Machjo

Be careful with Uni as a measurement. Tolstoy was a university drop out since he got bored with what he was learning there. Shakespeare never had the chance to go to uni and uni grads of his time who were competing with him in theatre were jelous of him for it. Meanwhile Goebels had a Doctorate degree. Character is not something you learn i uni. Consider too that some don't go to uni because of family responsibility which may strengthen their character, just as some prostitute their way through univeristy owing to the high cost of tuition. While uni is certainly valuable for trades and professions, it does not replace moral education for character development in the least.

On the contrary. I learnt that: A Liberal MP would follow the party manual like the Bible, A CPC MP (which is what we got) would let others do his thinking for him, An NDP MP would be unreachable for comment, and A Green MP would at least be willing to entertain new ideas and not be quite as attached to his party. Of course this could vary from riding to riding, but that was what I'd learnt from the last election for my riding. So I did learn something.

Personally, I will willingly vote for a candidate who does not look out for my own personal best interests if they are for the greater good. Give us some credit at least. However, I do not want my candidate voting blindly on ideology, which is what parties do.

Give me a break. Would it really be that hard for a candidate to set up his own website, create a few webpages on a few broad topics, and answer any new question that comes to him on that site in the appropriate category so that anyone who wants to know more can look it up on his logically planned and indexed site? This way he wouldn't need to answer the same questions repeatedly since whenever they should be asked once he'd put them on his site for all to see while respecting the anonymity of the original questioner of course. He could also request that all questions be mailed or emailed to him first so as to use up his time more efficiently, with arranging meetings in poorer parts of the community for those who don't have access to the internet or postal resources. This would show him to be organized too. No, I don't expect my candidate to give me any of his personal time necessarily. But I do expect him to show an ability to communicate his ideas to me in an efficient and planned manner. This also indicates his ability to think in a planned and efficient manner, which would certainly be a valuable trait for a national leader, no?

BS. Last election, I'd visited the Liberal candidate's office and asked a few questions. The candidate literally went to the party policy manual, looked up the subject at hand, skimmed through it, and then answered based on that. I was personally insulted, since i could have gotten the same information from the party website. I had not gone out of my way to go to his campaign office just to get what I could have read on my own off the party website. The CPC office was not far from there (walking distance in fact) and so I'd gone there to talk to the CPC member. He wasn't there, so I'd written him a note and got a call the next day from Dr. so and so who answered me on his behalf. Now I can understand that the candidate was busy an could not answer me personally. I have no issue with that. But certainly an organized candidate would gather questions he gets and answer them in an organized manner on his website for others to look up so as to not have to take up his precious time with the same question. But this candidate did nothing of the sort and got Dr. so and so to express his own opinions to me. Well, sorry, but Dr. so and so was not going to be on my ballot. Out of respect for each candidate, I'd looked up their websites first precisely to not waste their time if I could have found the answers online. The reason I'd gone to them was precisely because I could not find the answer online. I'd also managed to visit the Green candidate at his home, and he actually showed to be a more independent thinker than the rest of them (though I won't credit his party for that and took that as a reflection of him only). As for the NDP candidate, well, I couldn't reach her for comment. So, which candidate do you think I'd be more likely to vote for? It's just a matter of doing your homework if you really care about it.

That I agree with. Internal party policy is its business, and no party has any obligation to endorse this or that candidate. That said, no person should be held back from running as an independent, and if party names do not appear on the ballot, then that helps to put them on a more equal footing with party members.

I agree with all your points,and have written to my MP and MPP, and on occasion have had to write a few times to get a response, with the MP or MPP or the appropriate government administrator calling me with some platitudes. Needless to say, I gave up. After all, if after all that effort they still don't get it, the only solution then is to get them out of office. The problem though is that as long as the general public keep voting in such dimwits, our leaders will be too illiterate to understand anyway. I'm sick and tired of writing letters to dimwits. Now I recognize that removing party names from the ballots would be but a small step, and many of the points your bring up are valid. That said, when the allies had to fight Nazi Germany, they started off on a simple beach. Had they not started there, they would never have moved further inland. The same applies here. Removing party names from ballots would be that first step on the beach so as to allow for deeper reforms later. If you're not willing to make small victories, the big ones will never occur.

Besides, why would a candidate be bothered going though all this effort if all his constituents care about is his party affiliation?

You have some good ideas there, but I think a prerequisite is to remove the party hack mentality. As long as that mentality remains, few will even bother to look at their candidate's website. They'll only care bout looking at the party website. And I think the most important symbolic move to help fight the party hack mentality is to remove party names from ballots. Once that's done. more people might actually start looking at candidate websites so as to learn more about individual candidates. Then and only then would your ideas be fruitful, though I agree they are good ideas.

