Fair Vote Canada
For those who follow my occasional ramblings, it should be clear that I'm interested in politics (sometimes 'para' politics to be sure), and this is one of those posts.
On October 10 2007 there's provincial election here in Ontario. This time round, there will be a second option on the ballot, and that is to change the electoral system. Instead of a "First Past The Post" system, which is de rigeur in North America, we have the option to CHANGE that to a version of Proportional Representation called Mixed Member, or MMP for short.
I'm all for it. MMP would level the playing field by giving proper representation to political parties that have a consistent support, but who's voices are stifled by the old guard. This encourages a more direct democracy and (I would hope) actually engage more people in the political process.
I've been following Fair Vote Canada for some time now, and their site has a number of links about proportional representation issues, from a supportive point of view. You can also check out the wikipedia entry.
posted by Doug @ 10:29 PM
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I think the question of whether this will actually help smaller parties is a non-trivial one, probability-wise.
The problem is that everybody gets two votes. On the one hand, one of these votes goes into a proportional rep, which helps small parties. On the other hand, giving everybody two votes encourages people to split their support. Will the NDPers who are much more tempted to use one of their votes strategically (they have a spare after all) be outweighed by the number of Liberals who would use the spare vote on a non-Liberal?
I'm not sure -- most of the temptation seems to be on the wrong side. Liberals will probably cast two Liberal votes. It's the NDP support that will be eroded by the dilution of their constituents' choices. The real question is: is this erosion outweighed by the 1/4 of the house that will now be proportional? I kinda doubt it!
But that's just the NDP. For *really* tiny parties with little to lose like the Greens this is probably a net benefit.
If half the house were proportional instead of 1/4, I would have a lot easier time supporting this, because the benefits would probably outweight the negatives. And besides, people will tend to see their two votes as having equal weight: this should be reflected in the results so that people can make rational decisions and the will of the people won't be artificially distorted.
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