wastedvotes.ca

With the drumbeats to yet another federal election giving the lie to the myth that FPTP somehow creates stable governments I have put up the 2009 Nova Scotia elections. Another false majority that is the most common result of a First Past the Post election.

While the referendum results in B.C were disappointing, the struggle for a better electoral system continues. I'll be working on putting up the results of the recent B.C and Nova Scotia Elections in the next little while.

Small update with the official results for the 2008 federal election. The instability in Canadian federal politics can be directly tied to the absurd situation of the Bloc Quebecois holding the balance of power due to FPTP exaggerating the power of regional parties. The Bloc have the support of less than 10% of Canadians and thus should have only about 30 seats. Not the *75* that they hold. Federalist parties in Quebec have more than 61% support but only 33% of the representation. How does *that* make any sense?

After a longer than expected hiatus I have updated the site with the *interim* results of the 2008 Federal elections held on the 14th of October. Not only did more than half of the votes cast not elect anyone again but we also have two new ridings in the top 5 most undemocratically elected ridings of all the ridings tracked on the site. With a Brand new Champion in Gatineau in Quebec where the winner won with LESS THAN 30% of the voters in the riding actually voting for him. Coming in at the fourth spot overall is Guelph Ontario where far less than a third of the voters voted for the person who for some reason is considered to be representing the whole riding.

It was an extremly strong showing by the Green party that led to the very undemocratic result in Guelph and it was strong level of support for the New Democratic Party that led to the extremely absurd result in Gatineau. It is only in a fundamentally flawed system that more competitive races and *more* options for voters would lead to such ridiculous results.

Keep in mind that these are based on interim results as of October 17th 2008. I will update the results as soon as the final official tally is released by Elections Canada.

The 2005 BC provincial elections have been added to the site. A false majority government is the typically distorted result of this election. The Green Party received more than 9% of the vote and yet there is nobody at all in the BC parliament representing these voters. What kind of electoral system would allow all these citizens to go unrepresented? An antiquated one whose time has passed.

It took a while but I have added all the elections from Ontario 1981 till 2003 onto the site. That brings the grand total of election results on this site to eight which leads to more than 21.5 million votes which did not gain representation in parliament.

The 'Most Wasted Votes' booby prize has also changed hands from the last federal election to the 1990 Ontario election. The top 5 districts with the most wasted votes all come from this election. With members of legislative assembly that claim to 'represent' a constituency in which barely 30% of the people voted for them, and a stunning 100 districts that had sole representation from a person who had the support of less than half of the voters this was an election that saddled Ontario with an unready governing party that had full majority power even though it got less than 38% of the votes in an election. All thanks to the unrepresentative results of FPTP. Take a browse through this and the other new elections to see how poorly Canada is being served by this antiquated electoral system.

Any and all comments are more than welcome. I've gone through the results on the site with a fine tooth comb but if any issues have slipped by me then please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

After a slightly longer hiatus than intended I have added a new feature to the website. Now you can see results of the Ontario 2003 election by region. One of my favourite examples of the distortion of Canadian votes is the myth that the Toronto region has no significant support for Conservatives. This myth is completely busted by looking at how the region actually voted (click http://www.wastedvotes.ca/?q=node/2/Ontario/38/25/REGION ). More than 26% voted for the PC party in 2003, far more support than the NDP had and yet all of these voters had absolutely NO effect on parliament and elected no one. Completely and totally unfair.

The information of which district goes into which region was pilfered by me from the very gracious Greg Morrow and his excellent site http://democraticspace.com/blog/ . I had to modify it a bit as I was working with the 2003 election and not the 2007 one, so if anybody sees any errors or discrepancies than please send me an email.

I have another pretty large update planned, hopefully it'll take me less than a month to get it up this time :).

I started this site long before I even heard of the Citizens Assembly of Electoral Reform or the just ended referendum. And so while the referendum was a setback, it was a temporary one, this site isn't going anywhere and I'm planning to add more results and more features to make even more plain just how the only people who matter in an electoral system, the voters, are being extremely ill-served by the Canadian system.

I've been getting some amazing feedback and have updated the site based on some of the very useful comments. Hopefully the site is clearer and easier to use now.

Thanks guys, and keep the suggestions coming.

New feature on the site. See the districts with the worst record in terms of wasted votes in Canada. The number of districts in which more than half of the votes cast are thrown away and make no difference in the makeup of parliament is truly astonishing.