Evening Star

How has JT shown this?

At least in 2008, the BQ seemed like a social democratic party who happened to have sovereigntist leanings but were primarily concerned with constructive policies that would benefit the country. At this point, they've basically gone over entirely to nationalism of the bigoted variety. Tory-BQ sounds like a nightmare. Seriously, I'd probably be OK with a Liberal-NDP coalition, if it meant the Liberals' approach to federalism, the Senate, and electoral reform and the NDP's approach to civil liberties and economic policy.

I don't think these two could even speak to each other! I actually considered Communist-Green as an answer to this question.

Well, you could conceivably have FPTP without political parties at all (although this is almost never done in large countries) or with very weak parties. Most countries that use FPTP, including the US and UK, do not have the same level of party discipline that we see in Canada. Individual representatives can have a great deal of independence from party positions. (See the amount of trouble Obama has sometimes had with getting other Democrats to go along with him.) Any MP who was chosen from some kind of party list would be highly irresponsible if he or she did not go along with party policy.

This is a problem with the party system, not a problem with FPTP. There is nothing about FPTP that even necessitates the existence of political parties.

The main problem I would see with FPTP in a multi-party system is wasting of votes. I think STV addresses this more effectively than MMP.

I mean, if angrypenguin is from Vancouver and somewhere between his mid-20s and early 30s, it's not impossible that he took a class from JT. I wouldn't put a lot of stock in a teenage memory of him using a greasy line on another teacher, though.

If it is true that electing MPs via FPTP produces an imbalance that needs to be corrected, I would prefer that the way we elect those MPs actually be modified so as to reduce the imbalance, instead of preserving it and adding extra MPs chosen from party lists to try to 'correct' a fundamental problem. STV (Hare-Clark method) would address this and minimize wasted votes, if I understand it correctly. However, the problem of disproportional party representation is mainly a problem because parties have so much control over MPs in the first place. If parties were less important than individual reps, this would become a less significant issue. Others have complained about it creating 'two tiered' representation (1 type of MP directly elected and 1 indirectly elected). Yes. Yes, and, to me, this might be more pressing than changing the voting system. Anyone elected from a party list would certainly have to be responsible to the party, though, which would not help.

I believe that, in Sweden, voters can choose to either just vote for a party or to vote for party and and also specify the party candidate they want to vote for.

The system that was proposed in ON was more complicated than this. Everyone would cast two votes: one for a local representative (who'd belong to a party) and one for a party. The 'additional seats' would be filled by party list members in proportion to the votes cast on the second ballot.

This is basically my reason. To expand, it concentrates even more power in the hands of party brass. MMP seems bizarre to me. If there is a problem with how people are elected via FPTP, adding extra members who are elected in a different way does not seem to address this. Moreover, I have trouble with the idea that MPs who are elected in two very different ways should sit in the same House and have similar powers, when some of them are supposedly representing constituencies and others are basically placeholders for parties. I want individual MPs to be more autonomous, to represent their constituencies, and to vote their consciences, whether they are chosen through FPTP or STV/IRV.

I am in the US. I'll check out your Ceeb link when I can.

ap, here's the link to watch online. http://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele I don't watch online so I hope it works for you. <<... ce document vidéo n'est pas disponsible dans votre pays.>> Odd. I never have trouble watching CBC stuff.

I've seen some of it before and am watching this clip again now. Iirc, he mostly gave straightforward answers to questions about policy.

Very well. I'll edit my previous comment: I dislike, or at least am sceptical about, party-list PR systems and hybrid systems that include a party-list component.

OK, but what about his appearance on that show was so wonderful that it could make him so popular overnight? It's not like he had never been on TV in Quebec before.

The 2011 NDP surge is one thing I've never found a compelling explanation for, actually. The party was led by the same man who led them in the two previous elections. Their platform had not changed all that much, as far as I recall. Layton's position on federalism wasn't even any different from what the party had advocated in the two previous elections. Yes, the LPC and BQ had been declining but why, all of a sudden in the last two weeks of the campaign, did the NDP experience such a massive surge for which there had been no real indication until that point, led by a province that never gave them the time of day before? Edit: It's not like it made no sense, since the BQ had practically been functioning as a Quebec wing of the NDP in terms of policy in the previous Parliament (before they really committed themselves to bigotry on a full-time basis). I just don't know why the surge happened right at that moment, so late in the campaign.

Yeah, there was even a referendum in Ontario on whether to do this in 2007.

+ Layton's appearance on Tout le monde en parle, according to legend. I never completely gathered what was supposed to be so magical about this.

Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing.

According to Wikipedia, the NDP got 30.63% of the popular vote in 2011, which is more than what the polls are showing for them now. Do you mean in terms of seat count?

It's the least bad suggested version that I've seen.

How would they be disenfranchised? Their votes would get counted and would be reflected in the makeup of the House. Not exactly the situation of women pre-1916. I see no reason to believe that i) our current party system would continue as is under PR or that ii) A centrist or centre-left party and a centre-right or right party couldn't form some sort of right-leaning coalition.

Not necessarily. One conception of a fair voting system is that if a party gets 1/3 of the vote, it would be fair for that party to get 1/3 of the seats. It would be in a very strong position to become a coalition partner, in a system where it is very hard for any individual party to get a majority of the seats. Edit: there is no reason why that party should be guaranteed to form majority governments 1/3 of the time, just because it gets 1/3 of the vote. NB: I dislike party-list PR systems.

You're speaking about a multi-party system as though it is a two-party system (and lumping 'centre' and 'left' together into one category, which will always give a disproportionate result). The NDP are not the Liberals. An NDP voter could just as easily argue that, under the current system, they have never got to lead the federal government even though they get 20-33% of the vote, and that this is unfair. In fact, that's what they do argue iirc. Edit: Anyway, under a more proportional system, what's to stop a centrist party from forming a coalition with a right-leaning party?