Well, Ontario's holding a referendum on October 10th not only to elect our next provincial government but also to vote on changing our voting system from the current first past the post to a mixed member proportional representation system. The FPP system, which is used mostly throughout the country, works this way. You vote for a representative for your district, whoever has the most votes in that district represents in the government. Regardless of the popular vote, whoever holds the most seats, leads the government. Now, the MMP system works as such. You vote for 2 things. 1 being the member you'd like to represent your district and a party. Representation works the same as FPP, most votes wins, and gets a seat. However, they then tally the votes for the parties, and as long as a party has 3% minimum of the votes they are elected as List Members. List members are chosen from within the party itself and are SOLELY based on the popular vote. In Ontario, we currently have 107 seats I believe. The new system will drop that down to 90, and have 39 List members, So roughly 70% are FPP and the other 30% are based on popular vote. This then resolves the issue of popular vote not be properly represented in government. If Ontario passes this, hopefully other provinces do it as well, and perhaps even go nationwide. I support this and will be voting for it coming October 10th. The real problem is not many people actually READ what is going to be on the ballot or even care to. It's why we've had to suffer the last years with unsatisfactory government representation. :( |
I believe that a mixed system just like that one is the one the NDP have been pushing for in the last few years, but the idea gets zero traction with Libs or Cons craving the God-like power of a majority government. Even the Bloc could care less, because their regional concentration tends to inflate their representation.
Whatever happened to the single transferable vote system that citizen's council in BC recommended? Nobody could ever really describe how it worked in a succinct, simple fashion.
It's nice that provinces still have the courage to try to refine the political process. Perhaps you're right, and changes at the provincial level will precipitate changes at the federal level. That's how health care got in, after all. :P
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