Cheating voters out of truly representative government

A Free Press editorial (The problem with gerrymandering, Aug. 23) wants you to believe that we don’t suffer from political parties picking their voters instead of voters picking their parties — a.k.a. gerrymandering. A political party that gerrymanders should be condemned and disqualified but keeping an electoral system that does the gerrymandering for you is just as bad.

Where you live is a determining factor on whether your vote will count or whether it will not count to elect a representative.

The editorial overlooks the point that the same two-party, winner-take-all system Canada and the U.S. share, gerrymanders, such that where you live plays too much of a role in who gets elected.

Remember, politicians are members of private clubs which are also known as political parties. Their primary concern is getting power and our electoral system makes getting power easier for them even without direct political interference.

In Manitoba, the electoral system divvies up the province into PC and NDP areas. The Yellow Dog Area in rural Manitoba, got its name from election campaigns which were so confident of election there that they bragged a yellow dog could get elected. Other parties who use our electoral system brag about being able to elect a fence post. Notice the disdain and disrespect for voters and the braggadocio our electoral system imparts.

Yet the Free Press completely ignored how our elections of one candidate per riding create geographic barriers for voters which is a problem known to gerrymandering. The newspaper is rife with labels such as safe seats, strongholds and yellow dogs, but somehow Elections Canada spares us from gerrymandering.

The Free Press knows that once a political party deems an area safe, it tends to take those voters there for granted. Our electoral system incentivizes an election campaign to chase the swing voter in a swing riding. When votes are not equal, some of our votes count and some do not count, politicians go after the few swing voters in a non-safe riding to add to their seat count.

If geography didn’t matter in voting, then what would become of the votes cast in a formerly safe region that were offside? They would count. What would happen to appeals not split the vote lest the other party come to power? This wouldn’t fly. What would happen to governments elected with a majority of seats but without a majority of votes?

Politicians keep the system that puts its thumb on the scale to elect them, to keep down the competition and make whole swaths of the jurisdiction easier for them to manage in an election campaign. Keeping a backward electoral system rife with problems out of political self-interest should be disqualifying.

Rarely do media, including the Free Press, let the public know that their majority government, as in Premier Wab Kinew’s government for example, got majority power without a majority of the vote. Instead, they say that the people have spoken, when in fact it is our electoral system that has spoken. Where are journalists’ questions about fixing our broken electoral system and the broken politics it produces? Where are these questions that politicians want us to ignore? Isn’t the media supposed to be on the voter’s side?

The gerrymandering and other work done by our electoral system is so dear to the private clubs that they will keep it, even though proportional representation solves systemic gerrymandering, safe seats, political monopoly, toxic politics, false majorities, greater unity and so on.

These private clubs will fight for improving our democracy if it improves their electoral prospects.

What if two teams in the NHL got a monopoly on winning by keeping rules that disadvantage the fairness of the entire league?

Political self-interest keeps a system that gives advantages to governing parties. Demand that geography not be a factor on whether your vote will elect someone other than a yellow dog or a fence post.

Politicians will act to make election rules that give them an advantage, be it unnecessary voter ID laws advanced by Conservatives or the alternative vote advanced by former prime minister Justin Trudeau. Failing to get his electoral reform of choice was Trudeau’s biggest regret and, had he succeeded, would have given the Liberals a big advantage in getting elected.

Proportional representation is like water to put out gerrymandering’s fire. Tell our governing politicians that you want votes to count no matter where you live. If that’s controversial and undoable then disqualify the naysayer. It’s not. It’s just that self-interest has a way of sapping political will.

Free Press editorial writers, please stop ignoring problems in our electoral system which achieves the gerrymandering governing politicians count on and acknowledge that whether a vote counts is often highly dependent on where that voter lives.

Sheri Oberman has been working for proportional representation since Trudeau misled her to believe he was promising it.