Opinion: 'Having an old-timey voting system can actually be pretty awesome'

Canada's first-past-the-post voting system is under attack. 

At least, there are plenty of opportunities to criticize it, as the federal government undertakes its plan for electoral reform.

It's been called unfair, illegitimate, and more creatively, invented in a time when "people thought the Earth was flat."

But the National Post's Tristin Hopper set out to find some arguments in favour of first-past-the-post. 

What did he learn? That "having an old-timey voting system can actually be pretty awesome."

Here are four of his arguments:

1. It lets you know who to blame.

"If Canada's in tatters in four years, it's exclusively Justin Trudeau's fault, and he can't weasel out by pointing the finger at some coalition partner."

2. It throws bums out.

"Canadians don't just vote out governments, they vote them the hell out; the Progressive Conservatives reduced to two seats in 1993, the B.C. NDP reduced to two seats in 2001."

3. It's not fair, but it does fair things. 

"In fact if you've got to do something necessary, but politically un-sexy, there's nothing like the security of a majority government."

4. New ideas aren't shut out, they're just stolen.

"New ideas do find their way onto Parliament Hill, just in a skullduggerous way that is obviously quite frustrating to political upstarts: If you want to shake things up, you have to run a quixotic campaign and, if you get enough votes and shake up enough ridings, your best ideas will simply be hijacked."

Click the play button above to hear Tristin Hopper's entire audio essay.