The Inhumanity of MMP

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 01:03:55AM -0400, Marcus Brubaker wrote:
> The Citizen's Assembly was tasked with *electoral* reform, not 
> parliamentary or democratic reform.  They're job was to look at the way 
> people's votes get translated into MPPs.  Recalls or an elected Senate 
> were outside the scope of their mandate.  Further, they were an Ontario 
> group, which means that unless you're talking about adding a Senate in 
> Ontario, that was *completely* out of the range of possibilities.  I'm 
> hoping that you've just failed to read the any of the actual source 
> material instead of really believing that an Ontario assembly could 
> would even try to change the federal government.
> 
> Feel free to present some real evidence of political bias, but until 
> then I think the assembly stands as fairly neutral in my book.  Plus, I 
> don't know if you've noticed but people from all sides of the political 
> spectrum have backed this proposal.  For instance, from the right wing 
> of the spectrum there is Andrew Coyne.
> 
> This isn't a vote about what could be, it's a vote about what the 
> proposal does and doesn't do.  Are there other reforms which might help 
> the political processes in Ontario and Canada as a whole?  Absolutely, 
> but most of those were frankly not within the mandate of the assembly 
> and have nothing to do with this debate.

Well certainly some members of the Citizen's Assembly were not happy
with the MMP idea, but it was what the majority ended up picking as the
best proposal.  Some of them certainly had other ideas.

> I'm not expecting this to pass tomorrow, but to believe that this vote, 
> whichever way it ends up, will be an educated one is preposterous.  
> Frankly, Elections Ontario and the entire government of Ontario have 
> dropped the ball on even making people aware that anything was 
> happening, much less explaining what's being voted on.  It's been 
> expected from the beginning that inertia will lead people to oppose it 
> if they know little about it.  That over half the population only 
> learned that there was a referendum within the last two weeks does not 
> give me much faith that most of them have given it any due consideration.

Certainly the web site on MMP is seriously lacking in details.  It gives
the impression that the proposal is seriously lacking in details, which
of course if true should be a good reason not to vote for it.  Some
things certainly has to be cleared up first.

--
Len Sorensen
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