Other people's take on MMP

Well, I'm going through my own take on items such as lists, lists again, and minorities, so I thought I'd post up a link to some other people's opinions, and specifically, a small debate over at The Great Canadian Debate, about MMP. Many arguments are quite similar to what I've been putting forward so far.

Also, Greg Morrow has a good run-down of what he would like to see in how lists should be created. Not sure if it will be done that way, but it's something to consider. And again, it seems with just about every point that I see so far, I see some good and some bad with it. I may spend a post sometime going through some ways that we could pick the lists, and see which of them I feel would work best.

My take on MMP: Lists (pt 2)

Following my first take on list MPPs and my views on minorities, I'll take another stab at some stuff I've heard about List MPPs, this time focusing more on what they do (or don't do) after they get elected.

List MPPs are responsible to nobody but the party.

My take: Can't really argue too much with this, and it is a minor downfall, I will say. One of the major factors of current MPs is to follow the wishes of the people who elected them. And if they go against the wishes of the people, they will have to step up and explain their decisions the next time. If I don't feel my current MP represents me, I won't vote for them next time. I would really have to think that most of the list my party puts forward doesn't represent me to vote against them. If the top 4-5 people on the Liberal list are all anti-abortion, and I'm pro, then I have to think whether it's worth it to vote against the party on that. I may have to think that the top 4 will get elected regardless, but then my vote for the party is hoping to get numbers 6 and 7 elected, who represent me exactly. Or if every second person on the Liberal list doesn't represent me, do I vote for them? While this may sound bad, it's hard to say how much this will really affect stuff.

List MPPs will have no constituency, and thus won't have to deal with constituency work.
List MPPs constituencies are the entire province. They have the LARGEST constituency!

My take: These are some points that I've heard, and I agree and disagree with both. I do think that the matter of constituency work will have to be dealt with (I'll elaborate more on it later on when I examine the problems of dropping to 90 riding seats), but I can't judge too much, since I've never worked in a constituency office, I'm not positive how much the constituency business really affects everything. I hear some MPs and MPPs really do a lot about constituency work, probably as much as phoning up people with birthdays or stuff like that, and for some, I hear they really don't care too much about them. I do think not having as much constituency work could be both a blessing and a curse (see my next points), but overall, another weak point in the proposed system. I do hope that the List MPPs will take up some of the slack, but it could backfire if they only care about their local ridings, and we would end up with some ridings with effectively 2-3 MPPs, and some with just one. Alternatively, the "List MPPs represent the whole province" is again both true and false. While in some respects it is accurate, and they rely on the whole of Ontario to elect them, they really aren't representative of anyone as much, since it would end up being that the party will end up being responsible to everybody, while the individual List MPPs won't have to deal with as much.

Since List MPPs will have no constituency work, they have an unfair advantage in having more time to act on other stuff, like their re-election.
Since List MPPs will have no constituency work, they will be able to work on some longer-term items that require more time.

My take: Again, without knowing what the impact of constituency work is, I can't judge too much. While it would be VERY unfair for a List MPP to be elected, and then spend all the time that the regular MPP is working on one person's immigration case to be going door to door in the riding campaigning for the next election, they also may be able to take that time to spend more effort on committees, and to actually be able to plan forward.

List MPPs will be a second tier of members, and will be forced to act like the Senate.

My take: Another interesting point. Unless if a specific MPPs was "appointed" to the List to represent a specific demographic group, I don't see how easily they will be able to justify voting against their party's position. Especially since I'm not versed in what happens if a List MPP got kicked out of their party, what would happen to them? I don't know, but if they got replaced with the next person on the party's list, that would be a tremendous whip on them. On the other hand, if they sat as an independent, what does it mean to have a List MPP as an independent? Then they really represent nobody, and everything gets very interesting.

With the extra time, and since they don't have to face tough riding or nomination battles, List MPPs could be a real collection of specialists in their fields.

