On October 10, Ontario’s 8.4 million voters will have the chance either to re-install Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals into power or else elect a new government. Twelve registered parties, 600 candidates, 107 available seats: somehow, the messy process of democracy has to sort out winners from losers and produce a new ruling elite.

Voters in Canada’s largest province appear to be approaching this task with some indifference, if not reluctance. After all, they share the distinction of having recently elected and then been betrayed by all three major parties — first Bob Rae’s NDP (1990 to ’95), then Mike Harris’s Conservatives (1995 to 2002) and finally McGuinty’s Liberals (2002 to present).

Yet Ontarians also have the chance to make history. In addition to deciding who’s to govern, on election day they’ll also vote in a referendum asking them how they wish to choose their governments in future. Specifically, they must decide either to hold faith in the existing single-member plurality system (a.k.a. first past the post or FPTP) or instead adopt a “mixed member” form of proportional representation (PR).

What’s at stake is the basis on which power is distributed among political parties. Currently, a riding’s candidate who secures more votes — even just one more — than his or her nearest rival gets elected; the party with the greatest number of elected candidates forms the government. If that party happens to get more than 50 per cent of all available seats, it’s a majority government; with fewer than 50 per cent, it’s a minority government and has to depend on the support, tolerance or goodwill of opposition parties in order to remain in power.

Under PR, on the other hand, the number of seats each party wins is — as the name suggests — proportional to its total share of the popular vote. A party that secures 30 per cent of the vote would, in theory, receive 30 per cent of the available seats.

The difference in outcome between the two systems can be dramatic. In a four-way contest, for example, party A might receive 30 per cent of the vote, parties B and C each get 25 per cent and party D just 20. In an FPTP system, party A’s candidate gets elected even though 70 per cent of voters preferred someone else. The other parties end up with nothing. If this pattern was repeated in other ridings, party A would be elected into power despite its clear failure to win a majority of popular support.

Proportional representation is designed to address this imbalance by allocating power on the basis of actual popular support. If the party winning 30 per cent of the votes was the single largest party, it would have to work with at least one other party in order to govern effectively.

In short, the current system — as employed in all provincial and federal jurisdictions in Canada — seriously skews the will of the people by magnifying the small margin of individual victories into artificially large majorities.

Consider the last five federal elections. Not once did the winning party come close to securing a majority of the popular vote, but this did not prevent the Liberals from achieving three healthy parliamentary majorities under Jean Chrétien in 1993, 1997 and 2000. And even the minority governments formed under Paul Martin and Stephen Harper were significantly larger than their proportional share of the vote would have merited. In fact, newly elected governments received, on average, 36 seats more than they would have under a system of PR.

Given such obvious distortions within the present system, it’s hard to imagine that any serious argument could be made against the shift to some form of proportional representation in Canada. Yet each time the adoption of PR looks possible — as in British Columbia in 2005 and in Ontario right now — opponents of the system trot out the same old warnings.

PR is inherently anti-democratic, it is argued. PR would replace a system that doesn’t require fixing. PR would create weak and unstable minority governments based on compromise and consensus. Or best of all, as former Liberal minister Sheila Copps wrote in the Edmonton Sun recently, PR “institutionalizes extremist influence” by providing previously excluded voices with a presence in the legislature. “Anyone who thinks this is good for democracy is either naive or nuts.”

Perhaps there is some tiny element of truth to all these charges. However, the larger point remains that our present system — forged in the late 1700s and refined over the next century — is now badly outdated and needs replacing, not further tinkering. One need look no further than here in Alberta to appreciate why.

It is common practice to describe Alberta as the home of one-party rule. First, Social Credit ruled the province from 1935 to 1971, then the Progressive Conservatives reigned uninterrupted for the past 36 years and counting. It’s just the way we are, much to the chagrin and frustration of opposition politicians.

But wait, on no fewer than four of the last 10 elections, the Conservatives failed to win a majority of the popular vote, but thanks to the bias and flaws of the province’s FPTP system, they have never won less than 60 per cent of the available seats. On average, that system gifts the Tories an extra 21 seats at each election.

The seemingly invincible Conservative machine is largely myth, therefore, and had Alberta exercised a form of PR over the past three decades, opposition parties would have played a far greater role in determining policy and practice. For that reason, if no other, the coming election and referendum in Ontario should give many in this province cause for hope.