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system, in which the candidate who gets the most votes in an electoral district wins a seat. FPTP is usually (though not always) consistent with the popular vote when there are two dominant parties, as in the United States, but because most Canadian ridings (electoral districts) now have three or more non-“fringe” candidates, somebody can easily win a seat without earning the majority of the votes, just so long as he or she still has more votes than each of the competitors.
As a result, Canada’s government is often elected by a minority of the citizens. The current prime minister’s party, the Conservatives, had 39.62 percent of the popular vote in the 2011 election. The geographical distribution of these votes also happened to give the Conservatives a “false majority”: they hold over half of the seats in the House of Commons despite having earned under half the vote—and are therefore able to pass legislation without support from any of the other parties.
Given the potential for this kind of scenario, it isn’t unusual for Canadians to cast a ballot, not for the candidate they like the most, but instead for the person they believe has the best chance of defeating the candidate they like the least.
Leading up to the Canadian election scheduled for October 19, web-based vote-swapping hubs are offering another tactical option. Instead of simply voting for second- or third-choice candidates, vote swappers aim to pair up with somebody who lives in a riding where their preferred party has a real chance of winning a seat according to poll data and statistical modeling. Each partner in the swap agrees to vote for the other partner’s preferred party.
