Upcoming Ontario Election - Mixed Member Proportional voting
As I'm sure most of you who live in Ontario are aware, we're having an election on October 10th. What a lot of people don't seem to be aware of, though, is that we will also be having a referendum on the same day, on the issue of proportional representation. This makes for a very important day - not only are we getting to decide on who the current government is going to be, we're being asked to make a decision about the very way that we choose our government.
The current system that we employ in the province is what's known as "first past the post" - the individual who gets the most votes in a riding gets the seat, and the votes of those who voted for other parties are, essentially, uncounted. The result of this is that you end up with parties like the Greens, who consistently poll at around 10% of the population, and yet who never end up getting any seats in the Legislature.
Under the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system that's being considered, this would change. In addition to voting for an individual representative, a voter would also choose a party to support. If, at the end of the vote tallying, there is a discrepancy between the amount of support the party received and the amount of seats they received, they would have additional MPPs added to the legislature as "Members-at-large" (MALs), who would be required to represent people from the entire province (the political parties would be required to publish their lists of potential Members-at-large prior to the election).
The benefits of an MMP system are that it will make the legislature more representative of the actual votes of the people, while at the same time retaining the accountability of having individual ridings. Additionally, this will most likely give more parties seats in the legislature, which will create more diverse groups access to power, and allow for more different perspectives to be voiced in the law-making process.
Critics of a proportional representation system, such as the MMP system being voted on in Ontario, claim that the process is itself undemocratic: that Members-at-large would, in essence, be 'unelected'. However, due to the advance publishing of lists of potential MALs, voters would be well aware of who they will ultimately be voting for, and what the consequences of their party vote would be.
Another concern is that, without a constituency to be tied to, the Members-at-large would be no more than puppets of the centralized leadership of the party, rather than presenting dissenting opinions within it. While this is a legitimate concern, it is one that equally applies to the current system as well - as was seen in cases such as Garth Turner or Carolyn Parrish, politicians who go against the mainstream opinion within their party face censure or even dismissal. The only was to have politicians who are loyal to their constituents only, and not party ideology, would be to eliminate political parties altogether. While this is something that could be considered in the future, for now it would require a more complete overhaul of the existing political system than what is currently under consideration.
Regardless of one's thoughts regarding proportional representation, this is a history referendum for not only Ontario, but also for all of North America.
For more information on proportional representation and the MMP referendum, please visit the following websites:
http://www.fairvotecanada.org/Ontario
http://www.voteformmp.ca/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_member_proportional_representation