ReeferMadness

They ran paid ads on CBC radio. Since they were pretty strongly anti-CBC and cut its funding every chance they got, I have no idea which genius thought that was a good use of money.

Instant runoff voting works well when you only have one position that can be filled (e.g a president or a mayor). It tends to favor centrist, compromise candidates. I think it would tend to produce fewer parties rather than more but I don't think that's important. It isn't a proportional system and in fact can produce results that are even less proportional than FPTP. Lots of things are possible. The key point in my mind is that more people are able to vote for something they believe in rather than against something they don't. This election could best be described as the people who couldn't stand Harper vs the people who couldn't stand Trudeau.

Back to the topic. I haven't heard anyone with influence suggest that Mulcair is going anywhere so he might stick around. If he did leave, Nathan Cullen seems like the guy. As far as the Conservatives, the candidates that I've heard kicked around (Brad Wall, Jason Kenny, John Baird) all sound to me like Harper 2.0. If they're smart they'll look at someone who is pragmatic enough to look across the spectrum and bring people together. Someone like Dianne Watts. She's smart, female, has no association with Harper, and isn't going to be perceived (as Harper was) as a prairie oil guy mad at Central Canada.

The history of politics shows that voting system reform doesn't happen often because parties tend to organize themselves in ways that take advantage of the current system. In particular, first past the post (properly called single member plurality) voting tends to favor the winning party. In the case of yesterday's election, the Liberals wound up with something like 55% of the seats with less than 40% of the popular vote. However, I heard on the radio that electoral system reform came up in Trudeau's speech yesterday (I missed it) and so I have to assume that something will be done. Trudeau is on record favoring alternative vote; which doesn't produce proportional results and which is thought to favor the Liberal Party. This thread is a discussion point for how Canada can get to a proportional system and which system would work best in our country. There are 3 main types of proportional voting systems, party list, mixed member proportional (a hybrid of party list and FPTP) and single transferable vote (STV).

Fair enough. My point is that the assumption that the Greens would get no seats under a system with, say a 5% threshold, is premised on them getting the same number of votes. Bring on the system and then we'll see.

I think that's true and some parties are afraid of it for just that reason.

The premise of your argument is that people will vote exactly the same way under PR as they do under FPTP. Voting systems matter. Strategic voting happens in every FPTP election and there was a huge push during this one. And "force of note" is a relative term. They have polled close to 10% during this election and that could give them in the range of 30 MP's.

If you did that, you would have the most extreme form of PR in the world. I wouldn't support that and I doubt you would find many political scientists that would.

1. A climate change policy 2. Legalized pot 3. Electoral reform 4. No more talk of niqabs or barbaric practices hotlines 5. An end to CRA targeting of charities 6. Scientists who can speak up

Feel free to take him. And his band.

idk about that. If he really wanted to do this for political traction, he would have announced yesterday and released his column. I haven't seen it yet (and lots of twitter followers have asked to see it).

lol

I wonder if she saw the brochure or if it went out without her knowledge. It's hard to believe that someone with local knowledge would have agreed to it.

Green Party.

No, she didn't. She championed the yes side on her radio talk show in a great rant. She was against it in the first referendum (while she was an MP). And she seems to have forgotten about it now that she's premier. And it's possible that we get a shot at this federally. Don't give up.

Rural Manitoba? I'm guessing.

I've heard a number of problems about venue selection this time. I wonder if the Conservatives nickel-and-diming of Elections Canada has forced them to make some decisions which are going to restrict voting. There have been a couple of cases in BC where polls are suddenly much farther or less convenient than they have been in the past and it's resulting in people having to spend long times and/or travel long distances.

Yup. The mainstream media was at best apathetic and at worst openly hostile to the idea. I will say, though, that I think Gordon Campbell was at least open to the concept of PR. His party couldn't have been very happy about any of it but the citizen's assembly was a brilliant example of grass roots democracy. It was just a pity how democracy was undermined when it really counted.

I'm not sure it's fair to paint the entire NDP with that brush. I'm going from memory but I believe that the party has (and had) a resolution endorsing MMP. But you're right about influential party insiders. In addition to David Schreck, Bill Tieleman, another NDP insider was leading the no side. (I thought Bill was the main guy, actually). I remember attending an STV debate and John Heaney, another senior NDP insider was on the no side with a former Socred whose name escapes me. One of the arguments that Heaney made against STV was that BC is a centre-right province and if PR was adopted, the province would be governed in perpetuity by a centre-right coalition. But under FPTP, at least, the NDP would occasionally get a false majority. I was flabbergasted that he would make what is really an anti-democratic argument to a non-partisan crowd.

The process that led to the STV proposal was amazing. They had a citizens assembly that was educated on electoral systems and spent a long time (a year IIRC) coming up with the recommendation. Quite a number of the citizen assembly members were prominent supporters on the yes side. Then there was one sore loser who wanted MMP and was on the no side. In 2005, STV was on the ballot for the first time. It got 57% approval (but needed a supermajority of 60% to pass). However, most people didn't really have any knowledge what it was. So, they put it on the ballot again in 2009. This time, they selected people to lead the yes side and no side, paying them each $500,000 to run their respective campaigns. The yes side ran a totally positive, almost boy scout like campaign. They held free sessions on how STV worked (most of them sparsely attended). The no side, run by a pair of senior NDP insiders, went totally negative, campaigning on fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). The yes side got less than 40%. It was well known that the NDP really wanted MMP and didn't like STV. It's one of the reasons why I have a hard time voting NDP. An interesting sidebar is that Christy Clark was then a radio host and was an STV proponent. There was a widely distributed rant about how politicians and political insiders liked FPTP because it was good for them. Now she's premier and she's never mentioned it since.

Everyone who doesn't bow to Harper is a left-wing hack? :D Coyne's views could best be described as Libertarian - both socially and economically. There is nothing left wing about him. Or do you mean that everyone who has personal integrity is automatically left wing?

I used to have respect for Rex Murphy but in the past few years he's made less and less sense. Last year he penned this piece of tripe in which he came to the conclusion that because Trudeau was going to enforce party discipline on the issue of abortion, there was no longer any place in the Liberal Party for Christians.

No doubt that some people won't vote because they want to watch the Blue Jays. I wonder which party would be hurt most by that.

Soooo..... up 300% implies 4x. If turnout was 60%(or so) in 2011, it will be 240% this time? Someone might think the polls are rigged.

Don't forget the shy tory thing.