My take: I put this out, since this is an argument I aspire to. Far be it from me to be able to praise parts of the US electoral system, but I do think that one of their (theoretically) best aspects is that their cabinet ministers are not elected members. Sure, Bush has singlehandedly slaughtered most illusions that the system can be used for good, but as a whole, it could be useful. Since I heard a speech by Larry Page, founder of Google, give a talk about how many US representatives had technical degrees. I believe the number was somewhere less than 10, out of ALL governors, senators, members of congress, etc... We are very under-represented. And we're also not overly personable overall (as the old joke goes: How do you know a mathematician is extroverted? When he talks to you, he looks at your shoes and not his), so it could be tough for us to get elected. But if a party could throw a few people to represent the research and technology sectors onto the lists, they could really bring a new voice to parliament, and may actually know why it is absolutely critical to spend more more on innovation projects, which aren't generally the sexiest funding projects.
On a similar note, since they don't face the electors, they can also think ahead. I know there are tons of things that suck in the short term, but really are the right thing to do long-term (especially to do with the environment. Sure, it sucks to have people lose their jobs, but keeping the dirty, polluting plant open is worse for us overall. And if I represent the riding where that plant is located, no way will I get re-elected after closing that plant). Not directly having to say to someone, "Please, trust me that you being unemployed now is the right thing for the country!" allows me the privilege to do that without knowing that I will be losing my job next time. Having a few people like that might be good overall.

My take on MMP: Minorities and fringe parties

Well, continuing on with my summer series, I will now examine the next set of issues, minority governments and fringe parties:

Since we won't see as many majority governments, parties will be forced to work together.

My take: Well, I must say this will be partly true, but it could also be a problem. Let's just say that in Canada, we don't have a large tradition of working together overall, and I don't think that will necessarily change overnight. It is sometimes refreshing to see parties being forced to work together, but since the Liberals and Conservatives are so opposed to each other, for now, it would just be one of them being propped up by the NDP, which isn't always the greatest thing. I don't mind the NDP myself, but I don't want to always have to rely on them. As I mentioned before, I would like to have some chance at a party forming a majority, since although it may not always be great, I do think that we do sometimes need that sort of stability around.

Since a small change in votes will not cause a large change in seats, parties will have little incentive to force early elections.

My take: Well, I have to agree with this in principle, but in practice, I'm not sure how easy it will be for people to adapt to this. I am not a big fan of the 2% vote change leading to a 10% change in seats, but I'm not sure that this is enough incentive. It could be a good way for a party to say, "you've got to agree to this, or else we're gonna have to go to an election and you're not getting any better", but I can see the party in power holding this over the other parties as well, basically forcing them to go along with their plan, lest they be accused of forcing the election.

30% of people voted for party A, 30% voted for party B, nobody voted for a coalition of A and B!

My take: Another good and bad issue. While nobody may be fully satisfied with coalitions like this, the easy counter is in the current argument where a party with a majority but 36% of the vote is basically governing against 64% of the electorate. But really, as I said above, I don't see the history in Canada for making good coalitions, so I think you'd end up with one party trying to control everything, which may cause troubles.

Fringe parties will call all the shots.

My take: I don't like this argument too much. If a party gets 3% of the vote, they only get a handful of seats. While on a few votes it might make a difference, and I will cringe in the first Tory and Reform/Christian Heritage Party/Right-wing nutjob party coalition or even bill passing, the big parties will still be mostly in control. It may make the difference on a few votes, but really, in our current political system, the Green party will be the main "fringe" party, and to be honest, I wouldn't mind seeing some of them get elected, since then voters will actually have to pay attention to more than their environmental record, which I know will cost them votes.

The 3% threshold is low, and will give credibility to tons of small, fringe parties.

My take: This I find is the craziest argument. Anyone claiming this has obviously never seen election results. Ask people how much the Green party got in the 2003 Ontario election, and I bet hardly anyone would say that they got less than 3% of the vote. So really, the only "fringe" party that has a chance to get elected would be the Greens. The Family Coalition party would need to quadruple its votes to get seats.

So basically, I'm not sold on this incessant minority rule, but rest assured, I don't see there being any problem with crazy fringe parties calling the shots.

My take on MMP: Lists (pt 1)

Well, in my summer MMP series, I figure I may as well start it off with a bang and tackle the issue that it seems most people are wary about. From the arguments I heard last weekend at the OYL's SummerFling, these lists are the largest contention point, and somewhat ironically, are the least elaborated in the entire proposal, basically with the Citizen's Assembly saying, "we'll let the parties figure it out." So with that, here are some arguments I've heard, followed by my comments on them. Part 1 will focus on how the list MPPs are nominated, and who they will be:

If parties aren't responsible filling their lists, people won't vote for them

My take: I would love for this to be true. I think it would be great if the Liberals fill our list with equal numbers of people from each region and group, then we will get more votes from people. That would be great, except I don't expect that to happen too much. Oh, it may make a difference of a few votes, but I don't see this as a great selling point, since I highly doubt that very many people will actually know too much about the lists.

