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.
1 comment:
Coalition governments under MMP in Europe get just as much work done with fairer more proportional results as majority votes do here, Matt. The unstable government bit has already shown to be false.
I think the real reason some people are on here saying they like majority governments are the people who would rather not have to deal with compromising issues with other parties who might not think their ideas are the be-all and end-all.
This is what Ontario Liberal Cabinet Minister John Gerretsen, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and one of the Liberal cabinet's MMP supporters, said about MMP: In the Kingston Whig-Standard he said he's advocated for electoral change since being elected in 1995 because it would force governments to compromise more with other parties in order to pass legislation.
"Nobody is ever 100-per-cent right and nobody is every 100-per-cent wrong," he said. "Governing is the art of compromise. There's nothing wrong with having the governing party take into account smaller parties."
Post a Comment