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What mentally-deficient chimp designed the Elections Ontario site? It offers me only two options, one of which is currently unavailable (the "are you on the registry" link), which means that I cannot currently get any information from the Government of Ontario about how I can vote in the upcoming election.
Bravo - another job fucked right up the ass by the McGuinty Government. Jesus, at least Mike Harris did it on purpose. If I can ever find out how to cast an absentee ballot (fuck you with a chainsaw, Elections Ontario), it'll be for the NDP.
I also won't be voting for this new 'mixed-proportional representation' boondoggle Dalton's Citizen's Assembly's come up with - yes, first-past-the-post sucks and it can screw you on the popular vote. But it works. You know what doesn't work? Proportional representation - take a look at the Knesset or Weimar Germany . More to the point, the proposed 'neither hare nor hound' system will screw over cities by increasing riding sizes. The GTA represents 50 per cent of Ontario's population but only 47 per cent of the seats in the provincial legislature, which is how government's like Mike Harris' can survive by screwing over cities. I don't see anything in this proposal to address this problem. And, frankly, the idea that any party who wins 3 per cent of the popular vote in an election will get a seat in the legislature without being accountable to any constituency scares the shit out me.
Arguments in favour of any kind of proportional representation are all based on the same flawed premise - that a move towards greater proportional representation is an absolute good. Once again, see Weimar Germany for why that's not always the case. Frankly, Ontario electing someone from the "Progressive Jedi" party or some such shit is a best case scenario, here. The blithe assurance that a 3 per cent minimum vote would eliminate fringe and extremist parties is unconvincing at best. That's 3 per cent of voters, not the general population, which practically invites any group with money and organization enough to hijack the political process. Sure, getting the Greens into the legislature is one thing - the Khalistan Separatist Party of Ontario or the Canadian Heritage Party is another.
The current system, flawed as it is, makes elected representatives responsible to a specific, localized constituency. While this doesn't guarantee good government, it does provide a basic level of accountability when every member of the legislature can be held responsible for his or her actions by their constituents. At the same time, the first past-the-post system largely ensures that the members elected reflect the concerns and values of their riding. The proposed reform weakens that accountability by holding out the opportunities to parties to enter the legislature and form governments by winning seats that are beholden to no particular person or region - I'm unconvinced that just because Toronto and Timmons have fundamentally different political concerns, the inhabitants of either city should see the value of their vote diminished.
As Churchill said, parliamentary democracy is the worst of all possible systems of government, except for all the rest.
Bravo - another job fucked right up the ass by the McGuinty Government. Jesus, at least Mike Harris did it on purpose. If I can ever find out how to cast an absentee ballot (fuck you with a chainsaw, Elections Ontario), it'll be for the NDP.
I also won't be voting for this new 'mixed-proportional representation' boondoggle Dalton's Citizen's Assembly's come up with - yes, first-past-the-post sucks and it can screw you on the popular vote. But it works. You know what doesn't work? Proportional representation - take a look at the Knesset or Weimar Germany . More to the point, the proposed 'neither hare nor hound' system will screw over cities by increasing riding sizes. The GTA represents 50 per cent of Ontario's population but only 47 per cent of the seats in the provincial legislature, which is how government's like Mike Harris' can survive by screwing over cities. I don't see anything in this proposal to address this problem. And, frankly, the idea that any party who wins 3 per cent of the popular vote in an election will get a seat in the legislature without being accountable to any constituency scares the shit out me.
Arguments in favour of any kind of proportional representation are all based on the same flawed premise - that a move towards greater proportional representation is an absolute good. Once again, see Weimar Germany for why that's not always the case. Frankly, Ontario electing someone from the "Progressive Jedi" party or some such shit is a best case scenario, here. The blithe assurance that a 3 per cent minimum vote would eliminate fringe and extremist parties is unconvincing at best. That's 3 per cent of voters, not the general population, which practically invites any group with money and organization enough to hijack the political process. Sure, getting the Greens into the legislature is one thing - the Khalistan Separatist Party of Ontario or the Canadian Heritage Party is another.
The current system, flawed as it is, makes elected representatives responsible to a specific, localized constituency. While this doesn't guarantee good government, it does provide a basic level of accountability when every member of the legislature can be held responsible for his or her actions by their constituents. At the same time, the first past-the-post system largely ensures that the members elected reflect the concerns and values of their riding. The proposed reform weakens that accountability by holding out the opportunities to parties to enter the legislature and form governments by winning seats that are beholden to no particular person or region - I'm unconvinced that just because Toronto and Timmons have fundamentally different political concerns, the inhabitants of either city should see the value of their vote diminished.
As Churchill said, parliamentary democracy is the worst of all possible systems of government, except for all the rest.