Saturday, September 29, 2007

Ontario's MMP Referendum - October 10, 2007

Ontario's Provincial Election is rapidly approaching.

On Election Day, Ontarians will vote in a referendum on whether the Province should move to a Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP) system of government.

Our earlier post on MMP describes the proposed, new electoral system.

For the undecided, Straight Goods has a good selection of opinion pieces, pro and con:

ONTARIANS HAVE A CHANCE TO CHANGE AN UNFAIR VOTING SYSTEM by Rosemary Speirs Electoral reform could tip established politicians out of their comfy chairs at Queen's Park.

ELECTORAL SYSTEM NOT BROKEN by Geoffrey Stevens Upcoming Ontario referendum on PR is overkill.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION 101 by Penney Kome Ontario has a chance to bring its voting system into the 21st century.

VOTERS INDIFFERENT TO PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION by Marc Zwelling Not being able to say what will happen with PR is a big problem for proponents.

10 LOW POINTS IN CANADIAN ELECTIONS from Fair Vote Canada Ten examples of how First-Past-the-Post system distorts election results.

While I haven't made up my mind yet, I'm leaning hard in the direction of "No to MMP."

I'll be reading up on this over the weekend, and will have more to say about MMP later.

.....

UPDATE: October 5, 2007:

Our MMP position is now online. We say no to MMP.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well, I'm Italian and living in Ontario. There is no other Wester country such Italy that underwent more changes in its electoral system in the last 20 years. We had the totally proportional one for 45 years and then, since 1992, went to a mixed one (75% majoritarian, 25% proportional). Now we have something even different and worst, but this is not important, as it's changing again! Not to mention all the different systems for local elections.

My opinion is that there is no "perfect" electoral system. You have to change it each 20 or 30 years in order to avoid the rising of political patronages and other major defects, as the killing of political minorities. The proportional one works as a camera: it gives an actual picture of the electoral body, respecting all minorities, but this leads (usually) to little "governability", as I call it, to the country, i.e. coalition governments.

The majority system works as a transformer, because it gives the country a sure majority (usually) but no representation to the small parties.

A mixture between the two could put together the worst of the two, instead that the best of the two. That's why I always prefer a non mixed system.