Dan and Sarah Nicksy are on a mission.
“To simply start the conversation with regular citizens of Ontario and Canada that there is a better, more effective, and more democratic electoral system out there,” stated Sarah explaining that that she and her husband Dan have been proponents of a more democratic electoral voting system for quite some time.
The couple gave a presentation to a group of approximately 20 people at the Elk’s Club Thursday night, on the need to improve electoral democracy.
Their goal is to educate voters on how the current provincial-federal electoral system works, and why they say it is failing Canadians while explaining how other countries are experiencing success with their systems.
“Suffice it to say there are several different types of democratic electoral systems used around the world and when you ranked them based on how democratic they are, (our) first past the post comes in second last,” said Dan.
“First past the post is the system under the winner-take-all all umbrella (used for federal and provincial elections in Canada) and likewise, proportional representation has many systems under its umbrella,” explained Sarah.
Proportional representation is defined as “An electoral system in which parties gain seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them.”
“Over the years and over several failed citizens assemblies and the government preventing electoral reform in many different ways, we’ve realized that one of the major stumbling blocks to Canada having a healthier democracy is that citizens just don’t really grasp that there are other options out there and that the democracy we have is actually fairly unhealthy and dysfunctional,” stated Sarah.
“And this is why every time it comes to a citizen’s assembly or a referendum, the citizens just don’t know enough about it to vote ‘Yes, I would like a different system.’
So, the couple has taken it upon themselves to spread the word.
“Hoping that they will start to do the same and have the general public inform themselves on this topic so that the next time we do have a referendum or a citizens assembly people know enough about the topic to realize that this is a good thing for citizens, and that they should be proponents for change in our electoral system,” said Sarah.
Dan stressed that voters can have a different, “better” option.
“A lot of people just don’t know, they’re just not aware. It is not a thing that is on their radar. If you had only ever heard of pepperoni pizza, and you thought pepperoni was the only type of pizza, you would never seek out meat lovers, or Hawaiian or deluxe, something that is better, because you don’t know it is an option. So, we’re trying to inform people that yes, there are other options. Yes, they are more democratic. Yes, your vote would matter if Canada used those systems,” said Dan.
“Our hope is that if people are aware of this, then they will either advocate for change, or vote for change in a referendum, or just make other people more aware because the more people who are aware, the louder we can holler at our politicians to actually fix the system for us.”
The crowd heard that the current system is “not very representative. “
“Most people aren’t represented by a candidate or a party they voted for, there is a lot of very strong constituency links between politicians and citizens in that there is not very much incentive for politicians to listen to their constituents no matter what party those constituents actually voted for,” said Sarah.
“For example, in Canadian elections in 2019 only 49 per cent of the votes were actually impactful and actually elected a representative,” shared Sarah.
New Zealand was used as a comparison.
Roughly 30 years ago that country voted to replace its traditional "first past the post"system with mixed-member proportional representation.
“Which is one of the most highly democratic voting systems, and 95 to 96 per cent of their votes are impactful, so that is a huge difference,” explained Sarah.
“Just based on that alone, it is clear there is a lot of room for improvement from our current first past the post system to something like proportional representation, or a more democratic voting system. About 80 per cent of the developed democratic world uses proportional representation. So, most of the world uses it successfully and their systems are a lot more functional than ours. It makes sense to try to catch up to the rest of the developed world.”
Admittedly it is difficult to convince people who are complacent to get out and vote.
“That is as a result of our current system,” stated Sarah.
“A lot of people in Ontario and Canada don’t feel that voting matters,” added Dan.
“They ask ‘Why should I bother, I never get anything, I never see anything different.’ That goes back to if only 49 per cent of the votes cast in an election are actually impactful as far as who gets represented, then yeah people are right, voting isn’t as impactful as it should be. So, people get frustrated and then they get apathetic.”
Not an electoral reform expert, Sarah suggests the next step after voters do their homework.
“Ask for a citizen’s assembly on electoral reform. What a citizen’s assembly does is it basically gets and takes a selection of Canadians that represent our population as a whole and educates them with actual reform experts and politicians and electoral system experts so that we can actually make an informed decision,” said Sarah.
“I think we need to change to proportional representation because so many studies have been done and countries have been using this for centuries with great success.”
Dan agrees.
“People who are experts in electoral reform recommend proportional representation systems as the highest quality form of democracy,” explained Dan.
The pair began making presentations last year, so far staying local.
“There is currently a motion in the House of Commons on electoral reform and the reason we got started last year is because the Federal Liberals were holding a vote at their convention as to whether or not they should debate this party policy. We’re not associated with one party or the other, but the fact that a major political party is going to put this in their platform, we want to see that in everybody’s platform, so that’s why now,” explained Dan.
“There is a ton of movement mostly at the federal level around citizens assemblies and electoral reform. And so there is going to be another vote, whether it be with a citizen’s assembly or with a referendum. There is going to be another vote coming, on changing the electoral system,” stated Sarah.
The couple wants it made clear that they are non-partisan, with no hidden agenda.
“We’re two people who have been constantly frustrated our entire voting lives with how broken our current system is. We see this as a way we can do something about it,” Sarah clarified.
"We're just a couple of people who would like to see our democracy work better, and that starts with us citizens educating ourselves," explained Dan.
They have discovered that whenever they speak to people about electoral reform and proportional representation, conversations get started, which is exactly what they set out to accomplish.
“Before I came here, I just knew that it is not working, and I was hoping there would be a solution. I have never heard of this proportional representation. So now, it has given me hope,” shared Claude Janveaux following the presentation.
