Amend Elections and Parliament Acts

AI summary

Petitioners ask Parliament to amend the Canada Elections Act and parliamentary law to require dual-option ballots (party, candidate or both), seal party-vs-person ratios, and trigger immediate by-elections when party-only votes exceed person-only votes on floor-crossing.

AI summaries describe petitioners’ requests and claims. Consult the official record for the full text.

Official petition

Petition to the House of Commons Under the current Westminster parliamentary system, Members of Parliament are legally permitted to cross the floor and switch political parties without immediate democratic consequences; Modern voters increasingly vote based on national party platforms and leadership, meaning floor-crossing can disenfranchise voters who supported a specific party banner; and Existing proposals to completely ban floor-crossing fail to respect instances where an MP retains a strong personal, grassroots mandate from their community. We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Parliament of Canada Act to implement a Data-Driven Floor-Crossing Accountability Framework utilizing the following three mechanics: 1. A Dual-Option Voting Ballot: Introduce a local ballot allowing voters to explicitly check a box for the individual candidate, the political party, or both. Dual-checked ballots will count fully toward winning the seat but will be mathematically neutralized as a "wash" regarding party-versus-individual ratios; 2. Sealed Election Data Protection: Require Elections Canada to securely seal the ratio of "Party-Only" versus "Person-Only" votes on election night, keeping the metrics confidential to protect the day-to-day equality and stability of all sitting MPs; and 3. An Automatic By-Election Trigger: Require that if an MP requests to cross the floor to join a rival party, the data must be unsealed. If the "Party-Only" vote share outnumbers the "Person-Only" vote share, the MP's seat is declared vacant, and an immediate by-election is triggered where the defector is legally permitted to run under their new banner, allowing local citizens to make the ultimate democratic decision.

Government response

No government response is available yet.