New Zealand has just held an election. Strangely, it did not turn into Italy, or even Israel. I say strangely, because the election was held under a new system of counting the ballots that closely resembles proportional representation. Some element of PR is already in use in most advanced democracies: now that New Zealand has joined the crowd, it leaves only Great Britain, the United States and Canada stuck in the first-past-the-post mold.

Yet whenever cranks like me raise the subject, the immediate objection, aside from the usual mulish hostility to any proposal for change, is that it would turn Canada into Israel. Or possibly Italy. Let the number of seats apportioned to each party bear some relation to the proportion of the votes cast in its support, we are warned, and the result will inevitably be revolving-door government in a Parliament divided into dozens of tiny parties. Why, then, were New Zealanders so willing to give it a try?

Because the present system is broken. First-past-the-post is so named because a candidate has only to win more votes than his nearest competitor to take the riding, not an absolute majority of the votes cast. The most direct consequence is to exaggerate the majority enjoyed by the winning party, often grotesquely: with less than half the popular vote, governments have been formed with nearly all of the seats.

The corollary tendency is to artificially understate the standing of minority parties, especially if their support is spread relatively evenly across the map.

In theory, a party that took 49 per cent of the vote in every riding could wind up with no seats whatever. That's all right if there are only two parties, which is what the first-past-the-post system was designed for. In a multiparty contest, however, it produces results that are increasingly at odds with the desires of the voting public.

The particular frustration of New Zealanders was with the system's tendency to policy homogeneity, as the major parties contend for the fabled "median voter." Secure from any small-party threat, the Labour and National parties presented voters with essentially identical platforms, election after election.

And so, in a 1992 referendum, the people voted massively to throw the old system out -- over the strenuous objections of both major parties.

Certainly that tendency to uniformity has been observed at times in Canada.

But worse are the distortions in representation -- especially in provincial elections. Parties are routinely elected with a smaller proportion of the popular vote than their nearest competitor, or than they themselves obtained in losing the previous election.

Yet it is in federal politics that first-past-the-post has done the most damage.

In the most recent election, it very nearly killed Canada. Take the three parties that won the lion's share of the non-Liberal vote: Reform, with 19 per cent of the popular vote, won 52 seats. The Bloc Quebecois, with 13.5 per cent, won 54. The Conservatives, with 16 per cent, took just two.

Why did the Tories fare so poorly, when their popular vote was comparable?

Because the other two parties' votes were more regionally concentrated.

Reform won 36 per cent in B.C. and 52 per cent in Alberta. The Bloc, with 49 per cent of the vote in Quebec, gathered three quarters of the seats in that province. The system rewards those parties that can best exploit regional grievances, notably the Bloc, at the expense of those that attempt to take a national view.

The representation of the governing Liberals under this system is noteworthy, too. This is the first majority government since 1917 that did not also win a majority of the seats in Quebec. There have been times when the Quebec MPs alone have been enough to form a majority of the government caucus. In the present case, the government is ruled by its Ontario representatives. Either way, it means barely half the voters in one province can effectively rule the nation.

Is there a the middle path between the strange autocracy of first-past-the- post and the anarchy of Israeli-style PR? New Zealand seems to have found it. So has Germany and Sweden. It is, quite simply, a mixed system: half the members are elected from constituencies, the same way they are now; half are drawn from party lists, according to their share of the popular vote.

Voters mark their ballot twice: once for the local candidate, once for the party.

Whether it will take a referendum to change the system, or whether one of the smaller parties will see it is in their interest to take up the cause, Canada sorely needs some sort of electoral reform on these lines. If a people gets the government it deserves, it might at least get the government it voted for.