ReeferMadness

Anybody who wants to know why we've never gotten PR in this country just has to read through this thread. First, there are the naysayers - party insiders, members of the political industry, the mainstream media and people who think PR is some sort of plot. Then, once you get past that, you have a new threat from people who support PR - but not a particular form of PR. People with strong party affinities only want MMP but others will only accept STV. And then to top it all off, people want to take a crack at designing their own systems.

Hey. It's a great idea.

Wouldn't it be great to have a Minister of Science and give the portfolio to Garneau? A Ministry of Science, charged with ensuring that we have evidence-based policy, would be a great statement that Canada's war on science is over.

A product line?

Is the problem in the US the system or something else? Your statement that Canada would face similar issues with PR is utter conjecture. Does that happen everywhere with PR?

You seem to be missing the fundamental point of our representative voting system. You vote for your representative, not someone else's. In STV, you already vote for candidates, not parties. So, random ridings are going to be represented by people who maybe came in 3rd, 4th, even 5th in their riding. And I should point out that when people win by large percentages, it isn't always because they're star candidates, it's often that they are in safe seats. So, picking the people who got the largest percentage of their votes is not always the smartest thing to do. Honestly, PR systems aren't perfect. And it isn't because the people who came up with them were idiots. It's because you're trading off a lot of different factors.

How much of an obstacle would a republican congress be?

Trees.... mountains....... cities.......skies........fields.......oceans Oh, the horror of it all.

Color me cynical but I think that was a deliberate Harper strategy. The one thing he believed in above all was that government should get smaller. If the debt was paid off (or paid down substantially), it would free up money for some future government to start spending on programs again. I think paying down debt would be his last priority.

Why do you say the largest talent pool ever? Most of these people are rookies, aren't they? I'm not saying they're not good, I'm just surprised at the comment.

May would never be a cabinet minister on another party anyway - not unless she was given a lot of leeway. Just thought it was funny. I saw another, similar petition from Avaaz that had almost 25,000 supporters (or maybe it was the same one just linked to separately.

damn someone has started an online petition to have Justin make Elizabeth May Minister of the environment. It already has 20,000 supporters.

you want to open up the constitution? It would be easier just to visit the dark side of the moon.

Even with no cod?

In 2004, the Law Commission of Canada produced a report on voting system reform. It recommended a mixed member proportional system with regional open lists. It's a good read-if you have some time to spare. I don't remember the government discussing this at the time. I'm guessing it was overshadowed by the sponsorship scandal.

Don't mess with the math of STV - it works fine. Designing a good voting system is surprisingly hard and I recommend leaving it to the experts.

you have something against sasquatches?

And someone needs to explain to me why the Fisheries minister always comes from the east coast.

How's that supposed to work? If I run under the "I like to watch TV in my underwear" party and I get 50,000 votes spread across the country, who am I providing local representation to? Too many parties will make coalition building harder, especially if you have extremists getting elected. This isn't going to fly.

I guess he should have kept the suit on.

I'm not sure he'd need the suit in many cases.

citation?

There's a bunch of problems and it isn't just the threshold. 1. The only way I know of to implement something like this would be to have one huge party list (or you would need to add a *ton* of MP's. And nobody is going to rank 338 candidates so it would have to be a closed list. Nobody would support this. 2. If you only need, say 50,000 votes all across Canada, it would be too easy to elect extremists or joke candidates. I'm sure I could get that many people to vote for an "Elvis lives" party. Particularly if you combined this with online voting. 3. We would wind up with way too many parties.

Trudeau has committed to an all party committee to study systems and make a recommendation; and that's I what I expect to happen. Now, will that result in a recommendation of PR? I guess that remains to be seen.

You mean like how the economy was wrecked when Harper took over?