You bring up a very valid point here. As for 'the right of a candidate to associate as he will', putting his party name on the ballot essentially removes that right from him to a degree by giving the impression that he is bound to that party. By removing party affiliation from the ballot, we recognize that party affiliation is his business. We are voting for the candidate and he's certainly free to join any party he wants. Our only concern is that he represent his constituents well. Beyond that, he could join the Rhino Party for all we care.

Is your MP an independent thinker or a party hack? Does he just vote blindly along with his party thinking it'll look cool kind of like flailing your arms about creating a human wave of arms ripping across the floor in unison? Or does he actually vote his own conscience without fear of what his party might think of him?

Or here's another idea: You could choose whether you want a candidate ballot or a party ballot. This way a candidate would know how many voted for his party and how many for him personally if he wins a seat. If most voted for his party, then he knows his constituents don't really want him to think for himself but to just flail his arms in yeas and nays as per party request.That way he knows that if we wants to keep his seat for the next election, he'd better just shut up and flail his arms about as required. On the other hand, if he gets way more personal votes than party votes, then he knows that his constituents want a thinker and not an arm-flailer. As such, he would have no more fear of refusing to bend over forward with his pants down for his party and would actually have the courage to vote his conscience or even resign from his party if needs be to stand on principle.

So do we remove the party names from the ballot to try to improve the situation, or do we just remove candidate names from the ballot to reflect actual reality?

In fact if that's the case we could save much money on MP salaries by simply having party leaders show up to Parliament with each leader's vote worth the percentage of votes he got in the election. Why even pretend that candidates are worth anything if they've really just become party slaves.

Or if it is true that promoting more thought in elections is a lost cause, then let's be honest about it and remove candidates' names and just have party names on the ballot instead of pretending that candidates really matter anyway.

I can see why so many want to keep party names on the ballots. It saves much brainwork on their part.

I've noticed one serious problem in debates about not just electoral reform, but any reform really, how people fall so quickly to circular reasoning. Problem X is as it is so we need to maintain condition Y, even though condition Y is the reason for problem X. How do we break voters out of this simplistic thinking?

Agreed.

And that's inpart because party names appear on the ballot. You seem to be promoting a self-fulfilling prophecy, which generally involves circular reasoning. The party is all-powerful, and so we need to entrench that on the ballot, and entrenching it on the ballot ensures the party remains all-powerful. We need to avoid such circular reasoning. Now you seem to be defending taking party names off of the ballot. Let's say Harper was a worthwhile candidate to vote for but was not in my riding. And let's say (which is in fact the case in my riding) the CPC MP in my riding was a complete idiot. In my riding I'd actually met people who agreed that the guy was an idiot but voted him in anyway because they liked Harper. By emphasizing party, are you not encouraging people to vote for idiots because the party leader would actually be worth voting for if he were in that riding? By removing party names from the ballot, would you not give that local candidate more of a run for votes? You seem to be shooting down your own proposal with the example you just presented.

So you're quite happy with dolts running voting on national policy!? I agree there are certain things a candidate can learn on the job. Character, however, which is uniquely a personal and not collective trait, is something we'd expect a candidate to learn before getting the job. As for anything else, yes, he could learn on the job. But character, no way.

^ | Ditto that.

Exactly. That's precisely why I'd want the party names off of the ballots, so as to not encourage such excessive party discipline. Your argument runs along the lines of: "Problem X exists already, so why try to remedy it." Pretty defeatist if you ask me.

What's so bad about that?It would require them to actually think. For those who aren't used to that, it could give them a headache. Could you imagine?With all the trouble they'd have to go through to learn about their candidate, they might decide to just not vote anymore. Good riddance.

No kidding. Could you imagine them having to emphasize their name and saying: "if you want to vote party X, I'm it's candidate, and you spell it M-A-C-H-J-O. Would you like me to spell that for you?... No? Well, don't forget now, OK, because Manjo's on the ballot too, and you don't want to vote for her. Remember now it's C-H not N, Ok... don't forget now." Or... "You wanna know what I stand for? Good question. Let me just see if I can find it here in the party platform manual... Official Bilingualism you said? Hmmm... ah, here it is, page 35. Just read page 35 of the manual and you'll know what I stand for on that subject, but don't ask me 'cause I haven't read it myself."

Of course. But without the same emphasis on party, candidates would be expected to deliver or else they'd be voted out come next election, rather than just counting on their pretty party logo to win again and again. Also, these petty remarks would likely not hold as firmly as a bunch of party propaganda owing to the lack of party loyalty.