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2007 Ontario Election: MMP Referendum

so, if the other guy is any good he should be able to win....


:p
 
Are you then suggesting that we don't live in a democracy?

The voting system has little to do with how people vote. And besides, strategic voting exists in all forms of balloting.

The system has lots to do with how people vote -- why vote for the NDP candidate in a rural conservative riding? No chance of success there.

Strategic voting occurs in all political voting systems, but whereas strategic voting in certain systems maximizes the political spectrum, here it does just the opposite. Which systems encourage politically diverse outcomes? Certainly not FPTP, where only a few countries (I can in fact only think of India) get away from 2 or 2 1/2 parties.
 
The candidate that gets the most votes wins the riding. How is that not democratic?

While 'majority rule' is a simplification of democracy, I'd say it's a necessary component. In other words, how can you win anything without 50%+1 of the vote? That's certainly how the parliament settles disputes.

FPTP is an ancient system we inherited from a feudal system. Many of the initial ridings were practically countries of their own. FPTP works pretty well in that context.

But we don't live in a feudal system, and I'd say most residents don't care just about what goes on in their riding anymore. We care about the bigger issues too; otherwise why not just have municipal local representation and do away with provincial governments altogether? In our context, wasting the vote is a real problem; when 40-50%+ ballots have no bearing whatsoever on the makeup of parliament, there's trouble.
 
While 'majority rule' is a simplification of democracy, I'd say it's a necessary component. In other words, how can you win anything without 50%+1 of the vote? That's certainly how the parliament settles disputes.
But if you have more than two candidates, it's usually impossible for any one candidiate to acheive more than 50%.
 
^I don't recall feudal serfs having a vote. If you have evidence of this, please post it as I would be interested in reading about it.

Also, when speaking, speak for yourself and don't assume knowledge of what all other people think or care about, otherwise you might sound as if you are passing off your assumptions as facts.



I would also have to say that, as a voter and as a citizen, I didn't get to choose the present electoral system, and I certainly did not get to pick what some appointed committee selected as the best replacement. I did get to say no to it, and did so - as did many other people.
 
I we're going to make any change, here it is. In any one riding, all the candidates run. Afterward, another election is run between only the top two candidates. In this fashion, every riding will have 51% or more representation.

This would also stop most of the loser candidates/parties that never expect to win, but run only to make a point or to dilute the vote. We'd certainly never have to hear about the Family Coalition Party, Communist Party, Green Party, and all those hacks who'll never win. Instead, those of Communist, Green or Religious/Family leanings will have to push their "realistically plausible chance of winning" candidates to represent their issues.
 
My point is that there is no comparison between feudal times and today. It's a pointless analogy, and one used in an attempt to inflame the issue with provocative language. You need not own land to have a vote, today. Voting is a right for all, and not a privilege of some.
 
The candidate that gets the most votes wins the riding. How is that not democratic?

There might be a candidate that is more preferred overall than the one that wins. FPTP allows relatively thin slices of the population to have total control over policy.

"The voting system has little to do with how people vote. And besides, strategic voting exists in all forms of balloting."

Bad argument... we should move toward systems that have lower degrees of strategic voting. And I call bullshit on your claim that the system has little to do with how people vote. I voted Liberal in this past election because my first choice, Green, hadn't a hope in hell of being elected. Strategic voting, baby. Under a preferential voting scheme, I wouldn't have to vote strategically.

"I would also have to say that, as a voter and as a citizen, I didn't get to choose the present electoral system, and I certainly did not get to pick what some appointed committee selected as the best replacement. I did get to say no to it, and did so - as did many other people."

Incorrect. If you voted for FPTP, then it wasn't imposed on you--YOU CHOSE IT.

"I we're going to make any change, here it is. In any one riding, all the candidates run. Afterward, another election is run between only the top two candidates. In this fashion, every riding will have 51% or more representation.

This would also stop most of the loser candidates/parties that never expect to win, but run only to make a point or to dilute the vote. We'd certainly never have to hear about the Family Coalition Party, Communist Party, Green Party, and all those hacks who'll never win. Instead, those of Communist, Green or Religious/Family leanings will have to push their "realistically plausible chance of winning" candidates to represent their issues."

