ReeferMadness

Fair enough. It's not the fault of the Conservatives they haven't evolved as far as many of us and it was impolite of me to point it out.

So, you're making perfection the enemy of good. We can do much better than we are today,

Well, if it's governance the voters wish and gridlock that they hate, the answer is obvious, isn't it? Modern history is replete with leaders who focused amply on governance and never suffered gridlock. Mussolini. Stalin. Mao. There seems to be a lack of available polling data but I'm going to surmise that each of these leaders at some point during their rule enjoyed a level of popular support similar to what Chairman Harper has today. And you say that our system has the opposition? What a joke!! The opposition has no power and the government has essentially stopped even answering their questions. The media have been treated by disdain by a government drunk with power. The real opposition that has prevented Harper from ramming through his agenda has been the courts. Also a few heroic senior civil servants (like Kevin Page) have done something to keep the government honest.

I'm just so looking forward to seeing the backs of this bunch of knuckle-dragging zeros.

Funny and sad.

Hopefully, that is true. In reality, is it? Representatives serve 2 main functions. The first is to help their constituents access the government bureaucracy. This is a non-partisan activity and shouldn't be affected by political stripes. However, it's one that I've never used and to me it's less important. The other function (and the more important one by far, IMO) is to represent the constituents views in the HoC. Our system utterly fails us on this count for multiple reasons, a couple of the main ones being: 1. Power is so thoroughly centralized that MP's are actually more the party's representative to the people than the people's representative in the HoC. The system has been turned on its head. 2. In theory, the MP's are people's representatives and the PM is accountable to the MP's. In reality, MP's are beholden to the party and the PM. All significant policy decisions are made by the party and the MP's that don't toe the line will be out. You can check with Brent Rathgeber if you doubt that. 3. It is functionally impossible for a single person to adequately represent the views of a hundred thousand (or more) constituents on the basis of geography. The reality is that probably half or more of those people will have a fundamental difference with their representative on any given issue. It is the second and third points that PR addresses and STV addresses best. BTW, I'm not sure who Nita Lowey is. If your point is that the issues cut across ideologies, then I agree. This is Canadian forum and I've used Canadian examples. I understand your system is different and so your issues will be different as well. My impression is that the parties have less centralized control in your country and that the main problem down there is more about concentration of power in the hands of money interests than concentration of power in the hands of unelected party officials.

Your statement is an insult to sock puppets everywhere. Please apologize immediately. Crying is optional.

IRV can produce even worse results than FPTP. STV sacrifices some degree of regionalism for proportionality. You wouldn't normally join 10 ridings together because it isn't necessary. I'm going from memory but the optimum STV scenario is to join an odd number of ridings and 7 seems to be the optimal number. (As I recall, the increased proportionality of anything over 7 is minimal and it gets smaller as you add more). However, you can gain significant improvements in proportionality with as little as 3 representatives. In the BC-STV proposal, 79 BC ridings would have been reduced to 20, each with 2-7 members. If you have 7 members representing you, chances would be excellent that you would like at least one of them. Finally, having grown up in a rural area, I can tell you there is no magical, uniform urban-rural divide. If you live on a farm, then it's a problem if your representative is from the town. If you live in a town, then it's a problem if your representative is from a larger town. if you live in the larger town, it's a problem if your representative is from the regional city. If you live in the city, it's a problem if your representative is from the suburbs. And so on. Regionalism is an elusive, vanishing concept when you try to pin it down.

I don't usually respond to the same post twice but your map is a brilliant illustration of just how shallow and inane political analysis is. Those vast swaths of uniform color present a uniform view of reality that the third grader in your soccer comment would recognize as patently false. Inside those great expanses of NDP orange are huge numbers of frustrated Harper supporters. Granted, they're probably not too bright but democracy demands that they be represented. Similarly, the stretches of blue hide hordes of intelligent, thoughtful people who loathe what Harper is doing to this country. Again, they should be able to feel that their views are being heard in Ottawa. 37% of votes = 60% of seats = 100% of power = anti-democratic.

Agreed. Regional representation seems to be a sacred cow when it comes to representative government but I've never seen a rational explanation for it. Most issues that are dealt with by the national government are not regional. They are at least at the provincial scale and above (and hey, we already have provincial governments to represent the interests of the provinces). So, I'm inclined to conclude that it is simple, petty, primitive tribalism. We are social animals and the instinct to identify with someone from our own tribe is deeply buried in the primitive parts of our brains. It's behind our insatiable (and inane) devotion to sports teams, our species tendency to racism, our tendency to nationalism, religious wars and a great many other stupid and destructive tendencies. It could easily be the root of us bringing down civilization. Luckily, we have the intelligence (many of us do, anyway) to look past the ancient traits that no longer serve us. We can see that our natural constituency is not simply a matter of geography, it's a matter of shared interests and shared values. Now that we have the technology, it is easy to reach out and build those constituencies across space and time zones. We just need to get past ourselves.

Sadly, it would probably be better.

So, you would choose someone you couldn't stand who lives on your street over someone you deeply admire because they live 300 miles from you. Is that what you're telling me?

Exactly. It isn't about being fair to the parties. It's about being fair to the voters. And giving them the government they vote for not one that "wins" because of people feel there have to be winners and losers.

No, it's a major league f*** up. It isn't supposed to be about winning and losing, it's supposed to be about representing the people. And PR does a much better job of representing the wishes of the voters than FPTP.

Imagine that. And yet, people still defend FPTP. It's a wacky world.

Whoa, that sounds crazy. Almost as crazy as giving a party that got 37% of the vote 60% of the seats and 100% of the power.

What does that even mean?? Do you think that all rural people vote the same way? There are NDP supporters in rural Saskatchewan, Liberal supporters in Calgary and Conservative supporters in Victoria. Where numbers warrant, they all deserve representation. When my supposed representative goes to Ottawa and everything he says or does is counter to my core values, nobody can possibly claim that I am somehow represented.

Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about . Proportional Voting Systems.

I'm sure you have a point to make but don't worry - nobody will ever figure out what it is. You start with a pointless buzz phrase, add an unsupported (and unsupportable) opinion, put in an obvious factoid and finish off with a non-sequitur.

Single Transferable Vote is a form of PR.

Yes, I'm outraged. I demand that autos pollute as much as possible so that we can chew our air, just like China.

Stupid marijuana laws are not just about recreational pot smokers going to jail. They are about public resources wasted pursuing non-violent grow-op operators. It's about drug money going to organized crime. It's about lost tax revenue which could be used for <insert your favorite political hobby horse here>. It's about the fact that studies have shown it is easier for underage kids to get pot than beer. And even those pot smokers who don't go to jail can still have their lives ruined because they can still have criminal records. These laws are not of minor importance. Ask Marc Emery.

The main reason that more countries don't have PR is that major parties benefit from FPTP. They are reluctant to allow PR to be considered and are adept at torpedoing the initiatives if they do happen to make it on the ballot. The requirement (by Gordon Campbell's Liberals) that STV get a 60% supermajority is a good example. I find it bizarre that the UK could have been broken up by 50%+1 but STV needed to hit a very high 60% threshold.

MMP would be a great improvement on what we have today but I think that STV is a superior system.

Yes, our current system is based on the premise that people who live in a geographic area all have similar interests and similar political views. It's the very finest in 17th century political thinking. These days, when most people have more in common with friends and family who live timezones away than their next door neighbors, you might think that we could move beyond the antiquated view that constituencies should be based on geography. Tragically, you would be wrong because it seems that people just lack the imagination to be able to get their heads around anything else.