At the Hidden Cameras merch table, amoung the cds and t-shirts were brochures for the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. During the show the Camera's Maggie MacDonald called this the 'quietest referendum in history'. She pointed out that in 2003 the Liberals managed to score 72% of the seats in the Ontario legislature while getting only 46% of the vote. (Note that the headline of the page that links to says 'Liberal Landslide' - when it wasn't even a majority of the vote) The Citizens Assembly recommendation is meant to fix that and you will get to vote on it in October.
So, what exactly are they proposing? You can read all about it on their website but I'll try to summarize:
If this system is adopted, when you go to vote you will get one ballot but will check two boxes. One for the candidate of your choice (as always) and one for the party of your choice.
Before the election each party will nominate a province wide list of candidates in the order it wants them elected. Before the election parties must submit their lists and "details on how they developed them" to Elections Ontario. These lists will then be published widely so that you can read the lists before you vote.
90 MPPs would then be elected in local ridings (the same way they are now) and 39 members would be elected based on party vote. The number of seats each party received would be based on the percentage of the total provincial vote by party. So, you could vote (for example) for a liberal candidate locally, but the NDP by party - if the NDP received 20% of the vote on the party side of the ballot they would then recieve 20% (8) of the 39 party vote seats. Starting at the top of the Candidates list mentioned above the first 8 people on the list who were not elected in their ridings would be given seats.
It seems to me that this creates a far more fair and balanced system and works to bring 46% 'landslides' back down to earth. So, on October 10 get out and vote your conscience on this (in this case your conscience says yes). And in the event that this is, in fact, the 'quietest referendum in history' - I'm putting a link to it on the sidebar until October!
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2 comments:
Great to hear an awesome Ontario band is promoting the Citizens' Assembly's work.
One thing about your description of MMP though. The example you use is slightly off. The list seats are not distributed proportionally to the party vote, i.e. 20% of the party vote doesn't mean 20% of the list seats.
Rather, the list seats are compensatory, meaning that they are distributed to compensate for the disproportionality in the district seats. So with 20% of the vote, a party could win dozens of list seats if they do really poorly in the list seats or only one of two if they do really well in the local seats. I hope I'm making that clear.
Thanks for the point of clarification Mark - I think the video explains though - it is linked both on the blog and on the publicbroadcasting.ca home page.
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