What you propose is basically what they use to elect Presidents in France. It's fine, I guess, but it would be more efficient than having two ballots cast to just have electors rank candidates in order of preference, dropping the lowest and reallocating those votes by next preference until someone has 50%+1. Also known as alternative vote. It was basically my preferred option for the referendum, but when life hands you lemons (CA picking MMP), you might as well make lemonade.

Now we continue to be stuck with the system that gave us such wonderful governments as those of Rae and Harris. I used that argument to convince people to vote for MMP, actually: under MMP, Rae would probably never have been Premier.
 
But fundamentally, what's wrong with strategic voting? What's wrong with voting for the party that best approximates your views, yet also has a chance of actually forming the government? We can break ourselves down into smaller and smaller little groupings, but what's the point? No party, no matter how small, will ever represent your views perfectly. Any kind of representative system of government requires a certain amount of compromise on the voter's part.
 
What you describe is some what tangential to the issue of strategic voting. The problem with strategic voting is that there is imperfect information. Sure, there is some last minute polling available, but it still makes it difficult to say how to vote in an election to achieve your strategic goal. Let's say I wanted Elizabeth Witmer (PC) to lose in my riding. My first choice is Green, but they won't win, so let's say I guess that NDP has the best chance of beating Witmer and cast a vote for that candidate, but it turns out that the Liberal candidate was in second place when the ballots are counted. The point is that it shouldn't be a guessing game!! This is called 'gaming the system' in the vernacular, and generally avoided in mechanism design.

This is why I think we can agree that something like alternative vote takes a lot of the strategy/'gaming' out of voting, while helping to ensure that centrist/moderate candidates tend to win unless there is very clear opinion on one side of the spectrum or the other. It also penalises voting for small, irrelevent parties to a small extent, but enough that you won't have 50 'Caucasian Christian Reform Parties' etc. ranked before realistic candidates.

The point is that FPTP doesn't really achieve its goals in a multiparty landscape, unless its goal is tyranny of the plurality.
 
"The voting system has little to do with how people vote. And besides, strategic voting exists in all forms of balloting."

Bad argument... we should move toward systems that have lower degrees of strategic voting. And I call bullshit on your claim that the system has little to do with how people vote. I voted Liberal in this past election because my first choice, Green, hadn't a hope in hell of being elected. Strategic voting, baby. Under a preferential voting scheme, I wouldn't have to vote strategically.

"I would also have to say that, as a voter and as a citizen, I didn't get to choose the present electoral system, and I certainly did not get to pick what some appointed committee selected as the best replacement. I did get to say no to it, and did so - as did many other people."

Incorrect. If you voted for FPTP, then it wasn't imposed on you--YOU CHOSE IT.

You claim that it is a bad argument, but you don't explain why. Individuals will vote for their own reasons, regardless of what you happen to think of those reasons. People vote because they think its important to do so. Maybe they like a party. Or maybe they like the candidate. Maybe they voted Conservative because Mom and Dad did do. Or maybe they voted Green because students all voted Green. Maybe they choose not to vote because they are uninterested, or don't understand the politics, issues or parties. Maybe they don't vote because they don't care. Maybe they didn't vote because they see no need to because, in their opinion, there is nothing really wrong. You simply can't assume or prove that changing the system will affect voting patterns or the desire to vote. You can't disprove that it might turn people off from voting. Choices for voting are always going to be subjective.

While the MMP system offered up has to do with how the votes are balanced out, this need not always appear automatically satisfactory to a voter because you think it is. For example, in MMP, I might really like a candidate, I may even be able to live with the fact that he belongs to a party I really don't like, but my vote will be weighted to the party he belongs to anyway. I may not want that at all. Did I get ahead in such a system, then? No.

Call it bullshit all you want. You don't have any special claims on how or why people vote in the manner that they do. There's a significant population in B.C. that votes NDP provincially and Conservative federally. You may not like that, or even agree with it, but that type of voting exists.

As for voting on MMP, I'll tell you MY reasons so as you do not confuse your arrogance for my thinking. I voted against MMP by putting a vote for FPTP. That's how the ballot was presented. I decided to weigh my selection that way in order to stop what I think is a flawed plan that would put too much power in the hands of political parties. I voted strategically. Clearly you don't like that. Too bad for you.
 

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