The Inhumanity of MMP

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 10:11:15PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Not really. The "citizen's assembly" was charged with electoral reform
> and MMP was the best they could come up with. This indicates, to me,
> that those that claim that the CA serves political party interests over
> those of the electorate have a point.

Maybe they should have tried harder, or they picked the wrong people to
do it.

> At the expense of complexity, new MPPs without public accountability,
> more yet weaker government, and less value on individual contributions
> compared to those of the party.

MMP has some odd corner cases that don't seem to be defined well, but I
am not convinced it is really any more complex, or that it removes
accountability.  In some ways it seems to add more.  A strong government
may be one that does whatever it wants, while a weak one may have to
cooporate and actually care what people think.  The more individual MPPs
you have the more relevant they are likely to be.

> The vote tomorrow will be worth it if it fails bad enough to kill the
> idea, and make people think about reform driven to suit the electorate
> rather than minority parties.
> 
> What I find most interesting is a recent Globe survey which indicates
> that the more informed the electorate, the greater the opposition to
> MMP. Maybe the system works after all.
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071009.wontpollreferendum09/BNStory/ontarioelection2007/Ontario/

And who decides who is more informed?

The whole vote on MMP so far reminds me of the vote on the euro in
Denmark a number of years ago (I was there on vacation at the time).
The arguments for an against were generally completely without basis in
facts and neither side made particularly good arguments.  In the end the
result was 52% against and 48% for which really just means they had
managed to make most of the people very confused.  Apparently both ways
would ruin the economy and give great prosperity, would enhance the
nationality of the country and destroy a part of it at the same time.  I
suspect the arguments over the canadian flag in the 60s was similar.

--
Len Sorensen
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