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Alberta needs electoral reform

Editor: I believe the NDP missed a historic opportunity and that is to initiate or implement electoral reform. Instead, they were too focussed on ideology.

Editor: I believe the NDP missed a historic opportunity and that is to initiate or implement electoral reform. Instead, they were too focussed on ideology.

This election was (again) characterized by strategic voting, avoiding vote splitting, wanting a meaningful opposition, keeping the one or other party out, etc., rather than voting for something positive. Cam Westhead did as good a job as can be expected.

So, was it a vote in favour of Miranda Rosin, or one against Rachel Notley?

Westhead was a novice four years ago and did well. So far nothing speaks against Rosin not being able to do as well. Time will tell.

The remedy, in my opinion, is electoral reform, some kind of proportional representation, as most of the civilized world has it. Then your vote has some weight even if it is not the first to pass the post.

But this was not even on NDP’s radar and it will likely be even less so on UCP’s.
For all of the above reasons the first past the post process favours a two-party system with almost always a majority government.

If Notley had hoped for another government, she was pipe dreaming. The basic fabric of Alberta voters is conservative.

Her party didn’t get a majority back then because of a better platform. Albertans were simply tired of 44 years of conservative rule.

The merger of the Wildrose Party and the Progressive Conservatives was likely the straw that broke the camels back.

While the NDP lost the election, the real losers are Albertans who may now have to live with an antiquated electoral system for another 44 years.

Dieter Remppel,

Canmore

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