Prince Edward Islanders are slated to go to the Polls November 28th to decide whether or not they want Proportional Representation in their Province. See Story
I sincerely hope they vote no.
I am about as adamantly against Proportional Representation as you could possibly be. I loathe it. The reason? I hate minority governments. All you have to do is look at the one we have now to see why. Instability, constant election speculation, nothing getting done. Oh and the NDP, the party with 18 seats has half of the power. Does anyone else find that unnerving?
But if that isn't enough to convince you, perhaps this is:
These are the parties that, if Proportional Representation was in play, would have just missed getting 1 seat in the last election because they didn't run in all ridings, and a projection of where they would have finished if they had done so.
Progressive Canadian - 4
Christian Heritage - 4
Marijuana - 3
Libertarian - 1
Canadian Action - 1
[sarcasm]Now I don't know about you, but I defiantly love the idea of the Marijuana Party holding the balance of power in the highest legislature in the land.[/sarcasm]
Proportional Representation is a good idea, that is wrong for the way our legislature works. If there was a system out there that gave each party an amount of influence that was proportional to the amount of vote they got, I would support it. But a system like this gives far too much power to fringe parties, which you may like if you are a member/support of said parties, but not so much if you aren't.
If anyone has a system that would work better than this please feel free to comment on it and if I like it I'll post it in a future article.
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6 comments:
A follow-up to my first message.
Here is my column back in May explaining and supporting the Globe's MMPR model
http://www.progressivebloggers.ca/diary.php?cmd=view&id=2
I like the single transferrable vote that Suzuki was pushing in BC. You still get mainstream parties winning, you eliminate undue strategic voting, and you count more votes.
There are all different kinds of PR. It's not a yes or no choice.
Scott: That takes care of half of my fear, the fear of fewer Majorities. But it doesn't address the other half: That of small parties potentially wielding enormous power. Of course that can happen under our current system as well, and is happening as we speak. But it is rarer, as evidenced by the fact we haven't had such a situation since 1979. What I'm looking for is some sort of system that gives parties the amount of influence proportional to the amount of vote they receive. Why should a party that got 5% of the vote be in a position where they could possibly wield %50 of the power? We’d be replacing a small problem with a larger one.
What I’m looking for is some sort of weighted system for voting in the house, in addition to Proportional Representation. I’m not a math genius but now that I think of it my brother is, so I’ll ask him for help on this. But you understand what I mean right? I want it so that if you win %5 of the vote you have %5 of the say.
James: Not necessarily, just check out the latest seat totals for the 2005 election in New Zealand where they have MMP, the system advocated in B.C.
Labor - 50
National - 48
NZ First - 7
Green - 6
Maori - 4
United Future - 3
ACT - 2
Jim Anderton's Progressive – 1
Talk about a grand coalition.
You're speaking out against one particular implementation of proportional representation, but in practice there are many kinds. Mixed-Member Proportional, for example, includes a five-percent threshhold that all parties need to clear before gaining any seats, which would easily prevent the Marijuana Party from occupying any seats in Parliament. (I describe that system here, if you're curious.)
Also, you make the common mistake of lumping together minority governments and coalition governments and pronouncing them both unstable. In practice, it doesn't work this way. Minority governments are unstable, but coalition governments tend to be quite stable.
Ideal: Yes, I've been turned around somewhat on the Minority issues I had with PR, but the disproportionat power issue I address in my last comment, check it out.
hishighness,
I can see being concerned that smaller parties would get 50% of the power, and certainly this minority government situation in Canada has made it look like it would be that way. In practice, though, it doesn't tend to work that way in a stable coalition. A coalition government develops its policy together, in a situation where the ideas of the dominant party in the coalition carry more weight. Then the parties act as a team to implement it. You don't get the kind of "do this, or I'll stop propping you up" kind of maneuvering that you saw in this last government in Canada, because it's in everybody's best interest to stick to the policies that have been devised and actually see them through to completion. In Germany's last coalition between the centre-left SPD and the left-wing Greens, for example, the Greens had to give a lot more than the SPD did because the SPD had received more of the votes and therefore more political clout.
MMP isn't the system advocated in B.C., by the way -- they were voting on whether to switch from FPTP to STV, which is a totally different system. MMP is the system advocated in PEI.
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