My big decision
It's E-Day -1. I'm still not sure how I want to vote on the referendum about changing Ontario's legislature to a mixed member proportional system.
On the one hand, I'm cool with the idea of some of the smaller parties like the NDP or the Greens getting three or four more seats, in keeping with the actual proportion of the vote that they receive. That system benefits the major parties too, so that their losses aren't quite as crushing in bad election years as they would be under the FPTP system.
On the other hand, I am significantly less cool with the idea of some of the less mainstream parties winning seats. Remember, MPPs speaking in the House can't be prosecuted for libel or slander. Quite frankly, I'd rather not give the Family Coalition Party a platform from which to spout homophobia and religious intolerance.
In many parts of Europe, proportional representation systems mean that small, single-issue parties can get a foothold in parliament. Since the major parties rarely win majority governments under proportional systems, they have to form coalitions with these small parties, because the other major parties want to remain in opposition, so that they can present themselves as the government in waiting. This is how you end up with radical anti-immigrant parties helping to form the government in places like Denmark. While we may hate it right now when we get governments that 57% of the citizenry didn't vote for, will we be any more pleased if we get some cabinet ministers from a party that 97% of the voters would never support?
And then there's the problem of making party lists. Under the proposed rules, a party would get to make up its own rules for how it would draw up its lists. Now, I see how list members would be awesome for party henchminions like me, but what's in it for the rest of the population?
On the one hand, a party could use its list to elect some talented people who would otherwise never make it into the legislature. Sadly, the skill set needed to win an election, and the skill set needed to be a good MPP or cabinet minister do not completely overlap. In fact, I think some of the bombast and thick skin needed to win a campaign at the riding level is probably detrimental to your ability to actually connect with your constituents once you've won. So I would actually support the idea of letting the party leader appoint a few of the list candidates. But that's not very democratic, is it?
On the other hand, while riding nomination meetings can get a little ugly, they're pretty minor in comparison with the kind of behind-the-scenes brawling that happens when an entire party engages in something like a leadership convention. A twenty-way fight between the list candidates for a major party is going to get pretty intense, especially when the candidates at the top of the list will be virtually guaranteed a seat even before the election begins.
That's great news for henchminions like me. If I work hard on someone's campaign, and they end up at the top of the list, they're going to know that they owe their political career mostly to me, and only indirectly to ordinary voters. And remember, Liberal Party henchminions don't necessarily have to be Canadian citizens. They don't have to be eighteen years old, either. You can join the party at fourteen. Also, some communities in Ontario totally kick the asses of other ones at political organizing. If a major party doesn't make any rules about how many of its list candidates can come from each region of the province, I predict that five of the top ten people on every party's list will come from Peel Region and they will all be named Singh. (Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing.)
I'm also not so keen on the idea of reducing the number of constituency offices in the province from 103 to 90. Even if the riding MPPs get to hire more constituency staff to make up for the increased caseload, I think something will be lost. Constituency work is, IMHO, wretched drudgery only suitable for people with the temperament of saints, but I think it's the single most important thing keeping politicians connected with the reality of their constituents' lives.
If you have 39 MPPs who aren't spending every Friday meeting people face to face about bung-ups in the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, and welfare cheques that never arrived, and arcane OSAP rules that keep students out of school, and bitter cases in the Rental Housing Tribunal, then those 39 MPPs are just not going to be in touch with Ontarians the way the other 90 are. I'm sure they'll get letters from the public too, but they'll effectively be able to choose which casework they take on, and that changes everything.
So, on the whole, I'm leaning towards voting to keep the current FPTP system. Except that working on someone's list campaign could be a lot of fun...
On the one hand, I'm cool with the idea of some of the smaller parties like the NDP or the Greens getting three or four more seats, in keeping with the actual proportion of the vote that they receive. That system benefits the major parties too, so that their losses aren't quite as crushing in bad election years as they would be under the FPTP system.
On the other hand, I am significantly less cool with the idea of some of the less mainstream parties winning seats. Remember, MPPs speaking in the House can't be prosecuted for libel or slander. Quite frankly, I'd rather not give the Family Coalition Party a platform from which to spout homophobia and religious intolerance.
In many parts of Europe, proportional representation systems mean that small, single-issue parties can get a foothold in parliament. Since the major parties rarely win majority governments under proportional systems, they have to form coalitions with these small parties, because the other major parties want to remain in opposition, so that they can present themselves as the government in waiting. This is how you end up with radical anti-immigrant parties helping to form the government in places like Denmark. While we may hate it right now when we get governments that 57% of the citizenry didn't vote for, will we be any more pleased if we get some cabinet ministers from a party that 97% of the voters would never support?
And then there's the problem of making party lists. Under the proposed rules, a party would get to make up its own rules for how it would draw up its lists. Now, I see how list members would be awesome for party henchminions like me, but what's in it for the rest of the population?
On the one hand, a party could use its list to elect some talented people who would otherwise never make it into the legislature. Sadly, the skill set needed to win an election, and the skill set needed to be a good MPP or cabinet minister do not completely overlap. In fact, I think some of the bombast and thick skin needed to win a campaign at the riding level is probably detrimental to your ability to actually connect with your constituents once you've won. So I would actually support the idea of letting the party leader appoint a few of the list candidates. But that's not very democratic, is it?
On the other hand, while riding nomination meetings can get a little ugly, they're pretty minor in comparison with the kind of behind-the-scenes brawling that happens when an entire party engages in something like a leadership convention. A twenty-way fight between the list candidates for a major party is going to get pretty intense, especially when the candidates at the top of the list will be virtually guaranteed a seat even before the election begins.
That's great news for henchminions like me. If I work hard on someone's campaign, and they end up at the top of the list, they're going to know that they owe their political career mostly to me, and only indirectly to ordinary voters. And remember, Liberal Party henchminions don't necessarily have to be Canadian citizens. They don't have to be eighteen years old, either. You can join the party at fourteen. Also, some communities in Ontario totally kick the asses of other ones at political organizing. If a major party doesn't make any rules about how many of its list candidates can come from each region of the province, I predict that five of the top ten people on every party's list will come from Peel Region and they will all be named Singh. (Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing.)
I'm also not so keen on the idea of reducing the number of constituency offices in the province from 103 to 90. Even if the riding MPPs get to hire more constituency staff to make up for the increased caseload, I think something will be lost. Constituency work is, IMHO, wretched drudgery only suitable for people with the temperament of saints, but I think it's the single most important thing keeping politicians connected with the reality of their constituents' lives.
If you have 39 MPPs who aren't spending every Friday meeting people face to face about bung-ups in the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, and welfare cheques that never arrived, and arcane OSAP rules that keep students out of school, and bitter cases in the Rental Housing Tribunal, then those 39 MPPs are just not going to be in touch with Ontarians the way the other 90 are. I'm sure they'll get letters from the public too, but they'll effectively be able to choose which casework they take on, and that changes everything.
So, on the whole, I'm leaning towards voting to keep the current FPTP system. Except that working on someone's list campaign could be a lot of fun...