- by Pat Steenberg and Frank Barningham

How will I make my voice heard in the next federal election? I want to vote, but cannot support any party.

This is not because all parties are bad, or that none are good; I simply recognize that our first-past-the-post electoral system ensures that all parties – all legislators – behave the same way.

Since the 1984 federal election, the last in which any party received a majority of the popular vote, the average government plurality (share of the vote) was less than 40 per cent.

Given that our federal voter participation rate over most of this period has been hovering in the mid-sixties, Canadian governments sit with the support of roughly one quarter of Canada's eligible electorate.

This is not only undemocratic, it is fundamentally wrong.

While Parliament sits, members' focus is primarily on the next election - getting their own party in, getting the other party out or, if currently in power, increasing their seat count.

The system fosters the kind of gotcha governance we have endured over the past several Parliaments. Any issue is an opportunity to put another party - another leader - down. All issues are dealt with as equally critical, with the result that all issues seem equally insignificant.

Ordinary Canadians who have participated across the country in forums on electoral reform of various kinds, including that run by the Canada's Law Commission in the early 2000s, have overwhelmingly recommended that we move to a proportional system.
Yet, every time a government has put their recommendations to the public for ratification, the question or  process has been engineered so as to virtually guarantee no change to the status quo.

Prime Minister Trudeau promised that 2015 would be the last first-past-the-post federal election; I voted for that. More fool I.
I refuse to go on enabling a system that makes a mockery out of my country's government. I will no longer sit on the deck of the Titanic while we rearrange the chairs.

I will not do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.
I want Elections Canada to make my vote heard by enabling me to decline my ballot and have it counted as “declined,” not "spoiled.”
I want my vote to be counted and my voice heard.

Pat Steenberg has been a CBC radio producer, a House of Commons procedural clerk and the leader of a national NGO. She is retired and lives in Ottawa.

Frank Barningham of Owen Sound explains the process by which you can have your vote counted.

A 'special'/mail-in ballot can be requested from Elections Canada. This is a blank ballot on which the name of the candidate you support has to be written in. This is the opportunity to write in "DECLINE".

Your voice will then be heard and counted as such and not as a 'spoiled' ballot.