The Inhumanity of MMP

[Marcus Brubaker]

Jamon Camisso wrote:
>> Is this what people really want? Is this worth making majority
>> governments an aberration and reducing the influence of independents?
>> I don' t want MPPs who are reduced to yes/no switches, with no public
>> accountability and no need to bind with local constituents. These
>> MPPs don' t need to campaign; the party can simply parade out smooth
>> talkers -- who aren't even on the list -- to explain and attack,
>> while appointing parliamentarians who can't relate to people.
>>     
>
> That's why we have a 4 year election cycle. The one thing I haven't seen 
> anyone mention is that if after 4 years, a clique of backroom 
> coalitions inside parties etc. are dictating policy that we 
> constituents don't agree with, the popular vote is an easy and 
> effective way to crush said party's MMP seats, without voters needing 
> to fear that voting for their local candidate will hinder that.
>
> It's a good way to get parties to at least maintain a positive outward 
> appearance to avoid loosing ground to their competition. Most people 
> vote based on superficials anyways.
>   
I was at a FPTP v MMP debate last week with Andrew Coyne and I thought 
he put it very well.  Parties aren't suicidal.  If parties engage in 
backroom dealing that upsets their supporters, they will be punished at 
the next election.  Similarly if they continually put party hacks on 
their lists that no one wants.  No different than what we have now, 
really.  It's not like there is a mechanism in Ontario where an MPP can 
get booted out if their constituents are unhappy with them.  (Whether 
there should be such a mechanism is another question.)  So really, 
there'd be very little difference in accountability there, it would all 
come down to the next election.

Cheers,
Marcus
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists