The Martlet

Few who were born and raised in a “western” country would argue against the merits of democratic governance. We unquestioningly accept our democratic institutions because, we are told, they were earned through great sacrifice.

But even fewer would argue this nation’s form of democracy is perfect. As Winston Churchill once said, “democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried” — and we are content with that.

The options, as they are presented, are democracy (where you and I have a say in the running of our state) or those “other” forms, which usually refers to totalitarian, authoritarian, or fascist regimes.

But really, how much more say does your one vote give you in deciding who governs you than you would have had in, say, Soviet Russia or under the English Monarch?

In democracy, you still have no say in whose name actually makes the ballot — that’s determined by those who already possess power.

Maybe you consider that a red herring. The real difference between democracy and monarchy, for example, is that you and I have the possibility of holding office. Sure, but not really.

You and I have about the same chance of being Prime Minister as we do of being the next king of England. To be Prime Minster, you need to start from a place of wealth and connection. The sons and daughters of blue-collar workers do not become heads of western liberal democracies, right?

Still, you get to decide who represents your interests in the parliament. Unless, of course, you don’t vote for the political party that “traditionally” wins the riding you live in. Are your interests represented if you live in a Conservative riding and vote NDP, or vice versa?

What if you vote like I do, where you vote against a party rather than for one? I don’t vote to be represented, I vote for the party with the best chance of beating the party I don’t want to win. If everyone voted that way, how successful would our system be?

And here’s the important question: how much influence does your representative really have on their party’s platform? The party isn’t going to run a candidate with any significant variances in view.

So then the talk moves to different electoral systems — proportional, or single transferable vote. On a larger scale, it’s multi-party elections versus two-party systems, versus single-party systems (which they say can’t really be democratic anyway).

What do all these democratic systems have in common? They all presuppose the necessity of the political party. And here is the crux: the political party is strangling the value out of democracy.

We don’t vote for an individual, we vote for a party. We are given the “choice” of political platforms — even though we know that, once elected, the political platform becomes void. Sometimes, we vote for a party because our parents voted for that party. Sometimes, we vote for a party because that party comes closest to representing our personal beliefs.

How often do we concern ourselves with what the individual candidates stand for? I’m sure there are examples where voters that “traditionally” select Party X instead voted for Party Y on the strength (or weakness) of the candidates in their riding, but I would guess the amount of times this occurs in any given election cycle is insignificant as far as who gets elected (with the exception of some sort of scandal during the campaign).

On the other hand, I’d guess that the amount of people who vote blindly for a banner (without knowing more about their candidate than their name alone) does significantly impact the results, each and every election.

Getting rid of political parties would remove this lazy form of voting. No longer could you show up on election day and simply vote for a party. You would be forced to look into what the candidates in your riding were actually running on, and would be able to hold them responsible for broken campaign promises.

The whole point of democracy is supposed to be representation. The lack thereof is undoubtedly one reason that participation rates are falling across the western liberal democratic sphere. Banning political parties would decentralize the political process by making representatives accountable to those who elected them, rather than the party to which they belong.

And that might put at least some political power back where it belongs: in the hands of the electorate, rather than keeping it all in the hands of the elected and their sponsors.