This is yet another blaring alarm that winner-take-all electoral systems are fundamentally vulnerable to authoritarian capture. When a minority can claim 100% of the power through institutional design flaws, democracy itself becomes fragile.
What’s happening in the US is the logical endpoint of a system where millions of perfectly valid votes are systematically discarded in every election. Winner-take-all systems like FPTP create false majorities, weak democratic legitimacy, and eventually, as we’re witnessing, an environment where undermining democracy becomes politically viable.
The timing couldn’t be more critical for Canada. As we watch our southern neighbor’s democratic guardrails buckle in real-time, we must strengthen our own democracy through proportional representation. This isn’t about partisanship - it’s about ensuring our system can withstand similar pressures when they inevitably arrive here.
Note how the report still ranks Canada below the US as merely an “Electoral Democracy” rather than a “Liberal Democracy.” This should concern every Canadian who values our democratic institutions.
The most effective protection against authoritarianism is a truly representative government that derives its legitimacy from actually counting every citizen’s vote. A government representing the true majority of its citizens is much harder to capture than one elected by a manufactured minority.
This is yet another blaring alarm that winner-take-all electoral systems are fundamentally vulnerable to authoritarian capture. When a minority can claim 100% of the power through institutional design flaws, democracy itself becomes fragile.
What’s happening in the US is the logical endpoint of a system where millions of perfectly valid votes are systematically discarded in every election. Winner-take-all systems like FPTP create false majorities, weak democratic legitimacy, and eventually, as we’re witnessing, an environment where undermining democracy becomes politically viable.
The timing couldn’t be more critical for Canada. As we watch our southern neighbor’s democratic guardrails buckle in real-time, we must strengthen our own democracy through proportional representation. This isn’t about partisanship - it’s about ensuring our system can withstand similar pressures when they inevitably arrive here.
Note how the report still ranks Canada below the US as merely an “Electoral Democracy” rather than a “Liberal Democracy.” This should concern every Canadian who values our democratic institutions.
The most effective protection against authoritarianism is a truly representative government that derives its legitimacy from actually counting every citizen’s vote. A government representing the true majority of its citizens is much harder to capture than one elected by a manufactured minority.