Everywhere you go today the small but vocal cadre of Electoral Reform nuts are out there trying to drum up support for their flawed system to replace the flawed system we have now.
I wish someone would come up with a system that allocates power (read: not seats, power) according to how many votes they got nationally. I've tried to figure one out but my brother got all the math in the family and he couldn't care less about politics, I have to remind him to vote.
Basically my biggest worry when it comes to an electoral reform is, and always has been, the nightmare scenario of a small party like the NDP or a fringe party like the Greens holding the balance of power in Parliament.
While it is fun to try to see the supporters of reform, who by and large are usually supporters of these parties (gee, I wonder why) try to twist themselves in to knots trying to explain how it's unfair that a party that gets %40 of the vote getting absolute power is unfair but a party getting %2.5 getting essentially the same thing is a-ok. It's not so fun that I actually want to do it.
Really the problem that we have isn't electoral reform, it's Parliamentary reform. Giving seats based on percentage is fine, but in our current system seats can either be completely meaningless or one seat can change the course of Canadian history. (See Chuck Cadman)
So electoral reformers, put up a system that allocates power and not seats in proportion to the vote and I'll be on board, until then whether you want to admit it to yourselves or not, you're advocating replacing one unfair system with another. It's just unfair to different people.
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8 comments:
I would like to see the house stay the same.
Where the reform should happen is in the senate. Let the senate be a direct representation of their riding with no affiliation to a party. i.e. they can vote how their riding wants them to vote and not how a party tells them to vote.
The senator is directly responsible to the people that elect him or her.
The house will continue on as it does now, being an idea and policy place where bills are created and passed. When a bill is passed it will go to the senate for review by the people.
If, for example, 60% of the senators vote against the bill it will act as a veto, and the bill will go back to the house.. or it counts as a vote of non confidence and triggers and election.
Senators could poll their constituents via online means, snail mail, door to door to know what their riding's feelings are on the new law or bill.
One of two ways here that I am toying with, both have pros and cons, and I can not decide.
The senators will only vote no to a bill if X number of people or X% of their riding tell them to vote no. Otherwise they always vote yes.
or
They have free vote to vote as they wish. yes or no, but are answerable to the people for their decisions.
This of course would mean that we would have to increase internet accessibility..
For example, more funding for Libraries, use them as a focal point for community politics.
(Would it really be wrong to invest more money in our libraries anyway?)
Each year the Senator will have to make available;
How they voted on each issue.
Their expense accounts.
etc.
The Senator's job would be to bring issues to their riding and put it into context of their riding. If they have a view point on an issue, they can try to sell their view point to their constituents.
The Senate's job is to do the research on the bills and laws and present it to the people.
As well, It could be the senate that appoints judges, or the senate could act as a pool for judges to be drawn from since they will have their fingers on the pulse of the people.
Senators would be elected on a fixed term basis for example every 4 years. This is unless they are recalled by their constituents during their yearly review.
One thought, would be to have the Senators represent regions and not population.
This would help prevent polarization of power in the senate, due to population densities.
The Toronto area would get one senator, the same as say northern Ontario. The idea is that no region is trumped by another due to population. The western senators could veto a bill that is pushed through that favours the more densely population provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
These changes seem like they would be a lot easier to do, vs changing how our current house works. Plus it will allow us to retain some of our pomp and circumstance that goes with the history of our government.
my 2 cents.
The NDP + Green party earned 25% of the national vote... "fringe" parties my ASS!
Well you need to cut your ass off, because I said "small party like the NDP or a fringe party like the Greens" The Greens are a Fringe party, the NDP are a small party.
Almost a million votes is hardly fringe... but just keep telling yourself that if helps you sleep at nite.
Almost a million votes because they were erroneously allowed in to the debates. A Giraffe could get a million votes if it were allowed in the debates.
BTW I like the links on your blog, I've never been to the "Edit-Me" site before.
Harper was elected this time with a huge majority of the votes in his riding... about 40,000.
Election 2006 the Green Party got 600,000 votes or enough votes to win at least 15 seats if the votes were concentrated in one area... the parties that got less than the Greens... they didn't have enough votes concentrated to win even ONE seat... those are fringe parties... your post is insulting to the hundreds of thousands who voted for the Green Party... it's die hard blind partisans such as yourself that have poisoned our political system.
with 304 seats in parliament it only takes "proportinal about 0.3% per seat
ANY party that gets more votes is not a "fringe party ...
However the paties IN parliament have long secured their status over any others already to the detriment of their own
but we are only a pseudo democracy
remember the QUEEN is our head of state - we are still a monarchy
our form of democracy is somewhat hidden control mechanism to easily sway election as the conservative Million$ ad campaign against DION proves - so who has the power ? $$$ !!
THINK ABOUT IT
My concern is not so much about the NDP getting more seats or the Greens getting seats, it is more about what types of parties may pop up. We don't have any openly racist ones like many European countries do neither does the Communist Party routinely get above 5% as they do in many European countries that use PR. Even if the Conservatives are too right wing for my tastes, at least we don't have parties like Jean Marie Le Pen's party here in Canada. My worry is with PR such parties might appear as under the current system they have no chance at winning seats, but that could change if we used PR.
Merboy - Just because a party gets 25% of the vote doesn't mean they are mainstream. The National Front in France routinely gets over 15% and in the most recent Austrian election, the two far right parties got 29% combined together. That doesn't suddenly make them mainstream. Now I agree the Greens and NDP are not fringe per se, but the NDP is too ideological and the Greens are too much of a one trick pony.
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