The fact that the U.K.’s electorate heads to the polls on Thursday (May 5) to vote on changing its electoral system will have “no impact at all” on Canada.

That’s the view of Wayne Smith, Toronto-based executive director of Fair Vote Canada.

“Most people don’t have a clue it’s going on,” Smith told the Straight by phone today (May 4).

In the unlikely event Britons take the plunge and ditch their first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all system—the same one that just secured Prime Minister Stephen Harper a majority—Smith said, “Most people aren’t going to notice.”

However, as a poli-sci geek, Smith himself is curious to see how the “experiment” will turn out, if successful, based on the fact it has been divisive in the coalition government. British prime minister David Cameron wants the status quo, while Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is in favour of the alternative vote.

Smith has already made known his displeasure with Canada’s system, noting that the Conservative vote share only went up by less than two percent, yet they have moved from minority government to “whopping majority”.

So overall, he is not confident Harper will do a Clegg and go to the people to seek a mandate for electoral reform.

“Stephen Harper was in favour of proportional representation back when he was out of government,” Smith said. “But that’s a common thing. So was Jean Chrétien, and so was Rene Lévesque. All sorts of people are in favour of changing the voting system when they’re not winning. Once they get elected, it somehow slips their mind.”

As Smith noted, “When you ask people to change the voting system, you’re asking them to vote themselves out of a job. As they say, the turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.”

That is, unless their name happens to be Nick Clegg.