If it Ain't Broken...

The McGuinty Liberals have been proposing some electoral reforms throughout their tenure in office. Of course you all know about the fixed election dates, which was a good idea. Their latest one however, is highly questionable.

Do you know what a mixed member proportional government is? No? I didn't think so. Well it's an electoral system. The one we use now is commonly referred to as first past the post, where the person with the most votes wins. They don't have to have the majority of the popular vote, just the most votes. Mixed member proportional is similar. Here's the mechanics of the new system. The current Legislative Assembly in Ontario would be expanded from 109 seats to 129 seats. 90 of these seats would continue to use the old system. The remaining seats would use proportional representation. Mexico uses this system for its Chamber of Deputies (the lower house), remember that, it's important.
Proportional systems work like this. When you go to the ballot box, you'll have to vote twice. One for a person for your riding as you already do now, and again for a party. The remaining 39 seats will be divided up by this second vote. Say the Liberals get 40% of the popular vote, the Conservatives 30%, the NDP 20%, and the Greens 10%. The 39 seats would then be divided up to directly reflect those numbers. The Liberals would get 16 seats, and so on. Who gets to fill these seats is chosen from party lists. A party selects 39 people and ranks them from first to last choice. In the above example, the Liberals would choose the top 16 people from the list. Voters have no input on who gets on those lists.

The first obvious question about this system is why. Well, the idea is to give fringe parties such as the greens some representation in the legislature. It is argued that it gives more fairness since in a multi-party system, it is unlikely that one party would receive the required 50% plus one to give them a true majority. However, is this system really necessary in Ontario? No. There's nothing really wrong with the current system in terms of how our leaders are elected. If the Liberals want to reform something to make the system more fair and equal, try getting rid of that silly party discipline rule. Secondly, the lists would just reek of patronage positions and elitism. Gordon donated $1,000,000 to the party so he's at the top of the list. Frank is my buddy so he's definitely going on there. How is that fair to voters when they don't even get to choose the people who will represent them? Back to Mexico. The system for their Chamber of Deputies was created by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a highly corrupted party that has similar ideology to the Liberals here. They set up the system for the same supposed reasons, but twisted it to make sure they would always get the majority of proportional seats. What's stopping the Liberals from doing the same here?

Mixed member proportional representation is just a bad system, plain and simple. It confuses voters it will do nothing to improve democracy. A referendum will be held during the next provincial election in October regarding the issue. Now that you know how it works, be smart and vote no.