MMP, FACTS, FEAR, FOOLISHNESS AND FAITH

I don’t claim to be an expert on politics or electoral reform but I can’t help but get pissed off at some of the crap I’m hearing on MMP.

Fact:
List members will be chosen just as democratically from within the various parties as riding candidates are chosen now. If you support a party that partakes in parachuting candidates into ridings you have no right to complain the lists will be filled with party hacks. What you do have is a problem with your party, complain about them, become active in that party and fight for it to become democratic, that or move on.

Fact:
Most people don’t belong to a party.
Parties don’t allow members to belong to more than 1 party
This means we already have a system where most people have no say in who is their candidate, MMP neither makes this aspect of the game better or worse.

Foolishness: “Why should be we reward losers?”
I would respond, why should we reward winners who did not win. 37% for Bob Rae = Majority, 44% for Mike Harris = Majority.
Canada has had provincial votes where the higher popular vote did not win the election, what the fuck is that about?


Foolishness: “The list will be full of party Hacks!”
What the hell is a party Hack?, a member who is probably actively involved?, An insider?, of course they bloody are. Who the hell do you think is going to run for a party anyways? It’s not going to be a non member who does nothing for the party, duh!
What you might get with MMP is a brilliant but uncharismatic list member, a qualified but overlooked aboriginal, an incorruptible poor women member, the kind of members that would actually understand and represent the average person experience, what we don’t need is more of the same; lawyers, ex CEOs , bankers etc.

Fear: “we will be overrun by fringe parties”
People don’t change that much. Each of the major parties has a floor of support; do you honestly think that so many pre-programmed voters are suddenly going change their beliefs that there will be 20 parties overnight?
Face it you’ve got 2 parties that never drop below 25-30% that’s good for 50-60% of voters minimum; the dippers don’t fall below 11% or so, Greens we will give 6% for a total of 67-77%. This leaves 23-33% swing voters to be divided up among all of the old parties and any of the new “Fringe” parties. The assumption is we will be tripping over all of the new parties so lets guess 11 new parties (33% of swing voters/3% cut off for seats)
My guess is that at least half of the swing votes will swing towards the existing parties leaving 12-16% of voters split between our imaginary 11 wacko parties. At worst 5 “fringe parties would get the minimum % to get seats, statistically none of them get any seats, so what is the problem. Each new party decreases the likelihood of any fringe party getting a seat at all, it’s quite self limiting.

Faith: Canadians are not radical. I do not fear a deluge of nut parties taking over the province. First of all most of them would never get a seat, secondly the light of day on their beliefs would quickly marginalize most of them, and finally the large parties would not give them credibility by inviting them into a collation. Even if the do get a few seats I don’t fear new ideas or new voices brought to the table, the ones we have now do a piss poor job so a little fresh blood might be a good thing.

So screw their arguments, I say YES to MMP!Recommend this Post