VoteCheck: The Quebec Election

Welcome to VoteCheck!  We'll be publishing election analysis for municipal, provincial and federal elections in Canada to show voters how First Past The Post doesn't give us the governments we actually voted for.  Our first installment is about this week's provincial election in Quebec.  The headlines all say the same thing: "Liberal Majority".  But the actual numbers tell a different story.  The truth is, the majority of Quebec voters did not prefer the Liberal Party.

The Liberal party only got 4 out of every 10 votes - hardly a majority.  But because of the quirks of our sub-standard voting system, they somehow ended up with over half of the seats, a huge 15% gift that they didn't earn.

And of course if the Liberal party got an artificial boost, that means those extra seats had to taken from someone else.  Indeed, all the other parties in this election had their seat count artificially reduced!  The most noticeable distortion was for Quebec Solidaire.  With 7.6% of the vote, they deserved to win ten seats.  Instead, they won only three. 

These distortions reveal the inadequacies of our voting system.  Sadly, distorted election results and fake majorities are quite common in Canada.  But we can get rid of these problems with proportional representation. Watch our video, share it with your friends, and join our movement. 

Voters deserve better than this. 

[NOTE: If you live in Quebec, check out Mouvement démocratie nouvelle, a provincial campaign for proportional representation. Great article here]