" ... the Dodo suddenly called out ‘The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting and asking, ‘But who has won?' This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought ... At last the Dodo said, ‘everybody has won, and all must have prizes.'”

– From Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

In elections, as in life, there will be winners and there will be losers. That is inevitable in any contest where strength, speed, skill, intelligence, or in the case of politics, popularity is measured.

In Canada, federally and in provincial and territorial jurisdictions, first-past-the-post, or the-most-votes-wins, is the system by which we elect our MPs, MPPs and MLAs.

Those calling for electoral reform want to replace first-past-the-post with some degree of proportional representation.

This would entail electing some or all candidates on the basis of the popular vote, whereby traditional ridings would cease to exist or be diminished in lieu of a stable of candidates to shore up proportionality after votes are tallied.

It would be more representative of the voting population, electoral reformers say.

Results from the 2006 federal election illustrate Canada's electoral dysfunction, conclude reformers, who point to a myriad of seemingly disproportionate results:

In the 2006 vote, more than 650,000 Green Party supporters nationwide elected no one to Parliament, while fewer than 500,000 Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada elected 20 MPs.

In the case of Bloc Québécois supporters versus NDP supporters, the former group delivered 11 per cent of the popular vote and won 17 per cent of the 308 seats in the House of Commons, while NDP voters comprised 17 per cent of the popular vote, but garnered 11 per cent of the seats.

A little closer to home, the 2002 Yukon election results provide the perfect touchstone for reformers in their quest to prove how unfair things are.

In that contest, the Yukon Party won 12 of the legislature's 18 seats with 40 per cent of the popular vote, the NDP won five seats with 27 per cent of the popular vote and though the Liberals captured 29 per cent of the popular vote, that translated into just one seat.

At face value these figures bolster the argument for electoral reform. However, rarely is any attention paid to the number of voters in smaller ridings compared to those in urban ridings, and how proportional representation on a federal level would drastically reduce the Yukon's already marginal "voting power” when up against comparatively massive voter numbers.

Last night at Whitehorse Elementary School, more than 50 people turned out to hear seven Yukon notables' views on electoral reform.

Those in favour, like Yukon New Democratic Party Leader Liz Hanson, insist it would bring a greater diversity of views to Canada's Parliament and legislatures.

But economist and former Canadian diplomat Keith Halliday, calls those promises of diversity "overblown”, having seen first hand what proportional representation has wrought in the European Parliament.

"On the far right, essentially you've got neo-Nazis from Austria's Freedom Party ... and on the other side you've got hardcore ex-communists,” Halliday said.

Retired public servant Steve Smyth noted that voters in British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island have rejected electoral reform.

But the former political science instructor said talk of reforming the electoral system would never materialize into action until citizens had a more concrete idea of what that could mean.

"We need to try it in a jurisdiction and it doesn't have to be a permanent thing,” Smyth suggested. "Until we have a case study, we're just going to keep talking about it and we'll never see it happen.”

When Hanson agreed with the idea of a test run and used the opportunity to promote legislative renewal – her predecessor, the late Todd Hardy's goal to improve how the territory's Westminster form of government functions – Halliday offered the following blessing in jest.

"Sure, you could try it in Whitehorse Centre first,” he said, adding that Hanson and Kirk Cameron, her Liberal challenger in the downtown riding's Dec. 13 byelection, could "divvy up days in the legislature” based on the number of votes each won on polling day.

Cameron, who also took part in last evening's panel on the voter reform fence, drew attention to the dearth of 20-somethings in the audience.

"I think there's a statement there,” said Cameron, adding that there was a general lack of overall strategy in engaging younger voters.

Those calling to reform Canada's electoral system latch on to poor participation amongst the youth, caging their desire for change under the banner of democracy and fairness.

Young people don't vote because they believe their vote doesn't matter, or they don't vote because they feel no connection with the candidates, are common refrains from reformers.

But there is little evidence to show which would improve voter turnout amongst the young – changing the voting system or fielding better candidates offering more interesting and relevant platforms.

Last evening, apart from acknowledging the importance of engaging voters, little attention was paid to the citizen's role in a strong democracy – that turning out to vote once every five years is the bare minimum and people need to do more than simply let the political rhetoric wash over them up until polling day.

Between the Yukon's 2002 and 2006 territorial elections, turnout fell from 78 per cent to 72 per cent voter participation.

For David Brekke, a local proponent of electoral reform who organized Tuesday's panel discussion, it's not so much about turnout as it is about the fact that everybody's vote counts, or at least the chance it counts is improved.

For the Yukon, Brekke proposes a mixed proportional system, in which seats would be allocated in the territorial legislature based on outright winners in paired ridings with the balance of seats to be distributed according to the popular vote. To see how it would work, visit www.electoralchange.ca.

Brekke claims the system would permit individual votes to count up to 90 per cent of the time instead of less than 50 per cent under the current first-past-the-post regime.

It all sounds good on paper, but in reality it's a masquerade for extreme socialism, whereby equality of opportunity is supplanted by equality of outcome, akin to what the Dodo resigns itself to do in Alice in Wonderland.

In the big picture, equality of opportunity can create undesirable results for some, while the later notion of equality of outcome is wholly undesirable as means of operating and functioning in a free society.

One price of freedom is understanding that in a democracy, your candidate, idea or movement is not always going to win the day.