The lists will be filled with party hacks!

My take: This is somewhat fair, since I do believe that the list MPPs will tend to be fairly well-connected members of the party. But how is that too much different than the other MPPs parties nominate? We don't know how the parties will nominate people on the lists, but I don't think it will be much different than how we nominate candidates, so I don't see this as a major drawback. You still need to be involved and connected in the party (or a celebrity) to get elected.

All the list MPs will be white men from Toronto

My take: This could be a problem, but I don't see it as a major one, since I doubt it will happen. Honestly, I'd fill the top spots on my list with people from the areas that I would have the weakest party support, since then I could make sure when I win to have ministers from various areas. I mean, which party wants all their MPPs from one region? Doesn't make for a very balanced cabinet.

No way will there be MPPs from the North, since the party elite in Toronto will run the lists

My take: Again, this could be some trouble, but I'm pretty sure the parties will try to balance it out. Yes, there is the potential to screw some people over, like ignoring the North, but I don't think that would be too much trouble.

The parties will be responsible and make sure that the lists are representative

My take: Well, so far I've been mentioning this quite a bit, and this is one place where stuff can go wrong. As I pointed out above, I do think that parties won't be crazy with lists, but I still wouldn't be surprised if 15-20 of the 39 list MPPs are from Toronto. Sucks, I know, but we can't have everything perfect.

The lists will be a great opportunity to get [insert minority group here] a fairer representation

My take: This is where I feel the lists will be the most useful. I don't mean any disrespect for certain gender or ethnic groups, but they do often have troubles getting nominated, and are thus under-represented in the legislature as a whole. People don't want a "token ethnic" on the list, but I don't see any trouble in being able to better represent certain communities by having a list MPP.
I'll add even more to this: I think it would be a great way to add people who would do very well in cabinet, but may not be the easiest ones to get elected. I'm not a big fan of taking hints from the Americans too much, but one of the supposedly better parts of their system is that since their cabinet is appointed, and not made up of elected members, they could be specialists in their field. Now, they screw that up most of the time, but it could be nice to be able to bring in someone who may not be the campaigner, and be able to bring them into cabinet in a specialist role.

I'll stick with this for now, but I welcome any comments or other criticisms about how these people will be nominated and who they may be, and will do my best to respond to other comments. I will be coming back to discuss the List MPPs later on, probably more in regards to their actual roles in parliament, and depending on what other arguments I hear, I may revisit the way they're nominated again.

My triumphant return

Well, as I mentioned a couple months ago, I decided to take a break this summer from my blogging responsibilities. But now that my final exams are nearly over, and since I plan to keep going strong this fall, especially with at least one election coming up, I thought I'd start back now.

I've been thinking for the past week of starting a small series of posts about the new Mixed-Member Proportional system that is being proposed and voted upon in the upcoming election. I've been rumoured to be fairly much in favour of it, and let me start off by saying that's not true. Mostly.

I do believe that we should have some changes to our voting system. I am a Liberal from Calgary. If we had some form of PR federally, then the Liberals would actually have a reason to campaign there and do their best there. I also believe that both federally and provincially, the Green Party deserves to get some sort of representation, since they do have many supporters and would do well to advance the debates.

But on the other side, I also like getting majority governments some, if not most, of the time. Maybe not winning 75% of the seats with 40% of the votes, but I like some majorities, since they do often get more work done.

So with those initial thoughts out of the way, my idea was to run a little series, attacking the proposal from both sides. I've seen arguments from those who are staunchly in favour, and from those who are staunchly opposed, but haven't seen as much from those of us in the middle. I don't like this massive polarization, where it almost seems every point is black and white to everyone.

But in order to go forward, I don't mind getting some help in this. I am myself not familiar with all the arguments on either side (I've heard many of the basic arguments), so if you know of an argument either side is using to attack or defend, I'd love to hear it. Either post as a comment or e-mail it to me at uwhabs(at)gmail(dot)com and in the upcoming weeks, I hope to give my hopefully somewhat reasoned opinions of the argument.